God in My Story: James Prickett

A testimony from James Prickett.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Welcome to the Life Church Podcast, a place where the Word of God comes alive through scripture teaching and real stories of faith. Each episode, we dive deep into the Bible and share what God is doing in and through Life Church Windsboro. And we're going to hear powerful testimonies from people walking daily with Jesus. Whether you're seeking spiritual growth, encouragement, or a closer relationship with Christ, you're in the right place. No matter where you are on your journey, our prayer is that this podcast feeds your soul, strengthens your walk with Christ, and draws you closer to the heart of God. Let's get started. And welcome back to the podcast. I'm Jason Foster, and today I have the privilege of sitting with Mr. James Prickett. I've had the honor of knowing Mr. James over the about the past four years now. We came to Life Church in 2022, is what you told me. And we got gotten to know each other just through casual conversations on Sunday morning. And you know, people joke about Baptists, and I was born and raised a Southern Baptist. People joke about Baptists and sitting in their seats. Yeah, this is their, yeah, this are my seats. But I think that's a human nature thing. I'm not going to but we, you know, so we sit by each other uh and uh have gotten to know in each other, and and I have enjoyed our conversations and and and hearing some of your stories, some some wonderful stories, some amazing stories uh of uh things that you've been through in your life. And uh just as we've been preparing for this, Mr. James has um just shared with me how he through all these stories, through all the years of his life, he's been able to see God, uh, God's faithfulness and God's presence in his life, God being with him throughout all these years. And so I've I've asked Mr. James just to sit with me and to share some of those things and uh so that we can all hear uh about God's faithfulness and God's God's goodness uh uh that he's capable of, not just in one person's life, but in all of our lives. So, Mr. James, you know, you can certainly start. Uh I'm gonna let you talk. I'll ask questions whenever I feel it's necessary. And uh, but yeah, if you if you want to start that, uh, because I find find it in that first your first job, you graduated high school in 1965. 65. 10 years before I was born. And um uh so you start I've just that that first job is interesting. That was an interesting story for that. It was interesting. You start start there, I think that'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Wasn't anything I'd ever want to repeat. But well, like I say, I graduated in May of 65, and uh, of course, my parents had a big plan for me going to college and making something of myself, which I I did, but um the first summer I was I was supposed to try and pay part of my tuition, and Daddy was gonna help me with the rest. But uh the first job I found was at Herring's Fish Farms, Pete Herring, which is just across Turkey Creek from where I live, if you're familiar with the area. But uh at that time they weren't raising catfish. It was shiners, and they were shipping shiners to about three different states. And uh so I got hired, and they didn't explain the job fully to me before I started, or I probably wouldn't have started. But uh it was a crew of us that put out what they call laying mats in these what are now catfish ponds, those days shiner ponds, but have levees all the way around them, you know. And they had an old jeep with a flatbed trailer and these laying mats, they called them, which were about, I don't know, 42 inches long, but probably I'm guessing it measurements, maybe 24 inches wide, and about three inches thick, but it was net wire with Spanish moss on it, poultry wire laid over that, and then it was all tied together with a tie wire to make a mat about maybe four or five inches thick. And uh, we loaded all those on a flatbed trailer and drove down the levees. And I was a junior guy, the dumbest one in the buttons, like her road, and uh right out of high school, didn't know any better, and they told me I was the one that's gonna be in the pond. Well, the deal with being in the pond was as old clay mud, and you couldn't wear boots. You just bogged down and everything. So everybody worked barefooted. But uh they'd drive along there and toss the mats down to me, and I'd put them out in the water about six or eight inches out in the water, whereas they were, well, maybe they were under eight or ten inches of water. And uh that wasn't a bad job, you know, laying them out like that. And uh so we left them there for a few days, and then we came back and picked them up. And the reason we had to do that was the male shiners, uh, I mean the adult shiners were in the pond we had thrown them out in. And if the babies hatched out in there after the adults had spawned on these laying mats, well, the adults eat all the babies up. So we had to pick the mats up, put them on the trailer, take them to a different pond, put them out, let it leave them there for about a week or so, until all the babies hatched, pick them up, take them to the shop and wash them good and repeat the whole process. But uh the only problem with all this, me being the dumb one and in the pond, I was a guy picking the mats up out of the water. And uh, whenever you pick one of those mats up, there's nothing to see two, three, maybe four snakes on it, you know. And I just pick them up and throw them as fast as I could to go on top of the levee. There was a guy up there with a stick, and he'd whip all the snakes and throw the mat on the trailer. But uh, so that went on for about two weeks. That's about had about all that I could take. I'm sure. But uh I never got snake bit. And there were about 30, 35 people, something like that, working there then, doing this same stuff. And the whole time I was there, only one guy got snake bit. A cotton mouth got him. Most of those I was seeing on the mats were just water snakes, you know, fish snakes, we used to call them. But um, still it'd bite. It wasn't any fun looking at two or three of them laying in front of you when you throw it in the mat. But uh, so I I found me a better job. And oh, and I I forgot to add too, I was doing all this for a dollar and a quarter an hour. $1.25 is what you've ate. So after about two weeks, I went and found a better job, and I went to Charles Bowie at Fort Necessity at a cotton gin. Had a lot of big old cotton trailers sitting around it, needed flats fixed and wheel, bearings, grease, and all that kind of stuff. So that's what I finished out my summer doing. And uh I uh lost my train of thoughts what I did, but uh anyway, for oh, it was $1.75 an hour I was making there. So then that fall, I I went off to tech, Louisiana Tech. And with big ideas about becoming an ag engineer, agricultural engineer. Well, I found out after one semester that uh I wasn't ag engineer material. I didn't have near the math background I needed to be an ag engineer. And uh that and all my partying I was doing too, it didn't help me. And the next thing I knew I was on probation. So it doesn't take long. No. And I found a better job the following summer, and I hadn't written about any of this down in South Louisiana, and I was working for a telephone company with laying underground phone cable. And that was some better, and it paid better, I think. I don't remember what it paid, it wasn't, it wasn't more two and a half, something like that an hour. But um, I worked all summer on that. So I was made a little money, and uh made it on through at tech until it was my third semester. And um, I got back off probation barely, but uh um I got sick with the college kissing disease, the mononucleosis. I won't go into that story any further. But uh but anyway, I I got deathly ill and had to go home. And I I mean it put me in the hospital. I was a tall, skinny kid then. Like I'm still tall and skinny, but but um um I weighed about 165 when I was in good health. And uh gosh, within a week's time, it seemed like I was down to about 130 pounds. It put me in the hospital for over a week. And uh I was about too weak to do anything. But not speaking of weeks, not more than two weeks anyway, after I came home from tech, my draft notice came in. All of a sudden I wasn't one Y, which that was a college classification then. If you were in college or exempt from the draft, I was no longer one Y, I was one A, which meant I was just about to get drafted and sent off to Vietnam or something. Because that was in 1967 when Vietnam was hot. So anyway, my old college high, one of my college teachers, my ag teacher in college, Chester Dozier, good guy. But uh he was a World War II veteran. He'd seen a lot of stuff in the Navy and South Pacific and all, you know. He taught me about joining the Navy. He said, Man, you need to go talk to a recruiter before you get drafted, get sent off to know. So I did, and uh they took me in. Well, they took me to Shreveport first to do what they call the battery test. But anyway, it was me and two kids had to go take these battery tests together. And they they were good kids as far as I could tell. I didn't see anything, any problem with them, but they they wasn't scholars, I know that, nor was I. But I took the test and I did the best I could at them. No computer, I mean, uh a recruiter came back in the little office we were sitting in there later and walked up to me and said, Man, you you did great. You're gonna make a good four-year man. You made an 88 on that test. I didn't think 88 was all that special, really, but I guess it must have been to him. But then he turned around to the two kids. You guys didn't do worse than I'm gonna say blank at this point. But one of one of them made a 27 and another one a 28 on the test. And uh he said, but you know, I I think I can get you in on a two-year program. You know, we're running short, men. I'm thinking, well, what did I do wrong here? You know, I'm going for four years and they get in for two. Yeah. But anyway, they I'm sure they were ended up boasting mates or something, you know, chip paint and scrub decks, that kind of stuff. But I I got some good schools, though, and that's where I got my start in the electrical trade, and that's what I've done ever since, is some different types of electrical work. But uh I was in four years and in the Mediterranean three times. Uh, we were on the Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 space shots. We were the standby pickup ship, primary standby pickup ship. I forgot the real official title, in the Atlantic, in case things weren't right in the Pacific. Right. NASA could hit a button and send those ships on over and make them splash down in the Atlantic. Yeah. But they didn't. They went down in the Pacific. But we did lots of practice stuff, floating around out there a week or so. But uh anyway, I won't go into all the other stuff there. The shellback initiation.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

