The resurrection was like other biblical information, the Bible itself a household declaration in the country home of my upbringing. Quaint and shabby, we did not own a whole lot of anything. The land was still in the ownership of my forefathers and hand-me-downs and used goods was a custom. But God was important, and it was important to my father that we understand that.

My father was a humble sort of fellow, a gent but not holding sway to customs. He was raised in a farming community and liked to talk about stories and teachings from biblical Scripture. In his words, he would leave behind worthy pieces of remembrance. He would say things like “You can't take it with you.” about material goods. An old cliché? Maybe, but a Christian cliché none-the-less. My father would also say, “The more wealth you get from the world, the more you want the wealth instead of God.” I guess we had God's wealth and that made us wealthy in our land of poverty. But I didn't understand God's wealth at that time.

One day while I was rehashing in the blank areas of my mind where I searched for what I didn't have but thought I needed (which became a visiting habit), I remembered something I was told by my father about church. He'd say, "you can make good company there in church and visit fine about the Lord but a person didn't have to go to a church building to find God." And then he would say things like “If you want to talk to God, go out to the hills. You'll find him there.” My father didn't have anything against attending a good church meeting but seemed to always find himself too busy with the outdoors work and trying to hold down a full time job and all. And since we didn't make a habit of going to church, I sometimes wondered if I could ever find God because of it.

Now, the more I felt a lingering deprivation for all those worldly goods I didn't have but thought I needed, the more I began thinking about asking God for them. (God was my alternative choice for acquiring goods as I knew I wasn't going to get them from family.) I figured if God was really God then He could get them for me and so I began going to those hills to find Him. And that's what I did. I would go out to the hills and tell God everything I wanted that I did not have. I would ask for nice things and clothes and play stuff. I wasn't self-absorbed in my wishful wealth search. I asked if someday I could serve Him by helping others and I would tell Him how I'd like to write all kinds of good stuff for Him.

Pretty soon when that stuff didn't start to come my way, I got thinking maybe I was doing something wrong and maybe God would explain to me what that was if I picked up the book where He tells us stuff He wants us to know. I thought “If God is God, He would want to take good care of me and give me stuff and make me happy and He would want to tell me how He would do that.” So, I picked up the Bible and started reading it.

When I first started reading God's words, I found it to be hard to understand. I kept trying to get past the thee's, thou's, and thou's just to try and make sense of the rest of it. (I had the King James Version). As I slowly crept through some areas of the New Testament Book, like a turtle moseying it's way through rocky soil, I ran across a verse that said we need to be baptized. I got thinking maybe that's where my problem was. If I wanted to speak with the Lord and request His blessings, I needed to be baptized. But here was my dilemma. To get baptized, I needed to go to a church building. Since it seemed impossible for me to get to a church anytime soon (living miles apart from city living), I decided I best tell God my dilemma and how I want baptized and maybe He would understand my dilemma and baptize me best He can. So, I put down that good but hard-to-understand Book I was reading and told God ”Well, Lord, my church is in the country. I talk to you in these hills and I want to keep on talking to you. But you say I need to be baptized and since I don't go to a regular church and have no way to get baptized in these hills, would you please baptize me?” You see, I didn't really realize what I was asking for. But God knew what I was asking for and he knew I needed His presence and that's why He lead me to read that baptism Scripture. He wanted me to ask Him to baptize me so I could be baptized His special way. Not the water immersion, though that is important when a soul finds God. God intended to baptize me in the Spirit.

Something happened that day and I was changed. From that moment on, I was different, in the twinkling of an eye. It's a secret what happened to me when I talked to God and hardly a soul knows about it. For now, I want to keep it that way. Maybe some day I'll tell about it if for some reason God wants me to, but that would be for another story. I can say this much: I had a friend I talked to and that friend became my precious friend.

After my experience, things changed. I'd changed and what I knew and was beginning to learn changed with it. As I picked up the Bible and starting reading, there I was, speed-reading through it like it was my first language. I was understanding what the thee's, thou's, and thou's meant. Before my prayerful experience, I couldn't make much sense of it and now it was all beginning to take shape in my mind. It was like I had been walking through a hazy storm and found God's visible light on the other side. The fog had been lifted from my eyes.

I was 12 when I found God and Scripture became a special way my precious friend would visit me. I could feel His presence teaching me. Everything I was reading, I was learning what He was saying in His words as I was reading them. It was as if God would light up each page for me to read and show me what He meant it to say with each reading, The more I read, the more I could understand and the more I understood, the more I seen His light. God's truth was shining in that light. What I seen was His untainted sacrificial love. His light appeared to me in vivid colors of pastel.

Each word, every little detail in His Word, was a bite of spiritual knowledge, a tasty feast shared with Adam and Eve in the garden. There I was with the God of heavens as paradise took me down a new diminsion and gave me a dwelling. I didn't want to leave. Every day I looked forward to another imaginative walk through the garden. Everything I was learning, it was as if Jesus was leading me through the holy hills of paradise and sharing it all with me. I craved it. There was so much to learn. I couldn't get enough of God and He was the center of my universe.

Studies and homework, chores, that kind of stuff kept me busy most of the time. But whenever I got my chance, I would run to paradise. I lived for it and my existence outside of it was only mundane in comparison. 

God remained my center-piece until I graduated and got work. It was a big move for me, going to the city after living my life in the country. Country life was all I'd known until then and it was a simple sort of life, peaceful and unrefined.