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5A. A Chapel of Rest in Camarillo 
From the problems of Lemon Grove, I was glad to hurry on to my next assignment in Camarillo, a luscious green valley surrounded by rugged mountains. The area had taken its name from the family who had been given the original land grant after the State of Mexico had been incorporated into the Union. God's blessing on the Camarillo adventure gave me much satisfaction in later years. This was despite the enormous portrait of myself the congregation had specially commissioned and insisted on hanging in their church porch! When I first arrived, however, we had no Church building at all. A small group of parents who were keen to have a Sunday School for their children met in someone's home.
The Funeral Hall Church beside the Railway Tracks
Our very first gathering in Camarillo took place in a little rented building beside the railway tracks. These premises, however, were far from ideal. When we arrived for our Sunday School, empty beer bottles invariably littered the hall from the previous night's merry making. The stink of sour beer and cigarette smoke met our nostrils as we opened the door. Simultaneously, the parents' service met in the only other place available in town, the Funeral Hall. We were undeterred by the thought of a corpse "on view" there any other day. Our men carted in a portable communion table early every Sunday morning and set up for our service. As the weeks passed, we arrived by car sooner and sooner, bringing a pulpit and even kneelers with us in my car. We got more brazen with Mr. Griffin, the owner. I would ask him Saturday mornings "Is the coast clear?" "Sure," he would reply with a laugh, "you can bring round your church now"
She Only Liked Funerals
Few refused to attend our morning service because it was held in a funeral hall. On the other hand there was one lady who came to the church service and seeing no coffin at the front rose to leave. A concerned usher gently stopped her at the door. "Aren't you able to stay for the service this morning, Madam?" he quietly asked. Her indignant rely, as she turned away, rocked him on his heels. "I only like funerals!" she scowled. Despite this one quaint objector, our little church grew apace, and the Bishop named us St. Columba's, after the great missionary saint. So many new folk brought behavioral problems. An older member admonished a newly confirmed one. "If you're an Episcopalian, act like one!"
After two full years of steady growth, we were beginning to need larger premises. Mr. Griffin informed us that he was about to carpet the funeral hall and we had to move elsewhere, at least for a short time. We searched Camarillo in vain for an alternative for our Sunday services. Then, we heard that the "Women's Thursday Club" in the nearby town of Somis could help. Strange as it may seem, this move to their purpose-built hall increased the size of our congregation. Seeing our happy crowd going in to worship Sunday by Sunday, the people of Somis were themselves encouraged to come along and become members too. We had held our services in a beer parlor, a funeral hall's chapel of rest and in the Women's Thursday Club of another town. In less than a year, we were soon to begin work on our very own permanent church building.
God's Own Plot
It was raining heavily as the limousines arrived for the ground breaking ceremony in Camarillo. Framed by orange and grapefruit groves, our four acres seemed like God's own plot, despite the driving rain. The boys in the choir in red cassocks and white surplices grimly hung onto their soggy prayer books in the downpour. The coloring oozed from the red covers between their fingers. As the polished ceremonial spade cut into the sodden earth, we all sensed the thrill of a new era in the life of the church. It seemed to slice all too easily.
The bank would not send out any money for the superstructure of the church. Our first task was to drill a well and prove a plentiful supply of water on the site. This was our foremost and urgent priority. Day after day, the compressed air machine hissed and hammered relentlessly at the hard rock. Each anxious week passed without any news of a find. Then, at last, a telltale dark brown slither of sand appeared on the tempered steel drilling bit and as we watched, cool clear water bubbled and gushed refreshingly forth.
Communicating with God
It was now a joyful hive of activity for us all. The contractor built the frame. Our gang of eager volunteers, who were mostly ranchers and engineers, shoveled concrete for the sidewalks, painted, lifted and hauled. One man, a tall straight ex-Army Colonel from South Dakota, named Joe Pirsch, had worked especially hard and sometime later I was enthusiastically commending him for his efforts. Drawing me to one side, he quietly scolded me in defense. "Why," he protested, "I didn't do this for self praise. I fought alongside some good men in the last war. This work has simply been my offering to God. I am thankful for the memory of my friends! Many of them perished, but I was spared!"
Like the Pentagon
Others were blessed during this project too. The contractor, whose name was Enoch, became one of our backbone members at the church. Every Sunday he took his place as regular as clockwork in the very front pew. After the tedious negotiations over costs were completed, he told me with a wry grin, "You surely made it hard for me. That fourteen men building committee you appointed were like the Pentagon to deal with! Questions about this item or questions about that sum of money!" St. Columba's ventured out in true missionary fashion. Later it established another new congregation a few miles away at Thousand Oaks, called St. Patrick's after another Celtic saint. All this came about in the first instance because a few Christian parents wanted a good Sunday School for their children and were prepared to work for it!
"You've gotta have a glory in the things you do, an alleluia chorus in the heart of you" 
