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Following God’s Plan: Bob and Ben

During the conversation between Bob and Ben, Bob shares his journey in ministry, which began when he lost his mom and was raised by his aunt. He found spiritual guidance in the church, eventually becoming a preacher despite facing challenges and fears. As Ben considers pursuing ministry or engineering after graduating high school, Bob advises him to trust God, be prepared, and seek help when needed, emphasizing that God has a plan and is watching over him.

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Transcription

Sherri [00:00:10] Have you ever wish you could know what the future held before you got there? What if you were given the gift of knowledge before you even began your journey? Now, I’ve been thinking about that because I made a lot of stupid mistakes when I was younger, and I wish I had someone to say, Don’t go down that road. But on this one, I’m Sherri and welcome to From the Eyes of Wisdom, where we are pairing an experienced elder from Crista Senior Living with a passionate Kings High School student ready to launch into the world. And while these conversations won’t tell the future exactly, they did reveal a lot we weren’t expecting about how to live life well. Are you ready? I can’t wait for you to hear this. Time for our next episode. And oh gosh, I hope you guys have been being blessed so far because this has been amazing. Now we have Bob here and Ben. So Bob was a pastor for how long?

Bob [00:01:11] Well, I started in 1965.

Sherri [00:01:13] Okay. You know, you’re going to make me do math, Bob?

Ben [00:01:16] That’s when my dad was born.

Sherri [00:01:18] Ha ha ha. How’s that make you feel?

Bob [00:01:20] Well, I retired from pastoring in 1994.

Sherri [00:01:24] Okay. Ben is interested in ministry, but I was reading your story. So it’s ministry or engineering, right?

Ben [00:01:33] Yeah, I’m leaning more towards ministry at this point. Engineering is kind of losing. Losing its hold on my life.

Sherri [00:01:41] All right, So give me a little bit about your life Bob. I just want to get some background on you. So as a child, you had some tragedy, right? Your mom died when you were early? Well, when you were young?

Bob [00:01:54] I was 14 months old yeah. My dad was a career sailor. And I was born in San Diego or National City, which is the same thing. And then she got sick and came up here, and he came up with her, of course. And he got on leave. Yeah. And she didn’t survive.

Sherri [00:02:11] So how old were you?

Bob [00:02:13] 14 months.

Sherri [00:02:15] Okay. And then your dad. Was he involved in your life or?

Bob [00:02:19] Well, he started to. And then he contracted Tuberculosis.

Sherri [00:02:22] Wow.

Bob [00:02:23] And that’s before they had streptomycin to cure it?

Sherri [00:02:25] Mm hmm.

Bob [00:02:26] So I didn’t see him. Well, I think he came up there a few times and then he was in a sanatorium down in the southern part of town.

Sherri [00:02:36] So raised by your?

Bob [00:02:38] I was raised by my aunt, a widowed aunt, who was taking care of my grandmother.

Sherri [00:02:42] Mm hmm.

Bob [00:02:43] And so my grandmother didn’t speak English. She spoke Norwegian. Paul’s was little Norway, you know? Well, maybe a little Sweden to some people.

Sherri [00:02:54] So this is. This is what was interesting about your story. When I when I was going through it, I thought to have that kind of tragedy when you’re young…And still when you were a child and you would say even into maybe junior high, you were active in the church, how does that happen? Because usually when there’s that kind of tragedy, there becomes maybe a resentment or a bitterness towards God. Like a shaking of the fist to the sky. You never had any of that.

Bob [00:03:21] Never had that. Well, we talked about God freely.

Sherri [00:03:24] Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Bob [00:03:26] And so I just assumed.

Sherri [00:03:28] Mm hmm.

Bob [00:03:28] And then when the war hit, my aunt got a full time job downtown, So we divided our house in two because it needed people, you know, places for people to live. So family came out from, let’s see, Sioux City, Iowa. Yeah, I remember them well. Two boys. And they found work out here because there’s a lot of work here. And so they lived there. So I had some kids around, you know. Always had kids around.

