Rev. Carrie Lee Eastridge

Carrie Lee Powledge was born near Macon, Georgia, on November 16, 1893. She married Earl Woollsey Eastridge on July 25, 1915, and they had seven children: Nona, Earl, Joel, Johnny, David, Paul, and Jerry. Due to her medical condition, the doctors recommended the climate in the West, so the family moved to Canadian, Texas, where doctors gave Carrie six months to live. But Leila Brown invited Carrie to a home prayer meeting held by Sally McPherson. The group prayed for her, and her pain disappeared. In February 1925 Carrie was baptized in the titles, and she received the Spirit in May of that year. When Walter Lyon came to town the following month preaching baptism in Jesus’ name, Carrie was rebaptized.

Carrie began her ministry in Norphlet, Arkansas, in 1935. She built churches in Portales, New Mexico, Raymondville, Texas, and Blackwell, Oklahoma, and evangelized in other cities. She moved to Clovis, New Mexico, and started a church in a barber shop. One day the Lord instructed Carrie to stop at a particular house in Clovis. There was a badly burned baby in the home, and God instantly healed him when Carrie prayed. The Methodists were selling a building, and Carrie offered them five hundred dollars. They initially rejected her offer, but when one of the deacons told the Board the story of how Carrie had stopped to pray for his burned son, they accepted the offer. Next Carrie went to Rock Springs, Wyoming, and started a church through home Bible studies.

The Missions Board approved Carrie for appointment to Africa, but because they would not allow her to take her three youngest sons, ages fourteen, twelve, and ten, she decided not to go. Instead, the Lord showed her the need among the Navajo people in Arizona and Western New Mexico. She moved to Gallup in July 1947 and started a Native American work in nearby Indian Village (now Church Rock). With Home Missions (now North American Missions) support, she soon started a second church in Newcomb.

In 1956 after the Missions Board turned down her application to Africa because she was sixty-two, she sold her car, bought a ticket, and went to assist her son-in-law and daughter, E. L.and Nona Freeman, in Durban, South Africa. Needing to live at a higher altitude for health reasons, Carrie moved to Umtata, South Africa (now Mthatha), in 1961. After a remarkable service in one lady’s home, twenty-three people were baptized in the Umtata River. At Brother Freeman’s request, Carrie raised necessary funds, bought land, and constructed a church building in that city. Carrie’s poor health required her to return to the US in 1964, after eight and a half years in Africa.

In 1965 Sister Carrie began traveling among the Navajo people, preaching, teaching Bible studies, and praying for the sick. Often accompanied by her grandson, Martin Eastridge (current Pastor of the Tohatchi church), she would knock on hogan doors as God directed, telling people she had been sent to pray for them. By 1969 a mission site lease was granted by the Navajo Nation. In 1970 the Texico District Home Missions Department built a church building in Tohatchi, New Mexico, and Carrie’s son, Jerry, took over the work. As she had long hoped to do, Carrie returned to Africa just after her seventy-eighth birthday to complete her ten years of African mission work.

Carrie returned to the Navajo reservation just before turning eighty, leaving a legacy in Africa which includes two church buildings, one of which houses a Bible school, and countless souls born into the kingdom of God. In her later years, Carrie rejoiced to see the Laguna Pueblo being reached at Paguate, New Mexico, and a boy she had reached become pastor of the Durban church. Carrie continued to preach in the US until shortly before her death on December 23, 1981. She was buried in the Tohatchi cemetery by car headlight and is the only non-native buried there.