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Reflections My Personal Journey Part 2

by Jerry Pitts
06/30/26
Not For Sale
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Chapter 6

Our Journey Together

When Janice and I first met I was a single father of two sons who were 5 and 7 years old. Kristopher was my youngest son and Garry the oldest. Janice was a single mother of one daughter named Samantha who was 4 years old. Janice and Sam had been living in a small one bedroom apartment in Hazlehurst about a mile from her parent’s home. My brother Larry, the boys and I were living in some apartments in Jackson. Larry and his girlfriend Amanda were still helping me with the boys while I worked in the evenings. When Janice and I first moved in together we quickly saw that my apartment was not going to be big enough so we rented a three bedroom house in Jackson. After living there for nearly a year we decided to build our own home.

Janice’s father had 52 acres of land and let me purchase a nice piece of front property next door to Janice’s sister. In late December 1990 we moved in our new home. This is where our journey really got interesting. We had just recently found out that Janice was pregnant and we were very excited. Even though we had three children between us we had decided that we really wanted a child that was both ours. With a new house and a child on the way; things were really off to a great start. Things were even going great in my career. After seven years and going as far as I could go without a college degree at NAPA I decided that it was time for a change. I was offered a Computer Operator position with KLLM Trucking Company and had started there in August 1990. They had given me a significant pay increase and I really loved my new job. Just a few months prior my younger brother Larry had decided that he wanted to join the Mississippi Army National Guard to help pay for his school tuition. He had enrolled in college and was majoring in computer science. He had gotten a job in the National Guard as a Computer Systems Analyst and had told me about it. I had already done my initial 8 years in the National Guard and had gotten out. I had been with the Military Police Unit in Brandon and the 2/20th Special Forces Unit in Jackson. I

really had no plans of re-enlisting in the military but being the good big brother I was I decided to join his unit for one year to help show him the ropes. Because of my computer background I was awarded the same MOS as my brothers without having to go through any additional schooling and placed in his same unit. My plan was simple; attend drills for one year and go to one two-week summer camp to help my little brother get acclimated to the military. Then I was going to just get back out of the military and move on with my life. I was now 28 years old.

Then one fateful day everything changed. I was at work and walking past some co-worker who had turned the radio up unusually loud. Then someone asked, “Aren’t you in the National Guard? You better listen to this.” I listened on the radio as I learned that our National Guard Unit had been called up to active duty and we were to call our unit for further instructions. I called and learned that we had to report to our unit later that same evening; to come packed with full military gear ready to be deployed to active duty. You talk about a short notice but this was ridiculous! KLLM was great. Somehow in a very short period of time they threw me a going away party and assured me my job would be waiting for me upon my return. I met

Janice and the kids at home. We packed my bags and equipment and loaded the car up and headed to the armory to report for duty. I was very concerned for Janice, with her being five months pregnant and now she was going to have to raise the three kids on her own while I was away. But she stayed strong and handled it all with grace. They dropped me off at my unit and we went through all the pre-deployment activities. Before we left we were given our airline tickets and allowed to go home and say our proper goodbyes. What a sad day that was but I knew Janice was a strong woman and was surrounded by family so that made me feel a little more at ease.

We were stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado. We were sent to replace another unit that was scheduled to be sent to Iraq. Each day we reported to work just like they did and were trained to take over for them. The job was not bad at all but I missed my family deeply. We were allowed to use the phone in the evenings so I was able to talk to Janice on a fairly regular basis which made things much better. Then in March they let us have a weekend pass and I had Janice fly out to see me. She had never flown before and she was now seven months pregnant so I was a bit hesitant but we missed each other so much that we just made it

happen. I rented a nice suite for the weekend and also rented a car for us to do some sight seeing. We had an amazing weekend as we took in all the beauty the Colorado Mountain’s have to offer.

Fortunately by May the war had all but ended. They had told us that we would be allowed to begin returning home within a number of weeks. The unit needed a couple of people to return to Camp Shelby to assist with the return of units as we all began coming home. Since they knew that Janice was about to deliver at any moment they let me and another guy who had a vehicle there to drive back home and report for duty at Camp Shelby. I still wasn’t home but being an hour and a half away from home was much better than being 1200 miles away. Janice and the kids were able to drive down and see me a few times and once all troops had returned I was able to return home to my family. Then on May 24, 1991 our daughter Jessica was born thus completing our family.

