<TITLE>18. Par 68-72</TITLE>L-68 After I got outside, we come to. I got outside, and this fellow walked up to me with a great big Texas hat on, a pair of cowboy boats, said, "Say, I'm Reverend So-and-so."
I said, "Well, say. Maybe my seersucker trousers is not so bad."
Another fellow walked up and had on these little old golf playing...?... clothes, you know, said, "I'm Doctor So-and-so from down in Florida." He said--said, "Will you come preach for me?"
Well, I thought, "My."
I had a whole string of invitations. And I got in my old Ford. I was going to tell my wife. And down the road I went. See, it'd thirty miles an hour. That's fifteen miles this way, and fifteen miles up-and-down that way, you know. Down the road I come, just as hard as I could go. I'd pull on the old brake out there, and the two back wheels scooted. Bless her heart, she run to the door, and her arms open, you know, and she said, "Did you have a good time?"

L-69 I said, "Oh, a wonderful time." Telling her about being with Brother Ryan here, and so forth. And that's when I said, "Honey, I got something to tell you. Just let me show you." Reached down in my pocket. "See all them?" I said, "I've always wanted to be an evangelist." I said, "There is... I've got enough invitations to last me all year. You go with me?"
Said, "Sure."
Well, we still owed about a hundred dollars on the old Ford, and debts and things, but she wanted to go with me.
Well, we went and told her mother. "Mom," she said, "go ahead." But her mother said, "Bill, no." She said, "That ain't nothing but a bunch of backwash out of other churches, just what other churches had kicked out."

L-70 "Why," I said, "they're the happiest people in the world. They're not ashamed of their religion. They just scream, shout, just as free as the water runs." I said, "I like that."
She said, "It's just what other churches has kicked out." She said, "It's nothing but a bunch of trash."
And she... And I come to found out, what she called trash, is the cream of the crop. And I say that with respect. That's exactly right.
So I said, "Well..." She said... I said, "Well, that's my wife."
And she said, "But, it's my daughter." She said, "She can go. If she goes, her mother will go to a grave broken hearted."
Then Hope started crying. She said, "That's where I made my fatal mistake, right there."
So she said, "Well, if you want to, if you want to go, I'll go with you."

L-71 And we went on, talked it over. Instead of listening to God, I listened to the woman. Now, she may... She might be setting right here this afternoon for all I know. I don't see her, but she may be. She's a good woman, but she just didn't understand at that time.
Then sorrow set in. Immediately, the... We had a... After that little while, another little fellow was born, a little girl called Sharon Rose.
The 1937 flood come up. Sorrows begin to break in. Things went wrong at the church. My congregation begin to drop. Just get out of the harmony with God one time. And friends, I'll always regret it as long as I live. Right then, my church thought I was a fanatic. They still do. Not my church body at Jeffersonville, no, no, I mean the Baptist church that I belonged to.

L-72 At home, I was a black sheep, because I didn't drink and things, and all the rest of them did. In society I didn't dance, and didn't go to places, and didn't play cards and those things. So I was a black sheep there. In church I was a fanatic. And I just found out that that backwash was right where I belonged. I was one of them, just exactly. They had something that was down in here. And deep was calling to the deep, and it was where God was trying to get me.
I ain't disregarding any other, any church, or nothing about it. Every person that's borned of the Spirit of God, is a son of God. That's right.


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