You said, I think you said something along the lines of that talking about the Apollo and the getting ready. That was the most exciting thing that never happened. Yeah. It was a big joke on the ship.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Yeah. But anyway, I uh, well, let's see. Like I said, I was in the Mediterranean once on that first ship, about a three-month cruise. And then I got transferred to the Saratoga aircraft carrier. And um I was on a six-month cruise, and then I got discharged at five months into sixth month on that second cruise. But um came out of there. Well, and also by then I'd gotten married and had a son, and uh Alan was born on on um August 28th, 1970. And uh anyway, I came back to the States, you know, after we got back to the States, we lived in the Charleston area there for a while. My wife was from over there, and uh I was picking around trying to find work, and they just don't pay that well. Didn't in those days. I mean, well, actually we lived in North Carolina, uh, in the mountains, was where I said Charleston. At one time we did live there. It's I've been all over, been you know, moving back and forth and different things. But uh so they were paying actually $5 an hour for a journal electrician in North Carolina in those days. So I I wasn't getting much accomplished there. My wife was working and I was working, we were barely able to buy groceries. So my brother-in-law, who's an old-time union electrician, I was talking to him on the phone one day, and he taught me into going to the IBEW, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and I won't tell you what else it stands for. There may be some union people listening. But uh but uh anyway, he taught me into going to the local there in Ashville and talking to him. And by then I'd gotten me a state license and everything. I'd tested and gotten a state license, and I had umpteen years experience. But uh, and I've completely left out offshore and talking about all this.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

