Hey everybody. Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faith Forward Baptist Church in Phoenix,
Arizona with part eight of my life story.
So being newly married in August of 2000,
I was obviously just on cloud nine. This was a super happy time.
My wife and I are newlyweds were madly in love, but we had very little money.
Okay.
And so I got into a one bedroom apartment in Rancho Cordova,
California.
I didn't get the studio apartment because my sister specifically told me,
she said, no, that's a really bad idea. You know, when you're married,
you need to have somewhere to go and, and shut the door,
maybe even slam the door sometimes God forbid.
So I got into like a one bedroom apartment and we had nothing.
Like I had just literally a twin mattress on the floor and that was our bed
sharing, you know, two people sleeping on a twin mattress on the floor.
We didn't have a sofa. We didn't initially have a dining room table even.
And we just had like two plates, two forks, two spoons, two glasses.
I mean it was, it was just starting with nothing,
but we were just super happy to be together. We loved it. We didn't care.
And then a lot of people at church were generous with us and ended up giving us
like a bed, a sofa, a table and two chairs.
But then even once we had the table and two chairs,
we would want to invite another married couple over to have dinner with us and
we'd have to tell them, Hey,
we need you to bring two chairs because we just have two chairs for ourselves.
And so, you know, we started out really humble.
I was working my alarm job, uh, five days a week, 10 hour days.
Saturday, there was an option to work, to make a lot more money,
obviously time and a half and boost the paycheck. But honestly, you know,
being a newlywed was kind of more important to me and my wife missed me a
lot during the week because, you know,
especially because she's new to the country and didn't really have a lot of
friends and family. So therefore, you know, I usually didn't work Saturday.
I usually just worked Monday through Friday, 10 hour days.
And then just every moment outside of that, I spent with my wife.
And so we had a lot of good times. We couldn't,
we could never afford to go out to dinner or anything. Okay. Because, you know,
we were on a really strict budget.
We had $40 set aside each week that was for all groceries and like household
items, like toiletries, cleaning supplies.
So it was a pretty tight budget on that.
So we would go out to dinner every Friday night with my parents.
So my parents had this ritual for a really long time where they would always go
to Chili's for dinner every Friday night. They would get the fajitas.
They had the same waiter every time.
They even went to their waiter's wedding and stuff. So they had this ritual. Well,
you know,
they were kind enough to include us in that ritual after we were married.
So we would often do like a double date night with my parents on Friday nights
where we would go out to dinner together at Chili's.
Then we would usually go back to their house and spend the evening hanging out
with them, doing whatever. And then we would just spend the night at my old
bedroom. My wife and I would spend the night. And then the next morning,
we'd have breakfast and then head home, spend the day together on Saturday,
doing our own thing. And so those were just really great times,
really happy times. Well,
I got some bad advice right at the beginning of my marriage.
Basically that supposedly if my wife got pregnant right away,
then it wouldn't be covered by insurance and that I would just be totally
destroyed financially. So, you know,
basically my wife ended up using birth control pills for the first three months
of our marriage because I was told, well,
it takes three months for the benefits to kick in at your job.
And so, you know, if,
if a child is conceived in those first three months not going to be covered,
blah, blah, blah. So my wife and I, we both wanted to have kids right away,
but she took the birth control pills because we thought that we had to wait that
three months. Turns out that was not even correct. Anyway,
even if it were correct, obviously we should have just, you know,
trusted God and not listen to that. But anyway,
she was on birth control for the first three months that we were married.
And then as soon as the insurance kicked in,
she got off the birth control and then she got pregnant right away. Well,
but then she ended up having a miscarriage.
Later we would learn and realize how birth control pills work,
that they're bad for you and you know,
that they even are abortifacient and so forth.
And that's a whole nother subject.
I did a documentary on this a really long time ago called the truth about birth
control, but we didn't really know that at the time.
So we were pretty devastated by her having a miscarriage because you know,
when it's your first child and it's a miscarriage,
then you have all these questions like,
are we just never going to be able to have kids? You know,
is she just not able to have a child? And so we were pretty upset,
but thankfully right after that she ended up getting pregnant again and that
pregnancy went well and I'll get to that in a moment.