Sherri [00:03:55] When did you feel like you were called to the ministry?

Bob [00:03:58] Oh, man. It was crazy. I don’t mean that in a bad way.

Sherri [00:04:02] Yeah, right.

Bob [00:04:02] Yeah, but we’d have a missionary come.

Sherri [00:04:05] Okay.

Bob [00:04:06] And I can remember one came from the Congo. You know, there’s not the Congo now, but it was then. Oh, I thought, man, I want to go to the Congo.

Sherri [00:04:14] You said that? How old were you?.

Bob [00:04:16] Five or six. Seven. Something like that.

Sherri [00:04:20] Okay, you’ve going through junior high school. You’re still involved in the church, which is still kind of central in your life. Was there a point I think I read, like, whenever maybe…How old are you, Ben?

Ben [00:04:30] I’m 18.

Bob [00:04:31] So around what age did you start feeling like you’re involved in sports? Ben has his letter jacket on here. You guys can’t see it. What are you? Football?

Ben [00:04:39] Football, drama on here, soccer on there as well. There’s some other things on as well.

Sherri [00:04:44] Really busy?

Ben [00:04:45] Yes.

Sherri [00:04:46] You were in high school.

Bob [00:04:47] Yeah.

Sherri [00:04:47] Sports.

Bob [00:04:48] Sports.

Sherri [00:04:48] Busy? Started pulling you from the church a little bit.

Bob [00:04:51] A little bit, Yeah. Yeah, But not bad. But, you know, I’d always go but sit in the back with the rest of the gang. Yeah, it is. We did a lot of things together as our kids. We had a great youth group over there. They Rrally did.

Sherri [00:05:05] In your story, I read something that reminded me. I mean, did you grow up in the church, Ben?

Ben [00:05:09] Yes.

Sherri [00:05:09] You did, okay. You may resonate with this as well. I was reading your story Bob and I grew up in the church. Pentecostal side, so close to Assembly of God. And I remember like an altar call every Sunday. He said that there…Well you say it.

Bob [00:05:27] Every Sunday night I got saved all over again.

Sherri [00:05:32] That you Ben? You been to the altar a couple times?

Ben [00:05:33] I have not.

Bob [00:05:36] Well, it’s not it’s not a bad thing.

Sherri [00:05:38] No, but it is. It is a thing though.

Bob [00:05:40] But I didn’t do that in my ministry. Yeah, I don’t. Well, I hope not.

Sherri [00:05:46] I laughed because I was like, I remember that. I remember feeling like every Sunday night we had a service and you had to kind of go. This is going somewhere. It was amazing story that you told that really resonate and stuck with me and I’d love Ben to hear it about you’re at a service and is there a traveling…?

Bob [00:06:04] Okay let me tell you what happened. Our church, the pastor there had a scholarship to play football. It was his six foot three terrific football player, and he got called in the ministry.

Sherri [00:06:15] Okay.

Bob [00:06:15] So he became our pastor with his wife. And they became a part of what they called the gospel westernnaires.

Sherri [00:06:22] Okay.

Bob [00:06:23] Ruben Korpi and his wife were musicians. He was in town after church preaching. And so I thought I’d slip by. And I had my letterman sweater.

Sherri [00:06:35] Okay. How old were you? You think 17? 16?

Bob [00:06:38] I must have been about a sophomore or freshman. I had my letterman sweater on and the altar call came, so I just flipped out and was walking down the road.

Sherri [00:06:46] You left church?

Sherri [00:06:47] Yeah, I left church and slipped out walking down toward the downtown. And I hear footsteps behind me. You know what’s going on? I turned around and here’s Korpi the pastor or the evangelist coming after me.

Sherri [00:07:00] Chased you out of there.