But uh Yeah, definitely need I want you to talk about that offshore stuff.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

But uh you but anyway, I I got in the union and that was that was what started my traveling and uh Asheville, where I went, didn't actually didn't even have any work. I paid my my dues fee and and uh they wrote me out of ticket so I did work in Augusta. Yeah, so it started me on the road. But uh anyway, when uh after I well, right after I got out of the Navy, I'm sorry, I did we moved back to Louisiana for a while, and then I went went off. When I worked out there eight years, and um saw a lot of stuff and uh two different, well, actually four different fields. Um first one was for signal law and gas. We worked out out from Venice, Louisiana. One was out in southwest Delton, another one out in Maine Pass. And um it was a pretty good job. I caught a huge snapper there on one of those when I was supposed to have been working. Biggest snapper I've ever seen, in fact. But um so uh signal law and gas, the company I was working for, went out of business. And so I didn't like the next it was a partner operation. There's about four different oil companies that those things are so costly, uh that offshore stuff. There's never just one owner, it's usually a partnership. But um, I didn't like Marathon, one that took over, and they were changing everything. They were gonna pop the whip on us and make us actually do work. So I quit that and uh ended up going with penzoil. And uh then I was working out intercoastal city down below Lafayette, much further out. Um from Lafayette, I guess it was probably I'm guessing 125 miles, something like that, out to the rig. But we flew out intercoastal city, which is right at the edge of the marsh. And uh it was, I think I was told it was like 90 miles or something from intercoastal out. But Eugene Island 330 and Eugene uh South Marsh Island 128 were two fields I worked in. And uh I was I stayed with them six years. But uh on December 8th of 1978, when I was in South Marsh Island 128 field, and we had what they call Pile structure, pile being the legs. It was eight eight-pile structure that was the main structure, and then there were two four-pile structures out from it. It was catwalks collect connecting them. If you looked at it from, say, up in a helicopter, looked down on it, it looked like a big triangle, you know, just three different platforms connected by catwalk. But um, and it was our crew change, and petroleum helicopters had just bought two Puma helicopters. It were bigger than the Army Vintage 205 or 212s, really. They had two turbines, but the same old ship, like you flew in NAM, but that we did ride in. They'd only carry about 12 people. But uh, this thing would carry 18 people. It had nice commercial airliner seats in it. Pleasure to ride in. Except the one problem with it, it was just a little too big for the heliports. And plus, we had a drilling and producing operation going on. The drilling rig was on that eight-pile structure, and we were using their living quarters and galley, and the heliport was on top of that, all that building. But um, drilling rig, uh, tool pusher, I I don't know. I don't want to say anything bad about tool pushers. I'm sure there may be some of them listed, but uh, this guy in particular, I'll just talk about him. He wasn't a nice guy. And uh they were busy with their work, and they didn't care whether it wasn't their crew change today, it was productions crew change day, and they didn't care about us. They had both the cranes boomed up, turned around by the heliport. Well, here came the helicopter out. Well, I was supposed to have been on the um on the second flight. Oh, it was the first flight came out fine. I made it out there on the first flight.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

And you were supposed to be on the second flight.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

