The Pentecostal revival was just beginning in the west in the late 1920's and early 1930's. I was 16 when Pentecost first came into our town and I had my first experience with the Holy Spirit. That would have been about 1930.
I went to Bible College in Denver, Colorado, in the years 1931-32 and 1932-33. I did not graduate from high school, but let me tell you why I didn't. I was a very good student. I don't mean to boast, but I made wonderful grades. I had a professor in our school system, and he and his wife would have sent me on to college, but, you see, God called me to preach. If I had stayed in my home town, there would have been that temptation to go on to a secular college instead of preaching.
The morning after I received my call to preach, before I went to school, I went to our church, and I told my pastor that I was called to preach. He said, okay, preach Wednesday night! And, so, I did, so to speak. Then my father said, "If you're called to preach, we'll find you a place to preach." We were living in Chivington at the time, and my father was a song leader. My father was a good tenor singer, and he just did a lot of things around the church. He led the song service, and I think he taught a Sunday School class. So he went down to Sheridan Lake, and found a Presbyterian church that had been boarded up. It was a Presbyterian church that had been boarded up with a bell in the belfry. Daddy found out who owned it, and he asked the woman if we could have church there. He told her, "My daughter's called to preach." And she said, "Yes, we'd just be more than happy to open it up!" So, the church people went down there and cleaned up that church and dusted it out. It had a pump organ, and my sister, Ethel, who was 13 at the time, was a good musician and could play that pump organ. The church people went to all the houses, although there weren't very many, and told the people that we were going to have church there.
On the first Sunday, daddy took us down there, but he wouldn't stay with us. The people gave us some song books and some Sunday School literature they had at the church. I lead the singing and taught a Sunday School class. When that was over, we had another song service, and I preached. I don't have any earthly idea what my first sermon was about, but I had a Thompson Chain-Reference Bible that the pastor and his mother had given me. Now I had studied—I tell you I studied the Bible, I studied hard, and they had outlines in the back of that Thompson Chain-Reference Bible. They had the prodigal's seven steps downward and his seven steps upward, when he came back home to his father. I preached those and all the other outlines listed. And finally, I started in with the synthesis of each book of the Bible. This all happened real quick, and when that winter was over and the summer came, the District Superintendent sent a couple to us to start having revival meetings. Their names were Adolph and Viola Schaffer. Adolph Schaffer was my first husband's brother. He was a preacher, and when the Schaffers came, we started having revival meetings. All that summer we had meetings, and people were saved and filled with the Holy Ghost and healed. We just had a wonderful time. There was a church not too far from there, in Holly, Colorado, and there was another church that had been started down in that area, but when we left there, the District Superintendent decided the course for the people. I can't recall what happened, but the church was never established there or in Sheridan Lake. I hope that when I get to heaven, I see people who got saved during that revival.
Finally, Adolph went to Las Animas, Colorado, and pastored a church there. He wrote a letter to ask if I could come and help them. He was in La Junta, and he wanted to start a meeting in Las Animas, so I went, and that's where I met Jacob, my first husband. Jacob wasn't a Christian when I met him, but he got saved and filled with the Holy Ghost. He was a little rascal. He got saved at every revival meeting.
Jacob Schaffer was four years older than me -- he was 20 at the time I met him. We married 4 years later. I was 20 when I married, going on 21. We both were engaged to marry somebody else, and never did, but we were always good friends. You know, it's odd, I went through all these boxes that got wet in the flood we had in our house, and guess what I found. I found our love letters that we had written each other. They were sopping wet and I threw them away. I thought, "Wouldn't my children have loved to get these!" But I want to tell you something, those were mild letters. They were like Sunday School lessons. They wouldn't amount to anything to people today!
There were a couple of young men who graduated from Central Bible Institute in Springfield, Missouri and they were from Denver. They started a Bible School in Denver, Colorado. They used the same curriculum that was taught in Central Bible Institute. Of course, the District Superintendent by that time was acquainted with my family and me, and he knew that I was thinking about going back to school. I had missed a year of school while preaching, but I was going to go back to school in my junior year and finish. This was during the Depression, and these were very tough times, so I know it was the Lord, because the Superintendent said to my mother and my daddy "I want to take Jane back to Bible College. God's got His hand on her life, and we all know that." But my daddy said, "But we don't have any money to pay her way." And he said, "We'll let her work. Don't worry, we'll take care of her." So I went to Bible College and I did the laundry.