But during that time that we were newly married and during the time that she was
pregnant,
my wife started volunteering at the Christian school at Regency.
So they had Regency Baptist Academy and my wife would go down there like four
days a week and volunteer and she was mainly tutoring kids on English and
grammar, which was kind of ironic since she's coming from a foreign country and
English was her third language. But sometimes, you know,
when you have that outside perspective,
it actually helps you maybe see things in English more clearly because you've
learned it as a third language. So she would be down there every day,
volunteering at the school.
She was also just reading the Bible a lot because she wanted to catch up on
knowing the Bible. And I remember when we first got married too, uh, my wife,
you know, memorized the names of the books of the Bible cause she didn't grow up
knowing about the Bible or grow up being in church or anything. So, uh, it was,
it was so funny. I remember I would look over at my wife,
the pastor would call out a scripture that he was going to turn to and my wife
would have the Bible in her hand and have this really intense look on her face.
And you could just kind of see the wheels turning like, and then just go.
And then she'd go and just turn there really quick because she was really
putting in the work to like memorize the books of the Bible, nowhere to turn,
nowhere to find things. And she was just reading huge swarms of the Bible.
So, you know, I'd come home from work and she's like, Oh,
I read the book of second Kings today or, you know,
so she's just reading like huge amounts of the Bible,
catching up on that knowledge. She's volunteering at the Christian school,
just to kind of give her stuff to do during the daytime.
And I was really involved at Regency as well.
I was definitely going soul winning every week, but I also ended up preaching in
the nursing home ministry. Uh, ultimately it became, uh,
I think every other week I would preach in the nursing home ministry,
but then I would also preach in the bus ministry Sunday school and in bus
ministry, junior church. So I have like three possible preaching gigs,
bus ministry, Sunday school, junior church and nursing home.
And I was rotating with other guys, but between all of these three,
I would end up preaching, you know, once or twice a week.
So I was gaining experience preaching and my preaching was not very good.
I didn't have like a natural aptitude or ability. I was very nervous.
I did the best I could, but I struggled. Um,
my sister even expressed to me at one point, you know,
that she wasn't really sure that I had the aptitude to become a pastor because I,
you know, I wanted to be a pastor. I wanted to be a missionary specifically,
but my wife later even expressed to me that like,
she wasn't really sure if I had the aptitude to do that.
And I'm not faulting them for saying that at all,
because obviously they were right in a lot of ways that I was just, you know,
struggling to get good at preaching, but I just persevered,
kept trying, kept improving. And you know,
preaching is one of those things that you just have to just do it a lot to get
over the nervousness and it's really just like any other skill, uh,
putting in hours of, uh, of work is going to make you better at it.
Obviously the one thing that you can't learn or practice is just having the
passion and the fullness of the spirit of God and those types of things.
But as far as just the skill of public speaking itself,
that that is something that obviously has to be cultivated as well as a human
skill, in addition to the spiritual side of it. And so, you know,
I kept working at that when it came time for my wife to give birth,
she gave birth at the hospital and it was a really bad experience. You know,
we, we hated the experience and they ended up giving my wife an episiotomy,
which is just horrible and barbaric and stupid and,
and totally uncalled for.
And so we were really disillusioned by that. And, and you know,
she had a bad birth experience. Thankfully, you know, she and the baby were fine,
but she had to deal with, you know,
the horrible recovery from that episiotomy and everything.
And so around that time I was out soul winning and I knocked on the door of a
young couple that had some kids and they were already saved,
but I ended up getting them in church at Regency and we became friends with them
and they exposed us to home birth because she was pregnant when we met them.
And then she ended up doing a home birth.
And so my wife did a bunch of research looked into it and she decided that for
our second child she wanted to do a home birth.
She did do a home birth and it was just so much better of experience.
The prenatal care was way better. The birth itself was way better.
And so, you know, from then on we changed our philosophy and most of my children
have consequently been born at home. So we,
we learned that lesson with our second child.
And here's the thing is that also, you know, uh, with our first baby,
Solomon, my wife was, uh, you know,
just kind of following the mainstream view of like vaccinating and stuff.
