T ELL I NG GO D'S STO RI ES
Mattie’s Mite
Courtesy Heritage Woods of Sterling Assisted Living Facility
By Jon Corder
E Mattie wasn’t rich by worldly standards, but she shared willingly of what she had. From an early age, her life was one of sacrifice for the benefit of others.
12 APRIL 2021
MATTIE’S “GROWING UP” WASN’T A BED OF ROSES. By the time she was eight, both of her parents had died, and she and her brothers went to live with their uncle and his wife and their four kids. Because she was older than her uncle’s children and a good worker, a great deal of the housekeeping and child-rearing responsibilities fell on her shoulders. As a result, she was only able to make it to the fifth grade before leaving school to help full-time around the house. It was a blessing that her mother had been a stay-at-home mom because the training she got from her helped in the new role in which she found herself. It was not until she was 16 years old that she was able to leave that environment and get full-time employment at a boarding house. It was while attending school, however, that Mattie discovered music was her greatest joy. It was reaffirmed at the local Methodist Church where she and her mother regularly attended before her mother’s death. It didn’t matter what she was doing, Mattie was always singing and sometimes would even preach between songs. And the songs she sang revealed her other passion, her love for Jesus. She enjoyed hymns the most and one of her favorites was “Take the World but Give Me Jesus” by Fanny J. Crosby. She often said, "Without Jesus, life would not be worth living.” Family was important to Mattie. Her children have been blessed by her cooking, sewing and needlepoint skills. As she was able, she worked to support them during their growing up years. Thelma, her oldest, remembers that her mother would work nights at the post office at Christmastime so she could get presents for the children. It wasn’t until the kids were older and more on their own that she worked as a housekeeper at various hotels and finally, more permanently, at the Dixon State School. Her seven children (one for each
day of the week, she would say) have blessed her with many grandchildren and some great grandchildren. She would say that while she had lost track of the number, she knows she has enough of them! Mattie also loved her church. She became a member of the Shiloh Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1949. She and the kids had moved from Memphis to Chicago where they lived with her older brother and his family for about a year. They then moved to a small home where they were on their own. As God would have it, their neighbor across the street was an elderly woman named Betsy. She was an Adventist colporteur/Bible worker, and it wasn’t long before she sold a couple of children’s Bible story books to Mattie and started Bible studies with her. You guessed it, a couple of years later, Mattie was baptized during meetings held by Elder Cleveland and was a faithful member for the rest of her life. Early church life was a blessing; there were a lot of other mothers with children attending and those friendships were such an encouragement to Mattie. At that time, the Shiloh Church was a young church; elders from a larger church would come and preach, teach, visit and work with the kids on a weekly basis. Potlucks were such an important part of church because they provided time for fellowship and there was one every week. Thelma recalls that their diet changed and no longer included pork and other things. Also, for the first time they learned about Christian education. Two of the elders (who were brothers) that visited from the mother church, were strong supporters of Adventist education. Because of that passion, they sponsored many of the younger children, including some of Mattie’s, in Adventist schools. This was not something they did for a year or two. Thelma recalls that sponsorships continued sometimes clear up to the ninth or tenth grade which was the case with Mattie’s children. LAKE UNION HERALD