I was 17 years of age when I started Bible College in Denver. I learned so much, and it was wonderful. The moving of the Holy Spirit and everything about Bible College was wonderful. I learned how to study the Word. I learned a lot, and I preached all the time. I was blessed, and the Lord had His hand on me. Nobody ever discouraged me -- everybody encouraged me. Nobody ever questioned -- nobody ever said, "Are you sure?"
The name of the college was Rocky Mountain Bible College, on 8th and Liden Street, in Denver, Colorado. They had bought an old convalescent home. I went there two years, but I never graduated -- I married Jacob Schaffer.
Jacob didn't go to the Bible College, but all this time I had known him, and we would write letters. We were good friends, very close friends. I guess we almost had a brother-sister relationship. We were that close to each other. We shared our problems with each other.
He was going with a girl who was an evangelist. She was the cutest thing. She was blonde, cute, and I couldn't believe he would ever like me after he saw her. She was just the cutest little blonde, and oh, she was a tremendous preacher. And he said, "There's just something about her. What is it about her that I just can't like real well?" He would say to me, "I admire her", and I would say, "Well, if you don't think you like her, maybe you'd better leave her alone if you don't think you like her that much, cause you've got to like more that her preaching!" And that's the way we were with each other -- just sincere and honest.
I've had so many happy days in my life, but the Christmas Day in 1934 when Jacob and I got married will always stand out as one of the happiest. You didn't go to hotels in those days, so we stayed at home with my parents the night we were married. The next morning, we got up and spent a little time with them. We took our time and then started out about 3 or 4 o'clock to go to Fort Morgan, Colorado, where Jacob was living. As we were driving west that evening, that sunset was absolutely so gorgeous. You've never in your life seen a sunset until you've seen one in Colorado, and on a clear, beautiful night when the sun sets, it's absolutely beautiful. Jacob said, "Just look at that!", and we stopped the car, and got out and ran around and stood in front of the car, and we had our arms around each other, and he said, "You know, that's God's benediction -- that's God telling us He's pleased with what we've done!"
Let me tell you, Jacob was a wonderful man. He was called of God and I don't think he had an enemy in the world, to my knowledge. Of course, I was called to preach also, and when I married Jacob, he recognized that. I was a lucky woman, because a lot of men would not have recognized that, but he recognized it, and I preached every other time. He preached Sunday morning, and I would preach Sunday night. The next Sunday, I'd preach Sunday morning and he would preach Sunday night. And I would preach every other Wednesday night. I taught nearly all the Bible Studies in our church. It was Jacob who would tell me to do it. In fact, he had me minister far more than I thought he should. Sometimes, on special days, it might be my turn, and I'd say no, but he would say, "No, it's your turn, I want you to preach." He was precious, and we had a wonderful ministry together. Back then most people knew us as Jake Schaffer and Jane Schaffer.
Most of the time in our ministry together we pastored churches, but during the time that we were pastoring churches, I held revival meetings. I never held many, because I had my family. I had him and I had my children, and sometimes I would hold two meetings a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. I can tell you I had some wonderful revivals, and numbers of people were saved and filled with the Spirit.
Jacob and I were blessed with two children, two girls. Jacklyn, my oldest daughter, was killed by a drunk driver in an auto accident in 1975. She left two children, and those two children are serving the Lord today. Jennifer Pasquale is married to Rick Pasquale, who is the Youth Ministries Director for the Assemblies of God in the state of Michigan. They have three beautiful daughters, Jacklyn (named after her grandmother), Jessica, and Erica, and all of them are devoted to serving God. Jacklyn Pasquale, the oldest, has taken national honors in Springfield, Missouri, for four years in a row for her Short Sermon entry at the National Fine Arts Festival. She's feels called to the missions field.
Michael, his wife Judy, Jeremiah, and Rachel Jane (named for me) live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They are faithful to the house of God, and they love the Lord.
My other daughter, Joyce Marie, was and always has been a real blessing to our family and to my life. She was a happy child. She never took anything very seriously. Joyce never sassed me, she never talked ugly to me, she would just say, "All right, Mama." Even now in my older life, when people can sometimes get impatient with older people, she is so gentle and so patient and so kind. It's just in her nature to be like that.
