The story of how the Tavani family came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ

My father was born on June 22, 1925, in Camden, New Jersey. The Tavani family emigrated from Chievti, Italy, where Albanians had settled four hundred years earlier after fleeing across the Adriatic Sea from the Turkish invasion. His father, Vincenzo, and mother, Maria, had six children: George, Louise, and Mary when in Italy, then Mamie, Nickie, and Lucy after they came to live in America. The family converted from Catholicism at an Italian Baptist mission in Camden.

The following is excerpted from my father's contribution to GUIDED TO THE GHETTO: CHANGED LIVES IN AN INNER CITY by Maria Sherrill Miller Albrecht, a teacher in that mission who made a great impact on my father's life:

Italian Center stood like a fortress just five blocks from my home. The Lord used it along with the Italian Baptist Church to bring the saving message of the Gospel into our home and into my life. During the thirties was no time for an Italian living in the Italian quarter of a city to embrace the glorious truth that "by grace ye are saved ... " unless he was ready for the more unpleasant Biblical truths. One came to understand what He meant when He said, "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you .... . I remember the Italian Baptist Church auditorium being so full that we had to search for a place to sit.

Fortunately, the simple truth that Jesus died for my sins has done its work in my life, and the gentle but firm prodding of Miss Miller helped to bed it down in my life and mind. For that was a period in my life when I especially needed it. For a while, my week-ends exposed me to the evangelistic fervor of the Italian Pentecostal Church, the Bible teaching at the Center, and the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Mass.

In the years that followed, I have never forgotten the abiding influence of "Miss Miller" and of being taught and inspired to learn the Scriptures as a child. My childhood experience at the Center has been recounted by me many times in Sunday School staff meetings, graduate seminars, conferences, from the pulpit and in private conversations. I have tried to pass it on to my sons, and see that it is still working. The teacher has more than knowledge to leave with his charges, he has a spirit to transmit to them, one that incessantly nudges them to learn, and to learn in the context of his relationship with God.