My Blog For You

With that said my mom, my sister and I, together made the move to Rosemead and started our new life in this new city.  I had my own room upstairs next to my mom’s bedroom.  I had a bathroom of my own and it was much bigger than my former bedroom with my brother.  Life was different but it was good.  It was years later sometime around the summer of 1969 that my life would take on new dimensions as I was leaving grammar school, going thru Jr. High School into four years heading toward High School.  Right about that time many people in the United States were getting what was called the “Hong Kong Flu”.  This was a typical flu accept my mom got it really, really bad and what I remember almost died from it  This is where she began her own real relationship with God the Father and things started to change.  She had been a church going person, brought up in a Christian home but never made a commitment to Jesus.  It is kind of like being a wood pew in a church.  It does not make you a Christian by going to church.  That wood pew is only good for sitting on.    It cannot save you.  Just as the singing, preaching, and going to meetings does not make you a believer in Jesus.  I remember that my mom, sister and I attended for a few months this local congregational church just down the street from our home in Arcadia.  The drive from our new house with my grandmother in Rosemead was about 10 miles away.  From our old house it was maybe  4 blocks away. My mom learned of this church from a close neighbor at the end of our street who was a member of that church.  During this time, church leadership or pastoral leadership was changing.    The old pastor had decided to step down and retire and was soon leaving the church.  The leadership or elders were going through the motions and interviewing new pastors.  One of those interviewing for the job was a new pastor who brought his large family with six kids to the church to kind of audition I guess to see if they could do the job or something like that.  Let’s be honest… It was a try-out.   The pastor and his wife came first, he sang, she played the piano and he preached.    It was good.  I liked it. My recollection at the time was I liked them; they passed my audition...LOL … I specifically remember a solo he sang that Sunday morning,  “How Big Is God”.     With his strong larger than life baritone/tenor voice it touched me in a new way but I didn’t know it or understand it yet…Needless to say, he did NOT need a microphone.  A few weeks, maybe a month passed.  One of the leaders of the church this specific Sunday morning, I don’t remember his name or honestly the date.  Let’s call him Phil for the sake of this writing.    Phil got up in the pulpit and announced that Pastor Drell Butler, his wife Gloria, and their family of six kids had been chosen to fill the vacant pastoral position at the church.  They had contacted this family, and they decided to accept the position of pastoring this small church.  This new family’s first Sunday morning, my mom, my sister Laurie, and I were there, ready for some new life. The service began as one of the elders introduced Pastor Drell & Gloria Butler and their six kids got up and sang a few songs and I believe Pastor Drell spoke a bit about each of his kids introducing them to the church congregation.  After the service had ended, we usually would hang out in the outside foyer.  I remember very vividly my first encounter with two of Pastor Drell’s sons, these young gentlemen, Terry 14 years old and his brother Randy12.  Terry was a year older than I and Randy a year younger.     It was at the water fountain at the outside foyer that these two boys came up to me reaching out their hands to introduce themselves to me.  “Hi, I’m Terry Butler”, “Hello, I am Randy Butler.  At that time, we all had high squeaky cracking voices as we were at that age and stage of development where voices start to drop and change and where things grow in new and different places, if you get my drift.  Honestly, I’m trying to paint a picture with words about that  very important for me, “first encounter”.  We shook hands and I honestly don’t remember much else of what we talked about, however I knew I had two new friends. I did not know at the time how significant and how my world was about to change... These young men were good sons to a great father in Pastor Drell. I didn’t know it then, but he was going to have a tremendous influence on me as a young man.  As I recall those days, I get a big grin on my face thinking about the many Wednesday night youth meetings, pick-up basketball games out back behind the church in the parking lot, Sunday afternoon dinners after church at the Butler home and sometimes Friday night sleep-overs where us boys in sleeping bags would sack out on the floor in the Butler living room.  Oh, and Saturday mornings after a sleep over were priceless.   Pastor Drell would wake up early on Saturday morning, walk into the living room breaking the silence of our slumber, shouting at the top of his lungs…...Daylight In The Swamp”.  He would cook us scrambled eggs and bacon cooking the bacon first but then not removing the grease from the cooked bacon but would slap the eggs in the cast iron pan and cook the scrambled eggs in the bacon grease all together… Oh, it was good….Not sure about the cholesterol  or how healthy all that was but it was honestly a feast for kings.  You might ask, “Why would I grin about those simple things”.  The short answer is because when I think about it, they were all showing me as a family and as individual friends, “pure Godly and God centered love”.  They were loving me with all my faults, problems, issues and warts. I didn’t even recognize or know it until much, much later They were showing me the path I would soon take to the beginning of a deep relationship with Jesus Christ, My Lord.  That summer the six kids in the youth group at that time, Terry, Randy, my younger sister Laurie and myself, with a few others made up the group that started this church’s youth ministry.  We didn’t have a youth pastor then, however Pastor Drell assumed that role in the beginning.   He started every Saturday morning during those summer months with what Pastor Drell titled "Pastors Class". Well this was the beginning for me of a long walk thru some wonderful times studying the scripture, the B. I. B. L. E.  Pastor Drell opening the basics of the Holy Word of God, the scripture and piecing it together like a map so we would know how to live, how to understand what was true, good, perfect, genuine, kind, loving and right.  We also talked about the things in this world that were bad, phony, false, wrong, hurtful, and harmful. Pastor Drell was always careful to show us the differences and explain why.  He gave us time to ask questions and discuss the details of what he was teaching and showing us. He taught us about who God is, His many characteristics.  How he created in six days all that is around us.  How God created a man and a woman.  From those early days Pastor Drell was mentoring each of us, however I didn’t understand or see what was still ahead of me. I don’t think I thought at the time it would be "easy street" or just memorize this doctrine or that teaching of Jesus and I would have it all “wired”, but I did come to understand that there were “costs” and challenges involved and attached to the road in following Jesus. After all Jesus, at the time had enemies and those who chose NOT to believe what he said and what he taught. At that youthful age I began to understand. However, I was not yet converted or changed in my heart. More to come about that...

More next week