She's been a very wonderful child and she has given us two wonderful girls, Penny Dawn and Cande Jane. Penny Dawn and Stacy Stewart have three children, Joshua Stewart, Autumn Stewart, and Michael Stewart. They all serve the Lord and are in church regularly. Cande Jane Kidd attends Cornerstone Assembly of God Church in Nashville with her husband, Barry Kidd, and their three sons, Jacob Kidd, Jonathan Kidd, and Jeremy Kidd. Jacob is enrolled at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. No mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother has more right to be proud of her family than I have. They all love God, they're all serving God -- that's all they want to do. God is first in their lives.
One of the most wonderful things Joyce ever did for us was to give us one of the most wonderful sons-in-law anyone could ever have. Jimmy Williams is one of the finest men I have ever known in all my life--from the time we first knew him, he was devoted to his family, to his girls and to his wife, Joyce Williams. He was always pleasant, always happy." Jimmy Williams is one of the finest husbands and finest fathers and the most wonderful son-in-law that anybody could have. He was never too busy to help others.
I have four sisters. I recently visited my next-to-youngest sister, Belle, who is in the very last stages of Parkinson's disease. I visited the nieces and nephews of my deceased sister, Tyne, and had a nice visit with Belle and with her daughter. My youngest sister, Jean, lives in Lakin, Kansas, and goes to the Assemblies of God church there. Her husband's name is Shorty. I pray for his salvation daily. My sister Ethel lives in San Francisco. My sister Tyne went to be with the Lord in 1997 I think it was.
We were all close as children. I was the oldest, and it seemed like my call to the ministry took me away from home when they were much younger. There was only three years difference between my age and the sister next to me, but it seems like it was even more than that.
The first pastorate we had after Jacob and I married was in Brush, Colorado. From Brush, Colorado, we went to Montrose, Colorado. From Montrose, Colorado, we went to Newcastle, Wyoming, and from there we went to Trinidad, Colorado. While we were in Trinidad, Colorado, in 1940, just before World War II, our children were getting on up in age, and Jacob said, "I want us to have a little bit of evangelistic work before we put the kids in school." So we resigned our church and we came to Kansas City, and we were in Kansas City when the war broke out.
We had several revivals. We went from Kansas City to Youngstown, Ohio, for a revival. Ralph Riggs, who was superintendent in Missouri, wrote to us and said that he had a church open in Butler, Missouri, and he wanted to know if we would take it. My husband told him, "If they want to take us on your recommendation, that's all right, we'll come, but we don't have the money to come down there to try out." So he called my husband back and said, "They have accepted you on my recommendation." So we went to Butler, Missouri.
That was the year we put our children in school. It was their first year of school. Then Brother Riggs called us before the war ended, it must have been about 1943, and we went to Glad Tidings Assembly of God in Springfield, Missouri, and we pastored there ten years. We had marvelous experiences there. We had a great revival and a great move of the Holy Spirit.
From Springfield, we went to the boot heel, and pastored a church in Kennett, Missouri. While we were in Kennett, C. C. Crase, the pastor of First Assembly of God in Nashville, resigned his pastorate to become the District Superintendent of Tennessee. We had met him, and knew some people from the church that he was in. When he resigned, they called us in Kennett and wanted to know if we would come and take the church. So we accepted and were there five years. I became Women's Ministries Director in the state of Tennessee in 1960.
When Jacob and I left Nashville, we went on the evangelistic field for a year. It was a wonderful year. We went to Europe and to the Holy Land for 32 days. It was just had a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful time.
We next moved to Knoxville, Tennessee to accept the pastorate of Faith Assembly of God. The church began to grow, so we built a new church which is now called Evangel. We were there for almost ten years, and then Jacob felt impressed of God to go to Sweetwater, Tennessee, and start a brand new work. So we pioneered a work in Sweetwater, Tennessee, in 1970. In 1977, we retired from pastoring and bought a home in Hendersonville, Tenessee. I continued on as Women's Ministries Director for the Tennessee District Assemblies of God.
I might also tell you that I have been privileged to preach revivals, Women's Ministries conventions, and retreats in most of the United States.
In late 1984, Jacob discovered he was not well. He went to the doctor and found out he had cancer. We struggled with it through all of 1985, and Jacob died in January of 1986. At the same time, our dear friends Earl and Ruby Nell Blythe were going through tough times. Ruby Nell had cancer. She passed away in February of 1986. The Blythes had been our friends for years. Earl Blythe was District Superintendent for the Tennessee District Assemblies of God and was my boss, and we began to comfort each other over the loss of our mates.