Bob [00:07:01] Now what’s going on? But all he did was he said, “Hey, when you’re playing basketball and you try to make a shot and you miss it, do you go sit down? I said, “no, you know, you don’t do that. You either try to get the rebound or you or you get it and pass it to somebody else.” He said, “You are still in the game. And that’s the way it is when you’re Christian walk. Something goes wrong. Don’t worry about it. You make a mistake. Don’t worry about it. Pick it up. Go forward. God’s still with you.” That turned me around.

Ben [00:07:31] Love that.

Sherri [00:07:32] Ben, you get that? Oh, when I heard that, I was like, I love that you don’t just sit down. What do you think about that, tell me?

Ben [00:07:40] It’s a great analogy and it’s the idea of just continuing to go up. We’re going to fail at times. We’re humans, we’re flawed, we’re going to mess up constantly. But it’s what happens after we mess up that counts. It’s what we do afterward, whether we get back in, stand up, ready to go at it again, or if we just stay on the ground and cry out for help.

Sherri [00:08:03] Yeah, Yeah, I love that. So Bob that time your life around?

Bob [00:08:07] It did. It did.

Sherri [00:08:09] So you became a little more active?

Bob [00:08:12] Yeah and more involved in youth group, etc.. And so I really felt called. I really felt I was going to be in some kind of ministry.

Sherri [00:08:19] Okay, so then you go to Bible college right?

Bob [00:08:21] I went to Bible school. It was just a small college then in. The Northwest, which was a little college northwest. It was called Bible College then, now it’s a university course.

Sherri [00:08:31] And where you going there with the idea of becoming a pastor?

Bob [00:08:34] Absolutely.

Sherri [00:08:34] Okay. So, Ben, when you say ministry, are you thinking senior pastor, youth pastor?

Ben [00:08:40] Yes I am. I think I’d probably start being a youth pastor then from there go on.

Sherri [00:08:43] Okay.

Bob [00:08:44] So I had that idea, too. Yeah. Yeah. But I’ll tell you what I met a girl.

Sherri [00:08:50] I was just going to ask you about that cutie at the registration table. Bob, I heard about her.

Bob [00:08:56] Oh, my goodness. She was the cutest thing you ever saw with a big smile, personality. And I didn’t know that she was really a high IQ. But in school, I would go into the guy who tested all the kids and check out how smart the girl was before I’d date her. I was a junior. She was a freshman.

Sherri [00:09:15] Okay

Bob [00:09:16] And she was at this particular table and was, you know, you know as you go in and registration, you’re going.

Sherri [00:09:23] Yeah, right, right, right.

Bob [00:09:24] So this was a new table and because a lot of the kids weren’t going to church and the pastors around were saying, what’s going on over there a that school, you know? How come your kids aren’t going to church? So, I thought to myself, well, I’m going to pick a church that is off limits.

Sherri [00:09:38] Okay.

Bob [00:09:39] Yeah. Because I knew that a lot of faculty actually went down there. It was downtown and the pastor was Brother Ralph or something. And they had great music. And we’d go down there. I remember I used to go down with one of my roommates who had a terrific voice and a terrific ear, and he’d sing all through a song off pitch.

Sherri [00:09:59] Oh, wow.

Bob [00:10:01] I can’t. I can’t do that.

Sherri [00:10:04] That actually takes some talent. Yeah, that takes some talent to be able to do that.

Bob [00:10:06] Anyway, so I picked out that and she said, “You can’t go there. It’s off limits.” So we had our first argument.

Sherri [00:10:11] Right there at the registration table?

Bob [00:10:11] I was having fun. I was having fun with it. So I let it go, you know, and I did my thing because I wouldn’t be going to the local churches anyway because I was on gospel teams. I played trumpet at that time and did very strong.

Sherri [00:10:23] Okay

Bob [00:10:23] And I don’t do it anymore. It’s gone.

Sherri [00:10:25] Okay, so you’re there with what was a beautiful girl at the registration tables name?

Bob [00:10:30] Ramona.

[00:10:31] What I read was Ramona went after you guys had, like, the first date maybe?

