Chapter 34

     The summer of ’81, a friend of mine from Chi Alpha decided to wash windows and we set up a window washing business we called, “Ace Window Cleaning”.  I think we had maybe three or four window washing jobs all summer.  We spent a lot more time beside the campus pool.

     The girl from my double date and I were still going out, and I spent a day at their family farm helping them haul hay.  This gave me the idea of going back to Butler and getting some hay hauling work.  I could earn more in one day there than I could in a week working for minimum wage in Springfield.  It was late July and I figured I had a month before school started again.  This would give me enough time to put away a good sum to ease the financial demands of going to school full-time.

     I got permission from Marshall to stay at his Butler City Lake cabin while in Butler working and off to Butler to haul hay I went.  I got a job on a self-propelled hay wagon I had first worked on back in the day.

     The owner’s son was driving the self-propelled hay wagon and we did really well for a few days.  The start of the next day was going well when I threw a hay bale up top, and I heard my back pop and I was instantly in extreme pain.  

     I went to the doctor who took some x-rays but saw nothing abnormal.  All I knew was my efforts to save up money hauling hay had ended.

     I rested for a day or so pretty hurt and very discouraged.  I went and picked up my $200.00 paycheck and bought a few groceries but decided to fast and figure out the next step.  The next day I was thinking of Montana, figured I could make it there and back on the funds I had before school started.  A bit of a vacation. 

     Seeing that I had $160.00, $80.00 to go there with and another $80.00 to come back,  I decided to go as far as I could and stay until the first $80.00 ran out, then I would return.  I put some of the groceries in the car along with all my clothes and took off.

     I went up Highway 71 North through Kansas City and connected to Highway 29 North up to Highway 90 West which took me all the way to Bozeman.

     Almost half-way across South Dakota, there was a pretty bad storm and at one point, the wind and rain were blowing crosswise across my windshield.  In Missouri we knew if that happened, it meant a tornado was most likely nearby. 

     It seemed best that I pull off the road and take a look around.  I got out of the car but could hardly stand due to the wind.  Then my car slid about ten feet by itself backward and toward the ditch. I thought for a second, decided to get back in, and keep going lest I lose my car to the ditch.

     A couple of miles up the road there was a gas station and I pulled in to fill up and check on the weather up ahead.  On my way to their front door, I saw two guys with their faces to the window with their eyes wide open looking out.

     When I went inside, they both shouted, “Did you see it?” 

     I asked them what they were referring to.

     They said a tornado had gone right down the middle of the highway toward where I had just come from. I told them what I experienced.  I figured it must have jumped over me or veered off as I hadn’t actually seen the tornado.  A close call for sure.

     The ordeal convinced me I should get a hotel for the night.  I found one up the road a few miles with a $10.00 room.  I took it and crashed till early morning.

     I was up before dawn and took off again.  As I was going through the Bad Lands of South Dakota, the sun started coming up behind me and shining its light on the hills.  It was just amazing.

     The Beatles song, “Here Comes the Sun” came on the radio when an “open vision” appeared about ten feet in front of my car.  It was about the size of a billboard, and it blocked my view of the road.  I looked down and could still see the yellow line on the edge of the road and just kept going.  Crazy for sure.

     The first thing I saw was a map with “Bozeman” written in the middle.  Then a spark lit a fire and Bozeman started to burn.  As it was burning, the view panned back so I could see the whole state.  The Bozeman fire started shooting sparks all around Montana.  The sparks lit fires in other towns, and then the fires grew together till the whole state was on fire.

     The view kept panning backward till I could see the whole nation.  The fire in Montana started shooting sparks out over the whole country until it caught fire too.  Those sparks grew together until the whole nation was on fire.

     The nationwide fire started shooting sparks all around the world.  The vision ended and the billboard went away, and I could see the road again.  I kept going all the way to Bozeman pondering what it was I had just seen.

     I told my friends there in Bozeman about the vision and they recommended I talk to Pastor John Weaver as he had experiences with such.  I did and he told me that they have had hundreds of calls from all over the world with similar stories.  A typical saying went with them all, “Bozeman will become a light to the state, the state a light to the nation, and the nation a light to the world.”

     My visit went great, and I got to go on a few hikes.  It all just felt like I had been there a thousand times before.  It felt like home.  My feelings got me wondering if I should stay.  Housing was almost impossible to find and expensive.  Students were staying in hotels waiting for the semester to start and other students to drop out to open up housing.

     I said this prayer, “Lord if you want me to stay, I will need cheap housing and a job really quick.  Then a friend told me about a $40 a month basement room he had just moved out of.  I had just been offered a job and so I took the room.  This was the place of the mountain people from my dream and now,  Big Sky Country was now my home!  

     Bozeman was just a beautiful place nestled by the Bridger Mountains.  The people were great.  Everywhere you went everyone was so friendly.  The kind of town where no one locked their doors.

     My second flash forward occurred at a gas station I pulled into to get gas.  I went inside to pay and use the restroom.  When I was done, I opened the restroom door and started to walk out when I realized everything around me had changed.

     The front was a restaurant and as I looked toward the back where the mechanics’ bay had been, it was now a bakery.  I pulled back into the restroom to gain my composure.  I tried it again and it was the same as before. 

     On my third try it all turned back into the gas station.  I went out through the front door and left right away.

It would be twenty years before I understood that one.

     The local Bozeman Assemblies of God Church known as “Christian Center” sponsored the local Chi Alpha college youth ministry known locally as “Maranatha”.  Most of the students in the group went there to regular Sunday services.

     Maranatha was led by Pastor Dick Schroeder, who had been saved while going to college at Montana State University and stayed on after graduating, becoming its youth pastor along with his wife, Joy.  Rod Ennis was the assistant pastor along with his wife, Marcie.

     The group was on fire for Jesus with many of them coming out of a revival that had taken place the previous few years at Christian Center as it had swept through the local high school.  Per the visions, dreams, and prophecies that came in from around the world, there were great expectations of more to come.  Having had the vision while coming to Montana,  I too had similar expectations.

     This was a considerably different atmosphere than I had experienced in Springfield; not quite so religious from my point of view.  Part of the result of being so far away from the International headquarters of the Assemblies of God possibly; to me, it was just a great experience.  I dove in and learned lots my first year there.