Hanging at the Well
A Testimony to God's Grace
Chapter 1: The Beginning
I believe there are miracles in every life. We serve a God who is faithful, true and very involved in our lives, even the lives of those who do not want Him there. There are those who ignore Him and the evidence of His presence and even those who attempt to push Him away. However, for those who look to see, His light constantly shines even through some of the darkest hours.
I entered this life on November 28, 1944 in Marysville, California as the second child to Alvin (Bud) and Florence Kuest. I have always claimed Bakersfield as my home because that is where I was raised and it is there that the Kuest family roots are firmly planted. My father was serving in France during World War II and my mother, who was raised in the twin cities of Marysville and Yuba City, went home for my birth. My father arrived home in the summer of 1945 when I was about seven months old and took us home to Bakersfield.
Alvin Fox Kuest
God was active in my life before my parents ever planned for me. Many times I heard my father talk about his wonder at how God cared for him long before he was willing to claim any relationship to Him. My father entered this life on January 31, 1916 the son of Alta Frances Kuest (later to be Lounsbury), three months after his father, Alvin John, was killed in a railroad accident. During his first year my father survived the 1918 flu epidemic that took thousands of lives in America. My grandmother spoke of being the nurse to her immediate family as she and my father were the only ones to not be effected. However, my grandmother lost five family members to that flu.
When my father was two years old my grandmother married William Kuest, his father’s brother. This made my great uncle my step-grandfather (causing a twist in family history that we cousins love playing with even to this day). They had three children, Robin and Gwendolyn. Three years later, William died suddenly, leaving grandma, now twenty-one years old, a widow for the second time. Later she married John Lounsbury and had a son, Jack. Tragedy continued to plague my grandmother. Robert (after whom I am named) died at the age of five from complication caused by falling from a ladder that was left leaning against the house (a guilt my father carried with him to his death). Gwendolyn died of a childhood disease at the age of three or four.
Three Miracles that preceded my birth
During the times that my father would reflect on his life, he would recount three miracles - all happening before he accepted a relationship to Jesus Christ.
My father never finished high school. He joined the Army as America entered World War II. He earned the rank of Staff Sergeant. The first years of his tour were stateside setting up hospital units at bases from Texas to Oregon. After several appeals to be sent overseas, his unit was finally shipped out to England in preparation for deployment to France.
I always wondered if you could call a man getting drunk as a part of God’s plan for the future. Nevertheless, my father attributed the first miracle to a drunken sergeant who neglected to read the orders for his unit. Because of that my father’s unit missed the ship that was to take them to France. That ship was sunk in English Channel and every man on board was lost. It always troubled me as to why the death of many could be attributed as a miracle for one. However, that is the way my father viewed it as he reviewed the markers he believed led him to his life of service.
Dad was trained to be a surgical technician and was stationed in a MASH unit near what would become known as “The Battle of the Bulge.” However, when they arrived to set up the unit they discovered that no one had assigned them a cook. My father had some experience in the kitchen and was volunteered to be the chef. While in France my maternal grandmother sent him a two dollar bill – there was some humor involved in the sending, but it escapes me. The letter containing the money circulated around Europe until it found my father. As he told the story, he opened the envelope, read the letter and laughed. He stood to put the bill in his wallet and at that moment a bomb exploded nearby and a huge beam fell and crushed the bed on which he had been sitting. He carried that two-dollar bill until the day he died at the age of eighty-three (my brother has it now).
My mind is not clear as to when the third miracle happened. However, my father described speeding on a rural road and losing control of his car. The car spun and rolled three times. My father survived the accident without a scratch.
Just before shipping out to Europe my father said that he felt he needed to attend a church. He had no religious background and chose a church near the base. During the message that morning the preacher said, “God has told me that everyone here needs to donate twenty dollars to the church so that they will not go to hell.” The minister then stood at the back door of the church with an offering plate. My father said he walked out the door, told the minister that he would see him there and vowed never to attend another church as long as he lived. He broke that vow at the age of thirty-eight. Which is another chapter.
My father, because of his father’s death on the railroad, was given a job with the Southern Pacific Railroad, where he worked as a clerk until retirement. Most of those years he served as a Crew Dispatcher, organizing and contacting crew members for their next assignment.