Bob [00:10:35] it was the first date.

Sherri [00:10:37] First date she said, “Oh, no, that’s my husband.”

Bob [00:10:39] No, no, She did it this way.

Sherri [00:10:41] Okay.

Bob [00:10:41] By such a date, we’ll be going study.

Sherri [00:10:43] Uh huh.

Bob [00:10:44] By such and such a date will be engaged by such and such a date will be married. And I didn’t know this.

Sherri [00:10:51] Right.

Bob [00:10:51] I didn’t know I was pegged. I thought I was rescuing her from all the other boys.

Sherri [00:10:57] Yeah, she knew what she wanted. So let me ask you this just real quick before we get on the ministry, too. Well, if there’s a couple of things Ben should be looking for in a girlfriend or not in a young woman and someone he hopes to date and have as a spouse, what should we look for? What advice would you give?

Bob [00:11:14] I would say they have to love people. And she loved people.

Sherri [00:11:18] Yeah.

Bob [00:11:19] And you’ll discover that you are different in a lot of ways. I’m a morning person. She’s an evening person. So I remember in our first pastor, somebody to come in and she’d be counseling and talking to them to one or two in the morning, and I’m trying to sleep.

Sherri [00:11:31] Yeah. But she loved people.

Bob [00:11:33] She loved people. She did. Yeah. I think that’s crucial.

Sherri [00:11:37] He’s looking for someone who loves people. What else?

Ben [00:11:40] Loves Jesus.

Bob [00:11:43] Yeah, I think. Yeah. You got to get serious on that one. Yeah. It’s not a show. It’s got to be real.

Sherri [00:11:51] It’s got to be real.

Bob [00:11:52] To be real.

Sherri [00:11:53] Yeah, she is.

Bob [00:11:55] It was real.

Sherri [00:11:56] To know that the person that just kind of show.

Bob [00:11:59] Yeah.

Sherri [00:11:59] Loves Jesus or that kind of cool thing. Yeah, but really loves Jesus. How will you know, Bob?

Bob [00:12:06] How they treat people on the street. People who are a little. Not quite with, how would they treat them?

Sherri [00:12:13] Yeah. Okay. All right. You got that Ben? All right, good. We’ll revisit in a couple of years and see what he picked up, okay?

V/O [00:12:23] From the eyes of wisdom is brought to you by Crista Senior Living and Kings schools where multi-generational living is truly valued. Crista Senior Living is situated on a beautiful campus alongside the King’s preschool through 12th grade school, allowing multi-generational living filled with meaning and purpose. Those who call these communities home can enjoy not only the benefits of diverse interactions, but they can live somewhere that actually embodies a sense of community, dynamic, diverse and full of life. To find out more about Crista Senior Living or King Schools, visit Crista.org.

Sherri [00:13:04] You’re with your girlfriend, right? And then it begins to progress and you go to her father. So you asked him, Hey, can I. I’d like to marry your daughter.

Bob [00:13:14] Yeah.

Sherri [00:13:15] Okay. Were you already? Because I know that you got your first letter from a church to pastor before you graduated.

Bob [00:13:23] Oh, this was crazy. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I graduated.

Sherri [00:13:26] Okay.

Bob [00:13:27] Yeah, well, you know I thought I’d be a youth pastor.

Sherri [00:13:30] Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. What happens, Ben, if you skip youth pastoring and straight, like Bob did here, straight to the senior…

Ben [00:13:40] Answer the call.

Sherri [00:13:41] Yeah. Just feel like God opens that door.

Ben [00:13:44] To figure out what God’s leading me.

Bob [00:13:45] You’re got go to the right church, though.

Sherri [00:13:47] Okay? This first church was the right church for you.

Bob [00:13:49] The Winthrop Church loved getting kids right out of school and teaching them how to be pastors.

Sherri [00:13:54] Tell me about, you get the letter. Okay, I’m going to do it. I think the dean was like, not before you graduate, buddy, right?