So, so he got the first few vaccines and everything, but then, you know,
throughout the course of learning about those things, she ended up, you know,
uh, cutting that off part way through. So she did not finish vaccinating him.
And, and we did not vaccinate any of our subsequent children whatsoever.
So at this time I was working at an alarm company when I, well,
when I first got married, I was doing residential alarms, um,
other low voltage stuff like home theater, uh, distributed audio,
um, structured wiring, home automation, that kind of stuff.
So I worked at the company there for six months and I loved that job five,
10 hour days a week and the day would just blow by so fast. I enjoyed it.
The owner of the company was a great guy. He was a Christian,
went to like a non-denom church, but he was a saved Christian and he was,
he really treated me well. But the problem is after about six months at that job,
I kind of realized that people who'd been working there for many years were only
making a few dollars an hour more than me.
And so I started to see that there wasn't really much of a future at this
company.
And I also kind of felt like I'd learned almost everything after six months and
I was just kind of doing the same things over and over again.
So I ended up switching jobs and my new job,
I did not like at all. And the days dragged by,
I didn't like the way that the ownership and the manager treated me at all.
And it was just totally unpleasant.
And I totally regretted switching jobs on the plus side.
I only worked 40 hours.
So my wife was super happy that I was available more and we could spend way
more time together because I only had to work 40 hours,
but I was making less money because they kind of painted a picture that I was
going to make more money. And then I actually got the job. It didn't materialize.
They didn't come through on a lot of the promises.
And so I ended up making a little less money if anything,
but I was learning more and I was doing a lot more advanced things,
doing commercial alarms, fire alarms, you know,
electronics, CCTV, all that stuff.
And so even though I enjoyed the job less and struggled more financially,
in the long run,
it was good for me because the stuff that I learned at this job I ended up
using to make way more money in the future. So in the long-term it was good,
but in the short-term I felt like I'd made a big mistake and I'm, you know,
I moved like a half hour across town to be near the new job and I kind of just
felt like I'm stuck. I've, I've kind of gotten into this situation.
I need to just push through, stay with it, make it work.
So I ended up working there for the next few years and just kind of grinding it
out. I was still super happy at home with my family. I was super happy at church.
My social life improved because now that I was married and having kids,
then, you know, that put me in another demographic. So now I start, you know,
hanging out with other married guys that are in their thirties and stuff like
that. It was just, I didn't like the job, but everything about my life,
other than that was cool. And so, you know, life's never going to be perfect.
You make the best of it. So here's the thing. When,
when I was 12 years old,
I realized that the pre-trib rapture doctrine was bogus. So,
you know, I didn't believe in the pre-trib rapture and you know,
my family came to the same conclusion. Uh, our former,
not, not our former pastor,
but my parents former pastor had switched over to like a post-trib
pre-wrath view, uh,
sometime in the late eighties, early nineties, but he,
he came out with the book about it in 1996 and, but, but, you know,
uh, my parents had been aware of it going back all the way to the eighties.
And so when I started going to Regency though,
I was just so impressed by Regency and I love the church. I love the pastor,
love the preaching, the soul winning, as I said in the previous video,
it was just great. And so I basically, uh, started to question,
like, well, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the preacher rapture is right because,
you know, I kind of wanted to just totally buy into the program of Regency.
Okay. And Regency was just such an awesome church. And I felt like, you know,
pastor Nichols is way beyond me spiritually. And so maybe I should just,
you know, listen to what he's saying about this. And in fact,
I remember one Sunday night in particular,
just listening to pastor Nichols preach and just thinking,
I will never be able to preach as well as pastor Nichols. Like this man is on fire.
But I was like, but can God use me though as a pastor?
I know I'm never going to be able to preach as well as pastor Nichols,
but can I just be a preacher that could be greatly used by God, you know?
And I remember thinking that way.
And so I wanted to fully buy into everything that the church taught.
And so I was really trying to give it a chance and kind of questioning,
am I right about the timing of the rapture?
And so at this time I really dug into it. Like when I was 17, 18,
I really dug into it and I just realized like,
there's no way that the preacher rapture is true.
And that's when I really like nailed down exactly what I believed about the
timeline, which was a little bit different than Rasmussen's view,
a little bit different than another view that we were exposed to when I was
around 13 at a more liberal church. Uh, you know,
I really nailed down what is still my current view to this day and what is
taught in like the after the tribulation film and the revelation series.