Once officially off of active duty I returned to KLLM Trucking. They had already hired another Computer Operator but the guy they had hired to manage the department was not working out. Within a few days after my return

they promoted me to Computer Operations Manager which was my first real job in management and just another opportunity the Lord had given me to further develop my leadership skills. By the time we had returned from Desert Storm I had gone well over my one-year commitment with the National Guard and decided that I wanted to be a civilian again so that I could focus on my career. After Desert Storm unit training really picked up and instead of two-day weekends and two-week summer camps we started having three-day weekends and three week summer camps. I saw this was going to be a major inconvenience not only on my family life but my job as well so I decided to part ways with the military.

Chapter 7 Finally Living for God

Shortly after we moved to our new home in Hazlehurst we visited a few local churches but never really got serious. We were like your typical “Christians” who went to church whenever we felt like it but didn’t really take it too serious. We had even stopped going to church all together for a while and I had started back drinking a good bit; mostly while I was going through this transition period of deciding what career path to take. I had about a 47 mile drive home every day and would frequently drink a six pack on my way home. I always threw the evidence away before I got home. Then one day on my way home out of the blues I started hearing the words over and over “take your family to church, take your family to church”. When I got home I told Janice about my experience and told her we would go to

church somewhere the next Sunday. I had no idea where to go. We had been to a few dead churches in the area and knew we did not want to return there.

A few weeks prior to this a man named Wayne Sojourner and his son had come by our house and invited us to their Church. I didn’t know him but my oldest son Garry had visited there on a Wednesday night and seemed to really enjoy it so we decided to give them a visit. We went to church that next Sunday and the preacher there was a dynamic evangelist. He preached salvation and how do you know that you know that you know you are saved. I knew that I was not living for God. In fact I had never really lived for God. I had acknowledged His existence and my life had changed some but I was not doing anything of significance for the Kingdom of God. We started going to church there regularly, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday’s, you name it whenever the doors were open we were there. The kids had gotten involved and we were for the first time excited about the things of God.

After we had gone there for a short while Janice and I both rededicated our lives to Christ and were re-baptized on Easter Sunday 1993. At the time we were not really sure if we were

saved the first time since there was never a real change in our lives. We just wanted to know for sure that we were saved! Any way you look at it my life was never the same again. Only God knows if I was actually saved in 1988 when I was first Baptized. My life did change some but nothing in comparison to what I experienced in 1993. My world was flipped upside down and I was experiencing things like never before. I had a hunger for God’s Word and was studying every chance I got. I knew my life had been transformed and was exper-iencing the awesome power of God at work in my life.

In early 1993 at the age of 30 I was getting really tired of my career in computer operations and decided that it was time for a change. I had no idea of what I wanted to do I just knew that I needed to take some time and figure things out. I thought perhaps if I could go off to another school in the military this would give me a little time to make some decisions and still have some income coming in at the same time. Instead of returning to another unit in Jackson I decided to go to our local National Guard unit in Hazlehurst. My father-in-law had been in the unit for many years and really seemed to like it. I went to talk to them about what I may be able to do there. It was a field

medical unit which was going to require me to go off to another school. I really didn’t care what I did as long as I would be on active duty for a while.

After going over options with the recruiter I decided to go to a six month school at Fitzsimmons Army Medical School in Aurora, Colorado. After talking with Janice she decided that she needed a break from her job and wanted to go with me. Just like my experience with NAPA she had been with Southern Farm Bureau in Jackson for seven years and had gone as far as she could without a college degree. So in June 1993 we packed as much as we could take in a cargo unit and strapped it to the top of the car. And we loaded the four kids in the small Chevrolet Beretta and the six of us drove 1200 miles to Aurora, Colorado.

When we first arrived I reported to active duty. I had assumed there would be military housing available for us but soon discovered that was not the case. We had to be put on a waiting list and then there were no guarantees. For the first few days we stayed at a local hotel while we searched for a place to stay. We searched for apartments only to find out that everything in Colorado was extremely expensive and well out of our price range. We then searched

surrounding cities for units to rent. Unfortun-ately, they were building the new Denver Airport at the time and construction workers had everything rented out within a 30 mile radius. Not having time to look for anything else we settled on a two-bedroom hotel room across from the military base. We paid $750 month to stay in this sub-par housing unit but at least it was close to the base and Janice could take the kids on post to the park whenever she wanted. Our balcony also overlooked a drive-in theater and we could actually tune into the radio frequency and watch movies from the upstairs balcony. This was the first place I ever saw Jurassic Park. It was a pretty cool setup.

