Roger Gibson: Hitching Your Wagons

From the woods to the Word, this episode is a powerful story of faith, work, and direction. Centered around Psalm 23, we explore the reassurance Scripture provides, hear Roger's story of becoming a Christian, and reflect on his career as a logger. Along the way, we’re reminded of the importance of hitching our wagons to the right things: God’s Word and people who are committed to following Him.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Consider One Another is a podcast focused on each other. Thank you for tuning in to this podcast that is all about stirring up love and good works in one another. Good morning and welcome to the Consider One Another podcast. Me and Roger are excited this morning because it is opening day for baseball. And so we're wearing baseball caps. Roger, thank you so much for being here today. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. There's a lot for us to talk about. We were actually just talking about all the things, and I said, hold on, let's hit record before we miss something good. So the thoughts are churning, and we are excited to talk about Roger and consider him today. As we always do, the procedure here is to start with scripture. So, Roger, I'm just gonna read Psalm 23. I'll just read a section of scripture and then you just jump in with any thoughts you have. Sound good? Yes, sir. Does. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul, he guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You have anointed my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and loving kindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Well, I think, in particular, this Psalms is very, very reassuring as we live our life. Yeah. But I think the whole book of Psalms is a way to get some insight into a king. Yes. That he was serving God in the capacity that he he was ordained to do. And he asked for help. And if he's the king and he's asking for help, why shouldn't I ask for help? And the advice he gave is very thoughtful and very sound. And that's what I like about the Psalms reassurance. It's reassuring.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

And it kind of is just a look into the whole book of Psalms. It is. Psalm 23 represents the whole Psalter very well. And I like that. It's a look into a king. It is. David's a king. What does he say? The Lord is my shepherd. What? A king needs a shepherd? Oh, I never thought about it that way. But I really like that. I think the way we've talked about it before is seeing Jesus in this psalm.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

And we serve that same shepherd.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Yeah, right. A long time ago. How many years ago? Oh man, it's the same God? Thousands. Yeah. Yeah. We serve him. Yes, it's the same God. And that's where the reassurance comes and why Psalm 23, I think, is so memorable.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

People want to be reassured by scripture. Exactly. And that's reassuring to me. One of my favorite Psalms, and seeing how there's a king in need of a shepherd, in need of a king himself, that's reassuring. So go to the Psalms, go to the Psalter and find something that reassures you. We were just talking about the importance of reassuring someone you're talking with who wants to maybe receive an invitation like you were explaining last night. God's word is meant to be reassuring.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Psalm starts out in chapter one as kind of an instruction on how to live our lives. And it just builds from there, you know. And that's that's probably been one of my favorite psalms shortly after I was baptized. Doing Bible study, this was one of the psalms that I found, and I read it often. Psalm 1.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Psalm 1, yes. Yeah, nice. Yeah, like a tree by the water. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

He delights in the word of the Lord. For instance, you know, bless is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked. That's some pretty good advice. Especially as a new Christian. Yes. There's a lot going on when you become a Christian. You're dismantling, for me, it was dismantling a life that was not the best. And as you do that, it it's like a remodel. You take a lot of things out before you put the new things in. These are the new things.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