So I was super sure about this. By the time I got married and stuff, I,
I knew like, I'm not pre-tripped. I'm never going to be pre-tripped.
This is super unbiblical.
And so I knew that this was going to be a sticking point because pastor Nichols
was always just vehemently preaching it's pre-tripped.
And if you're not pre-tripped, you're calling Jesus a liar. And I mean,
he was acting like people that don't believe in pre-tripped,
like they're probably not even saved. I mean, he was just really radical on this.
So I was like, Oh man. And I, and I came to the conclusion,
there's no way I'm going to be able to become a missionary because in the
independent fundamental Baptist world to be a missionary meant to go on
deputation and to gather up a whole bunch of churches supporting you for some
tiny amount of money, like $50 a month,
$100 a month. And then you get so many churches supporting you.
And then it all collectively makes like one salary where you could go be a
missionary. That was the method that they use. And I just thought to myself,
if I go around and do that,
they're going to ask me questions about doctrine and pin me down. And there's,
and as soon as they find out I'm not pre-trib,
like that's going to be a deal breaker. And I just thought to myself,
there's no way I'm going to go around and be able to please all these people
and, and preach what they want and,
and please them when it comes to my eschatology. And so I just decided,
you know what, I'm not going to be able to be a missionary.
I think I just need to become a pastor in the United States and the home front
needs a lot of work anyway. And so I think I'm just going to have to just
give up on my dream of being a missionary and just be a U S pastor.
So I went to pastor Nichols and told him that I wanted to pastor and that I did
not want to go to Bible college because he was still pushing Bible college and
going to golden state Bible college in particular. And I told him, no,
I said, you know, I really just want to be trained by you.
I want you to train me. I want to be trained the local church. And so he said,
okay, great. And so I kept on preaching in the nursing home preaching in junior
church and he and I got together and went out to eat a couple of times and
talked about the ministry and talked about plans,
but he kept promising like a structured training program where he was going to
train me in the ministry. And he kept saying, oh yeah, I'm going to do this.
We're going to do this. And he kept talking about how, you know, don't worry,
I'm going to put you on like a structured program to get to there.
But it just years went by and it just never materialized. Okay.
So I started to kind of see that like, I don't think this is going to happen.
I think he's just kind of saying that he's going to train me for the ministry,
but it's just,
it's something that just is getting pushed out there in the future. And you know,
are we going to run into a problem about the fact that I'm not pre-trib? You
know, these are the things that I'm wondering in my mind. Well,
I didn't tell anybody that I wasn't pre-trib.
This was something I kept to myself because I was never a troublemaker and I
never wanted to speak against the doctrine of the church.
Every time I had the opportunity to preach,
I only preach things that I knew that Pastor Nichols agreed with and that
we're in line with the church's doctrine.
And so the only time I ended up telling someone was I was at this deacon's
house one time helping him out with some electrical work.
And he just flat out pinned me down because he starts,
he's saying some pre-trib stuff or something about the pre-trib after.
And I'm just kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just kind of blowing it off.
And then he just pins me down. He said,
Steve, do you believe that the rapture is pre-trib? Well, you know,
I can't lie to him. So I just said, well, actually I don't, you know,
here actually believe that it's post-trib pre-wrath. And I was like,
oh great, you know,
now I'm just going to get just totally lambasted or something.
And so I told him like, no, I'm not. And to my shock,
he turns around and just doesn't even bat an eye and just acts like, yeah,
he's like, yeah, I'm questioning it too. And here's some reasons why I think it's
not pre-trib. I was like, wow, you know,
even the deacon is questioning it. And of course, you know,
later I would realize there were people, even back then,
there are people in every church in America questioning it because it's just so
grossly unbiblical. So anyway,
these are the kinds of thoughts that I'm having of, you know,
the pre-trib thing could be a sticking point.
I don't think pastor Nichols is really going to come through and train me.
And at this time I've been listening to a ton of preaching by brother Hiles.
So I used to download sermons and I had dial-up internet.
This is way back in the day.