I was supposed to have been on the second flight, but they had guys going to a firefighting school. They sent me out on that first flight. So when the second flight came out, I had I was out there and I had gone on over to one of the full-pile structures, and I was sitting in the office over there on the full-pile structure, and um I heard that helicopter coming in. And it on those pumas, they had a pilot and a co-pilot. That was something different than that 212 had. This was a much bigger helicopter I'm talking about. But um, the co-pilot was trying to qualify, and the pilot was supposed to be telling him what to do, and evidently he didn't, because the guy came in there and tried to land, flew into a crane cable. And that, you know, I heard that awful noise, and that wasn't my first helicopter crash to hear. I'd heard one crash a few years earlier, not that nobody was killed in it, but it wasn't a pleasant thing to hear. But uh anyway, that thing, when it hit that crane cable, it spun the ship around there on the on the helipad. The rotor chopped the tail end off the ship, and the whole thing spun around, went overboard about 130 feet down the water. Hit the water, and it it had inflatable uh floats around it, but all of them busted when it hit the water. And it just, I mean, it sank in just a few seconds. 208 feet of water. And 17 out of 19 people killed on it. And I when I heard it crash, you know, like I said, I'd heard that sound before I knew it was a helicopter, and I went running out to the handrail there to look across to see it there. And I got there just as it hit the water and the wave was going away from it. But like I said, down it went. Yeah. And I remember thinking, man, I was supposed to have been on that ship. Yeah. God had his hand on me that day.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Sure enough.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Now I wouldn't live a Christian life, I won't say I was. But God, God doesn't give us a give up on us. We fall short of his glory. Yes, sir. And I have done it over and over again in my life. And not a thing I'm proud of, but it's just something to keep in mind. God loves you.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

That's right. Certainly.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

But anyway, uh we we worked that that shift shorthanded. Never shut the platform in, nothing. They never lost a minute production. And one of the they they found 16 of the 17 guys, one of them they never found. And he was a black kid, uh, Roe Robinson. He was from the Baton Rouge area, played basketball for uh uh Southern University. And both his parents were professors at Southern. But um, like me, he'd done too much partying. He got on probation and stayed out, laid out a semester, came out there offshore, gonna make some money, go back to school. Well, he'd worked his term as a contract, you know. And he got an opportunity to go on, you know, on Pinzall's payroll as a permanent hand. And that was gonna be his first permanent flight coming out. Wow. And um, he had been teaching me how to play chess. And I had the chess board all set up. That's what I was doing over on that four-power structure in the office. I had the board all set up for O when he got there. I had some new moves I was gonna pull on him. Oh, wow. And uh but he never made it. And they never found him. His body was the only one that was lost. But uh, I just lost my interest in chess. I didn't and never played a game since.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