A lot of wicked counsel around you. Oh yeah. Uproot that so you can be rooted like the tree by the water. Exactly. Well, you're getting right to where we want to talk about. So we'll just jump into conversation. I think we've got to rewind even further than where you just were when you just became a Christian. But can you just take us through how you and Cindy met? Because you met before you became a Christian, right? Yes. Okay. So tell us about that, how you met, and then how you became Christians.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Well, I met Cindy, I came home on leave. I was in the Navy. Okay. And uh I was trying to get my old 39 Chevy back on the road so I'd have something to drive while I was home. 39 Shavy. 39 Chevy. Okay. 39 Chevy as a kid. And and so anyway, I was in the driveway working on that, and uh Cindy came up, she had dropped my cousin off. She got out of the car. I went, wow, what a nice looking girl. Okay, yeah, good. And so anyway, through the process, my sister was there, and Vicki knew Cindy, so she came out and talked with and introduced me. And uh Cindy went ahead and went home, and about 30, 40 minutes later, Vicki got a call, and Cindy was asking her if she would like to bring me over and meet her family. Wow. And I don't know why that happened, but it did. And from there we developed a pin pal relationship because I was going back to Guam.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Okay, you know while you were underway.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Yeah. I I had to go back to Guam, and I came back several times to the States for schooling. And when I do, I take advantage of that and go see my family. Well, of course, I always try to make sure that I saw Cindy when I was home. Oh, sure, why not? And uh eventually I was there when she graduated in 1970, and we started a relationship, and as that sometimes does with young love, you know, it kind of got away from us and we drifted apart for a while. Oh no. Well, when I got out of the service, I came back here, went to work, and uh as it as it was, got together with Cindy again, and from there we developed a relationship that I decided, well, maybe this would be a really good girl to marry. Yeah. And so we went through that whole stage, and after a while, as people do even when they're married, you run into rough patches. Sure. And as everybody does, you know, I was I was just being worldly. That's the best way to say that.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Okay, yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

And we were having a few problems, and one evening we were standing in the in the kitchen, and she looked at me and she says, Why don't you go back to church? You were happy there once. And I went, hmm. Well, there's a little country Bible church across from where we lived, and we started attending there. We'd been there, in fact, that's where we got married. Okay. And I had friends there, and in that process, when we went back, uh a good friend of mine wanted to know if I wanted to have a Bible study. I said, Well, sure. Yeah, sure. You couldn't we can set it up at my house. Well, in the process, Cindy was working at a department store, uh all-in-one type thing, fishing gear and automotive stuff. And she was talking to one of the guys there she worked with, and he said, Well, can I come over? Cindy said, Well, sure, sure. Well, we went through the first first Bible study, and his name is Mike. And after Joe had left, he looked at me and said, If you if you really want to study the Bible, he says, I know somebody that knows this thing from cover to cover. I said, Sure, I'd I'd meet him. He set up the arrangement, and and we went over to his place. The man's name was Arnold Sapsowitz. Okay, and he was a big guy, and they called him Tiny. So, anyway, in the process of doing that, we started talking about the Bible and the things we knew, and I would be asking questions. Arnold had his Bible with me. I didn't take mine with me, and he just turned it around and put it in front of me. And he said, Read this when I'd ask a question. Lo and behold, I was answering questions, and he did that all evening. And as Cindy and I walked home, Cindy was with me. We were maybe a quarter mile from home. I looked at her and I said, Whatever this says to do, I'm gonna do. That's so powerful.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

So you would ask a question, and he would just turn his Bible around. Put it right in front of me and read this. Oh man. Okay, so I'm interested from a perspective of some trying to learn about the Bible. Did that I mean it obviously impacted you, but it helped for you to be the one to say it and see it and read it. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 9:03

That's exactly how Arnold taught. Okay. He says, You don't need to know what I I tell you. Read this. Yes. He was truly, if a man speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. I learned that later. That if I was gonna ask a question about God, he was gonna give me God's answer.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Yeah. Not his. Not his. So much so that he didn't even need to speak it. That's amazing. And encouraging to me as an evangelist and all of us as evangelists. It's not about having the perfect words all the time. Sometimes it's just about giving them the Bible.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Well, I was pretty impressed that a guy could turn his Bible around, not even look at it, and give me a verse. I would turn to it and it would answer the question about what we were talking about.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Do you have an example of what like one of those questions would be? Like what must I do to be saved?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Or no, it wasn't even that. It was just general God things. Okay. Who is he? And and I know God. We were a religious family growing up. We went Sundays and and that was about it. And then every you know, Easter and Christmas, stuff like that. Okay. And as a young kid, I was probably 14, 15. All of us sit in the back. You know what I'm saying? I understand, yes. And we just couldn't wait for the thing to get over and we went off and did our thing. So it wasn't paramount. We were religious to the point that I I knew God. Okay. But I didn't know what he what he was all about.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

You knew he was out there. Yes. And acknowledged him sometimes. The line you give from Cindy is, why don't you go back to church? You were happy then. So she she knew you had that background, and as you hit that rough patch, she came up with that solution or at least pointing you in the right direction, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:50