Florence Anita McDougald
My mother never spoke of any dramatic miracles. However, her childhood was far from usual. Her father, William Wallace McDougald, was a Scottish emigrant. At the age of forty, he met and married twenty-four year old Emma Hurlbert from Yuba City, CA. Sixteen years separated them in age and it was sixteen years into their marriage before the welcomed their first and only child. Grandpa McDougald was fifty-six and Grandma was forty when my mother was born. Grandpa and Grandma were migrant workers following the lumber industry through the northwest, which explains why mom was born in Spokane, WA on December 7, 1921.
My grandfather contracted Tuberculosis and died when my mother was seven years old. He had moved his family back to Yuba City so they could be near grandma’s family. My mother attended school there, graduating from Yuba City College with an AA in Accounting. In the summer of 1942, while hosting at a USO dance, she met Sergeant Kuest. They were married three months later on October 22nd.
The Family
On October 1, 1943 my brother, Alvin Wallace, was the first to arrive in the new Kuest family. My father was stationed in Bend, Oregon. My brother is currently a professor at Great Lakes Christian College in Lansing, MI.
My sister, Anita Kay, was born in Bakersfield, CA on November 9, 1948. Anita is now Director of Education for Special Needs Students at William Jessup University in Acton, CA.
Carol Lucinda arrived two years later, August 9, 1950, in Bakersfield. She now lives in Katy, TX where she works as a special customer’s representative for Baker-Petrolite Petroleum.
This introduces the family of which I was a part until Peggy and I began our own. Every family has their unique stories. I you enjoy it as I share ours.
Chapter 2: To The Farm
My father had no church background. My mother had been raised in the Nazarene church; but, she had not attended since she was in high school. However, they made sure that my brother and I had an introduction to Christianity. When I began first grade, every Sunday Alvin and I were dropped off at First Baptist Church for Sunday School. Mom got us to the front door and met us there an hour later.
I don’t know why I remember 3116 Bank St in Bakersfield, but that was our first address. I can still draw the floor plan of the house. Anita and Carol were born while we lived here. I can remember the playmates with whom my brother and I played late into the evenings. We lived there until just after my eighth birthday in 1952. It was a year that changed Bakersfield and my life forever.
The first earthquake (measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale) struck outside of town during the very early morning of July 21. It shook dishes from the cupboards and Alvin from his upper bunk. It was called the “two minutes that changed Bakersfield.” Almost the entire downtown sustained heavy damage. The second earthquake (5.8) hit on August 22 of the same year. I remember riding my bike home from swimming lessons at Beale Park when we heard a rumble and our bikes became almost uncontrollable. Our school, Roosevelt Elementary, was destroyed in the second quake and I began third grade in half-day sessions at Castro Lane Elementary.
During that school year we moved to the small farm on W. White Lane, just south of Bakersfield. Even though we had ten acres, we never farmed them (As I mentioned in the last chapter, my father was a Dispatcher for the Southern Pacific Railroad). We had animals of all sorts that we fed to sell or butcher. The eight acres of farm were leased out to a cotton farmer. There was a small fruit orchard where I learned much about trees and their needs.
It wasn’t until much later in our lives that we four kids realized that we were living on the brink of poverty. Our home life was rich and full of country adventures. It was years after it happened that we discovered that our parents had twice filed bankruptcy because my father had tried hard to have his own carpet cleaning and upholstery business. He wanted to get away from the railroad. He never did, but I remember always answering the phone, “Kuest Upholstery and Carpet Cleaning” and helping my father during his days off with the few jobs that supplemented income.
There were two houses on the property. There was a small one-bedroom dwelling. The other was a combination building, part auction garage and part chicken coop. All of us lived in the garage and the coop became the kitchen/dining room. Eventually my father built a foundation and rigged a way to roll the small house to the back of the garage. This became our farmhouse for the next three years. It was then that my parents sold the back eight acres and had a house built in the orchard.
We no longer were driving to Sunday School as it was too far. However, during our first year on the farm our parents enrolled Alvin and me in 4-H; and I joined Cub Scouts. My 4-H project consisted or rabbits and a steer. My brother chose to raise the sheep that had been given to us by some local shepherds.
It was in Cub Scouts that my life would be changed forever. It was there that God opened the door to This Miraculous Life. But, that’s the next chapter.
Chapter 3: Rexland Christian Church
My Cub Scout Den Mother was Edna Quilliam, she was (still is) an amazing women. Her husband, Tom was a butcher and they had two children. Phillip, the oldest, was several years older than me. He was mentally challenged and rode our school bus back and forth to his special school. (I would discover later that he was a Bible/history sabot.) Patrick was a year older than me, but because of a severe bought with Encephalitis he was two years behind in school. Edna was a stay-at-home mother who took care of her boys and tutored blind students and served her Cub Scouts.
