Sounds of Hope

When I started this series with the entry A Draft , I had no idea where it would go. Like a snowball that cannot be stopped as it rolls down the hill gathering more snow, this story keeps going and growing. Many of the details are still laying in the snow pile. You are hearing just the highlights, or lowlights. Everything is true. Nathan would run the trailer court. Often he'd sneak out of bed before I got up. He'd be outside playing by the time I did. It was a safe place. His best friend was Butch Hamilton. I could peek out the windows and see Nathan and Butch digging for frogs and worms. Too excited from play, trip inside to use the bathroom were optional. Nathan picked up a southern accent from his friend. Life seemed good. I had good neighbors. Army communities are like that; people cling to each other. Betty Boomer would take me to the store. Later, another Army wife decided I had to learn to drive. She gave me her car keys and said drive. That was all I needed. At 19,...

Alvin had finished high school just before we married. He was a year older and a year ahead of me. As my class, Hickman 1969, donned their caps and gowns, I was preparing for yet another move. Having passed the test for his exhorter's credentials with the Assemblies of God, we packed our belongings for our first major move to Neosho Missouri, the flower box city 242 miles away. Neosho was to be the home of the new Ozark Bible Institute. Neosho, only 76 miles from the international headquarters of the Assemblies of God, was at odds with its denomination. Worldliness had crept in to the Assemblies in the form of lipstick, eye shadow, television, short hair, short sleeves, mixed bathing, and all manner of sinful behavior. Their quarrel was not doctrine. It's quarrel were standards. Alvin was to be in the first class at OBI. As David confronting Goliath, OBI would be a challenge to the backslidden Evangel College and Central Bible Institute (now Evangel University and Centra...