About the first thing I remember, at church, was the song “I’ll Fly Away” being sung. I sat between my mother and my great aunt, Edna Downing, on the front seat of the awomen side at Maple Grove at Fountain Run. I could just picture my mother flying and leaving me there by myself. It scared me.
I remember going to Bob Downing’s house before the revival started and Marla, Hope and me playing in the yard. I was the oldest. Marla heard some of the church members, off in the hog lot below the house, calling out the name of the children at church. Marla asked me why they were calling our names. I told her I didn’t know.
My mother and father carried me to the other churches when they had their revivals. One night at Union’s revival, Enoch Carter said that he felt that someone would not get home that night. I felt like he was talking to me. I was under conviction so much; I wanted to walk across the fields to get home for fear of having a wreck. Brother Emmett Strode was the preacher, and the house was full.
The next revival was at Tracy Creek. Roger Cherry was there. The next night, he told me that his mama got down in the floor of the pickup truck praying for him and me to be saved. As I write this, I stop and pray that God will guide my hand what to write that this will help someone that is lost.
I got to sit with the bigger boys on the second seat in the amen corner. I was about eleven or twelve years old. Sister Pauline Patterson and Sister Ada Tracy always worried us to death to come to the altar. One day service, Barry Brooks said “let me set out at the end, and when they come and ask us to go to the altar, I want let you out”. Well, here they come, I look up and Barry is gone, yes, gone to the altar. There are still two more boys before they get to me, David Strode and Cordell Shockley. I had time to figure how to get out of this, but just as soon as they got to them, they went to the altar. I knew that I needed to go to the altar, so I did give in and go. I still did not get saved.
We would have prayer meetings on Sunday nights. A lot of the time, there would only be a few there, and I would always ask my mama, “What is the use”.
Our revival was always the first Sunday night in July. Brother Ellsworth Strode and Brother Wendell Strode were the preachers. We always had day services at 1:30. I had been mowing yards and got stung by wasps around my ankles, and I couldn’t walk but Mama still made me go to church. They brought me back home after church, and they went to pick blackberries around the pond. I prayed while they were gone and the Lord saved me. I forgot about my feet being swollen and started to run out the back of the house and jump off the porch, I was so happy. But, when I got to the back door, the Devil told me I was not saved, and I stopped. I was always quiet, and I had been practicing shouting. When I got saved, I wanted to impress everyone, and I wanted to be saved in the church house and jump up off the mourners bench so no one would doubt me. God knows and we don’t get saved the way we want to.
This was the second week of revival on a Wednesday afternoon about 4:00 or 4:30 in July 1969. I thank God for saving my soul and am thankful that my parents took me to church.