Bob [00:14:01] No, but they wanted me to candidate the night of baccalaureate or the day of baccalaureate. He said, You’re not going. Give me that letter. I had a new date. But to come to find out, they got my name from a former pastor when I was in junior high. In Poulsbo, I had this pastor and he moved and started a church in Twisp, which is the town below there, and he had a sister in law and their family in our church there and he remembered me. Well, I’d win contest and I would do this and he’d start and pick me up. We had a bus to go out in the hills and pick kids up.

Sherri [00:14:39] And he’s the one that said, Hey, think about Bob?

Bob [00:14:41] Yeah, think about him yeah

Sherri [00:14:43] Okay. So you decide to answer that the candidate for that. But before I thought it was interesting that your father in law then to be your future father in law, did he tell you to get married before you took the job?

Bob [00:14:56] Well, Ramona went to him and said, “What should we do? Should we get married before we graduate or before his senior year or during her sophomore year?” And he said, “You know, if you go into the ministry and you’re just married. You’re adjusting to two things.”

Sherri [00:15:13] Okay. You’re adjusting to new church and to marriage.

Bob [00:15:17] And you never pastored before. You got all that kind of stuff to go. And in those days, you know, Sunday morning service, Sunday night service, Wednesday night service. And you you didn’t have a string of sermons to go back to either.

Sherri [00:15:29] So he said, get married before you take the job. And you did?

Bob [00:15:32] Yeah.

Sherri [00:15:32] Okay. So now you’re in that church, First church. Tell Ben what you expect in a first church.

Bob [00:15:40] Well, we didn’t know what to expect.

Sherri [00:15:41] Yeah.

Bob [00:15:42] But we discovered that the people were really great and they provide, you know, I average $22.50 a week.

Sherri [00:15:52] Okay, Now let’s turn to Ben now. How does that sound for a salary?

Bob [00:15:57] Well, a dollar was a lot more than now.

Sherri [00:16:00] Yeah. Yeah. What are you thinking?

Ben [00:16:02] I know that God can provide all that I need. So I’m going to have to trust in the fact that I might not have it all the money all the time.

Sherri [00:16:12] Right.

Ben [00:16:13] I may not even be living off much money that I’m getting from myself. But I do know and trust the fact that God’s going to have to provide for that.

Sherri [00:16:22] Okay. And you saw God’s provision, right?

Bob [00:16:25] Absolutely. I mean, the people. Well, for example, our car and the motor oil on our car. What do we do now? And we had gone to a meeting and Mcglothlin was speaking, Assemblies of God, you know? I don’t remember the sermon, but I remember he’s saying you’re just before getting it. You know what I mean?

Sherri [00:16:48] Yeah.

Bob [00:16:48] The blessing is there, you’re just becoming. All of a sudden we go down to the post office and there’s a check for $200. It bought me a new motor.

Sherri [00:16:58] Just for getting it.

Bob [00:17:00] It was amazing.

Ben [00:17:01] What are you most thankful for over your time in ministry?

Bob [00:17:05] That God put up with me.

Sherri [00:17:06] Mhm.

Bob [00:17:07] Yeah. Use the talents I had, the abilities I had. Helped me grow. Because you have to grow. You have to go to the things you know. The people. Great people. Great people.

Sherri [00:17:22] Different churches.

Bob [00:17:23] Great people. Yeah.

Sherri [00:17:25] Before I go to the next church and some things that you did, can you tell him the story about the funeral in the blizzard?

Bob [00:17:32] Oh, yeah. The first funeral.

Sherri [00:17:33] First. This was your first?

Bob [00:17:34] It wasn’t a blizzard yet.

Sherri [00:17:36] It wasn’t?

Bob [00:17:36] There was snow, but you couldn’t get the the hearse in far enough to the grave. And the snow was coming down. So they opened the back of the hearse. And I stood there and my wife was in and a lady in church played the accordion here. So she and my wife sang a little bit and I preached.