Patrick soon became one of my closest friends. The Quilliams were devoted Christian. Edna started inviting me to church, but I needed to feed our animals. My parents were also avid boat race fans and we went to Hart Memorial Park every Sunday during the season. She never gave up and after I ran out of excuses I started attending Rexland Christian Church in a Bakersfield suburb known as Rexland Acres. I would often attend church then join the Quilliams on their weekly family outings.
I can still see Edna turned around over the front seat of the car telling me about Jesus. She would tell me about the importance of becoming a Christian and ask me if I wanted to accept Christ. On one of these occasions in February 1954 I told her that I did want to become a Christian. The next Sunday I stepped forward during the invitation song to say, “I want to be a Christian.”
My mother had attended a Nazarene church until she was in high school. She started attending Rexland with my brother and two sisters. Our minister was Brother Otis Bell. He came to our house one evening to talk to me about what it meant to be baptized. However, he came at my bedtime. He asked my father if he could speak to me, but my father refused. Brother Bell asked if he could stay and visit with my dad and dad agreed.
Neither my father nor Brother Bell remembers what was said that night. But a great miracle took place. My father consented to allow me to be baptized on Sunday morning and he attended with the family. I well remember my baptism as I felt the minister was going to hold me under the water and I kicked to get up and splashed water on the choir members who were sitting nearby.
Every family member was surprised the next Sunday when my father announced that he was attending church with us. However, no surprise was greater than when my father stepped forward to accept Christ as his savior. My mother recommitted her life and the great journey for the Kuest family began.
I was only ten years old when this happened. Even though I was a young child, I could sense that life in the Kuest home had changed dramatically. My father, who was never a heavy drinker, stopped drinking altogether. Church became the center of our life. My dad became an evangelist to his family and within two years thirteen members of his family had become Christians.
A year later, Otis Bell left Rexland Christian Church; but, I would reconnect with him during my first year in college. My father was appointed an elder (by his admission, much too early in his Christian walk) and was asked to be on the Pulpit Committee. After a short very troubled ministry of Brother Ray Aplet, the Pulpit Committee reconvened. At that time, God brought a man who would impact my life more than any person outside my family. I was in seventh grade when I first shook hands with Herman Lippert, the new minister for the Rexland church.
Chapter 4: A Late Bloomer
I look back at my introduction to Rexland Christian Church as one of the great miracles that God has wrought in my life. Not only was I given a strong biblical foundation, I was brought under the leadership of caring people who molded my life. But this will have to wait until the next chapter.
During my school years there were two very different forces trying to claim my future – school and church. I was not a good student and I had nothing to recommend me scholastically or athletically. However, the people at church held a vastly different opinion of me. To help you understand, I need to share some of the stories that indelibly printed themselves in my mind and controlled my thinking for more years than I would like to admit.
The first incident took place on the football field while I was in fourth grade. The boys had chosen teams for the recess game and I was left standing unchosen. I had never played sports and I wanted so badly to learn and be accepted. I stood on the sidelines and said, “I want to play.” A boy shouted, “Go on Kuest, you don’t even know how to play.” I replied, “I have to learn somewhere.” “Go and learn somewhere else,” he answered. I turned to him and the other boys and whispered, “Someday I am going to be great and you will be sorry you didn’t let me play.” Those words stayed with me, even into adulthood.
By the sixth grade my athletic abilities had not gained improved. My teacher, Miss Smouch, decided that each day a different boy would be allowed to captain our class team. I counted the days until it was my turn. The day came when every boy had captained the team but me. I knew it was my time and I raced to school with great joy. I told my friends, “I will be captain today.” When it came time, Miss Smouch asked whose turn it was. My hand raced into the air. She paused, looked at the schedule and asked, “Is there any boy besides Bobby who has not captained the team?” I was confident. Then she said, “Okay then, we will start over at the top.” I was crushed and I once again whispered the words under my breath, “Someday . . .”
I was a decent student at Golden State Junior High. I did not participate in school sports but I did play in the Junior Baseball Association (a local version of Little League). That first season I did not make the team. I would be assigned to a farm team. I called my coach and asked if I could continue to practice with the team until the farm teams were organized. He allowed it and on the day uniforms were passed out he handed me one. He said, “I want boys on my team who want to play.” It was a good summer.