We enrolled the kids in the Aurora Public School for the semester and spent just about every weekend doing things. We went to a couple of Denver Broncos football games and many Colorado Rockies baseball games. They had what they called, Rockpile Seats which were over the outfield wall and you could get in for $1.00; and since there were six of us that was a cheap way to spend an evening. We also traveled all over the Colorado Mountains and saw many spectacular sights. It was kind of like being on a paid vacation except I did have to go to class 8 hours a day.

When we arrived in Colorado this was the first real test of our Christian walk. After arriving in Colorado Janice made a sign which we displayed on the outside of our front window which read, Jesus is Lord. On day one of my school the Chaplain spoke to around 300 of us soldiers and asked, “How many Christians do we have in the crowd”. I was one of only three people to raise their hands. After the service I met with the Chaplain and shared my testimony with him. He was letting me know what a challenge I would be in for and how important it would be to stay true to my faith. This was the first time in my life where I learned just how important it would be to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. For six months in Colorado our faith never wavered. We never went to Church there but in everything we did we put Christ first. The thing that surprised me the most though was the respect I was shown by my secular classmates for living my faith in front of them.

The other thing that happened during these six months was for the first time in my life I felt like I was as good as anyone in my class. At this point I was still a high school dropout with a GED but something had changed in me and I felt as smart as anyone in the room even though I was in a room with many who were college

level students. One thing about this school was I was not even supposed to be there. To even be accepted in the class you had to meet or exceed a minimum test score in math because the course had a lot of algebra involved. I had never even taken algebra in high school so I knew it was going to be a challenge but with this new found confidence I was able to convince my recruiter that I could succeed, all I needed was a chance to prove myself. After convincing him, he changed my math score on the paperwork and gave me a much higher score than I actually had, and put me in the class. I took this opportunity and newly found confidence in myself and not only passed the course but graduated with the highest GPA in the class and graduated as Honor Graduate of the course. I knew then the meaning of Philippians 4:13 and as long as I put Christ first in my life and allowed the Holy Spirit to be my guide there were no limits to what I could accomplish.

I graduated from my school during Christmas break 1993 and we loaded up the Beretta and headed back home to Mississippi. Once there we immediately got back involved in church. In the six months since we left the church had grown tremendously as God seemed to be drawing many new people into the body of

Christ. I was soon asked to teach a college and career discipleship training class on Sunday evenings which put me in a position to really start studying God’s Word. I also started going out on a regular basis sharing my testimony with all who would listen. This is when I really discovered the power of the Holy Spirit on what was one of the scariest moments of my life. It occurred the first time I went out with a former pastor of mine. I was scared to death that he was going to want me to say something. You see, you would have to have known me before I was saved. I was a very shy, private person. I hated any kind of social gathering, and I certainly would have never gone to a total stranger’s house for anything, let alone, share Jesus with them. However, what I discovered that night, not only changed my outlook on sharing my faith, but was something that totally changed my life. As I sat in the home of a man, who was sharing about his struggles with drugs and alcohol, and hearing him say that he just couldn’t come to church until he got his life together, from out of nowhere, words began to flow from my mouth, and I found myself sharing with him about how the day I gave my life to Christ God delivered me from that same bondage he was in. You see, that night I experienced something supernatural, something that was much bigger than myself, it was

something that could have only come from God. After we left his house that night we committed to pray for that man every day and a couple of weeks later at a revival service that same man walked the isle and gave his life to Jesus. Oh, what a joyous occasion that was for me to kneel beside this man and hear him repent of his sins and give his life to Jesus. From that point on there was a fire lit inside of me that could not be put out.