Sherri [00:17:57] Out in the snow?

Bob [00:17:58] Out in the snow, cleaned it off my Bible and gave them the whole…

Sherri [00:18:04] Yeah. Kit and caboodle gave it to them.

Bob [00:18:07] Yeah, I had an audience. Captive audience.

Sherri [00:18:11] Well, he’s not going anywhere. You’re right. Okay, so you’re at that first church. I think you go to another church, and then at some point, you end up at a church, and it’s…I don’t know how to pronounce this, is it Spokane?

Bob [00:18:22] Yeah.

Sherri [00:18:23] Spokane. Okay. So you end up there.

Bob [00:18:25] It was a homogeneous church the guy before me had started it.

Sherri [00:18:28] Okay.

Bob [00:18:28] And so I picked it up after that.

Sherri [00:18:31] Is this where Night Walk happens?

Bob [00:18:33] That’s where Night Walk was.

Sherri [00:18:34] Listen to this, Ben. Night walk.

Bob [00:18:35] I was a member of Night Walk. It’s a program where we would of ministers of all denominations and we would hit the streets at night alone. I carried with me a roll of quarters in case I had to.

Sherri [00:18:52] In case it went down.

Bob [00:18:52] To protect myself. But I would talk to people on the streets. I would go into the nightclubs and there and the Ridpath Roof was the fanciest one. I get up there and wherever I go in the taverns and sit with them

Sherri [00:19:10] What were you doing were you just sitting there and talking to people?

Bob [00:19:11] Talk to people. Yeah. Yeah. And if someone got a little rough and, you know, in a tavern they’d say hey, leave, you know?

Sherri [00:19:21] Okay.

Bob [00:19:24] And, we had Catholic priests and everybody was in it and it was a great thing.

Sherri [00:19:31] Ben, it’s hard to comprehend at 18. But that is part of the ministry. So a lot of times in our social media era, in our just media overall era, the picture of ministry and pastoring is kind of shiny in its presentation, right? Like you have your skinny mike on, you have your little, you know, skinny jeans on and and who you are, right? And it’s oh, gosh, guys, don’t don’t take this the wrong way, but it can be performance based, right? And so what really struck me with your story, Bob, the actual grimy ness of ministry. What do you think ministry is when you say, I want to be in ministry? What do you think that entails?

Ben [00:20:18] I want to reach out to people and show them that God loves them even though they don’t love God. That there is a better life if you choose to live in. Life that is full of joy, full of goodness, full of peace, full of life.

Sherri [00:20:35] Yeah. Okay.

Bob [00:20:37] You don’t have to be perfect.

Sherri [00:20:38] Yeah. Was that odd during that time for you to be the person to be hitting the streets?

Bob [00:20:43] No.

Sherri [00:20:43] Was it?

Bob [00:20:44] No. No. I loved it.

Sherri [00:20:46] You loved it?

Bob [00:20:46] I loved it. Yeah, I did.

Sherri [00:20:49] Because your heart was just for…

Bob [00:20:51] And I would go into the clubs, too. And it was nice there.

Sherri [00:20:55] No, I heard. I heard, like, some musicians came over to the church swinging a little bit.

Bob [00:20:59] And the interesting thing was that they’d come in and they didn’t know you were supposed to sit in the front row because it nobody goes in the front row. Fine, come on down.

Sherri [00:21:11] They’d walk right down the aisle and sit in the front row. That’s when I was listening to the story, Bob. It felt so exciting, even though obviously, you know, rolls of quarters, people with guns, pimps, all that’s that notwithstanding, just it’s exciting in a book of Acts kind of way. Where like there’s just this life of the Holy Spirit that’s happening and people are being converted and you’re seeing it. That had to be exciting at that time.

Bob [00:21:42] I’d also go to the emergency wards and sit there. One day this lady came in and she’d been one of my kids second grade teacher.

Sherri [00:21:52] Uh huh.

