“Come over to Watertown and start a Bible college,” Elayne Senn said in June of 1968 to Dr. B. Myron and Thelma Cedarholm. For a campus, she suggested The Brothers of the Holy Cross property in Watertown, listed for sale at $250,000.
With a vision but no money, Dr. Cedarholm and concerned friends attempted to raise $5,000 toward a down payment. But when they asked for a loan to help with the down payment, the bankers refused.
Dr. Cedarholm said, “When they [the bank] heard that we did not represent any particular denomination, that we were not underwritten by any denomination, and that we were only a group of independent Baptists who desired to start a Bible college in Watertown, the members of the board lost their interest immediately.”
Dr. Cedarholm and his friends, though disappointed, committed their vision to God in the parking lot.
The next day, Dr. Cedarholm received a call from the bank loan officer, who informed him that the president had decided to lend the Cedarholms $70,000 for the down payment, not just $5,000.
That same day, the sellers changed the price from $250,000 to $150,000 and decided not to require a down payment (not knowing that the bank was lending $70,000 for a down payment). The sellers also said that the first payment would not be due until after the college’s first year and that the interest would be only 5 percent.
Over the next few weeks, God provided everything from desks to dishes as the college raced to open in August.
Just three months after the Cedarholms accepted the challenge, 173 students and 27 teachers gathered on the campus of Maranatha Baptist Bible College for the opening meetings.
