By the time I got the bad news about my future at Stetson U., I had already proposed to my girl. I went through the entire process of meeting her dad --- alone --- and asking for her hand in marriage. He made me wait for what seemed like forever before he came out of the bedroom to receive me. By then I was working for a company that made canning equipment. So I had a job, and I convinced him that I would be finishing school at the earliest opportunity.
He appeared to be more interested in my testimony. He had heard me sing at Campus Life, and I had visited the chapel where he and his family worshiped. I shared the fact that I had given my heart to Jesus, that the Son of God had died for my sins, and that my future wife and I would live the Christian faith. I assured him that I would take care of her. I even threw in the plan to go into full time Christian service (which I still believed). The whole package took about twenty minutes, and I got his approval.
This was in December. We were to be married the following June. We still can’t agree on whose idea it was to get married so soon, but I suspect that I had the greater influence. I gave her the ring the same night that I took her to hear David Wilkerson (The Cross and the Switchblade). I don’t remember anything about his sermon. I was in love, and her ring seemed to cause her hand to float up in the air often so that folks could see it.
We were married in June at her parents’ church, and we honeymooned on the Gulf Coast in a small vacation home loaned to us by a neighbor. The house was on a small canal, a few blocks away from the beach, with a few other houses around it. But there was basically no civilization around it, that being decent stores, restaurants or shopping malls. The closest attraction was Weeki Wachi Springs, where we went to see the “live” mermaids, young women in big fish tails (with bathing suit tops) that could hold their breath under water for a really long time, behind a glass.
Just before we got married, I had changed jobs and started working for a sawmill in Deland, so that we could be near Stetson U., whenever they were ready to take me back. So, following the brief honeymoon, we stopped by Orlando to tear through our wedding gifts, then head up to our apartment, where we would enjoy the newness of married life for the next seven and one-half months.
As devout Christians we were anxious to find a church as soon as possible. She had been brought up in the Plymouth Brethren church (more on that later), and I was of the Southern Baptist faith. We were both ready for a change. Little did we know, however, what Deland Baptist Temple had in store for us.
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