So I'd use dial-up internet and I would download sermons from brother Hiles
mainly, but other preachers on the internet as well.
And I would download one sermon.
It would take about an hour on dial-up internet to download a sermon in low
quality audio, it would take like 45 minutes to an hour.
And then I had a cassette deck hooked up to my computer and I would then,
you know, record them onto cassettes in real time.
So to record a 45 minute sermon onto a cassette would take 45 minutes,
an hour would take an hour.
So I always had this pipeline going, I would get home from work.
As I'm hanging out with my wife and we're having dinner and doing these things,
I just kind of constantly had something downloading and something recording onto
a cassette. So I'm just making myself all these preaching tapes every day from
brother Hiles.
And then pastor Jack Scott had taken over first Baptist church of Hammond after
brother Hiles death.
So I would also listen to the weekly sermons from pastor Scott.
So I listened to every single sermon that pastor Scott preached since he became
the pastor. And I listened to about five to 600 sermons by brother Hiles.
I also listened to other preachers that I just found online.
There wasn't a whole lot though, but any independent Baptist preaching,
I could get my hands on. I was listening to it.
And so I would discipline myself every day. I would go to work.
And I would discipline myself by saying, okay,
before I'm allowed to listen to any preaching,
I need to listen to at least an hour of just Alexander score B reading the
King James Bible. And so I'd listen to the Bible for at least an hour.
And then I'd switch to preaching and I'd listen to six,
seven sermons a day while I was working.
I would just have my headphones on and I'm just doing my manual labor of
electrical or whatever. And if I ever had an opportunity to listen to some,
it was just preaching. So I'm just tons of preaching.
So I was learning a lot,
just getting a ton of doctrine from the sermons and just from listening to the
Bible. And so, you know,
I loved brother house preaching and I loved pastor Scops preaching in those
early days as well.
And one thing in particular that pastor Scop preached pushed me over the edge
and made me decide, you know what,
I'm probably never going to get trained and sent out by Regency.
So I need to just bite the bullet and just go to Bible college.
And then that's my pathway to becoming a pastor.
And so this is what pastor Scop said in a sermon.
He said that it didn't matter whether it's pre-trib or not.
He doesn't care about that subject and people argue is a pre-trib or is a
post-trib and it doesn't matter. That's not what's important.
So he just blew off the subject and said it didn't matter. I thought to myself,
wow, you know, if pastor Scott doesn't really care that much about this issue,
then it seems like I could go to house Anderson and even though they're
pre-trib, I could go to house Anderson, go through their program,
graduate and be sent out to start a church because this is not going to be a
major issue. And if, and if, and if they try to make a big issue,
I can literally point back to this sermon and say,
pastor Scott said that it's not a big deal.
Why are we making a big deal out of it? So I go to pastor Nichols and I said,
Hey, you know, I've decided I'm going to go to Bible college. And in particular,
the college I want to go to is Howells Anderson college. He told me, he said,
Oh, great idea. Howells Anderson is a great school. He said,
there's one concern that I have about pastor Scott in particular though.
And he brought up the concern and he showed me like a,
a newspaper that was attacking pastor Scott for not being dispensational.
And I'm thinking to myself, I hate dispensationalism.
So when he shows me this and says, look, look,
pastor Scott rejects dispensationalism. That's my only issue.
And pastor Nichols was not super dispensational, but you know, he did,
obviously he leaned that way with respect to like Israel and the preacher
rapture and some of those things. He was only, you know, half dispensational.
He didn't believe in different salvation and different eras and the really
heretical parts of it.
So when he showed me this concern about Scott rejecting dispensationalism,
I just thought to myself, yeah, that's one of the things that I like about him.
Because I, you know, I don't believe in dispensationalism either.
I didn't say that, but that's what I'm thinking. So he raised those concerns,
but overall he said, no, he said, I think Hiles Anderson is an excellent choice.
And he said, if I were a young man,
I'd probably do the same thing because if I were in your position, because,
you know, it's a great school and so many great men of God have come out of
Hiles Anderson. And so he was a hundred percent for it.
He thought it was a great idea. So I'm like, okay, great. You know,
I asked the pastor what he thinks. He likes it. Let's go.