It's all God. Yeah. I I when I look back, it's it's exactly because why would she say that? We had talked very little about God. She knew where I went to services as a Baptist and all of those things. Her mind was quick enough to say, why don't you go back to church? You were happy there once.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

As opposed to where you were then.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

It wasn't a good patch in our relationship. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

So her solution was, hey, go back to the happy.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Go talk to God, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yeah. Well, great direction. And then so then you then have another good line of whatever the Bible says to do. Like, I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

It's exactly that was my words, exactly. You remember that. Yes. It's it was paramount in the change. Cindy, whatever this says to do, I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

I think that's important as we think about spreading the gospel. It wasn't whatever Arnold says, that his name, Arnold, whatever Arnold says I'm gonna do. Like Arnold took the pressure off of him and put it in God's Word. So now Roger isn't following Arnold, he's following God's Word.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

He was a teacher and preacher in the Church of Christ. Great guy. His wife was she was really, really helpful with him teaching cool. Me and Cindy. Okay. Both of them knew the Bible frontwards and backwards.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Okay, because that was my next question with Cindy following. You say I'm gonna do whatever the Bible says. Did she follow right away, or what did she think about all this?

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Well, we started classes, and um I was so thrilled with the answers I was getting, and I would dominate the class by asking questions. Of course, Cindy knew nothing. I mean, she's sitting here like not getting anything. Okay. And I'm But you were just asking the questions. Yeah. And finally she says, I don't know what we're talking about. And I said, Well, maybe I better just let you ask your questions. She had experience with church, but only the fact that her mom would take her, drop the kids off and go home and come back and pick them up. No not no Bible knowledge. She knew that her kids needed to know about God, but wasn't good enough to stay there with them. It was just here.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Interesting. Okay, so then in this conversation with the four of you, she's just a little bit more behind. Oh yeah. So she needed ask her.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

I got my back like this, and Cindy's sitting here.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Okay. And she just is overwhelming. Okay, you said three months later you were both baptized. Does that mean that happened at the same time? It did.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

We were we were having a class at our house and we'd gone through all the all the scriptures on Acts and stuff like that. Okay, versions, yeah. And Cindy's sitting there and I excused myself. I said, I gotta go to the restroom when I come back. Cindy's sitting there and I hear her say, Arnold, I need to be baptized. Oh wow. And I'd been thinking about it for a while, and I just I said, Well, Arnold, I do too. This was midnight. He called the preacher of the Church of Christ in Enaclaw. They met us down there, opened the building, and we were baptized that night. At midnight. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Oh, that's awesome. Okay, so this is in Washington at the time. When you were in the beginning of the story talking about meeting Cindy at first when you were home, is that Washington too? It is. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

My folks had moved up here from Texas and were living here, so like when I came on leave, I had to find out what their address was to go home. Oh, wait, so they moved from Texas to Washington? Oh, you don't live there anymore, Roger. Okay. So you grew up in Texas? I did. I was born in Artesia, California. Right. I remember moved to Texas. Our dad took us to Texas at five because that's where he's from, and spent the rest of my days in Texas until I graduated and joined the Navy. Gotcha, okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

I remember California because they took a right right as Disneyland was opening. I said, let's go to Texas. And then he moved. So that's where you and Cindy would have met here in Washington. That's where you were baptized then. And then what happened after that? We stayed in Washington the whole time?

SPEAKER_00 14:55

We did. We did. Arnold was preaching in a little church building in in Auburn. And we would go down there. And it was, like I said, when when we were doing the singing thing, there was 25, 30 people on a good day in that place. And you know, Arnold was doing everything. He was doing the singing and the teaching, the preaching, Lord's Supper, all of that. Through that process, him and Marilyn, this is one that really sticks out to me, is him and Marilyn had gone out of town for the weekend. And he had set it up for Jack Hafer was his name to teach and preach. And so as this goes, it's past time to start. I went over to some of the guys that had been there for. Are you guys gonna get this started? And he says, not me, not me. I got up and went over to Jack and I said, I'm sorry, I've only been a Christian about four months, maybe. I don't know what to do at all. Could you please get things started? Oh sure. And he did the singing, they did the Lord's Supper. I was really upset when we left. Oh no. Because I I didn't I hadn't even said a prayer. I hadn't served on the table or anything. And that was another one of those things that I told Cindy when we left there. I said, that's not gonna happen to me again. I'll be ready to do something. Okay. And so I just bumbled through prayers and stuff until, you know? Yes. And I got to comfortable up there.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Well you said I'm never gonna be dependent on.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

