My wife is a fun woman. She has a great sense of humor. She can take it, and she can dish it out.
Judy never tires of tweaking me about my "spending money" budget of my senior year in college. Actually, it was not the fact that I had a budget that caused her to tease me. It was the fact that my dad gave me $300 a month spending money that makes her laugh.
She claims she did not received $300 in all of her years in college. Incidentally, today that $300 monthly stipend would be worth $672—a month.
My counter argument was that $300 accounted for gasoline, eating out, books, and very important—golf. Hey, at least I had a budget!
I will concede this: I had a good life. Materially, I never wanted for anything.
All of that changed three months after I graduated from college. I was in the deep bush country of Papua New Guinea when some missionaries from Mt. Hagen traveled four and half hours by jeep, into the bush country, to find me. My mom had called, my dad had undergone an emergency stomach operation—and they sewed him back up. Cancer had eaten away most of his stomach. It was only a matter of time.
I flew home, helped my dad die (hospice was unknown in my part of the country—then.) After that, I faced the challenge of managing my dad’s estate, of which he had legally put me in charge.
I was very fortunate for two reasons. One, my dad, a businessman, had been very organized. Two, he had surrounded himself with good, decent, and honest people.
Daddy’s lawyer was magnificent, daddy’s administrator—his cousin—was on top of everything, and his former business associates were all very willing to help me.
My business training was minimal. (Daddy had tried for years to prepare me for life, but, regarding finances, I had let his teaching go in one ear and out the other.)
I was ripe for disaster. Any one of the people Daddy had around him could have deceived me and cost my mother greatly. Fortunately, all were trustworthy and models of integrity. I have never forgotten this.
I spent a few months at home organizing the estate so it could support my mother as well as my sister, who was fifteen at the time. (Mom kept her teaching job a few more years and then retired.)
Serving as the executor of my dad’s estate was actually the easy part. What came next during that decade was hard.
I had decided before I graduated to go back to school to get a Master’s degree in Bible and Communication. I did not want to sponge off my mom, so I decided to support myself and put myself through graduate school. But what to do for a living?
Shortly after my dad’s death, I was playing golf one day with a good friend from high school, Brian Lindsey, and he suggested that since I was spending a lot of time working with my daddy’s real estate business, why not get my real estate license? That seemed a good idea, so I spent the next few months working toward that goal.
In January of 1984, I moved back to Abilene and went into the real estate business. I worked under the tutelage of Ray Scott and his associates. I had returned to ACU to get my Masters, but I think I received my real education from the real estate business.
When I entered into real estate, interest rates were finally dropping below 15 percent. That was good news! A few years before, they had reached up to 18 ½ percent.
Times were tough. Abilene was in a depression. And people of the world were not beating a path to the door of a 23-year-old real estate associate.
To help my tuition costs and to give myself some experience, I taught one speech class a semester at ACU. Furthermore, I was very active in the campus ministry of my church, since we did not have a supported campus minister.
Consequently, I was spending forty hours a week in real estate (to pay my bills), about ten to twenty hours a week in ministry with my church, about ten hours a week teaching (to pay for part of my tuition), and about ten hours a week taking two courses a semester. I would literally go to bed at 11:00 pm and set my alarm for 3:00 am to get up and start my day. As you might guess, this was an exhausting schedule.
I worked in real estate for four years. I would not trade those years for anything. They paid my bills and financed the majority of my first Master’s degree. However, I would never want to repeat those years.
In late 1987, I decided that if I was ever going to do mission work in a foreign country, I had to begin to find a team and raise support.
To achieve this goal, I needed flexibility with my schedule. Real estate prevented this. Therefore, I made the decision to leave real estate at the end of 1987.
I called several churches asking for support. Every one of them said, “No.” I will never forget that after this, Rick Atchley, Brad Small, Robert Oglesby and I hatched a plan to raise my support from the congregation I attended. They were on staff at my church then, and our plan was for me to ask members in our church to offer me individual support with offerings of $10 month. (That church was facing hard times because of the West Texas depression, and being funded through the church’s budget was out of the question.) The thought was I would go on staff with this support, as well as begin trying to put together a team to do foreign mission work in South America.
We took our idea to the elders, and they turned it down. I will never forget one of the elders sitting with me on the floor outside the elders’ conference room after everyone had gone home. He was trying to cushion the blow for me.
I was totally confused. I was trying to honor God with my life, and nothing seemed to work. I could not get from point A to point B. Finally, I began to cry like a baby. I mean, I sobbed. That poor elder, he probably thought I was having a breakdown. He gently patted me on the back and did his best to comfort me.