As we approached the end of 1994 our church started planning a mission trip to Mexico. There was a missionary named Larry Mitchell who was originally from Copiah County where I live. He had been doing mission work in the mountains of Mexico for over 20 years and wanted to take a group from our church. Our pastor, associate pastor and about 12 others signed up and began praying about the trip. I had started going out visiting with another guy named Francis. He was about my age and had also recently got on fire for Jesus. One of the deacons named Clemon Sojourner had chosen us to be his Yokefellows so we had already gotten pretty close. We flew to Arizona where Larry Mitchell lived and he took us to his house where we loaded up a trailer which he pulled with his truck and we had a church van that someone had driven there for us. Over the

next ten days Larry took us to the remote mountains in Mexico. Places that had rarely ever seen Americans and were deeply rooted in demonism. Each village we traveled to we would first walk throughout the village and tell people about Jesus. We had learned some phrases in Spanish and how to invite them to the service that evening. Each evening we would setup for the service and Larry and his wife Norma would lead worship. After the singing he would show them a movie about the life of Christ and at the end of the movie have an invitation. Afterwards we would pray with people and give them a Bible of their own. We had great success and everywhere we went the Spirit of the Lord was upon us.

One of the last villages we came to was deeply rooted in demonism and you could feel the spiritual struggle as soon as we got there. In this particular village many of the people lived up in the mountains away from where we were having services. There were four of us, John Sojourner, Francis Jackson, me and one other member of our team who I cannot recall his name. We were going through the mountains inviting people to the service and the rest of the team members were setting up for the service. We came to this one thatched roof house and there was a guy outside who greeted us. He

said he would like to come to the service but couldn’t leave his brother. He said that his brother had been bedridden for about 9 months and he had no idea what was wrong with him. We went inside and prayed with him and asked if he would like to come to the service. He said yes so we put him in a chair and the four of us each grabbed a leg and carried him down the mountain to where the services were being held.

When we arrived Larry Mitchell was leading worship and we sat the man down front so he would be able to have a good view of the movie later. When we sat him down we then took our place on the outside of the crowd like we usually did. In this particular village there was a raised platform where we stood and there was also someone from our team there filming the service. All of a sudden Larry looked down from the stage and saw this man sitting in the chair we had brought him in. Larry sensed that this man was bound by a demon and that was the reason he was unable to walk. Larry stopped the worship service and went down in front of the man and began speaking to him in Spanish. I really couldn’t understand what he was saying but Larry later told us. Something weird that happened right beside me was that as soon as Larry got in front of the man the video camera all of a sudden shut off. The guy

filming the service was quite upset because he knew the battery was good and really wanted to film the confrontation. Larry told the man that if he wanted to be freed all he had to do was confess Jesus as his Lord. He repeated it several times in a very strong voice. The man would say that he wanted to but when he tried he couldn’t. Larry then told us all to begin praying and he then confronted the demon and began casting him out. To my astonishment the demon then manifested himself and began speaking in a language no one there could understand. To see the face of this man was beyond description.

After several minutes of continual confrontation the man screamed out in Spanish, Cristo Jesus es el Señor (Jesus Christ is Lord). Larry told him to say it again and he did. Then Larry stepped back several feet and told him to stand up and walk to him. I had been feeling for some time that God was calling me and at that moment I remember looking up to the heavens while I was praying and saying to God, if you are truly calling me to your service make this man get up and walk. At that very moment, this man, who we had carried down the mountains, then stood up and walked for the first time in many months. After a time of praising the Lord Larry told the man to have a seat. We all

looked on in amazement as we knew we had just experienced something supernatural. And to top it off; I was standing just to the left of the guy who was filming the service. And at the moment Larry left the man and returned to the stage the camera automatically turned back on. I knew then that there were simply things I cannot explain. I had just witnessed a miracle that would grow my faith and helped me to more easily accept the many things I would experience in the years to come.

Chapter 8

My Surrender to His Service

Needless to say when I returned home I was a changed man. Sometime shortly afterwards during a revival service at our church I surrendered my life to God’s service. I had no idea of what He wanted me to do but all I knew is that I would do whatever it took to make it happen. I came to the church the following morning and talked to my pastor. He counseled me and told me if I wanted to serve in a Church one day it would be best for me to go to seminary. When I told him I only had a GED he explained that seminary is a master’s level program and I would first need to earn a bachelor’s degree. Well here I was, a high school dropout with a GED whose only exper-ience in college ended when I had a stress attack years ago. I did have great success in the military school I had completed the previous

year so I was giving it serious thought. As I talked it over with family and friends I only got discouragement. After all I was now 31 years old with a wife and four children in private school. How in the world would I be able to afford college and keep my family afloat? But Janice totally supported my decision and gave me her blessing and told me if that was what I felt God wanted me to do to go for it.

