1942 John leaves for India; John and Eunice are married.
Please see end of
1903-1942 Cecil John Buffam in
this blog to see all that brings John to 1942 on his way to India to marry Eunice!
From Mummy’s remembrances…. All the way from
Australia to Ceylon the boat had to zig zag to miss the mines. When they arrived in Ceylon they told the
passengers they had better go by train because the war was very bad in Rangoon
where the boat was going. But he didn’t
have enough money to go by train, so he and 3 or 4 other missionaries stayed on
the boat.
When the boat came near to Rangoon, they notified
them that Rangoon was falling and that they should go directly to
Calcutta. They came safely, but when
they got to the Hougly River, it was too low and they had to wait four more
days before they could dock. (don’t I
wish I had some diary thoughts from Daddy about this time!) All this time I was waiting for him, and when
we finally saw that boat come into dock, I was a very happy girl.
He stayed with some friends for 2 weeks until we
could make all the arrangements for the wedding.
He had bought a wedding ring for me when he was in
Ceylon, but it was a fake, so we had to buy another one in Calcuta.
Our whole wedding cost only about $50.00 in American
money. That included his suit and my
dress and dresses for the bridesmaids. Our wedding dinner was a special Rice and Curry
dinner and we all sat on the floor and ate with our fingers. For our honeymoon we took a train out to a mission
station in the country where we stayed for a week.
A Marriage Has Been Arranged
Between
Eunice Estella Scott
daughter
of
Mr.
and Mrs. Warner P. Scott
Cazenovia,
Wisconsin, U.S.A.
and
The Reverend Cecil John Buffam
son
of
Mr.
and Mrs. Alexander Buffam
Perth,
Ontario, Canada
Carey
Baptist church
Thirty-one,
Bowbazar Street, Calcutta
Thursday,
Twelfth February
Nineteen
hundred and forty-two
Eleven
o’clock in the morning
The
pleasure of your company is requested
May 1942
THE OHIO MESSIANIC TESTIMONY (M and D’s sending organization) writes…
We know
you will be most interested in the accompanying cut, which is a picture of the
bridal party of John and Eunice Buffam, taken on Feb 12, 1942, in Calcutta,
India. Communications are so slow these
days that it took almost 2 and ½ months for the letters of the Buffam’s to
arrive after they were mailed in India.
So we trust our readers will be patient, under the circumstances
when the waiting for eagerly desired
news is long.
Reading
from left to right in the accompanying picture, you have Miss Rizpah Moshiah,
Mr. Lionel Hodgson, John Buffam, Eunice Buffam, Rev. Eadie, Miss Rachel Judah
and Ronald Wallace. Mr. Wallace gave the
bride away; Mr Hodgson was the best
man; Rev. Eadie, pastor of Carey Baptist
Church, performed the ceremony; and it seemed most fitting that two Jewesses consented to act as bridesmaids,
since bride and groom are married in heart by the Lord Himself, to Israel. But I am sure you would rather Mrs Buffam
would tell the story herself, in which we have all been so very much
interested; so I am copying some excerpts from her letter here for you to read.
There
were some anxious days just before John’s arrival, when I had news that the
boat he was on was being sent to Rangoon before coming to Calcutta; but in this
as in all difficulties, the Lord overruled and they were stopped and came to
Calcutta sooner. I was told that the
boat was expected at 2:30 PM on that long waited for day, Thursday, Jan 29,
1942. Miss Leach and I had permission to
the dock, so started early, as it took us nearly two hours to reach the dock
where the boat was coming in. At
exactly 2:30 we sighted the funnel of a large boat making her way very slowly
up the river. After about another half
hour it had come close enough for us to see the name, and we knew it was the
one we were looking for. It was still
some time before we could locate or recognize any of the passengers, but before
long I spotted John in his green polo shirt, which he had told me to look
for. He tried to climb over the rails
and swim ashore, but decided he had better be patient. It is so very difficult to dock boats in the
Hoogly River that it was still a long wait, and the gang plank was not down
till 5 Pm. And then it seemed the
greatest moment in my life had come. I
had lost all sense of feeling and everything else, but there was a wonderful
song of joy and thankfulness in my heart that John was at last safe in India,
our adopted home. Just that moment was worth
all the long wait, and all the dark hours; and God’s love seemed overwhelming
as I thought upon His faithfulness.
God
certainly answered prayer in the next few minutes and all John’s things came
through customs with no difficulty at all.
We soon had them through and were on our way back to Mulvany House,
where we brought all the big cases. John
was welcomed here by the girls, who garlanded him with flowers and sang a
welcome song in Bengali. Then I went to
the Wallace’s with John for dinner, and Miss Leach came there later to bring me
home, since John was not yet acquainted in the city. He stayed with the Wallaces for the next two
weeks, and they certainly made it home to us during that time. He of course, found his way to Mulvany House
all by himself the next morning and every day after that without difficulty,
except once, when he got lost. Those two
weeks, though very busy were full to overflowing with JOY, as we got acquainted
all over again and grew in love for each other. It was a very brief courtship, but we are
sure there never was a better.