Bob [00:21:53] And there was something really serious with her daughter had happened and she was concerned and all kinds of stuff, you know, and be able to comfort her. And yeah.

Sherri [00:22:02] The reason why I love this again Ben, and I’d love to get your thoughts on this. This is not the picture of ministry and pastor, that I think that we have right now. But that to me personally, for whatever my opinion is worth, is actual ministry because it’s the thing people don’t see. Right? So now we have, you know, people preaching on TikTok, people preaching Instagram. All of it’s wonderful, fantastic. I’m glad they’re doing it. But that in the emergency room at the tavern where the pimps are. That’s the real stuff because nobody’s going to see that work. But that work has to be done for what you said. Right? And I want people to know that God loves them even if they don’t love Him right now. Right? Was there that time where you’re like, I don’t want to do this anymore.

Bob [00:22:59] Never.

Sherri [00:22:59] Never?

Bob [00:23:00] Never.

Sherri [00:23:03] I’m going to give you this card.

Ben [00:23:10] Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Sherri [00:23:13] Ben, leaning towards ministry.

Bob [00:23:15] Good. Yeah.

Sherri [00:23:16] What is the one piece of advice you would give him? Not just for ministry, but for life? He’s going to have that card. He’s going to have that card when he takes his first pastorate job. You know that card when he takes his eighth pastorate job. He’s going to remember Bob said this. What is the one piece of advice you would give him to write down and take with him?

Bob [00:23:35] I would say just trust God. Just trust God. He’s got you there. He knows your name. And He knows what He wants to do through you. And He’ll do it if you let Him. Yeah. You don’t have to have all the answers. Don’t be afraid to ask other people for help.

Sherri [00:23:58] Hmm.

Bob [00:23:59] And prepare yourself in advance for ministry. Be prepared. And if you like. Well, of course, I would recommend Northwest University.

Ben [00:24:12] that’s one of the ones I’ve been looking at.

Sherri [00:24:13] Look at that.

Bob [00:24:14] Yeah, well, my son went there and he’s been with Young Life for 30 some years. And I remember he called me, he was graduating, and he’d had two interviews. One, the guy said, “Well, we want you to run our school, too.” well, his mom was a schoolteacher. He knew he knew nothing about that. And then the other guy guy asks him, “What do you do to reach the kids in the community?” He says, “Well, we don’t want you to worry about the kids in the community. We want you to take care of our kids.” Well, that didn’t sit too well because he had done his internship with young life.

Sherri [00:24:48] Yeah.

Bob [00:24:48] And it was a split thing because he was on the basketball team and, you know.

Sherri [00:24:51] Yeah.

Bob [00:24:52] That’s how it goes. So he calls, and I said, Well, Ky, it’s really important the first person you’re with is the right person. So, don’t just go to anything. Yeah. So he went to Young Life, and for three years he had to work and support himself to prove he could do it. He’s been with him ever since. He was an area director and regional director.

Sherri [00:25:21] I’m sure taking your advice. Trust God. God’s got the plan.

Bob [00:25:24] All the way.

Sherri [00:25:25] He’s put you there. He has the plan. Thank you so much. Bob, thank you for your wealth of information. I honor your life and all that you have done. Ben, hopefully this has been helpful for you. And that kind of gives you some more information about where you feel like God leads.

Ben [00:25:40] Oh, yeah.

Sherri [00:25:41] She’s a preacher’s kid.

Sherri [00:25:42] Yes, I am. Born and raised, baby. Thank you all for joining us and I hope you enjoyed this episode. We have more coming for you. We’ll be talking to some people who have had a life well lived and just imparting wisdom to those who are beginning their journey. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed the conversation and that you will join us next time. But before you go, I want to remind you, this is being brought to you by Crista Senior Living and Kings schools. You can find out more about these ministries at Crista.org. And please take a moment to leave us a review, by the way. We’d love to hear from you. And our final challenge to you is this. Look around you and find the eyes of wisdom in your own life. We’ll see you next time.

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