[The end of this month will mark seven years that we have been in Valdosta. I guess I'm writing this more for my benefit than anyone else's, but it was a long process, at least from our end. I don't know if anyone is interested in this little bit of history or not, but I want to record it, so please bear with me.]
Let me lay some background info before we really begin. Stacy and I were married in Thayer, MO on June 5, 1993. At the time, I was working for Oregon County Ambulance and Air Evac, then later went to Baxter County. In 1996, our dear, dear friends, Joel and Sue Wheeler, decided to leave Thayer and move to Foley, AL. They loaded up the largest moving truck they could find and still couldn't fit it all in. Stacy was going to go down with Mandy, anyway, so I ended up driving Stan and Regina's truck down with the rest of their stuff. While we were down there, Stacy and I went down to Gulf Shores, walked out on the pier and had a heart-to-heart about where things were headed. After many tears and much prayer, we left the pier with the decision that I would go to preaching school. After an initial plan of attending Northwest Florida School of Biblical Studies in P-cola, we ended up in Memphis in January, 1997. In October, 1998, with only a few months to go in school, Mike Brothers, who at the time was one of the elders at Berryville, was passing through Memphis and stopped at the school. They were looking for a preacher and he wanted to ask Garland Elkins of a recommendation. Brother Elkins came and got me out of class to meet him.
So this story actually begins in 1999. We had moved to Berryville, AR, deep in Hawg country, in January of that year. In May, a group of Sojourners came to Berryville to conduct a doorknocking campaign. Without going into specifics, the lead Sojourner (who was from Mountain Home, a town I dearly love) and I had several differences of opinion. Those issues were not pushed because he knew that at the end of the two weeks I was staying there, and I knew that he was leaving. And while we parted cordially, there was to be no exchanging of Christmas cards.
(On a little side note, of which there will probably be many in this narrative, it was during this particular week that little baby Kaitlyn, right at one-year old, got sick with a virus. Her big brother decided he would fix her and gave her a whole bottle of infant Tylenol. Can everyone spell ICU?)
Nearly two years later I was passing through Harrison, AR. If I remember right, I had taken one of the kids to Dr. Wilbur's in Mountain Home. (On another side note, Mountain Home was about an hour and a half from Berryville, and yes, there were doctors in Berryville, but Dr. Wilbur had been Benjamin's pediatrician before we moved to Memphis and we felt he was well worth the drive. Likewise, Dr. Teal had been Stacy's obstetrician with Benjamin, and so we had driven back and forth to her with Shelby.) Low and behold, who should be pumping gas across from me? Who else but the sojourner whose name I cannot remember. Anyway, we get to talking. He asked if I was still in Berryville and I told him I was. All of the sudden, he got this look on his face like the light had just come on. He said, "Hey, we're looking for a youth minister at College and North (in Mountain Home) and I think you are just he guy we need. I'm going home and calling the elders and telling them to call you." I smiled, expressed my thanks, all the while thinking, "Please don't do me any favors." Number one, I knew too much about him. Number two, I knew too much about College and North. But I thought it was funny that two years after he thought I was his mortal enemy that all of the sudden I was "just the guy they needed."
As it turned out, that very evening, I got a call from my dear friend Ryan Tuten. (Side note time. Ryan and I were in the same class at Memphis. I was a wrap-around and he was not, but that's OK, Ryan, you can't have everything. Everybody knows wrap-around students are the best. Anyway, this is a side note in itself, but Stacy and I moved out near the new school several months before it was ready, which is a side note all in itself. Just a few weeks later, Ryan and Michelle moved in a few doors down, which, incidentally, could justify its own side note. He and I did a lot of carpooling together, a lot of studying together, and a lot of fishing together. We ate a lot of food at their house and they ate a lot at our house--depending, of course, on who had the food at the time. In other words, Ryan and Michelle are just really dear to us. One has few enough drop-everything-do-anything-for-you friends in life: Ryan and Michelle are on that list for us.) Anyway, Ryan happened to call and I told him I had this really funny story to tell him about the sojourner guy. At the conclusion of my story, Ryan tells me that he knows of a congregation that is looking and he is going to call someone there and tell them that I was just the guy they needed. As before, I thought, "Don't do me any favors."
We were not looking to go anywhere, and I just thought it all was really funny.
Bill Newcomb called me the next day (still waiting to hear from College and North).
THE END OF CHAPTER ONE
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