Now, even if I could figure out a way to go to college, where would I go? I had always wanted to go to Ole Miss as I have been a Rebel fan since high school. But to move everyone to Oxford just didn’t seem like a good plan. I knew that my pastor had attended Mississippi College prior to him going on to New Orleans Seminary. So the next day I decided to at least call and find out how much it would cost to see if it would even be a possibility. I knew little to nothing about college so I was extremely ignorant and really had no idea of what I was doing. I called the main switchboard and asked to speak to someone in the Christian Studies department. The lady who answered was named Linda Street and she was the secretary for the depart-ment. Her husband was Jim Street who was a prominent pastor in Jackson. Not knowing what to say I simply began sharing my

testimony and how I had just recently surrendered my life to God’s service. I told her about my family situation and confessed that all I knew was that God called me. But I also told her the main reason for the call was just to find out how much it would cost to go there in the event I could figure out a way. She told how much the semester rates were and I came close to laughing in her face. I knew college was expensive but the amount she told me was ridiculous and certainly more that I could ever afford. I politely thanked her for her time and started to hang up the phone. Just before the phone went on the hook I heard a voice. I picked the phone back up and it was Mrs. Street. She said that if you have a minute I would like for you to talk to the head of our department and share your testimony with him.

Always eager to share my testimony I agreed and she transferred me to Dr. Lloyd Allen. After I shared my testimony with him he said, if you really feel like God is calling you and you want to go to school here don’t worry about the money. He said that he could bring me in on a full-paid ministerial scholarship. Not only would the scholarship cover my tuition and expenses but it would also allow my spouse to take 6 free hours per semester. I would also receive a monthly check to help

with additional expenses. Well I knew then that God was in control. All I had to do was do my part. Dr. Allen set me up with a financial aid counselor who throughout my time at MC was nothing short of amazing. Every semester our counselor would find me and Janice additional scholarships to help with expenses. So in the fall semester of 1994 I enrolled in Mississippi College as a Christian Studies major. Because we were required to have 12 hours of foreign language I just decided to minor in Spanish since it would only require two more classes for a total of 18 hours. Another very unexpected blessing were the credit transfers from my time in the military. A total of 32 hours were credited towards my major so I essentially entered college bypassing my freshman year. I still had to take all the core classes. I just didn’t have to take as many electives as the military credits took care of most all of them.

Now that I was officially enrolled Janice decided to take advantage of the free hours she received from my scholarship. She had attended Co-Lin Community College for a year right after high school but only a few of her hours transferred over. But she was excited because returning to college was something she had always wanted to do but given our family situation it was something she never thought

would happen. She loved working with children in our church and decided that she wanted to major in Elementary Education and minor in Christian Studies. She started off her first semester with 6 hours and loved it so much that she later decided to enroll full-time as well and ended up graduating only a semester behind me.

Our life was slowly but surely headed in the right direction and God was teaching us to depend on Him, which continually grew our faith by leaps and bounds. Throughout the next four years Janice and I worked a combination of work study jobs during the semesters and other jobs during the summers. We would do whatever we had to, to make ends meet and God always showed us a way. I recall one month during the summer we were about to be late on a house note. We needed to make an additional $300 that week. So Janice and I went looking for additional work we could do. I had a good friend who I mentioned earlier named Francis who had a furniture store in town and also rented houses on the side. He knew a lot of people in town so I just wanted to put a bug in his ear in case he heard of anyone who needed to hire some extra help. As soon as I got the words out of my mouth his phone rings. It was someone on the other end calling him to see if

he knew anyone who could paint a building in town. The guy said they would supply the paint and pay someone $300 to do the job. If you could have seen his face; this was the same guy I had witnessed with in Mexico and we had seen some stuff. But for that phone to ring and the exact moment I had told him what we were needing. And for the pay to be the exact amount we needed it was just beyond explanation. He looked at me and told me you will not believe what this person just said and asked if we wanted the job. Janice has always been a great painter so when he asked us if we wanted the job it was a no-brainer. We just praised the Lord for supplying yet another one of our needs.