No, I'm not, it's not gonna happen to me. I was really I was new, and it was really, really embarrassing to me that that happened. I said, that's not right, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Right. I should be able to help this. They should be able to. Well, they should definitely be able to.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

You know, I mean, and and that was my thinking. Somebody other than me should have done something, and and that I only did what I thought I had to do is ask Jack to do it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

He said, Okay, next time I'm gonna be ready. Yeah. And sometimes that's by stumbling your way through a prayer or by learning the hard way, and that's okay. Yeah, I'd write all my prayers down.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Good for you. Go up and read them. Uh-huh. You know, I would participate in class. Sometimes it was goofy questions I'd ask, but I would still ask them.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah. Just participating.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

And uh it went from there. Got acquainted with other really great men that were Christians. They were elders and they were preachers. And anytime his name was Clarence Turner, if you went to Clarence Turner's house, it's a given. You would have a Bible study if you went there for lunch.

unknown 17:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

We were opening up the Bible. If you're there for lunch, you've got a little bit of Clarence, you're going to have a Bible study.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

I love that. The perspective you have that I really think is valuable. You've been a deacon in two different congregations and an elder in in two different congregations. Was that down in Auburn after some of that? Tacoma? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Eventually went there because the congregation was so small that Arnold said, I think we need to go someplace else. He told everybody to get more value from what I'm able to do in the scriptures. I see. So we went to uh Tacoma and uh worched worshiped there for a while. That's where I became a deacon. Okay. And then as things happened, and I'm sure you've seen them as you grow up, there's always something that that goes wrong in the church. Yes, unfortunately. And uh it was devastating because it put people at odds, and you could tell. And it was devastating on our kids.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Because they saw the squabbles and all of that stuff. Right. And so we eventually uh left there, started to work in Gig Harbor. Worked there, that's where I became an elder first. You started the work there. Yeah, uh a bunch of us left when we left Tacoma, we started to work there.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

In Gig Harbor?

SPEAKER_00 18:43

In Gig Harbor, yeah. And uh Jim Turner, good friend, great friend of mine, was the preacher, and and the rest of us did Bible classes and things like that. Cool. And grew from there. Served with Jim as an elder. It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me as far as having to do the work. Okay. You know what I mean? Being an elder. That, yeah. Yeah, just getting in doing the work. Because you you you had to listen to people. Okay. You know, you have to listen as an elder. Yes. Sometimes if you're if you're sitting there and you're not an elder, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's the responsibility thing, I think, that comes along with becoming a a Christian, becoming a good Bible student. You don't get lost anymore.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Yeah, because you got a shepherd now. You can't get lost. You got you gotta know. You gotta know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

And when you become an elder, you better know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

That's what I'm saying, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

You better know this. People are gonna need to. And then and then I served here for a while, and then it was nothing, no problem. It was during COVID and all of this stuff was going on, and there was a myriad of thoughts and processes and how we were services and stuff. It got really wearing on me. You know, and and the older you get, the harder it is. And finally I told Sam, well, you know what, I don't think I can do this anymore, I can't do it justice. Right. So I stepped down. And it's time. Some guys stay too long. Yes. There is a time to leave. It's the best thing for the individual and for the congregation. Most important because most of the time you stay in the congregation like I did here.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Yeah. And you have that perspective.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

And you still have all the knowledge. Clarence Turner, that friend of mine that was talking about, was an elder, and when he resigned, and it was just age, an age thing. When we were talking one time about being an elder, and he looked at me and said, Well, Roger, just because I resigned as an elder, when am I not an elder? Maybe not by title, but I still have all that knowledge. People would still go talk to him.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah. Right. You can still help people, you can still turn sinners from their ways. You can still be an asset, even if you're not one of the named shepherds.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

