Day 58 – Back to Ohio for more training…
After 3 years of working in New York, those of us that were training together back in 1972-73, were asked to come back to Ohio for a year. It was sort of like a sabbatical year of no “field” responsibilities except that we were working in different departments at the International Headquarters now.
It was wonderful to get back together with those we had trained with, many of us were married now and a few had children. Upon arriving, I was asked to be the group coordinator for the year. I felt like I was in a good place to do this, it would have been overwhelming had I been asked 3 years earlier. The ministry was still pretty innocent at the time, but it was growing massively, and everyone was just trying to hold on and grow with it.
The position I had required me to lead a lot of the Sunday evening services and every now and then to teach. There were times that I also served as the musical entertainment for the night, but I didn’t mind.
There were several times when groups of us were sent out to different areas of the United States to handle some difficult situations. We probably looked at ourselves like the Green Beret forces sent in to handle problems, when in reality, it was more like going in to soothe hurt feelings or even mop us messes that had happened.
That summer there was a very big event planned called PFAL ’77. This was supposed to be a re-teaching of the original Bible Class we had all taken, which was first produced in 1968. It never replaced the first class, but it was a week of teaching and celebration at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. I don’t remember exactly how many were there, but over 1,000 I’m sure.
I had just been assigned to a new position in the ministry which would start that August. I was the Mid-west Region Coordinator responsible for the work in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming, and Montana. During PFAL ’77 my wife at the time was responsible for the backstage area and hosting all the teachers and speakers. My job was to help arrange and coordinate big events like a class picture (no small feat) and other activities.
I was also asked to teach one of the sessions, which was a real honor for me. It was my first time in front of such a big crowd. As I have said before, sometimes teaching a big crowd is easier than a small one. You walk up and the lights are so bright, you can’t see anyone, just hear them. I never had a problem with any size crowd when teaching, I would just get so locked into the message, I didn’t care who or how many were there. The teaching went well and later, someone turned it into a magazine article for the monthly ministry magazine, which meant a lot to me.
As odd as it may sound, it was during this crazy week or 10 days that my wife and I got pregnant with our first child. Actually, she got pregnant, I was just a participant. We had been told that we should take the first three years of our marriage to get to know each other and not worry about kids. It was good advice, but the three years were up, and we both wanted children, so as tired as we were each night, we still made it happen.
The state I was assigned to was Minnesota and then I worked with the leaders of the rest of the states I mentioned. When we got to Minnesota, my wife was in her first trimester of pregnancy and in October of that year we headed out for a driving tour of the new region I was assigned to. It took us the entire month to cover all the states and it was a beautiful time.
I really loved those people in Minnesota and still keep in touch with many of them some 40 years later. Many of them were Scandinavian in background…hard to get to know in the beginning, but once you were accepted, you had a friend for life. Some of the most wonderful times and some of the most painful times happened in Minnesota, but that’s another story for another day.
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