A Child’s Response to an Ashram

My mother and father, Helen and Golden Thompson, must have attended one of E. Stanley Jones’ Ashrams that summer of 1940 when Wendel was 4 years old. His mother and father who was pastor of the Hildreth Memorial Evangelical church in Le Mars, Iowa sought a summer retreat that would give them renewal that they found in the Ashram.

Mother had been telling Wendel about the man at the Ashram who had no arms but could swim, paint, write, and feed himself.

Wendel: That was naughty of Jesus not to give him any arms, wasn’t it?”