Sunday, April 6, 2008

From "ammo" to "amore" - Part II

Sage #1 continues: I had just returned from three years service in the Navy during World War II. (Some of that time was spent as a radioman with the Navy gun crew aboard armed merchant ships, once transporting bombs and other ammunition to our troops in the Southwest Pacific ... that's where my side of the "ammo"-"amore" equation comes in!) Anyway, as I returned home to Wallace, IN, I was anxious to resume my "social life," and soon asked my mother is she knew any really Christian girls in our area that I might ask for a date. She wisely replied, "Why, give Mary Kathryne Jackson a call!" I faintly knew Mary K. (or "Katie" as she was known "way back when") as a friend of my younger sisters, but gave her a call right away and she agreed to go to church with me. As we got acquainted the next few weeks she discovered that I did not really know the Lord as my personal Saviour, so she patiently and lovingly shared the Gospel with me over hamburgers after church services. On the evening of Mary 13, 1946, after she once more explained John 3:16 to me, I knelt in the livingroom of her parents' farm home and asked Christ to save me. She told me later that I looked as though a tremendous load had been lifted from me. It was the burden of sin! I just praise the Lord for forgiving me and giving me eternal life that night. And I thank Him also for giving me in due time Mary K. as a wife and coworker these many years, serving the Lord together first in Germany and then in home fields. Truly, "the LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad!" (Psalm 126:3) ... and that's real "amore"!