Earl and I got married fifteen months after our companions died. We were married at the Tennessee District Council in 1987. Jacob died in January of '86, Ruby Nell died in February of '86, and in March of '87 we married.
I definitely feel, after twelve years, that God did indeed look after me in giving me Earl Blythe as my husband. I knew him well. I knew he treated Ruby Nell wonderfully. I knew that if he treated her good, he would treat me good. There wouldn't have been any way that God could have favored me more than letting me have, in the last years of my life, Earl Blythe as my husband.
I would like to put this in for the older people who get married, that in the preparation for this marriage, there were many questions that I asked myself. I had known this man for many years. There was and is no mark against him that I know of. Nobody has ever been able to bring up anything against Earl Blythe. He had a peaceful life and a happy life with his first wife. She was not like me. She was very quiet and totally different from what I am, and that was one my questions--I wondered if he could stand me. I'm rather blustery and outspoken. Anyway, the principle question that I asked myself was, "Can I make this man happy?" And I said, "God, if I can't make this man happy, I don't want to marry him. I want to make him happy."
I went to his son, Charles and said, "Charles, I want to ask you a question. I'm really concerned about this. Your mother was very quiet, very soft-spoken. Do you think your daddy will be happy with me? I'm so totally different than your mama". Well, he said, "I don't know, Lady Jane, but I think he wants to try!"
It's been years and it's been good. We had no way of knowing what was ahead of us. I have practically lost my eyesight. He's my eyes, and he has been so good. He reads to me when I want to know something, and looks up my references in the concordance for me. He is so patient and so good. I just thank God that He took care of me and gave me a husband like Earl Blythe.
When Pastor Maury Davis first came to the District Office, I was introduced to him by Gene Jackson, our District Superintendent. When he came back the next time, interested in starting a church, Pastor came in to my office and asked if I was interested in helping him. I said, "Well, it's strange, but we're working on our Women's Minstries Home Missions Project to raise money for a new church in Tennessee."
He sat up an office in one of the vacant offices of the Tennessee District Office Building. He was preparing for a telemarketing project in the city, so the Women's Ministries had the phone line put in and scheduled volunteers to work the phones. In the meantime, Cornerstone Assembly of God church in Madison, Tennessee, came open. Brother Jackson asked him to take the church since our project was for a new church and Cornerstone was an established church. We re-allotted the money to a home missions church in Knoxville.
Pastor Maury would come to the office, and we'd pray together. Every now and then he would say, "Why don't you just quit working here and come work for me?" When he found out that I was really going to quit, just as soon as I resigned, Pastor came in and said, "Come over and help me!"
When we came to Cornerstone, we were pastors over the Keenagers. I was supposed to be able to plan trips for them, and do things like that, but it reached a point where it was more than I could handle. It was just too much for me. So we became Pastors Emeritus, teaching Sunday School and Wednesday nights and working in the church. When we meet our friends, they ask what we're doing. We say, "We're going to Cornerstone, and I'm teaching a Sunday School class!" They don't pay much attention to me until I say, "I had 72 in my Sunday School last Sunday," and that's more than they have in church! When I say that, they perk up their ears and listen! It has been such a delight to work in the church. It's so precious. It's so much fun! Sometimes I almost feel guilty when I go to church because I have so much fun! I think, "What are you going there for, just to have a good time, just to enjoy yourself?"
It was a happy day when my children were born, and a happy day when people got saved. I've had thousands and thousands and thousands of happy days. In fact, I don't have very many gloomy days. I don't permit myself to have a gloomy day. I don't have many sleepless nights, either, because when I go to bed at night, I lay down and say, "I've come here to sleep. I've not come here to worry about anything. I've come here to go to sleep", and I sleep, and I sleep good. I think it's why I'm still going at this age.
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the most significant event in the Church I've seen in my lifetime. Wherever that river flows, there's life. It's significant. Things happen. They can talk all they want to about jumping and shouting and all that, but that's not what we look for. What's significant is when people get saved, when people get filled with the Holy Spirit, when people get healed, when the church grows, and when there's a healthy attitude in the church. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the moving of God's Holy Spirit, is the greatest event that can ever happen. When leadership and laity know that neither one of them can do this job alone, and when they realize that all of them have to rely on the Holy Spirit's guidance, that's the greatest thing that can ever happen to a church.
