He Comforted God's People

Way back in 1976, I travelled to England with a choral group from what is now Freed-Hardeman University. We spent a week in Aylesbury providing support to a local church for an evangelistic campaign. Our troupe of singers went out two by two to knock on doors each day to invite local citizens to the religious service that night, where they would hear Elvis Huffard, one of our own professors preach, and to a concert by us after the service. Another singer, like myself a Bible major, and I stayed with the local preacher and his wife. The wife treated us to tea each afternoon, a major treat for me. One night, we also had a time where people in the audience could ask us questions about the United States. I answered a question about our secondary education system. At a farewell supper, the local church members treated us by serving us an "American" dinner, boiled hamburgers on buns. We hated to break it to them that those were not American hamburgers. One of the local teenage girls would enroll at our college later. Besides the friendships we forged with the English people we met, we also deepened our friendship with Elvis Huffard. His daughter was in our singing group, but I had been unaware that he had sung with a quartet at Freed-Hardeman when he was a student. He preached messages that encouraged, but also introduced Jesus as one who deserved, required a response. Today would have been Elvis Huffard's birthday. So I pause to honor a man who comforted God's people and encouraged me in my faith.