But um anyway, I worked out there about another year after that and looking hard for something else to do, and got on at the paper mill in Pineville, Pineville Craft. I worked there in-house for a couple of years. But my wife didn't like me smelling like pulp every day when I came in, and and my attitude too. I mean, it wasn't fun to live with, I'm sure. But um, we got a vacation coming up and went to Pigeon Forge. And um, well, we were at Pigeon Forge admiring how beautiful everything was up there, you know. We were out there on one some little creek here one day, and she alluded into me, but we need to move up here. We need to move. I said, But Becky, we don't have anywhere to no jobs, you know. How are we gonna make it up here? I don't know, but we need to move. So I promised her that if we could sell our house in Deville, which wasn't just down the road from the paper mill, and um we we had we'd had the house built and hadn't lived in more than about a year and a half. And uh so I told her, so if we can sell that house and don't lose any money on it, I'll move. And I thought I was safe with that, because that was in nineteen um nineteen eighty one. Yeah. And the market was just Kind of dead, you know, I wasn't moving. Within two weeks' time, we were sold and on our way to North Carolina, I couldn't get out of it, you know. I had to go. So we got up there, and the only place we could find to live where we went to was out well at Black Mountain, about 20 miles out from Ashville, 17 miles, I think, east of Asheville and Interstate 40. But um, up in a mountain cove there on Black Mountain is Montreat, and it's uh was the Southern Presbyterian Church is PCUS, now it's PCU SAE. I think they've all southern and northern churches merged. But uh anyway, as it turned out that the house we found was right there within walking distance of the church. And uh that church at that time was called Gaither Chapel, but that's not Gaither Chapel anymore, the one you hear about on TV. It's a different it's now Graham Chapel, because Billy Graham's wife, Ruth, was a member at that chapel. Okay. And um both of them, I've met Billy Graham and Ruth too, and their son, Franklin. And uh it's now Graham Chapel. They've changed the name on it since then. But there there were a lot of um both retired missionaries, Presbyterian missionaries, and uh uh missionaries' home on furlough and all that kind of stuff in that area there, you know. In fact, the house we rented was a furlough home for the Linton family. They ran a tuberculosis clinic in South Korea. But um so we got interested in mission work and we applied and got accepted. And I ain't gonna say I I I applied to go to the Congo, but that's what was offered, and I said that's what God wants, and we went. And we both said that. It wasn't just me. Believe me, Becky didn't do everything. I said, But but anyway, we went to the Congo, went over there on a two-year mission, and uh we made it through a year and a half. And when we went over, we didn't get any language training. Uh French was spoken throughout the country. And Chaluba was the African dialect spoken in Conongo, where we were on the south-central part of the Congo. Zaire, as it was known in those days. But uh, we got a month immersion course in an African dialect, Chaluba, while we were there. You know, it was I learned a little bit, but not much. Channel Mamania Chaluba Bempe. It means I can't speak Toluba very well. But but uh struggled along with that. And I ran a garage too for the fixing presbyterian missionaries, Toyota Land Cruisers. Different machine than you see here. These big old rugged long wheelbase, four-cylinder diesels, and they were like tractors. But the bodies weren't much. But uh anyway, we we were doing all right with that. And and Becky went over, my first wife Becky went over to to uh work in the hospital. The Presbyterians had a 175-bed hospital at a place called Shikashi, which was just out from Kananga. And uh she was gonna be in blood lab. She had experience working in blood lab, and uh everything was in French. She couldn't, she said, I'll kill somebody. I ain't doing it, you know. So she ended up teaching school in the the missionary school that went up through grades eight. And uh so that's what she did the rest of the time over there. But then after we'd been there about a year, we kept trying to get French, get some French training. We finally got accepted to go to Bukavu to the Peace Corps stodge or school. Echole. Ecol is actually Stoj is actually uh when you do a uh I can't think of the name. When you're like an aide, you go into an internship or something. But um anyway, we got up there and nobody bothered to tell us that there was, we were, well, when we first got to Kananga, we they put us on chloroquine tablets. That was for malaria preventative tablets. And um, I know chloroquine doesn't sound like it sounds like some kind of pesticide or something. But nobody told us, though, that there was a there was a uh chloroquine-resistant strand of malaria in Bukavu where we went for the French school. And uh we got up there and we hadn't been there a week, and Becky came down with a horrible case of malaria. They couldn't get her over it and had to send her back to Kananga. And the Presbyterians put her in the in their hospital there and gave her the quinine cure to get her over the malaria. She didn't get to go to the school. And I I finished the school. Well, let me just say real quick, I got to go see the mountain gorillas at Varunga Park. And that was an experience I wish I could share with everybody. That I mean, it was something. Beat around the bushes for about 30 minutes, four hours, something like it, before we ever found them. And the way we found them was one of them was sounded like Tarzan nowhere beating on his chest, you know. Silverback male. And there were two guards with us, park guides. Neither of them had guns, they just had machetes. And uh, so we got out there, and me and a bunch of Peace Corps kids, and I was by far the oldest one. I was in my 30s, and they were may have been 20 most of them. But uh so they told us when we went out, too, that the things would actually charge you, but you had to stand your ground. If you stood your ground, they'd stop. If you ran, they'd charge you and kill you, you know. So that wasn't much fun. But anyway, we got out there, no silverback male. He's sitting way over there by himself eating leaves, about, I don't know, 30 feet or more away. And uh those guys wanted us to get pictures of his back, so they kept cutting brush, making it fall on him. And he looked big and fat sitting over there in the brush. But all of a sudden that thing growled and jumped up on his back feet, and all that brush fell into a, that fat fell into a big V, you know, just huge, you know. And he dropped down on all fours and ran straight toward me. He stopped about maybe 10-15 feet away, about 15 feet away from me. And he was growling, bearing his teeth, and he had horrible teeth. I couldn't believe a gorilla knee teeth like that to eat leaves. But he kind of moved around over to the left and sat down and started eating again. And those guides kept messing with him, cutting things and making it fall over on him. And also, they told us the females out there were much more volatile than them than the males that they would actually attack you. You had to watch them. Well, all of a sudden something screamed like a panther back behind that male, came running past him on all fours. The male came running with him when that time they stopped. They weren't but about maybe five feet away from me, looking straight at me and growling and mean-looking eyes. I had a little Pentax camera that Becky had left with me. I'd never used it before, and I loaded with film before I went out there, had it on the wrong ASA sticking. And boy, I'm taking pictures as fast as I could, trying to not take off and run myself. And uh all of a sudden I noticed all those Peace Corps kids had crowded in right behind me. Like I was I was the old guy I was gonna protect them or something. Using you as a shield. One of the little girls had fallen down on some vines, and she was crying, boy. I was about ready to cry myself. But anyway, they calmed down and we told those guys, let's get out of here. We see all the gorillas we want to see. And on the way out, one of the one of the guides actually almost stepped on a black mamba. He came very close to getting bit. But uh, so that that was a gorilla story. So I'll get off of that now. But we ended up coming back to uh after I got back to Kononga, about the first thing out of Becky's mouth was we're going home. So that ended our missionary trip six months early. But uh so then I kept knocking around there trying to find something to do, and and uh I don't know, I got us talking about my brother-in-law trying to get me in a union. You did you talk about being in the union?

