"At the same time, there were two women in the church in Richmond who took a particular interest in our work and community. They were both older, mid-forties and early sixties, respectively. The younger, Dianne, was a real piece of work, a tall, rather attractive woman with wild hair and a natural messiness of character. But she seemed like a particularly caring and compassionate woman with a real desire for God. Doreen, the older woman was her close friend. She was more like your traditional white middle class Anglican church lady, and she was the church secretary. An enormously kind woman with an unusually intense desire to serve and love Christ.
"They began, over the summer, to visit us frequently. There support could not have come at a better time. We were close to starvation, behind in the rent and my mother's lung cancer had just returned to her with a vengeance. And Ken had just died in the same week, from AIDS. Doug and I were also fighting. He was a nitpicking control freak with a violent temper and was also very possessive of me. He was suffocating me. Yet we had already come so far with this work of community, I couldn't just kick him out or walk away. He was too strong for me.
"The two ladies helped keep us in food, and helped with some of the bills and the rent, so that by the fall, just when we had been delivered our eviction notice, we suddenly had the rent ready..."
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