I am writing today from the beautiful Tulsa area.

It was the summer of 1987. I was 21 years old and working in a warehouse and doing deliveries for P-F Business Systems in Tulsa. I was an assistant head deacon at the Tulsa First SDA Church. I had just become re-acquainted with a young lady I had known growing up. She attended the Owasso SDA Church. I fell in love with this young lady and her small church. There was a deep spiritual atmosphere that I craved. I soon moved my membership to the Owasso church. To make a long story short, the lady I had fallen in  love with moved away. I stayed at the Owasso church because I had made many friends there, and they gave me plenty of opportunities to minister there. At the age of 22 the church made me a local elder, and thus the youngest elder in Oklahoma at the time. The next year I became the head elder. My friends, Gary, Paula and Terri invited me to join them as Literature Evangelists. I left my job at P-F and joined them. In 1991 I became the  Bible Worker. I stayed on with the Owasso Church until October of 1993, when I moved to Fort Worth. While I was at Owasso we had plans to add on to the church and build a sanctuary but for several years, even decades, the church looked exactly how I left it. The above picture is what it looked like when I came and for years after I left.

Today, I came back to preach and visit my Owasso Church family and this is what I found.

They finally added the sanctuary! They also added a very nice lobby, Sabbath School classrooms and library. It was beautiful!

I took this picture of my friend Terri, playing the piano, in the sanctuary on a visit back in 2007.

Today the same room is used for a beautiful fellowship hall.

Today, the Owasso SDA Church has a beautiful sanctuary that years ago we only dreamed about. I took this picture during Sabbath School before the entire church had joined for worship service. I am not 21 years old anymore. I have since moved on to Texas and now Florida. The lady I fell in love with so many years ago, has since married someone else and has five kids now. There are a lot of new faces in the church now who never knew anything about my ministry there so long ago. Still, there are a lot of familiar faces and current friends that I am still in touch with on Facebook and that are still a part of my ministry network. In some ways, the Owasso church is a memory in my distant past, but in so many other ways, like today it is a part of my current life. God has taken me a lot further than I had ever dreamed since that Summer of 1987. Still, I owe what I am today, to that small church family in Owasso who loved me and believed in me. Some have passed on. Some, sad to say left the faith. Some I still talk to every week on Facebook. Even though I may be 1,400 miles and 18 years away now, my Owasso Church family is still a big part of who I am today. In my heart they are never far away. I am very proud to see how the church in Owasso has grown, and I hope they too can be proud of how I have grown. Even though my lady friend and I were never meant to be, she is still a good friend today, but even more so, she introduced me to a wonderful church family. A church family that believed in me and my ministry before it even began. A church family that I have to thank, not only for my ministry that began 24 years ago, but also for my ministry today, 1,400 miles and 18 years later. 1987-1993 were good times and I will keep my friends forever.