Precious Memories

Last night in rather sleepless night, I got to thinking about some precious memories from the time shortly after I received Christ. This was in the summer of 1969. I had been a Christian for perhaps two weeks, when a young man came to the Lighthouse who was saved, probably about the same time I was.

Except he was saved in a tent meeting Lester Roloff, held in the Dallas area, in June of 1969. Early in the same month, I accepted Christ in a little bedroom, in the back of the beach house which served as our main headquarters, down on the Intracoastal canal, at Lester Roloff's ministry for young men, known as The Lighthouse.

I never will forget the day Ricky came to the Lighthouse. But I have recorded that story on my blog “Up and Down the Landcut”, which is the place where I tell of many of the unique things that happened, back in my younger years, during the times when I lived down at The Lighthouse. You can read about that account on my “canal” blog by clicking on this link, "My Brother Ricky n' Me"
Now back to our story. It would be hard to imagine two young men who were any more more different, both in personality and in their physical makeup than Ricky and I. Ricky was a bit older than I. And physically he was already very much a man. He was kind of short and a heavyset and stocky He was broad chested and sort of short in both his arms and in his legs. Ricky had dark, already thinning hair, and very light skin, with brown eyes. I, on the other hand, was a skinny late bloomer, but I was starting to grow up a bit taller than average. I was wiry and thin, and dark complected, with a bushel of very unruly blond hair, and I have blue eyes.

As soon as Ricky arrived at the Lighthouse, we began to form a nearly instant friendship as well as a deep brotherly like bond. So where one of us was, usually there was the other as well. People thought that we made a very opposite looking pair. Therefore, some of the guys, and some of the office staff at the Brother Roloff's downtown office began to call us "Mutt and Jeff"! :)

But Ricky and I were not only different from one another on the outside. Our personalities were also very much the opposite in many ways. Ricky was very extroverted, very adventuresome, and quite assertive as well. On the other hand, even though I was not shy by any stretch of the imagination, I was more laid back, and more of a follower at that time. So as a natural coarse, between the two of us, Ricky became the leader.
Therefore it was he who thought up most of our schemes, and who amused me with his antics and with his constant clowning and his eccentric antics. It was Ricky who thought up the idea of us walking across Padre island to the gulf side, on the scorching black sand's of the Luguna Madre salt flats, at the widest part of the island, in the heat of a heat of a rare, windless summer day, which just about did the both of us in! And you can read that account by clicking this link, "Walkin' on Water?".

But even though we were on opposite poles in many respects of our personalities and our physiques, one thing we both had in common was a mutual fervor for reading our Bibles, and learning all we could about God's Word, and then discussing those things we were learning and discovering with one another, daily.

Down on the canal we fished every night except for Saturday nights. Saturday nights began our Sunday rest break. All day Sunday we rested and had our own Lighthouse church services, complete with preaching and singing. Then, every Sunday evening, we would fire up the generator again, turned on the fishing lights, and thus began our weekly, night fishing and day sleeping schedule anew.

Sometimes we had groups of guests, that were friends of Bro Roloff;'s ministries, who would come down to the Lighthouse to enjoy a night of unbelievable fishing. Early on in our tenure that summer, whenever that happened, we two "coconuts" were considered yet too green and much too inexperienced to be trusted to assist the guests in baiting their hooks, taking the fish off of their lines, and knowing what to do in case of some emergency happening. So we were not too sad for a few short weeks, to be relegated to what became to be known as “The West Bedroom”.
The West Bedroom was a place we went when we needed an overflow sleeping area. Because sometimes as the night wore on, there were so many guests in the old houseboat, which was the original Lighthouse structure, that both in the bunkhouse area, and on top of the rooftop sleeping area of the old houseboat, it would get so crowded with “sleeping bodies”, one could scarcely walk through the old houseboat without stepping on someone, or stumbling over a sleeper. Hence, the need for what Brother Roloff dubbed as, “The West Bedroom".
The West Bedroom was simply a piece of plywood carried 60 or 70 feet away to the southwest of the old houseboat, then it was thrown down onto the salt flats. Then two of those old skinny camp style mattress, like we used of sleep on at church camp, or almost at any kind of camp, were laid onto the plywood side by side. Both “residents” of the West Bedroom also got two sheets, one to sleep on, and one to cover up with.
What the real use of the bottom sheet was, is questionable, though, since well before morning, both mattresses would be full of powdery fine, white wind blown sand.
But the other sheet was needed to cover up with. And this was very needful, because the wind, even though it was generally a warm wind, usually blew constantly, until the wee morning hours, when it would lay to the point of just being a nice soft breeze, with gentle puffs at various intervals here and there.
But out in the West Bedroom, we did not just lay under the top sheet, like on a normal bed. No, but instead you wrapped yourself in it like a caterpillar, spinning a cocoon. Because if you did not wrap yourself up, the wind would buffet you and your sheet mercilessly, so that your sheet became more like an unfettered sail, almost broken entirely free from it's main mast, while flapping madly, like a horizontal flag in a wind tunnel!
So if you hoped to retain your sheet, and not to have it escaping by flight sometime during the middle of the night, winding up in the mesquite bushes over on the Kennedy Ranch, you had better wrap up in your top sheet. And you had better be wrapped up good and tight as well!
In continuing this story, I would like to say the following. The entire dialog from here on, with a few edits, is an excerpt from my story “My Brother Ricky and Me” story, on my “Up and Down The Landcut” blog.
I remember on one particular occasion Rick and I were consigned to sleep out in the “west bedroom”. As we set our camp spot up, it occurred to Rick that the night was a relatively calm one, so he suggested we read our Bibles and study them together out in the west bedroom. So after our mattresses were hauled out there, and put in place on the plywood, and everything was set up, we went to retrieve our Bibles.