I've lived through several significant changes in the church. I lived to see the church, in the early days, begin to emphasize the moving of the Spirit. We emphasized putting God first. In fact, we didn't even worry very much about membership -- we emphasized the missions program. We emphasized missions around the world. Our lives were tied up in that. We were interested in the missions field -- that's the Assemblies of God heart. The missions field was our life, and after that, Sunday School, the teaching of the children, the training of the children. Then we began to see a change. The Sunday School began to dwindle. This was a sad thing when it happened. Then, the "Charismatic Movement" came in. Well, of course, we had several other movements before then, like the "Latter Rain", but the Charismatic Movement, while it did some great things for us, sort of emphasized that it wasn't necessary to go to Sunday School -- you were supposed to go to worship instead. All of a sudden they got wrapped up in it -- all of a sudden they turned. They began to dwell more and more on blessings than on the move of the Holy Spirit. They began emphasizing beautiful buildings. There's nothing wrong with beautiful churches, but in early Pentecost we used storefront buildings. People make fun of them today, but that was our birthplace. That's where we started, like Jesus started in a manger. That's where we started, and we just cleaned them up, scrubbed the floors, and had church. We could hardly wait to get there. When we began to try to make things sophisticated and nice, we began to lose something.
In those days, preachers trusted God for their living, and they didn't worry. Then we got to the place where they set their salaries. They had to have so much money, and it was all right. There wasn't anything sinful about it, I guess, unless that was their goal—unless that's all they wanted. It's awful to say, but we went through an era when there were a lot of people who were like that. I thank God for Jacob Schaffer and others like him. He said, I'll take a percentage. He would go into a church and he would take an extremely low percentage. He said, "This will make me work. You haven't got a lazy preacher on your hands. I'm going to go to work. And when I work and bring this congregation up, my salary will grow." In the last church we were in, one of the very strongest financial churches that we were in, he cut his salary back four times.
From my own personal life, the most powerful manifestation of God's Spirit I've witnessed was my encounter with Pentecost, and I was also healed one time with a marvelous healing. But I have seen the hand of God work mightily. In Kansas City, Missouri, when I was holding a revival meeting, there was a businessman there, who after a number of years, perhaps from an injury or something, developed epilepsy. In those days, epilepsy was a disgrace because it was misunderstood. The pastor A. A. Wilson came and told me about this man. We were having a healing service on Sunday night. He said, "Now, he's embarrassed, and he's been having four or five seizures a day. It's hindering his work. He's coming tonight but he's going to wait to the very last, and he wants to be prayed for." We prayed for a lot of people. Then, almost everybody left, and I was getting my things together, and this man came up to the front. And here's what he said to me: "Sister Schaffer, God told me that if I would come here, and you would anoint me with oil, and lay hands on me and pray for me, He would heal my body." And I said, "Well, you and I don't have any problem at all! If God told you that, I'm going to do what God told you that I was going to do, and you're healed. So I anointed him with oil and I prayed with him. Nothing spectacular happened at all. He went his way. That was the last night of revival meeting. About a month later, they were having a fellowship meeting at this church. So we went to the fellowship meeting, and this couple was sitting on the platform, singing in the choir. They were just beaming from ear to ear, they were so happy. So this man's wife told me what happened. She said that they went home that night, and all night long, she kept hearing him say over and over, "Now Lord, You told me that if Sister Schaffer laid her hands on me and prayed for me, You would heal me." His wife said that he would wait a little while, and then he would mutter it again. She said, "He said that through the night, I don't know how many times." The man never had another seizure.
Another case where God used me was for a lady who was in a wheel chair with arthritis. The daughter called us quite early in the morning (the daughter was not a Christian), and she said, "Mama wants you to come over. She has suffered so all night. The pain has been so terrible. She was in a wheel chair. Her hands were all twisted, and the pain was so terrible in her body, and she said, "Mama wants you to come." And as we were going along, Jacob and I were praying together, and I said, "Oh, honey, we've got to touch God for this lady." So we went into this room, and she was sitting in her wheel chair, and all of a sudden, the Spirit of God hit me. Any preacher who prays for the sick knows the difference. I went to that chair with such force and said, "Sister, get out of that chair. Jesus has healed your body!" She began to shout and came right out of her chair. She danced all over that kitchen floor, and never went back in that wheel chair. She died some years later of a natural death. Those are some examples of marvelous encounters I've had. I've seen the power of God. I've seen Him work.