The four years I spent at Mississippi College were wonderful and it completely changed my outlook on education. Prior to this I had the attitude that college was not for a person like me. After all I had made my bed when I dropped out of school. When I started at MC I had never written a paper in my life; now as a Christian Studies major I would be required to write many. I had never even taken algebra and now I was going to be required to take College Algebra. There were countless excuses why I could not make it in college but after my experience from my last military school I now

had a new found confidence in Christ and felt I could do anything as long as I was on the path He had set before me. Each semester my confidence grew as my grades continually improved. I ended up graduating from college in 1998 with a 3.34 GPA overall and a 3.5 GPA in my major. I knew the Lord was with me and I was excited to discover what He had for me next.

Chapter 9 What Now?

While most of my classmates went off to different seminaries I was just not feeling led in that direction. Janice still had another semester to complete before she graduated and I definitely wanted to stay and support her just as she had me. Plus at this point I was having some real reservations as to whether I wanted to serve in a Church at all. The great thing about Mississippi College was they didn’t try to brainwash you into thinking just like them. Nor did they try to tell you what your call was. Most all the professors taught all aspects of religion and left it up to the Holy Spirit to be your guide.

In the summer of 1997 we were looking for a cheap and family-friendly place we could take the kids for vacation. Being college students

we didn’t have a lot of extra money but still always did our best to do things as a family. My parents used to live in Gulf Breeze, Florida and told us about a nice camp ground at Fort Pickens. We decided we would go down there for a week and camp out. We had some friends named Mike and Darlene who we went to church with who had a camper so I asked if we could borrow it for the week. They agreed and when I went to pick up the camper Mike told me that while we were down there we may want to check out this revival that was taking place in Pensacola. Well to this point my idea of revival only came from my Baptist Church experiences; some quest preacher coming in for a few days and preaching evangelical messages. But as he spoke I could tell that something was different about him. He was normally a very quiet guy but there seemed to be a spiritual fire lit inside and the zeal in his voice kind of peaked my interest. So I wrote down the details of the revival and didn’t really know if we would go or not. After all we were going to the Florida beaches and I couldn’t see us spending the week at some revival service.

We arrived at the camp grounds and got every-thing setup. The camp grounds were amazing. On one side was the bay and the other side was the ocean, with beautiful white sand beaches all

within walking distance. When we arrived across from us was a large group of teenagers and a couple of adults supervising. I went over and introduced myself and discovered that they were troubled youth from a rehab ministry. Something prompted me to share my testimony with the group leaders and when I was through they excitedly asked me if I would mind sharing my testimony with the group. I knew God had opened a door here so I eagerly shared the amazing transformation the Lord had done in my life. After my testimony I prayed with the group and began chatting with the leaders a little more. I discovered that they were there to take the youth to the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola. He said that it was an amazing work of God going on and we ought to check it out. Well Mike had already told me about this revival before we left and here I had another invitation. I thought perhaps this was just confirmation from the Lord that we needed to go. So I talked to Janice and we decided to take the kids that evening.

When we arrived we were amazed to see people waiting in this long line to get in the church. I certainly had never seen people wait in line to get in church before. So we got in line and began talking with people. Most all had been there many times before and were so

excited to be there. We met people from all over the world who had come to Pensacola for the sole purpose of attending this revival. We found out that this was nothing new and that it had actually started on Father’s Day 1995 and they had been meeting seven days per week. Well as you can imagine I was in shock. How was it that I was in college as a religion major and never once heard of this amazing move of God? Well after a very long wait in line they finally started letting people in. It was a huge church but we were still concerned if we would even get in the main sanctuary or not. Fortunately we did but had to sit in the very back.

Once the praise and worship started we knew we were in a special place. To this point all we knew were Baptist hymns and Christian Radio. But this was something completely new. Lindell Cooley, the worship leader for the revival began leading the praise and worship and it was like nothing we had ever experienced before. You could see the hunger in people’s faces and they were actually singing to the heart of God. You couldn’t help but to get caught up in the worship and by the time we were through you actually felt like you had been in the presence of almighty God. Then the Evangelist for the revival, Steve Hill brought a powerful message

on repentance and when the invitation was given, the alters were full of people weeping and repenting before a Holy God. It was so far beyond anything I had ever experienced. I was a bit numb. I really did not feel a need to repent; after all I was in Bible school and trying to serve the Lord. What could I possibly need to repent of? We stayed and watched after the alter call as the ministry team began walking through the crowds praying for people. We were seeing people fall under the power of God for the very first time and this kind of freaked me out. I had never seen anything like this before.

