Oh, yeah. Having a friend from when you're young is really rare. It's really rare to
have a lifelong friend or a friendship that lasts a long time. He and I have now been friends for
19 years because I met him when I was 20 years old. I still remember meeting him. I remember
the first conversation we had. I remember the first time we went soul-winding together.
I vividly remember everything about our friendship because it's important to me.
He and I are real good friends. We've been friends for a long time. The first thing I said to him
was actually rebuking him. He and I just immediately hit it off and we're good friends.
No, this is what it was. It was King James Bible month at Regency. We're sitting in church.
His family was pretty new. They'd only been coming for a couple of weeks. He was 16
and I was 20. We didn't know each other. We'd never talked or anything.
At this time, I was learning Spanish. I was reading the Bible in Spanish. I was really
militant about the Spanish Bible issue because it really bothered me because I was learning Spanish
and speaking Spanish. The 1960 version was being put forth as the King James equivalent. It was so
bad and it really bothered me. I looked at his family's Bible and it was like a 1960 King James.
They had both King James and then they had the Spanish 1960. We're in King James Bible month.
I knew all the errors in the 1960 version because I was deep into this. He's sitting behind me and
the preacher's up there preaching. He brought up a mistake that I knew was wrong in the 1960.
I'm watching him out of the corner of my eye. I don't even know them. I see him frowning and
looking at his Bible because he had the Spanish. I just leaned back in my chair and I said,
it's not what yours says, is it?
That's it. He didn't even answer me. I just said that and I just leaned back forward and just went
back because I read his mind. He was looking at it and he was like, huh? I'm just like, yeah,
it's not what yours says, is it? That was on a Sunday night.
Then the next Wednesday or Sunday evening service, he walked up to me. I was there real early.
He walked up to me and he's like, hey, what you said to me last Sunday night. He's like,
you're right about that. Then we started talking about it. Our first conversation was about the
Spanish Bible issue. Then we just hit it off right away. When we really became close was because
my wife took a trip to Germany a couple months later. I had a lot of free time because usually
I was spending all my time with my wife. She was going to be gone for a few days. I said to him,
hey, let's do a big soul winning thing where we just go soul winning. Let's just see how many
hours we can go soul winning in one day. Let's just max out. We went out and we just did an
11 hour day of soul. We took three hours of breaks. It was eight hours total of soul winning
in one day. We were just trying to push ourselves. How much soul winning can we do in one day?
That was the first day we really hung out. Then we went soul winning a few more times while my
wife was in Germany. After she got back, we would still go once a week. All the memories.