This change that's coming now is great. I see a change moving across our country. It's coming in various forms, but I don't make light of any of it. What has happened in Brownsville is absolutely nothing more than a miracle of God for this day. The Holy Spirit has spread all over the world. Some of our churches have had such a marvelous move of God. There have been a few extreme things happen, but there were extreme things happening in early Pentecost, too. We just prayed over them and around them and went on.
I tell you, the power of God is manifested in Cornerstone Assembly of God Church. If you're reading this on the Internet and you're within driving distance of Nashville, Tennessee, and you want an encounter with God or want help for your wayward life, or if you are discouraged with the way you are living, make your way to Cornerstone even if you've got to drive 100 miles. You'll meet God when you come in the doors. You'll hear a message from the Word of God. You'll hear singing under the anointing of God's Holy Spirit. You'll see a body of people who are dedicated to winning the lost for Christ -- a body of people who love you.
What Today's Church Needs Most
What today's church needs most is more of the Holy Spirit's operation, more yielding to the Spirit. We need more unity and straight-forward focus on one thing -- on what we're out there for. We need to be a body of believers who are focusing on what God is trying to do in this day. That's very important! Of all the churches that I've attended down through the years, the church we're in right now, Cornerstone, is the closest to being this type of church I've ever seen.
If I could go back and redo anything in my life, it would be to pray more, to do more personal witnessing, and to give more of myself. Sometimes I sit and I say to myself, "God you've been so good to me and you've led me so long." To me sometimes it looks like I've not accomplished very much. I don't suppose anyone is perfect, and I don't suppose it's possible for any one person to literally, totally give it all. I think it has been said, "It's yet to be seen what God will do with a man who will totally commit his life unto Him and surrender everything." God's had to work on me a lot. He's had to work on my nature, He's had to work on my disposition, He's had to work on me. He's had to straighten me out. Down through the years, there have been times in my life when I stood in front of the mirror and pointed my finger in front of my face, and said, "Girl, now you straighten up. Get that stuff out of your head. You straighten up." I have, at times, been careless and slack in my prayer life and my Bible reading and study. I know I could never say I have given 100 percent.
My advice for young people today is to stay in the church and give the Lord their lives totally, and like I said, don't waste time. If you want God to use your life, don't waste time. Be in the house of God. Listen to the leadership over you. Learn how to obey and respect leadership. That's the biggest problem kids have today.
For Those in Middle Age...
My advice for those in middle age is the same as my advice for young people, but also, don't get set in your ways. Somebody asked me one day, "What do you do with change?" I said, "Just change! There's no problem--you don't have anything to fight. Just change." You know, there's just some people so scared about periods and times of life, and what do you do? You don't just sit and moan.
If you are an older Christian, don't just sit in a rocking chair and rock. Do something. Be active. And stay in church. So many times, older people in the church just quit and let someone younger do things when they still have a place and so much to offer. I've seen people who have served God their whole lives fall away because when they got older they decided to sit down and let someone else do it. Just do something for God.
I want the Lord to help me close my ministry out right. I want to do every day what the Lord leads me to do. I want to be ready for any opportunity I have to minister or to witness. I just want to be ready. And I want to keep prepared.
I was talking to a couple of young men at the church the other day. I had just met them and sometimes when I meet young people, particularly, the Lord gives me a word for them. There were two fine young men at the church. They were standing together, and I said, "You're two handsome young men. Are you walking with God?" They said, "Yes." I said, "Have you set a goal for your life?" They said, "Yes." I didn't ask what it was. I said, "Okay, then don't leave any gaps in it. Fill up all your time achieving what God has set you to do. Don't waste time. Then you've got to try to catch up. If you miss some times, you break the link. Then you've got to mend something. Don't do that. Keep up, keep pace." One of them looked at me and said, "You know, that's words of wisdom." And so I just want to keep pace. I want to keep walking. I want to keep ready, so that if I get an assignment, I'm going to do it by the help of God.
You can read more historical stories about preachers and churches at the Flower Pentecostal Heritage web page.