The Baptist Standard, October 9, 2000

At 100, she's a nursing home missionary
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___SCHULENBURG--The nursing home ministry is one of the most important things in Blanche Bolling's life.
___She drives to the nursing home each Monday morning to visit with the residents there, and she comes back every other Wednesday to gather many of the home's residents for Bible study. She pushes their wheelchairs down the hallways to the meeting room until all who desire to participate are present.
___Yet when everyone arrives, she's still the oldest one in the room.
___Blanche Bolling turned 100 years old Sept. 21.
___She can't remember exactly when the ministry started, only how.
___"There were a couple of others who worked just as hard as I did when we started, but they're gone now. It started one day when I said, 'We talk missions, we preach missions, we give to missions, but there is a mission right across the street--so what are we going to do about it?'" she recalled.
___First Baptist Church in Schulenburg has changed locations since that time many years ago, but her ministry never has wavered. She doesn't have to think twice about why she does it either.
___"They need it," she exclaimed. "Most of the people there are Catholic, and they don't study the Bible the way we do, but they just love it. I'm not bragging, I'm just telling you. They're all Catholic, but they love picking songs out of those Baptist hymnals."
___Mike Gresham, pastor of First Baptist Church, said Bolling is a remarkable Christian.
___"She's an amazing lady," he explained. "We were at the nursing home yesterday, and she was rolling them around all over the place. She's just a really neat lady and has been a very active part of the church's ministry for 73 years."
___Bolling was among those who reorganized the church in 1927. The church had ceased to exist, and there were no Baptist churches in the city east of San Antonio, so Bolling and a small group of others restarted First Baptist Church.
___She was teaching primary students in the public school and began teaching the "beginners" class at church. She continued to teach it for 70 years.
___Today, she still drives her own car, but that's not a topic of conversation she enjoys.
___"Two years ago, the church gave me a birthday party and everybody found out how old I was. After that all I heard was, 'You're 98 years old and you still drive?' I heard that till I'm sick and tired of hearing it," she explained.
___All those comments have made her an especially careful driver, however.
___"I get up early and get there first, and I make sure I leave church first," she said. "I know that even if some drunk hit me head-on everybody would still say it was my fault. They'd say, 'What was that old lady doing driving anyway?'"
___Bolling became a Christian when she was 15 years old while attending a revival with her grandmother.
___"The preacher preached the kind of sermon they preached during revivals back then," she recalled. "When it was over, I guess my grandmother could tell I wanted to go forward, because even though she was Methodist and we were in a Baptist church, she leaned over and said to me, 'You want to go forward don't you? Go ahead and do it then.'"
___She did and shortly thereafter was baptized in the San Marcos River.
___Bolling said she has seen many changes since then, "and I hope I have grown in my appreciation and love for the Lord."
___She plans to continue to grow spiritually and to continue to minister at the nursing home. That ministry is what has kept her vigorous, she said.
___"I don't give up. I think people stop too soon, but I've never done that."

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