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Yeah. And that the union was the reason why for a lot of your travels so good.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't have any work in Augusta. So I you know, in Asheville, first off, went to Augusta, and a little bit of a while after that I got accepted and was able to get out in New York City. Worked there two years in New York and uh just all over the place. I've been in, I I think I made a list there of 26 states that I've worked in and 50 some odd jobs. But I worked a lot of shutdowns at nuclear plants and that, you know, a lot of them weren't long-term jobs, some of them weren't like the New York City thing for two years. And then I managed, we decided to move back down here after the New York job and moved down here and built a house. And uh, and I got my ticket, my union ticket transferred to Alexandria, Louisiana, 576. And and uh, but I was still all over the place working. And uh I don't know, I I was gone too much, I guess, but came home one day and Becky and my daughter Lori weren't there, and my cousin called me and told me to come over. She had a letter she wanted to show me, and Becky left it with her. Becky was out of state by then headed back to South Carolina. I made a trip over to China talking to coming back, she wouldn't, so that was 20 years gone. But uh anyway, I I like say I started working nuclear plant outages. I got qualified to work on um lemotaric gearboxes on motor operated valves, on safety-related valves, stuff concerning safe operation and shutdown of a nuclear plant, yeah. Kind of serious sounding thing. But uh that was what the reason I had all those different jobs in so many states. Although I did work some, like the Denver Airport. I worked on that thing for a while. Two or three other big jobs, you know. Yeah. Nuclear plants and all under construction, but a lot of time and on the road. And I've been married two more times since then. I'll I'll make this real short, but they weren't pleasant. That's all I'll say. But uh, you know, the whole thing though, about God looking over after me. And I I remember one time in New York City, gosh, uh some guy that I was on a job with over in in Brooklyn, he was trying to get out of city to get back to Scranton PA, and he he had a hot date, man. He didn't want to take the regular route, he wanted to go up the west side. Well, I was living on the west side, believe it or not, in Harlem on West 142nd Street with some friends I had. That wasn't a pleasant neighborhood. But he was this guy at the job, though, he was convinced that I knew how to get up the west side quicker and hit the GW Bridge and get on over, you know, get gone to Pennsylvania. And uh I couldn't tell him anything different. So I finally gave in, go riding with him, and and uh he got so frustrated because it was taking so much time to get up to the west side, and uh he uh he had agreed to let me out at uh I think it was 125th or something where I could catch a train to 142nd and uh 145th and walk, had to walk three blocks back to 142nd there. If any of these listeners have ever spent any time in that part of the city, you know about what I'm talking about. But uh anyway, about 125th, he got to fussing at me, and I got to fussing at him, and I got mad and I said, just let me out. I'll walk home. You know, I shouldn't have said that. I got out of the car and it was after dark, and I couldn't find how to get, I needed to get over to Broadway, and Broadway was where the trains ran, and I couldn't couldn't find how to get there. I ended up, somehow I ended up down in a little park down next to the river. Down and dark. It wasn't a good place to be after dark. I stumbled around there for the longest time, couldn't get out of that place. And it was winter, it had no winter work coat on, the hood that came down, almost covered my eyes, you know. Couldn't see my face in it at all. But at one point, this little old, I don't know, it was a Honda car or something, pulled up and all I could see was faces. And I mean, that was they were packed in there like sardines. And they pulled right up almost to me and stopped sitting there looking at me. And I knew, yeah, I'm fixing to get it here. So the only thing I could think of was I showed up my hand down, hand down my pocket of that coat and poked my finger out. When they saw that that coat move out, they took off. So, so I finally stumbled around there some more and found a big old green oak limb about four feet long, something somebody had thrown down there. I mean, it was a made an excellent club, and I found a tunnel about 12 feet high. And that tunnel must have been, gosh, I don't know, 50, 60 feet long or more. And I went in complete darkness in that thing, and I go in there like like Rambo waving that big old stick. Walked right on through there and found my way up to Broadway, caught the train, and went on. My goodness. I was a happy camper. Tell me God wasn't with me that night, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:02