You're still an asset to the group. Like I said, if you were with Clarence, you were gonna have a Bible study. If you went out for lunch, Bible study. Bible study. Oh, I love it. You went to his house, Bible study. Yeah, maybe I'm gonna start doing that. It was pretty cool. I mean, he spent hours in study and worked up lesson plans, is what he did most of the time for for the classes.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

I've still got all of them in my good for you. It's Bible study. Now that's gonna be. I can listen to Clarence every day, just opened it up. I saved some of his preaching stuff. Yeah, now they can look back on it. They can hear him.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Ah, that's sweet. It is cool. Yeah, and that's that's more that reassurance we started up with. Um someone teaching you the Bible. That's reassuring, not because they're so good, but because they're reliant on scripture. That's exactly what it is. Well, thank you for sharing that perspective. It's very interesting for me uh to see someone, a life that you talked about, being in a rough place, changed by Christ, and that changed everything, leading in the church and just your whole life dedicated to it. So thank you for your example. Let me shift gears here. Though, because I'm interested in other things too. Like your career. You mentioned getting out of the service when you married Cindy. Would that be right? Yes. Okay. So how long were you in the Navy? Four years. Four years in the Navy. Then you get married to Cindy. Then what is what does your career look like? What sort of things do you do?

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Well, like every kid that gets out of the service, you end up thinking, Well, I gotta go to work now. Okay. And so I was living in Enum Claw. Uh the big employer there was Warehouser, which is a timber company. So I had no idea what I was gonna do. Well, my aunt knew one of the uh bosses there in Warehouser. She said, Go up there and talk to Hal. Maybe they got a job opening. So I went up there and asked for him, and sure enough, I talked to him for a while, and he called my aunt and he says, You tell that kid to come back here, I got a job for him. Wow. And I went to work in a sawmill. And I stayed there for about a year. We had our first kid then, and I hated being in the sawmill because you're indoors. It's noisy, it's yeah, it's got so loud. Well, I've quit that and went to work with her dad. He was a saw mechanic, he had his own little saw shop, and that didn't work. I didn't get along with him that much. So I went back to warehouse and asked, hey, you got a job, I need to come back. Yep, you can plant trees. So I went and planted trees, you know. Interesting. Yeah, like with seeds or yeah, with plugs. They're called plugs. Plugs, okay. And uh there's a season for that, the spring through middle spring, early summer, and then you you don't plant them anymore. And so it was ending, and uh, oh no, what I'm gonna do now. Well, the boss came back and he says, Well, I got a job for you. If you want it, you can go to work in the rigging, which was the actual logging uh part. Oh, okay, which is very dangerous. I said, I'll take anything. So I showed up the next day. Well, prior to that, I went home and I told Sim, Well, I still got a job, I'm gonna go to work in the rigging. And she it she didn't like that at all.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

She knew the danger.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Well, her dad was a logger, he was a faller too, and she knew the dangers of all of this. Yeah. So I said, Well, I I gotta do something. We gotta eat, you know. So I went to work. Kid from Texas didn't know what a tree was, and here I'm out here logging in Washington. Yeah. So I'm a greenhorn, I'm really green. I get on the crew bus. We head out up in the hills, and the third rigger, which is the guy that blows the whistles for the is part of the team, and he's the one that tells the guy running to the yard or when to move the lines and stuff. And as we got off the bus that day and looked at me and says, You ever been in the rigging before? I said, Nope. He said, Well, just follow me, you won't get killed today.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

So anyway, it went from there. I did 45 years with Warehouser, ended up as a heavy equipment operator. Wow. I uh loaded log trucks. Did you see the log trucks with the logs on them? That's what I did. I told Cindy, I'll do this job for free. I love that so much. Just heavy equipment. So that's that's where we come from there in the process when we become Christians and at Warehouser, okay. Right. We were still there, still in Endham Claw, and from there we worked our way through silly adolescent marriage.

