Part One     Part Two     Part Three     Part Four    Part Five     Part Six

Going door-to-door the first year, I met Geri Singleton, a black woman about 45-50 years old.  I preached the gospel to her.  She received it.  I came back.  She still showed interest.  She came to church, not faithfully at first.  We baptized her and her teenaged son the same night as Art Anabo.  Geri grew and grew.  She became a faithful member.  She is still one, and since that beginning, she taught Sunday School and discipled several women in our church.

After a year and a half, I informed all of the churches that supported us, we were self-supporting.  This was in the Spring of 1989.  Even though we had buildings, were still a new church plant.  We barely had enough in expensive California to support a pastor and only one who lived in a tiny apartment with a wife and no children.  Bridget also continued working at the bank.

While evangelizing in Hercules that first year, I talked to a man, who said he bought his house after selling his mobile home.  I came home that day and told my wife the story.  That very night we drove to a mobile home park and found a single wide, just for sale that very day.  The owner died and left the home to her brother, who was eager to sell fast, and offered it for 10,000 dollars.  We bought it and moved in.

The San Francisco Bay Area had Fleet Week every year because of the Alameda Naval Air Station, which closed in the early nineties during the Clinton Presidency.  In the early days we had up to five families attend our church from the Naval base, and one faithful family in particular, the Ruckels, bought us carpet for our new tiny mobile home.  The same year we bought it, the park voted to become 55 or older and we were now the only twenty somethings there.  The timing was perfect.  A few years later we sold the mobile home for 19,000 as a down payment for a two bedroom condominium.

Evangelizing door-to-door in Pinole, I met Brenda Rose.  She came to a service.  She was saved.  Shortly thereafter she met a Navy man, who grew up in Arkansas in the Church of Christ.  I met with both and Doug Stracener was saved.  The two went to Bible college, trained, and then went back to Arkansas.  There Doug discipled dozens of people using a thirty week discipleship I wrote and our church used.

I was never a carpenter, but suddenly with new buildings and no construction types in our church, repairing and maintaining the buildings was difficult.  We had a tiny nursery spot right next to the meeting room and the babies were loud.  We decided to split our only other large room into a nursery and a classroom, which required building a wall.  About that time, a homeless man knocked on the door and asked if he could do any work.  He said he didn’t want money, just a place to sleep and milk and cookies.

Scott had been a successful general contractor, who became disabled in a work accident and he wasn’t covered by insurance.  He couldn’t do most of the work to build a new nursery, but he could tell me what to do.  I would preach to him while I worked and every day bring him milk and cookies.  He slept in the nursery.

In October 17, 1989, one day before our second anniversary of the church, I sat in front of the mobile home after supper with my wife in our running Subaru, talking before I went to work at the church building.  That year the Oakland A’s played the San Francisco Giants in the World Series.  Most people were already at home to watch the Bay Bridge Series.

Someone, I thought, as a practical joke began to jump up and down on the bumper of our car.  As our car rocked violently, I saw the road in the mobile home park like a ribbon rolling in front of me.  It threw our neighbors cat way up in the air and it shrieked as it flew in the sky.  What was happening?  It was the biggest earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area since the early twentieth century San Francisco Quake.  They called it the Loma Prieta quake.

I had never experienced an earthquake before, except for the typical minor tremors anyone will feel in the Bay Area from time to time.  This was a Big One, albeit not The big one.  I left my wife at the mobile home, not really knowing how serious this was.  My first stop at a hardware store to pick up some things revealed the extent.  Almost everything on the shelves was now on the floor.  The rolling quake scattered nuts, screws, paint, glass, and bolts all over the store.  After seeing that, I drove to the church building to see.

Everything at church was fine.  I could only imagine how much the building moved.  Our mobile home rode the wave, but up on stilts it was in a better position than some houses.  It was the only moment I remember wishing I was in the air rather than on the ground.  It was not terra firma that October evening.

What I found was that a church member was stuck on the Bay Bridge because part of it collapsed.  He couldn’t get home that night.  Over a hundred died on Highway 880 near Oakland, only ten minutes from us, when the top deck collapsed on to the bottom.  Many across the country saw Candlestick Park swaying on national television right before the Series game began.  The timing saved hundreds from death, as the highways were half as crowded as normal, fans from both side of the Bay already sitting on their couch to watch.

Anyone could wish that an earthquake would grab the attention of the lost.  I can report that it did little to nothing for constructive introspection.  More than anything, people in the Bay were, one, angry, and, two, determined to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

To Be Continued