He he never gives up on us. That's right. You you traveled around, but you've also been uh to a variety of churches as well.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Yeah, well, at one point when I was working offshore, I'll tell you how this got started. We worked seven-on-seven off. Go out go to work, be at Intercoastal City, which from Alexandria, where I lived in those days, is a several-hour drive on down to intercoastal city. But uh, so you had to get up pretty darn early. So Wednesday night, you know, I mean, you'll go and be gone a week. You and your wife want to have a special Wednesday night, you know. It never failed. After prayer meeting was out on Wednesday night, here'd come the Baptist knocking on my door and sit down for several hours, and you wouldn't take any kind of hint about leaving. That happened to me several times, and I was talking to some neighbors of ours down the street. They were kind of a wild pair. But ask them if they'd had any trouble with the Baptist bothering. Oh no, we we went and joined the Catholic Church, and they we just go to the door when they come and we tell them we're Catholics, and they turn around and leave. So that's how I got into Catholic Church and was a Catholic for about five years, did the adult catechism. The first church we went to, Immaculate Heart of Mary, there in Ball, had a good priest, Father Clucci, and I enjoyed that church and uh you know liked him. But then we moved and moved out to um Elmer was the name of the little place out near Hindston, bought a house there. And we were bad about buying houses and moving off not long afterward, losing money in the process. But uh anyway, there was a different church out there, and no priest out there, I can't even remember his name. But uh he he said mass at like three churches, you know, and man, he'd say mass and take off real quick, trying to get to the next church, you know. Yeah. And uh he wasn't much fun. Had a real sour disposition, really. Never cared for the man much. But of course, that church, the whole thing with it really was where to plan the next Saturday night for the fish fry. Whose house the fish fry was gonna be at? And of course, there's plenty of beer and everything. He came out one night. He'd come by and visit a few minutes early. He made sure he got there early and maybe drink one beer, you know, Catholic is allowable, and leave, you know, make sure he was away from there before things got too wild. But he he came out one night and he didn't get away from there in time, and there was one old boy, I'll I'll be sure not to mention his name, but he was a bad drunk. He's a bad alcoholic. But um, he all always wanted to cook fish, fry the fish, you know, make a mess out of it usually. But he kind of stumbled over to Father Pierce and said, Tell me, Father, how's your love life? Oh my goodness. No priest took off. He didn't take her off. So, and uh, and uh and the guy I'm talking about, his wife, happened to hear over here, she wasn't drinking at all, in fact, didn't drink. Boy, she got all over him about that. He was in confession the next morning. But uh so anyway, we that was that was when I was uh working at the paper mill, too, that was out there. And uh when we moved off to North Carolina and got out of the Catholic Church. In fact, before we left, we kind of moved on out of the church and started going to an Episcopal church for a while. I went a few Sundays. I didn't I didn't care all that much for it. But um then when when we got to got to North Carolina, though, like I say, God had his had his hand on us. Sure did. And we got active in that Presbyterian church. And I really liked that church and you know, liked all the people there. And uh I say, Billy Graham, I mean, who couldn't like it? That's right, yeah. And Ruth, his wife, but uh anyway, I guess that's covered most of the.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

How did you how did y'all how did you decide, I guess once you uh started coming to life church, I guess, how did you figure out we just liked it.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

You know, I mean we well, we we had been going to uh Beth Prairie Methodist as a church I grew up in, but uh founded in 1833, built in actually built in 1837. If you're ever in the Franklin Parish Library and you want to spend some time, get the 100-year centennial for the Franklin Son. There's a big article in it about Beth Prairie Church. It was, I mean, it was there long before Franklin Parish was even a parish, you know. It was Catahula Parish in those days. But um anyway, we uh that is a church I grew up in. And uh that was well Kathy, my wife, passed away in 24, July 17th, 24. But uh she had a lot of physical problems and dementia was what finally got her. But uh anyway, we we just couldn't sit on those pews, man. They just were so dang uncomfortable. I did go through some classes during the time we were working at uh attending Beth Prairie. But uh I went to the church at Chatham and a couple of churches in Monroe, and I forget where all they were, but did some classes and I'm still certified, I guess, as a lay speaker at Beth Prairie. And I've preached there maybe five or six times, I don't know. Rex Barker was pastor there when I was preaching there. When I was most of the time I was going there. And uh I'd fill in for him whenever he had to be out of town for some reason. But uh anyway, we but mainly because of the views. I mean, I have a uh kind of a um a vertebrae that sticks out a little fellow than it should in the back. And man, I just couldn't lean back on those backs. And Kathy was having even more trouble than me. So we left. That's when we came to life. So well, my friend Randy Richmond, you've met Randy before. Um, he had he taught me to go on up there. But um we like it, you know, so that's all I can say about it.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