unknown 25:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

And by that I mean being young. Not having the best examples in our families. Uh we did the best we could. And she did the very best she could when she recognized, like I told you, when I needed help. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

So how old were you when you got married? I was twenty-three. Twenty-three when you got married, okay. And then how old were you when you were baptized? Uh thirty-four. Thirty-four, okay. About ten years there of adolescent marriage trying to find And living in the world. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

You know, I was a Baptist, but no particular religious upbringing.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yeah, still kind of living in the world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Yeah. And uh when that happened, that saved our marriage and our lives, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

I love that. Yeah, it's it's not just about doing something so that you can go to heaven 50 years from now. No, this is a better way to live right now.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

That's exactly what it was. I mean, it's you look at salvation, and that erases a lot of stuff. And I thank God every day that He spared my life to that point. Yes. But it also changes lives for the better. Because you see examples of people in in in the church. Good families, strong families, and the and and that's who we hung around. Yeah. That's how we learned. Instead of the other examples you had before. Instead of going with my buddies to the tavern when you get off work, you know. Yeah. Just a huge change. And I I think back on my life, and I said, You're the luckiest man in the world, first and foremost. You met Cindy. Right. Check. And she was smart enough to say, we need help.

unknown 26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

We tried marriage counseling, and I thought that was yeah. Not working. Yeah. I mean, most of the time they weren't even married. You were sitting talking to some young, this in this case, it was a woman. Someone with a degree. Yeah. No practical experience at all very much at being married. Why would you listen to them? Right, yeah. What do you know? I need to help you. Yeah, so I I uh We needed something else. We hitched our wagon to the people that were going to heaven. And we've been there ever since. And it's you got your ups and downs. Now it's so mellow the older you get, you're settled.

unknown 27:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

There's nothing that can shake you now. Right. Just maybe a death in the family, and that's it. But all this other stuff is irrelevant. Your finances are fixed. Your house, you got your house, your kids are all doing good. Yes. You're getting great grandbabies.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Right. And now I I love the phrase because now you're the one that hopefully people are hitching their wagons to. Yeah. I'll help you. So Roger's going to heaven. Roger's lived a life changed by Christ. Like I'm gonna show up and and and glean from him and learn from him and see how I can follow him as he follows Christ.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Well, people noticed, my family for one thing, really noticed it. Oh, absolutely. And trying to teach my dad hardcore Baptist and stuff, and and we were taught we talk about it all the time. And one day I said, You have to be baptized for the remission of your sins, Dad. Yeah. And he looked me straight in the eyes. He says, I have been. Well, what are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

And that one I left in God's hands. Yes, that's the right thing to do. And I didn't I I probably got a little headstrong sometimes with my family, but I was excited. And I thought, if anybody's gonna want this, it's gonna be my family. And yeah, you know, there's sometimes there's not a lot of stuff in the family that they like they don't like what you're saying. Because they're in the same place you came out of.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

And you can present it to them. You can say, like, Dad, you have like this is what the Bible says, and but you can't do it for them. You can only present it.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

That's exactly what my dad said. Isn't what I did for you good enough? You know, as going to the Baptist church, and I said, No. You have to read the instructions, Dad, and that's the word of God. And it has to be sought after. Right. Not just on Sundays. It's sometimes or Easter. Yeah, I'm Christian. That that's tagged on everything. If they only knew what Christian it was.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

It's gotta be sought after. You've sought after it ever since then, and that is very clearly seen.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

It's gotta be that thing that's more precious than silver and gold.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yes. Or anything else. Yeah. Yeah. Which which does bring me to some of our favorites I like to talk about. Okay. Because there's so much silver and gold in here, spiritual silver and gold, that we should seek after. Do you have a favorite verse or a favorite hymn or both that you'd want to share? It's a hard question.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

I yeah, I don't know if there's a favorite that I could say is a favorite. I like them all. And right off the top of my head, Psalms 23 is is one, Psalms 1 is one. Yeah. And we that labor and are heavy laden, that one. I will give you rest. Yeah. Yes. And I I really, really, really rely on that one. Yeah. I will give you rest. And uh like the songs we sang the other day at the pot like that was so uplifting. Yes. And when I told you about the story of being in the first congregational singing, and all we'd had was 24 to 30 people, and we sang songs. And this one we went to, I thought if this is really going on here in this little place, what's it gonna be like in heaven? Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

