UPDATE ON HOME SCHOOLING AND FAMILY

UPDATE ON HOME SCHOOLING AND FAMILY

Sam attended Landmark Christian High school his last two pre college years. That meant Shirley had to stay home with him as I traveled. Home sickness took its toll on me. In addition, my Dad had to have open heart surgery in 1998. The surgery really did not work. Dad lived 8 more years but his health was terrible and it took a great deal of emotional energy out of me. In fact it took more than I knew at the time. I was still preaching over 40 revivals a year and squeezing many other activities in between.

Seven Thursdays in the fall of 1998 I would take dad to the hospital where they would place a needle between his ribs and draw fluid off his left lung. They could not deaden the area and he would feel like a knife was pushed into the lung. He would shake as I held his arms and kept him from falling forward. Of the seven trips to the north side of Atlanta, more than one trip took all day because we waited for the heart surgeon to slip out of surgery to deal with dad. Sometimes the surgeons could not get away and we waited all day. Mother was exhausted and I was grieving to see a man who had once been so strong going down physically.

In addition, I was having chest pains and was going to hospital or doctors on Fridays to find out what was wrong with me. After heart, gall bladder GI and numerous other tests a diagnostic doctor asked me what I had done the last three weeks. I said preached three revivals. He said, “Come back next week, and bring your wife.”

The next Friday came after an exhausting week of revival. I drove across Atlanta. The Doctor came into the exam room and said. You have scars in your lung from a fungus you picked up in India on a mission trip. But I will ask your wife some questions and then I will tell you what I think is wrong. He asked, “Tell me what your husband has done for the last three weeks and give me the 24 hour picture. By the time she finished telling about being up at six a.m. going to bed at 2 am with all the school programs meals out , pastors meetings where I spoke, radio broadcasts, TV interviews, speaking at night, two nights I did not go to bed because of emergency office work, being broke down on the side of the rode and towing the travel trailer, He said, “My God, I am a medical doctor on call 24 hours a day and have never had that difficult of a schedule in my entire career. You have done this, twenty weeks in a row. If you do not slow down you will collapse. Stop doing public school assemblies and throw your dummy in the trash can, stop doing radio and TV interviews.. Start eating right, exercise in the morning spend some time with the pastor and his staff at lunch. Then take a two hour nap before the evening service.”

I went on two more years before I collapsed. I then began to take his advice. After a twenty week run in the Spring of 2,000 I had to miss two nights sleep. In addition to my dad’s illness, my hot water heater burst and flooded my office. I had to clean it up and get it dried out and rush to my next revival. Then later, during this year of drought, my sewage backed up and flooded the office again. This took even more work to clean up which meant missing sleep so I could go on to my next revival.

Sam graduated from Landmark and served an internship with me. He took me to this next revival. I called the pastor and told him that I was feeling so bad that I was thinking about going to the hospital and canceling the meeting on Friday before revival started on Sunday. He said, “come on Saturday we will have the electricity hooked up for you and you can spend the day in bed in air conditioning.” Sam drove me over. The electiric hookup did not work and I spent much of the day in 102 degree heat lying in the shade on the ground. It took 8 hours to get the hookup. Sunday morning I could not get out of bed. I made it to the service and 12 people joined. At lunch the pastor was angry at me because the people joined when I preached and he had been working on them 12 years. I told him that it was not my fault, God did it and that is the purpose of having an evangelist in anyway.

Sunday evening more people got right and joined the church. Monday morning I did 5 radio broadcasts, spoke at the local pastors conference and did an elementary school program. By the time we ate three meals, it was time for me to do ventriloquism for thirty minutes before children’s night at the revival. I had asked the pastor not to have much music because the children would already been under the word of God through the dummy thirty minutes and needed a shorter service especially since we had guests from the school where Homer and I performed that day. Not to mention the fact that I needed to see a doctor. Instead they had the longest song service they could, even inviting unscheduled folks to come up and sing. Evangelist Frank Shivers says that revival is not the time to invite the untalented to sing. I might add because they are going to talk 15 unnecessary minutes about something that has nothing to do with children’s night in a revival service before they sing.

Even more were saved. At the close of the service I sat down on the front row. A father brought his 12 year old daughter over say that she wanted to be saved and asked me to lead her to the Lord. As I did a 17 year boy came over and told me he wanted to be saved. I asked Sam to lead him to the Lord. He did. When we finished I still could not get up. The pastor said, “You need to go home, don’t you? I said, “I do.” He said , “I will finish preaching the meeting and we will send you a great offering.” He did not send a great offering it hardly covered my expense.

Sam hooked up the truck and trailer and took me home. Tuesday morning with the air conditioning wide open and a fan blowing on me, even the palms of my hands were sweating. I called and canceled the revival to begin the following Sunday. The first in over 1,000 meetings, I was no longer the “iron man” of evangelists.

My wife said, “Let’s go the doctor.” I said, “I do not feel good enough.” She said, “You are setting there worried sick because you cannot preach. You think if you do not preach you will not eat. God has taken care of us for 27 years and he is still providing!” Shirley handed me an envelope. The top had been opened with a letter opener. I reached in and pulled out a check between my thumb and fore finger. It was a check for $3,000 from my CPA to our ministry. The front check stuck to my thumb and the second check from her husband stuck to my forefinger, it was $3,000 from his building business. God was teaching me that He is in control. I was depending on myself to get crowds to the church from the public school, and to provide our livelihood. Now, I would change my lifestyle and trust the Lord and his people to bring in the lost. When they do it the converts stick a whole lot better.

I sold the trailer and Shirley learned ventriloquism. She travels with me and we stay in motels and she now uses a dummy named Joy.

Sam Fordham answered the call to preach; my dad won a car , as a door prize and gave it to Sam. It carried him through two years of High school, four years of college and through nearly three years of seminary where it was retired by flood waters.

Sam met his precious wife Katie King at North Greenville University where Sam led an impact team from the school. While there they had such a good meeting one weekend that his impact team received the largest offering any team had received from a church up to that time.

Sam and Katie were married and then moved to Louisville, KY to Southern Seminary, Katie Taught elementary School at Bardstown, Kentucky for one year and at Lebanon Junction, Kentucky. They lived in Elizabethtown, KY the last two years. Sam served one year as interim youth minister At FBC Bardstown. Sam’s last year at seminary, he preached revivals and did an internship at a church in E-town. Sam graduated from Southern Seminary with a M.Div. degree and is Pastor of the Rehoboth Baptist Church in Piedmont, South Carolina. They have one son, Micaiah Keith Fordham. He is an absolute delight.