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John Van Kammen, the father of Mrs. Betty Wunsch, emigrated from the Netherlands to Grand Rapids as a young man in 1902, and was saved while attending meetings at College Avenue Gospel Hall.
By 1925, the College Avenue Gospel Hall was too small, and the assembly purchased and moved into another building at the corner of Eastern and Baldwin in Grand Rapids and named it the Eastern Avenue Gospel Hall and later the Eastern Avenue Gospel Chapel. However, it was usually called either the ‘Eastern and Baldwin Assembly,’ and sometimes the ‘Van Ryn Assembly’ because it was the home assembly of the Van Ryns who had moved to Grand Rapids from the Netherlands. [[August Bernard Van Ryn |August Van Ryn]] itinerated among area assemblies in the years he lived in Grand Rapids.
Cornelia DeJonge, commended by the Eastern and Baldwin assembly in 1925, was the first missionary to go out from West Michigan; she served in Africa. In 1951, Gerald and Betty Wunsch were commended by the assembly to the Lord’s work in New Guinea. They served the Lord for 41 years as missionaries in that country.
