Chapter 6 Summer of 1960 It was a joyful time in my life. I was healthy and athletic. I had a new dad who actually spent time with my brother and I. This was the man who was my uncle and had jumped in the water to try and rescue that basket of fish when we were fishing in central Minnesota where I met and talked with our dear Lord Jesus at the bottom of Lake Latooka. However, just as the Lord Jesus said would happen, he is faithful even when we are not. He had removed all the memories of that previous year – leaving only bits and pieces of memories until over 30 years later. Anyway, suffice it to say, I was in a seriously backslidden condition, we were extremely poor and lived in a very poor little village between Lawrence and Desoto, Kansas called Sunflower Village. I don’t think it even made it on a map of Kansas, it was so small. We did have a school building however. The principal was also the teacher of the entire first through sixth grades and my teacher was teacher of the entire 7th grade through 12th grades and I had just completed 7th grade. It was that time in a boy’s life where thoughts towards girls started to turn from thoughts to “I wish they would go away, I wish they would stay inside their houses and not bother us boys, I wish they would quit whispering and giggling” to thoughts of wonder. You know, I wonder what they are like, I wonder what they are whispering and giggling about, I wonder if they would like me to sit next to them and hear what they were saying. Then there was this young lady, Zetta, I think was her name. She was older, 17 I think. She would not come out and play. She could only come out on the porch or stay in the house. She lived alone with her dad and he wouldn’t let her go any further than the front porch. The house stunk so bad that you couldn’t go on the porch and she smelled real bad also but she couldn’t help it because her dad would not allow any soap or cleaning supplies of any kind in the house. If she wanted anything clean including her own body, she would have to use just rags and water. Even their clothes and dishes, she was only allowed to use water and rags. Someone gave her some liquid soap and her dad found it and poured it out on the front lawn. Then someone gave her a bar of soap, thinking that would be easier for her to hide but when she used it to wash her own body, her dad came home and could smell the soap’s clean smell and he made her strip and he found it and then he made her eat it, all of it. She was sick for a long time. We wanted to help but there was no police department and no volunteer police and she was terrified of her dad and begged us not to do anything because he would kill us and he would just make her keep on living and suffering even if he killed us. One afternoon I was drawn to her as she sat out on their back porch. The Spirit of the Lord was on me though I didn’t realize it. I just felt a deep compassion for her even though I was only 13 and she was 17. After I was there awhile, she finally started talking to me and wishing she could marry some young man and just leave her dad while he was drunk asleep some night but she couldn’t because she thought no man would have her to be his wife and be kind to her and let her have soap and feminine things instead of rags and water. She also said that her dad was her legal guardian and she couldn’t just leave because the authorities would just find her and make her go back. As the compassion of Christ was upon me, I started telling her about Jesus, what little I knew, and she really listened because she had never even heard of him. Anyway, I did not lead her to Christ because I did not know how to do so. I just told her what little I knew. We didn’t even have a church in our little village. I even told her that if she could wait until I got out of high school and got a job I would come and get her and she could marry me if she wanted to and I would take her away in the middle of the night. She didn’t think much of that idea and finally went back in the house as she could hear her dad getting up from his drunk. The next morning I got up and went out to play and saw several people and a few vehicles near Zetta’s back porch and after awhile I found some girls who I saw standing over there and asked them what had happened and told then that I had spoken to her the previous afternoon and they asked me what I had talked to her about as they had found her in a warm – the water was still warm, bathtub of water with her wrists slit and bled to death. They said the water which was probably hot when she slit her wrists helped to keep the blood flowing so she would bleed to death. Dear Lord Jesus, I pray that Zetta is home with you. I pray that I may see her in Heaven. She didn’t even know your name or anything about you until that afternoon and I don’t even know if she received you as Savior. I should have known more to tell her. I should have been more bold, but I didn’t and I wasn’t. We need to pray for pastors and evangelists and christians everywhere that we would rightly divide the Word of truth and boldly declare that Word all the while and foremost allowing the love of Christ to flow through us. That was the summer of 1960 and that was the summer of my 13th year.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 00:01:41 +0000