And so I ended up signing up for Hiles Anderson before I did. You know,
I did take a survey trip out to Hiles Anderson just to kind of go there in
person and see what it's like. So, you know, my wife stayed home with the kids,
but I took my younger sister, Lisa on the survey trip to go check out Hiles
Anderson. And so my sister, Lisa and I,
and I had very little experience traveling. I'd gone to Germany a couple of times,
but other than that, I hadn't flown anywhere since I was four years old,
you know? So, you know, I, I brought my sister, Lisa,
we flew into Chicago, we rented a car, like I didn't even know how to rent a car.
I was kind of figuring that out and everything. And so we flew in,
rented a car, we had booked a hotel in Hammond.
And so my sister, Lisa and I were there to like check out Hiles Anderson
College and check out First Baptist Church of Hammond in person.
And so, you know,
we get there on a Saturday and we drive to the church and we took some pictures
outside the building, kind of looking through the windows and checking it out.
But there wasn't really anything going on at the church at that time.
So we're just kind of looking around, checking it out,
driving around Hammond, checking it out. So then we got this idea in our heads.
We're like, Hey, you know, we need to try a Chicago style pizza.
And this is before smartphones, you know, I didn't even have a cell phone,
let alone a smartphone. Okay. So we're like,
we need to find a Chicago style pizza. We just had this in our head.
Like this is what you do when you go to Chicago.
So we start driving back towards Chicago and the first part of Chicago you come
to is South Chicago. Now we don't know anything about Chicago.
And we didn't realize that South Chicago is like a super duper ghetto.
Okay, like really ghetto. And Chicago is also very segregated.
And so when you go to South Chicago, I'm sure it's probably still this way,
but it definitely was this way back then in 2003.
This would have been in 2003. Like you go to the black area.
There's no white people. Everybody's black. I mean,
it's just a hundred percent segregated. Everybody's black. So we,
we just pull off the freeway at a random exit and we just pull into a gas
station in South Chicago. We don't even know where we are, what's going on.
We're just kind of flying by the seat of our pants.
We'd used a map quest like printed out directions to get to the church,
but now we're just freestyling it, trying to find Chicago style pizza.
So we pull into just one of the most dangerous ghettos in America.
We don't even know where we're at. And, and we pull up to this gas station.
My sister walks in, uh, and you know,
cause I'm just in the driver's seat to kind of pull up to the door.
She hops out, runs in to ask the cashier, Hey, where can I get a, you know,
Chicago style pizza around here? The girl just glares at her. And she's just like,
you're not from around here, are you? She's like, well, no, you know, I'm,
I'm visiting, um, and she's just like, Domino's is down the street.
We're like, Whoa.
So my sister gets in the car and after she gets in the car,
we start looking around and we're like, wow, this is a, this is a weird area.
Maybe, maybe we shouldn't be in this part of town.
This seems a little bit rough. And then, uh, and I was just like, man,
that's really rude. Like telling you to go to Domino's,
like we wanted Domino's, we would just eat Domino's in California.
Want the local stuff. So we go to get back on the freeway,
but before we get back on the freeway, we see a place called Giovanni's.
And I was like, well, I said, Lisa, this is a pizza place, Giovanni's pizza.
And I said, it sounds Italian. You know, it sounds serious.
Giovanni's pizza sounds like it could be good. So we, we pull in,
we parked the car and we walk in and it was like a really
interesting restaurant. They had like a giant screen TV in the
dining room playing like some movie from the seventies with an
all black cast and kind of that background, kind of like
background music and whatever. And then there were all these
posters about like, you know, poetry night and freestyle and
whatever. And so we walk into this place, there's like one
customer sitting in the dining room. Oh, that's totally empty.
We walk up and we order a pizza to go. Well, the guy tells us
it's going to take 45 minutes and I'm thinking to myself 45
minutes, like what the heck? There's like one customer, but
we're like, okay, whatever. 45 minutes. Let's go. So we're
just sitting in this lobby just waiting and just kind of taking
in the ambiance of this kind of strange restaurant and strange
environment. And we're watching the guy make our pizza and the
guy is just going so slow. Like, and he you know, he's he's
got the sagging pants. He's got the whole like ghetto ensemble
going. And we're just sitting there watching this guy like he
kind of throws a little cheese on our pizza walks away does
something else just snails face throws a little more cheese on.