We left and went back to the campground where we discovered quite a few people who had been to the revival. All were extremely blessed as we talked about our experiences. I met a guy who had a truck stop ministry and he explained to me many of the things I did not understand which had taken place. It was like a whole new side of Christianity had been opened to me. This was so much closer to what we read about in the New Testament than the dull excuse for religion I had been experiencing. All I knew was I wanted more. We continued having our fun during the day but each night we went back to revival. By the end of the week God showed me the religious pride in my

own heart and after repenting of my sin I felt a newly found power emerge. I thought I had experienced some pretty amazing things in Mexico but this was far beyond anything I had ever felt in my life. I could not wait to get back home and share with everyone about the amazing week we just had.

Chapter 10

A Season of Disappointments

We got back home and I went to return Mike’s camper to him. I told him all about our exper-ience and he knew exactly how I was feeling because he too had been mightily touched by God. He told me about a few other couples from our church who had been there and all had similar experiences. But he cautioned me about telling too many people because our pastor was opposed to this revival and said it was of the devil. I asked why in the world would he say that; had he even been there? He said no and he didn’t know why but he was definitely opposed to any of his church members going to this revival. I suddenly understood why I had never heard of this revival within my Baptist community; the pastors were not telling people about it because they didn’t want their flocks going there. This was very eye-opening

to me and I knew if I was ever going to move forward in my relationship with God that I was going to have to do it somewhere else. Since I was now entering my senior year of college I thought it may now be time for me to start serving in a church.

There was a small Baptist church not too far away who was looking for a youth minister and asked me to come share my testimony with the church and meet with the church board. I took the family and we had an amazing meeting. I felt the presence of God was with me and I left feeling assured I would soon be called. They asked for a list of references which I gladly gave them with my pastor at the top of the list. I knew they were supposed to make a decision that week and I had been expecting the call. After a couple weeks went by with no word I decided to visit there one evening just to see where they were with their decision. The moment Janice and I walked in I could tell something was wrong. The sweet spirit we had experienced was gone and people were acting very uneasy about us being there. After the service one of the board members called me back and said they had decided to go in a different direction. Needless to say I was hurt to the core. I could not imagine what in the world could have happened to make them

change in such a drastic way. It wasn’t just that they decided not to call me but it was the way they acted towards us. I could not remember feeling that low in many years. I went for a while not really knowing what had happened to keep me from getting the position. I had always suspected that it had something to do with my pastor but had no proof.

Then my senior year our youth minister transferred to Mississippi College and we had a few classes together. We had also spent time in Mexico together and he had been our kids youth minister so I knew him pretty well. One day at school I was sharing with him about the experience I had. I saw in his face he knew something. He had already taken a youth minister position at another church so I guess he felt like he had nothing to lose. Then he told me that he remembered the situation. He said that he was in the office when someone from that church called and that the pastor essentially blackballed me. Apparently he found out I had gone to the revival in Pensacola and was telling people what an awesome move of God it was and he cautioned the church not to call me. Well I can’t tell you how betrayed I felt. Here was someone who I looked up to who had gone behind my back and done the unthinkable. This was my first insight of the corruption that goes

on in church leadership. At this church you either did everything just the way the pastor tells you to or he would make you pay for it. Well after that, one of my classmates at Mississippi College had been called as pastor and knew my walk with the Lord. He spoke to his deacon body and they called me to serve as Minister of Education and Outreach and Janice served as Children’s Minister. We were both licensed by the church to serve in our roles and I was later ordained to serve in the ministry.

When I was in my final semester of college I received an offer to become a Chaplain at a Christian school in Bogota, Colombia. I was very excited and definitely felt a calling towards the mission field. The position unfortunately would require me to raise my own funds to come there. I immediately went and purchased passports and began trying to raise the money. The problem was at this point I had been blackballed and most all my old so-called friends would not support me for fear the pastor would find out. After a couple months of fundraising we had not received even close to enough money so I had to decline the offer and this really set me back spiritually. I was feeling very confused as to what God wanted me to do. Why did He want me to go through all this schooling and not ever serve? Why would He

give me such an amazing opportunity and not provide the means for me to follow through? I could only conclude that somehow I had gotten off track and needed to get back to where I needed to be.