I played football on South High School’s reserve teams and loved it. I sat on the bench most of my senior year because all seniors had to play varsity. However, I lettered because our team won the championship. When the coach called my name during the award assembly he said, “Bob is the kind of player every coach wants. He listens and is willing to do anything he is told. I wished I had him one more year.” I tried out for baseball and basketball but did not make either team. I was a manager for the basketball team (passed out towels, picked up balls, etc) and kept score for two years. In my junior and senior years I played on the tennis team and was good enough to letter as the seventh player on a seven man team.
I did not bloom scholastically during high school. I struggled to maintain adequate grades in the college preparatory track I had chosen. I had my heart set on going to college. However, not everyone shared my dream. During my senior year my guidance counselor called me to his office on two different occasions and told me to not to plan on going to college. He told me I would not make it academically. He wanted me to go to a vocational school and study auto mechanics (which is now a family joke). On the day I was to take my college entrance exam the announcement was made over the school’s PA system for students to be dismissed. I stood to leave when Mr Hamilton, my English teacher, said, “Sit down Mr. Kuest; you don’t stand a chance.” He would not allow me to leave the room. Once again, the words were whispered, “Some day, I’ll be great and you will be sorry.”
However, a quite different opinion of my life was being shared by the people at Rexland Christian Church.
Chapter 5: Encouragers and Models
How do you properly thank God for people like Tom and Edna Quilliam who introduced me to Jesus and this miraculous life? There are no words to express what I feel about Marie O’Dell and Katherine Brewer, two women who were both teachers and encouragers. They would call on me for answers and give me responsibilities in the lessons. At church I was treated as a person who could learn and contribute.
Herman Lippert, our minister, formed a Gospel Team made up of the youth from our church. Virgie Brewer played the piano, Elaine Thorne and Wayne Milton sang special music while three boys would divide parts of the sermon. Alvin (my brother), Patrick Quilliam, Dean White and I rotated on the team. One would do the introduction, another would do the middle and a third the conclusion to a sermon written and coached by Herman. Tom and Edna Quilliam were our sponsors, drivers and providers of laughter. We would lead worship for small churches in Kern County while their minister was on vacation. We helped do door-to-door surveys for the beginning of churches in Shafter and Porterville. Four times a year we would have responsibility for the evening service at Rexland. Herman also organized “Preaching Contests” for the boys in our Christian camping area. Several of us would gather at a church on a Saturday and share our message before a panel of preachers who would then give us positive critique.
One Sunday morning in my fourteenth year Brother Roy Lammiman, one of the church elders, put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Bobby, someday you are going to be a preacher. I will do what ever necessary to see that that happens.” Brother Lammiman was a man we all respected. He was in his seventies and a hard working insurance salesman who often sang special music with a deep bass voice. However, I must admit that we often snickered during his very long prayers. We knew his story of how he lost his leg in a farming accident as a teen and who, with a wooden leg, participated on his high school track team. He had a passion for evangelism and would often take one of us with him. His words to me that morning were not idly spoken. He would often repeat them and ask me how my plans were going.
Hal and Joyce Williams came to be a part of Rexland during my freshman year of high school. He was a math teacher at South High School. He became our high school Sunday School teacher and the church’s choir leader. It was only through his tutoring and grace that I passed high school math.
Rexland Christian Church had the perfect youth program for our spiritual and social development. There were about thirty of us and we did everything together from sports, school activities to dating. In my senior year, out of the fourteen boys and girls that made up the varsity tennis team at South High School, five were from our youth group. We were inseparable and the Kuest house was the meeting place.
Camping and youth rallies were a big part of our church activities. Herman Lippert and my father were strong leaders in Sierra Christian Service Camp, the Christian camping program in central California. Herman helped plan the camping weeks and my father did the buying and delivered it each week. It was at this camp, during a week under Herman’s leadership that I, at age fifteen, felt the call to become a preacher.
This is why I knew I needed to go to college. This is why I started taking speech classes in high school and why Patrick Quilliam and I joined the South High speech team. I did well on the Speech team. I even qualified for the California State Finals in Oratorical Interpretation. However, I rather bombed the first round and was out of the competition early.
Patrick and I knew God had a call on our lives and no opinion other than His was going to guide us. It was college or bust.
Proceed to Chapter 6