We're like, what is this guy doing? Like, why is this taking
so long? We thought 45 minutes was long, it ended up taking
over an hour for him to actually finish the pizza. So when he's
done, he gives us the pizza, we take it in the box, we drive it
back to the hotel in Hammond. And it was like one of the best
pizzas that we've ever had ever because we were we were concerned
because it looked a little sketch, the restaurant seemed a
little wild. And the guy didn't seem like he was real passionate
about what he was doing. But we ended up actually just loving
the pizza was so good. So that was actually a win. Believe it
or not. We get back to the to the hotel, we check into the
hotel, the hotel was just so crashed and ghetto. I forget
what it was called some some with America and the names a big
hotel in Hammond. If I looked on Google, I'm sure I can figure
it out. The pool was just totally drained and dirty and
defunct. Everything was run down, we get to our room, the
smoke detectors like broken and hanging from the ceiling. People
like carve their names in the table of the room. But we sit
down at the table, we eat our pizza, we lay down in the bed
that night, you know, the room only had one bed. So we slept
heel to toe, or sorry, head to toe, where like we each put our
head at one side of the other, since we had to share the bed.
And then all of a sudden, just fireworks start going off. Like
what in the world? And just for hours, just fireworks, fireworks.
And we're just laughing our heads off. Like what is going on?
Because we were used to in California, it's only legal to
set off fireworks on the Fourth of July. And this was just like
some random day in summer. And people are just going crazy with
fireworks. We're in this super ghetto hotel. We're just like,
where are we? What is this place? So we laughed and laughed.
We fell asleep. We get up the next morning and we go to church
and we were all excited and we wanted to get good seats. So we
got to church like an hour and a half before Sunday school
started. And we're just like sitting right in the front row.
We're super excited. This goofy old man comes up and he's
greeting people and just making all these jokes and just being
really silly. And I thought I heard that his name was brother
Sally. And I was thinking to myself like, please let this not
be the guy that helps you find a job. Because I'd heard that at
Howells Anderson, you know, there, oh, there's a guy that
helps you find a job, so that you can, you know, work your way
through school. Because obviously, you know, if I go to
Howells Anderson with my wife and two kids, I'm gonna have to
have a job and this guy helps you find a job, whatever. And I
was just like, please, there's not be the guy that helps you
find a job because he just seemed like such a goofball. But
and it was him, Phil Sally, and anybody who who knows him, he's
a character, he ended up being a great guy. He was very unhelpful
in helping me find a job. But he ended up being a really cool
guy in other ways. And he ended up, you know, really liking me
and saying some really nice things to me and in the future.
And so, so I ended up liking him in the long run. But, you know,
I sat there in the front row. The church service was awesome.
I loved everything about the church service. And then also
right in front of me, or right near me, was sitting a guy named
Mike Ramsey. And so I ended up meeting him on that Sunday
morning. And just, you know, he and I hit it off right away. And
he ended up being my ministry leader when I went to
Alexanderson. He was my ministry leader the whole time I was
there, I ended up joining his ministry, because he was like
the one person I knew. And we ended up just being kindred
spirits in a lot of ways. We had a ton of things in common. We
both had the same style of soul winning where we like, we
wanted to be thorough. And we really emphasize the eternal
security of the believer. When we presented the gospel, we
both had the same views on the sodomites and a bunch of other
things. And so you know, I feel like that was definitely God
that brought us together because there's just you know, 5000
seat auditorium, several 1000 people there for church on
Sunday morning. And I just happened to run into this guy who
ended up being like, the perfect guy to be my ministry
leader for the next few years. So I joined his outreach
ministry. I'll talk more about that in the next video when I
talk about my time at Howells Anderson. Because you know, I
went back from the trip. And I was like, honey, it's everything
I thought it would be. I love it. This is what we're gonna do.
We're moving to Indiana. And you know, I'm going to go to
Howells Anderson College, that's going to be my pathway into the
ministry. At least that was the plan. That's where we're gonna
leave it this time. Next time, I'll talk about my time at
Howells Anderson. God bless you. Have a great day.