In retrospect, I see the wisdom of the elders’ decision. It ended up being a blessing for me. However, I will never forget the generosity of spirit and true friendship that Rick, Robert, and Brad showed toward me.
God honored my desire for mission work shortly thereafter by providing me with a team to go to Argentina. He also blessed me by allowing me to begin courting my future spouse. (I don’t remember when I delivered the news of my past—my dad had given me $300 a month spending money.) What next?
In December of 1987, Brad and Allison Small had me over for supper. They said they believed God had called me to do mission work and committed $50 a month support—to begin immediately. With that pledge, I began to spend all of my time raising support.
I called hundreds of churches. Some were kind enough to allow me to come speak and offer me a one-time contribution. That was enough for me to get by the next few months. Those were fun times. (I still remember every church that helped me, and I will always be grateful.)
After a while, the money dried up. Our team was not to set to leave until the fall of 1989. Future support was beginning to fall into place, but that was still a year away.
What to do?
Enter roofing, phone book throwing, and mowing.
Steve Ridgell (if you read last week’s blog, you know who he is) was starting up a business that incorporated these eclectic components: roofing houses damaged by West Texas hail, contracting with a company to distribute phone books to every business and residence in cities such as College Station, Midland, and Odessa, and mowing lawns in Abilene.
The good thing about Steve was his flexibility. I could take off on a dime and visit a supporting church or travel to a mission forum. The bad news was, when I was to work, I was to work long hours—and hard.
I remember having so many houses to roof, we would start at 6 AM and go until dark, taking an hour off for lunch. When the temperatures exceeded 100 degrees, our tennis shoes literally began melting. Every time we took a step, we could hear them squish. Moreover, I was not a gifted roofer. Consequently, I hated roofing.
Throwing phone books was better, but it was still a job requiring long hours. We would travel to a city and stay all week. Many times, we worked from daylight until after dark. Often, we would work thirteen or fourteen hours.
I didn’t mow that many lawns because of the roofing. Unfortunately when I did mow, I would break out into a rash because of my allergies. But you have got to make a living.
In December 1988, Judy and I married. In May, our support kicked in and we were off to language school. It was in Mexico that Judy began thinking that life is hard, but I will let her tell that story.
I know some of you have been through so much more than I have. Please do not hear me complaining.
I also realize many of you learned this lesson your first decade, and there are some advantages to learning it early. It was the third decade for me—the decade of my twenties.
Let me also make this clear. My challenge was not working hard or spending long hours working. I have always worked hard for long hours; and I still do. It was spending years working long hours doing things I had never intended doing—that was what was hard.
I have faced challenges since, but nothing like those years. I learned that God sometimes allows us to face adversity to help us grow. Without adversity, we cannot grow.
I am sure that if I live long enough, I will face much more difficult challenges. That is yet to be determined.
I am so thankful I went through the decade of the eighties. Because of that decade, I can tell you this. Whenever I thought foreign mission work was tough, or things were tough in a U. S. church and someone wanted me fired, or I was staying up all night studying my Hebrew and Greek assignments for my doctorate, I also told myself, “It could be worse. I could be in real estate… or roofing!”
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28.)
Five Things I Think I Think (with a nod to Peter King for this idea)
1. I promise, this is what I wrote in my blog two weeks ago: “There is still work to do. I fear picking them [the Mavs] to beat Miami; Miami is hot, playing great ball, and has three legitimate, young superstars. However, I have a good feeling about this Mav team. I think they reverse the curse of 2006. I see them winning the championship in six games.”
2. After watching the Mavs win last night, can a Monday be any better?
3. Now, on to the Stanley Cup. I predict Vancouver defeats Boston in seven.
4. I’m halfway through the first season of 24. (I watch it while I’m on the treadmill.) My goal is to never watch another season again—too addicting.
5. Not every day you get a call from your wife saying that your daughter and her team’s physics’ project won second in the nation. I found out that eleven thousand schools were invited to participate in the nationwide competition funded by NUCOR, which I found out last week is a FORTUNE 300 company with headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Not every school entered, but a lot did. Three teams from East Texas Christian Academy were invited to the finals in Charlotte, with one winning an honorable mention. That in itself was amazing.
Haleigh, along with her teammates Loren Moore and Kaitlyn Gravois, won second place. Haleigh gives the lion’s (lioness?) share of the credit to Loren and Kaitlyn. In any case, I am sure this was a memory maker for all involved.
Thanks again, Mrs. Chitty, for teaching the physics class at ETCA. I never saw this one coming. Great work.
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