WALKING, PRAYING AND THE PROMISE

Many of us are affected by events that happened before we were born. In 1937, my father bought an old feed mill located along the railroad tracks passing through Snow Hill, Maryland. He borrowed $500.00 from his father and $500.00 from a cousin to purchase the old feed mill. He married Belle Scarborough from Girdletree, Maryland in 1938. I was born in 1939, the year Hitler invaded Poland. My brother was born in 1941; the year Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan. A few years later, dad asked me to work in the old feed mill sweeping. I was to do the sweeping of the dusty old mill, the offices, and the agricultural product display areas. During summer vacation time and Saturdays during the school year and during the summer, dad paid me a $1.00 a day.

After work each day at 5 PM, if it were not raining, I would jump off one of the old feed mill loading docks and walk the railroad tracks. I have always loved to walk. I walked and talked to the Lord anytime I was alone. I did not go to church very much. Occasionally mom made my brother and I go to church. I did not consider myself religious, but I have always feared and talked to the Lord as long as I can remember. I would walk by myself and talk to the Lord. I always felt He heard me. It was a relaxing feeling. The distance I walked increased each time as the years passed by.

When I was about 12 to 14 years old, I made a promise to the Lord as I walked and prayed on the railroad tracks. I made the same promise more than once. I do not know how many times. The country was in a post war period and dad’s feed business began dwindling and there was less activity. I was by myself more and more, filling all the smaller orders coming into the feed mill. Dad lost the feed mill, his farms and our home in Snow Hill. I was in the ninth grade when we moved to Girdletree. The loss of the farms affected me. I would leave the Eastern Shore and only return on visits; the memory of losing the farms was painful to me.

After completing high school and six months active duty in the U.S. Army Infantry and Combat Engineers School, I began to notice my life was progressing because of direction and circumstances that I believed were created by the Lord.

Even though I had never read very much of the Bible, I spent my spare time walking and praying to the Lord on the railroad tracks, in the fields while finding Indian relics, and on the beaches of the Eastern Shore finding sand dollars and an occasional Indian relic. At that time, I did not connect the directions and circumstances that followed my promise to the Lord.

The first circumstance or direction I connected to the promise was when a U.S. Army Major, who was a recruiting officer, asked me what career I wanted to pursue after I finished high school. I said I am studying commercial art and cartooning through a correspondence course. Then I mentioned that my dad had me making architectural renderings and floor plans for different business ventures he was developing. The recruiting officer said he was going to assign me to the U.S. Army Engineers School to learn construction drafting and perspective rendering after I finished basic training in the Infantry. I used the Army Engineers School training in the very first position after graduation from art school. That first art position was as an Advertising Agency Art Director. The last position I had was as an Audio Visual Information Officer and was the Acting Deputy Chief of the Audio Visual Services Division in the U.S. Department of State. I was still using the training I acquired in the Combat Engineers Drafting Course.

After being retired because of an occupational disease, I began studying to become an ordained minister and I still had not remembered my promise to the Lord! I became a prison minister, a truck stop minister, on the board of directors of a truck stop ministry, tried to start a church as a co pastor, was offered a church on the lower Eastern Shore but could not accept the position because of my wife’s medical situation at the time.

When I remembered the promise, I remembered many of the directions and circumstances that happened at the right time advancing me in my chosen profession. But most important I remembered the times on the railroad tracks beside my dad’s old feed mill when I made the promise to retire and serve Him. I had forgotten the promise when I became very busy becoming “successful”. When I was 45, I was retired, unable to work in graphic arts or a lot of other fields because of unknown or known, graphic arts chemicals and industrial chemicals to which I had become sensitive.

I started preparing to serve the Lord. It was after ordination in the ministry before I remembered the promise. I started writing this book about three or four years ago. I had limited experience and knowledge of computers this was a real challenge. But I wanted to honor and serve the Lord.