The singing is so exciting. And that was encouraging to us to see you get up there and lead or start a song, song starter, song leader, close enough.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

I always think of that, you know, when Jesus, the song we sing that when Jesus speaks, the birds stop their singing, and that's probably the best way to look at it. But everybody, everything's still when he speaks.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

I don't know that song. Now I want to try to find it. I'm gonna find it for you. Okay, you you find it for me. Uh, but that's that's what we're seeking after. The words of Jesus, uh the words of life.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

I I try to think how to put my life in in any words that make sense to anybody, and I can't do it. Because it's from the heart, and you have to be speaking to a heart for them to hear you. A lot of people don't.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Right. As much as you'd want to perfectly articulate it.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

You can't. Sometimes you can't. You can't. It means maybe backing off and dropping down a little gear to their level. You know, I had guys when I first became Christians, even at work, it'd be hectic as I'll get out, and one guy came up to me one time. I mean, it was busy, we were working 60 hours. Yeah, you know, uh, uh, it was nuts. And he he's Marv says to me, How in the world do you stay so calm when it's like this? I said, Well, one thing, Marv, I became a Christian, and so this doesn't really matter. And we're gonna get the job done one way or another. So don't worry about that.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

You know, you can only work so fast, you can only do so much. And then I begin to understand what it was to be a Christian. You don't have to worry about stuff.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

If it gets done, it gets done. If not, you do it tomorrow. Right.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Come to me, I will give you rest. Yes, says Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Yeah. Which is a huge perspective change to your coworker.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

It is, it is, and and the same thing in my family. They eventually come to the point and realize that I'm not backing off what I'm telling them. They ask me a question, I give them a verse. Right. I'm not backing off. I'll tell you what, I wouldn't live life without being a Christian. Right. I'm not backing off. I don't know how to I'm I'm not an eloquent guy. I think you are. But I love telling people what I know and how it makes me feel.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Yeah, that's that's spreading the good news right there. I have a dyslexia. Oh, really? And I struggled in school with dyslexia. And I probably didn't really, really learn to read till I was fifth or sixth grade. Wow. Because looking at those letters, I didn't know what was what. So if I I learned to read by T H E is the. I couldn't sound it out. I didn't I didn't know that. And so eventually, when they made me a radium in the Navy, I thought, what are they doing? Well, it just so happened it worked really well because I ended up having to do that for work. And so I really bared down on doing that stuff. And when we were flying, when we were not on station, you had to do something. So I'd get a book and and read. And I began to get better at reading.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

But I would have never known that. And well, you guys will have to tell Roger, but I think you're very eloquent. The things that you got to today, there's more we wanted to talk about, but I just never wanted to stop the things you were saying because they were so well put. Well, it's me. It's my life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

I know how to tell my life.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

You know that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Yeah. Better than anyone else. Because I know where I came from.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

And I'm happy with where I'm at.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

And it's the only reason that I can do that. That's just perfect because that's the whole point of the podcast is no one knows Roger better than Roger. So if you want to consider Roger, well, listen to this.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

I got a lot to say. You might not like it, but I got a lot to say.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

And remember also, the point of this is not just to hear about it be done. This is meant to be a launching point. So go ask Roger more questions. Ask him about his family, and he'll tell you. Thank you so much for your time today. This is just great. Again, there's there's more to talk to Roger about. Go consider Roger more. Talk to Cindy about her side of the story. Go consider them. For today, this was just great. Roger, thank you so much for taking the time and for sharing with us. Well, thank you for asking me, and I told you what you were gonna get when you had the convenient. Hey, I knew it. I knew it, and that is totally fine. The Bible tells us to consider one another in order to stir up love and good works in each other. So thank you for stirring up love and good works in me just by listening to this episode.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

Well, we didn't even get into my family. That's just another kettle of worms. That'll be part two.