Lillie Abercrombie Book Report

***

Trudy and Lillie Abercrombie were close to the same age and both excellent seamstresses. Lillie says Trudy liked her cooking which seems to be quite understated since we know how Trudy loved good cooking. Lillie was born in Honea Path, S.C. and lives in Greenville, S.C. surrounded by many family members. Lillie and her husband Charles have 8 children, 26 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren, a total of 72 family members and 56 of them are Baha’is. The Abercrombies became a five-generation Baha’i family in an unusual way. First Richard (Ricky) declared his Faith in 1960. Seeing a change in Ricky’s behavior, his father Charles and mother Lillie (students of the Bible with strong Christian backgrounds) studied the Faith and both declared in 1961. Lillie’s mother, Della Mae Ellison (Biggie) came down to ‘save’ the family and met Eulalia Bobo Taylor. Mrs. Taylor considered her strong Christian background an asset to her membership in a new religion and she used her extensive knowledge of the Bible as a means of teaching others about the Baha’i Faith. After many deep conversations with Eulalia, ‘Biggie’ also declared. Lillie recalls “Trudy was so sweet and I loved her dearly. She was a hard worker for the Faith – she did so much! She went into little places nobody knew about, would find people

from the Regional Teaching Committee of 1976-77, “In ‘Operation Outreach’ one of the main things we discovered was with the same approach to mass teaching, we added to the rolls 111 beautiful Baha’is. However, with the same problems: too ill, old or the very young or unemployed so that the percentage of mobile working participating Baha’is outside their own community is almost nil. Over 200 children and young adults were being trained in these communities however, with the cold weather upon us, all children’s classes stopped since classes were being held in the yards of the believers, [and] the homes are too