Um when we were at the point where we were looking to to move uh churches, yeah. Uh, you know, we we came here because we knew people that were coming here and they they enjoyed it, and we said, let's at least give it a try, you know, just to see. We'd we'd visited a few other churches and said, let's uh let's just go, let's just go see. And uh we you know, we we came and uh we walked through the doors and realized that it was uh a different place, different spirit in the church than what we've we've felt in other places, and and we've just enjoyed enjoyed the the fellowship with uh uh with the others you know here. And uh we've just we've just knew it was the place that God wanted us to be.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

So I I like the music there, and I like brother Brother George Bates and his son. Brother Kevin Bates. I mean they're just family. And I I you know, I was thinking, I I guess I left out that at one point back when Becky and I were still together, after we had moved back here, which well, I wanted to go to the Methodist church. The kids wanted to go to the Baptist church because that's where all the youth was. Methodist church, I was probably one of the youngest ones in there, you know. But uh, but anyway, so we started going to the Baptist church, and we all got baptized. So I've been totally immersed. I've been sprinkled and immersed.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

But uh that's my that's Jamie. That's uh her so she was raised, you're raised in both Catholic Catholic, baptized in the Catholic Church, baptized in the Methodist Church, and baptized in the Baptist Church. So she's been washed every way you can be. Yeah. But well, Mr. James, I appreciate you spending time with me this afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

And uh, if you you have any closing words that just you want to wrap wrap things up and give us a closing word, or I don't particularly have anything to say except like I say, would you like to God never gives up on us, we give up on Him. That's right. That's I'm trying to keep that in my mind.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

And uh maybe I you know I have considered getting baptized at Life Church a time or two. I haven't done it, but uh I might later. But that way I've been totally, totally baptized.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Well, do you would you mind sharing uh would you mind praying for us? Just a short word of prayer uh uh uh as we close. Well, I can. If you if you wouldn't mind just praying for our audience and and for Those that listen to this message, I, you know, I pray when in preparing for these, and you know, that I feel like it's sort of like preparing for a sermon. Um, or it's sort of like a sermon in that you know, I just ask God that He will guide our conversation and that uh that He'll allow the guest to share things that will be uh relevant to the people that are listening, and in some way that God will use the words that you've shared, you know, to others. And so, you know, I just if you would just pray for our audience and that that God will open up their hearts and that some in whatever way that He God wants to use your use your stories, that He'll use your stories to touch people.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

All right.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

Go ahead and pray for us.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Lord, I thank you so much for all the blessings you give me each and every day of my life. I pray that my our podcast here will reach people that may that it may have a positive effect on them. And uh I'm not, you know, I I can't speak for anybody but myself. But you know, when God lays something on your heart like he did us about the missionary work, we went and and I was in some precarious places, and you know, things could have happened that could have gone totally wrong for me, just like those gorillas attacking, you know. But uh still God brought us home safely. And I've got two fine kids, they didn't suffer from anything, and uh they've both grown and have families at all, and uh hopefully I'm gonna be a great granddaddy come November. My son's my oldest grand oldest grandchild, my granddaughter, my son's daughter. And uh really looking forward to that event. And they're flying me all the way up there to to um I guess to spotsylvania, Virginia, where where my son lives for the when the baby can't well no, I'm sorry, so my grandson's getting married next May. My son's uh other child. He's he'll be twenty five um by then. But um anyway, he's getting married in in Richmond, Virginia. But um anyway, Lord, I uh I just pray that, like I say, that people will hear this podcast and and it will they will find it favorable. I hope I haven't offended anybody in any things I said. I'm bad about that. My mouth's moving, my my brain usually isn't working that well. But uh in this event, I hope it has I have been able to get a good message through to everybody. And just pray for our country, pray for everything that's going on right now, and pray for our president and his whole cabinet. And Lord, I just pray all these things, Jesus, in your name. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Amen. Thank you for listening to the Life Church Podcast. We pray today's conversation encouraged you, challenged you, and brought you closer to Jesus. If you enjoyed the podcast, consider sharing it with someone so that they might be encouraged as well. To learn more about Life Church Windsboro, get connected, or find spiritual guidance, you can find us online at dlc.us or follow us on Facebook. But the best option is for you to join us in person each Sunday, 10 30 a.m. at 23 30 Highway 15, Windsboro, Louisiana. Jesus said, the one who remains in me and I in him bears much fruit. So until next time, continue walking with Jesus, allowing yourself to be fed from his word.