"...Here I will bring in a little personal history in connection with our church location. The land on which our church is built is part of the Edmondson homestead. When I came to Tucson, (in 1922) I bought a little grocery store at the northwest corner of Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue. Old man Edmondson had his homestead house just across the street from the front of our present church. He worked at the Southern Pacific shops and drew his pay every two weeks." "Each payday his wife would walk all the way to my store at 6th Avenue and 6th Street. She would pay her previous two weeks' account, go on downtown, do a little odds-and-ends shopping, come back, and my delivery boy would take her and her groceries out to the homestead." "Now this was, as you know, quite a distance, It was even farther in those days. I had a little, old, dilapidated Model T Ford, and I would caution the delivery boy to be sure he had plenty of gas in the tank and water in the radiator. Speedway was not paved. Wilmot was really out in the toolies."

"Mrs. Edmondson, who is 73, came to Tucson a young bride and recalls how Tucson was then a small village... She was anxious to have a home of her own so decided to homestead 160 acres of land, bounded by Speedway and Tucson. (Our church property and Himmel Park are part of this homestead). "She (Mrs. Edmondson) told how in those early days the storms in Tucson were much worse than they are today; of how the wind and rain were so severe that at times she thought surely the walls of her house would fall in, but the sturdy redwood building withstood them all." "When she first built the house, her nearest neighbor lived two miles away - and Mrs. Edmondson spent many lonely years there since her husband worked in Clifton at that time... Coyotes, rattlesnakes and Indians caused her great uneasiness. The coyotes used to howl and jump against the walls and doors at night trying to get at the food inside." "The coyotes used to run in packs and lots of times when I walked four miles into town pushing the babies in a carriage and pulling a small wagon, in which I carried my purchases, I would have to chase them away with sticks."

Jones recounts raising money for the church in 1923 or 1924: "In those early days we started our financial campaigns by calling for oral commitments from the assembled congregation. We would always have three or four decoys to start the voluntary pledging." "To name the decoys would likely be embarrassing to some of our people at this late date. Related tactics included a bingo party, and on another occasion chances were sold on a quilt made by the ladies of the Missionary Society."