Glimpses – HAND OF THE CAUSE WILLIAM SEARS VISITS IOWA by Priscilla Hofert
WILLIAM SEARS, HAND OF THE CAUSE, AND HIS WIFE MARGUERITE’S VISIT TO THE HOFERT HOME JULY 1973
One Friday evening at around 7PM we got a call from Marguerite saying, “Bill and I would like to visit you in Council Bluffs tomorrow night, as we are coming from different directions and want to meet in Council Bluffs, because that is where Bill’s grandfather lived… the famous grandfather that Bill tells about in his books.”
In fact our older son Dan had just turned 9 and had just read William Sears’ book “God Loves Laughter.” I said that we would be happy have them come. So it was that we, John and Priscilla Hofert, hosted the beloved Hand of the Cause and his wife.
Being that it was on such short notice, we figured that 40 or 50 people, at the most, would come. But the next afternoon our phone rang off the hook with people asking for directions to our house. People as far as central Nebraska turned up, driving 3 to 4 hours one way. At the appointed time, people streamed into our living room. I was at the door welcoming everyone when a dog started coming in. I started to stop him when someone whispered, “that’s Marguerite’s dog!“ Needless to say I was really embarrassed!
Since we lived on a short dead-end street, John was outside trying to help people park. Our street was quite narrow; there was only room for a dozen or so cars, so we ended up shuttling people from the elementary school parking lot about 3 blocks away.
Soon it became clear that everyone would not fit in our living room, so we went out to the adjacent neighbor’s backyard and watched the lovely slides of Iran which William Sears showed us. We guessed nearly 100 people came!
See also the biography is Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sears_(Bah%C3%A1%CA%BC%C3%AD).