I will never forget that night. The breeze was softly wafting across the salt flats, as we both lay there on our stomachs, Bibles open, and pages softly rustling in the warm breeze, with our single mantled red Coleman lantern set on the sand just before us. To our north, and on our left we could see the Lighthouse's pier, brightly lighted with it's fishing spotlights. Somewhat silhouetted and sometimes highlighted by the lights we could see the guests, and some of the other boys, in a flurry of activity as they all fished, dancing in and out of the lights as they cast their lines in the canal.
They were having the times of their lives, “fishing in paradise”! The cries of delight and their exclamations of excitement could be faintly heard, wafting in and out on the wind, louder for an instant, and then more softly, as the southern breeze tried to carry the sounds away from us, and northwards. Our Bibles seemed to virtually glow of the orb of the whitish yellow light the gas Coleman lantern was emitting. The soft hiss of our lantern’s burning, mingled with the distant babbling sounds of the boys and the guests chattering out on the pier, mingled with the sounds of the pages of our Bibles, rustling in the soft breeze, made for a unique, soothing, mesmerizing, blending of sounds.

As Rick and I lay there, a strange presence seemed to surround us. It was one of those moments that seems frozen in time now. We read thorough several New Testament passages that evening. Then, “Big Brother” Rick presided over our Little Bible lesson. I remember so vividly the last passage we read in John. Rick said, “Ronnie, look at this one!” He then directed me to John 10:10, reading aloud, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Ricky seemed captivated by this verse, as he repeated it once, more. Again he slowly and deliberately read, “the thief commeth not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.” He spoke these words, and as he spoke them, he gazed with a contemplative countenance, looking out into the dark of the night. It seemed to me as though he was very absorbed in deep thought. Then he turned to me, and exclaimed, “Ronnie, isn't that a wonderful verse”! Again he repeated that passage, saying with a sense of wonder, and reverence, “Listen to what Jesus said, Ronnie!” He said, “The thief commeth not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly!” Ricky then concluded his thought by saying,"Ronnie, Jesus came to give us abundant life! Isn't that wonderful”
In retrospect, I have often thought that this verse meant so much to Ricky, because of his past struggles. Ricky had told me before, and he shared with me again that night, how in his past he had battled with stealing, and thieving. And then he proclaimed how Jesus Christ had marvelously delivered him from that sin, as well as from many other vices.

I will never forget the feeling of us two young Brothers in Christ, being so isolated from the outside world that night. We were totally caught up in our own little universe, the boundaries of which were defined by the small circular, glow surrounding our little Coleman gas lantern, out there in our "West Bedroom"!
The lantern’s brightness and it’s light seemed to contrast so completely with the surrounding darkness. The pier seemed to be both somewhat near, but also very distant. It's own lights seemed to cause it to float and hover in space, in a surreal manner, with a gulf of inky darkness between us, and it. It seemed as though we could have reached out and touched the pier, but it also seemed that had we tried to do so, we would have fallen off into the seeming abyss of darkness just beyond our lantern's ring of cheery light.
So there we were, we two new Brother's in Christ, all by ourselves, Bibles open, in a world apart from the real world, propped up on our elbows, perusing through the pages of our Bibles as we read and discussed the marvelous, wonderful Words of life, by the hiss and the glow of our gas lantern!
Those were such special moments, that seem now to me, to be suspended in time. Money cannot by those kinds of precious memories. Nor can moments such as those be staged, arranged, or orchestrated. Those special moments as of that memorable night are like a rare and a precious jewel, that without warning fell from the God's very heaven above, casting a very special spell into the midst of us two very new Brother's in Christ.
It happened for one night only, out in the West Bedroom, at a place called The Lighthouse, down on the Intracoastal canal.