Growing Up in Williamsport, Ohio

A New Beginning
 
Our group of summer friends started going to the Christian Church on a regular basis. We liked it and the fellowship we had together. None of us were Christians and actually knew very little about becoming one. I was asked to teach the youth Sunday school class though I didn’t know much about anything religious. I studied and was able to do the job. However, I hungered and thirsted to know more. 
 
One Sunday morning Janice O’Conner and one or two others stopped by my house to walk together to church. Janice said, “I got saved,” meaning she had become a Christian. I said, “I have been wanting to do that but I don’t know how”. You know, people like me think things are complicated and difficult. 
 
We continued to go to church. My mother and others started to attend as well. Of course, we young people went to Sunday School then left when the worship service started. We went to Red Fry’s Drugstore. He had a soda fountain in the back, so we ordered cherry and vanilla Cokes and five cent bags of chips. Of course, there was a juke box though there was not really any room to dance. We had good times fraternizing with each other and the boys that we were interested in that went to church too. 
 
The church got a new young minister, Rev. Rogelio Canales from the Circleville Bible College. He was from Laredo, Texas. He was truly interested in us but was concerned that we left church after Sunday School. One morning he got smart and switched the services. The Scripture he used was, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”.  Janice O’Conner, my sister Betty and I, and several others went forward and asked Jesus to come into our hearts and lives. We committed ourselves to Christ that day in early October 1955.  It was a life changing decision, and one that we would never regret.
 
Because I had hungered and thirsted for God for a long time, having Jesus in my life was as though a heavy burden had lifted off of me and I wanted to tell everyone.
 
My life changed so much that I think my mother noticed that I was not the same grousing teenager that I had been. She was a morally good person but not a Christian per se. She decided that she wanted to be one too, and in a few weeks made the same decision herself. She was so happy that she sat in a rocking chair and stared off into space for about two weeks.
 
We make several decisions in life that are important but the most important is deciding to follow Jesus because it affects all of the other decisions that we make afterward.
 
 ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck