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From: Margaret Biss

Words fail me when I try to tell what God has done for me throughout my entire life. But I will attempt to tell you some of the things He has brought me through. He gets all the glory. Without Him, I don't think I would be here. He loved and provided for me in every aspect of my life.

Every time I needed Him, He was there. I started to serve Him when I was 16 yrs. old. Yes, I strayed for a while, but thank God He was still there. He sent someone to lead me back to His fold.   I'm so glad He did. If you’re in that same place, He's waiting to take you back, just ask.

I never want to leave Him again. You can't hide from God, so don't waste time trying.

On Dec. 22, 1976 , I had a bad accident on our farm while my family and I were cutting firewood. I immediately thought “My God, I'm dying.” It was a horrible feeling but then I thought, “God is here.“ Although I had lost a lot of blood (3 pints), my scalp, and my ears, I did not lose consciousness. This was by the grace of God. I was put in our car and started for the hospital. We met the ambulance in Whipple Ohio and they finished transporting me to Marietta Memorial. There the doctor on duty said “I can't do anything for her.” After much discussion about what to do with me, one suggested they send me to Columbus. Then Praise God, a nurse in ER told them there was a plastic surgeon in Parkersburg. So, that's where I went.

Three days later, I awoke and my head was completely bandaged except for my mouth. I had over 600 stitches in my head. The scalp did not grow. Several days later, I had another operation with skin grafts, which did not grow, so 2 weeks later more skin grafts, and I was suppose to get more grafts, but I thought,   “No I'll let God do it.” Thank God He did. The grafts were worse than the accident.

In 1983 I developed a disease called Addisons, at that time, a little known disease. It's an autoimmune disease. I lost 50 lbs couldn't eat; lost part of my memory was losing my muscles and walked with a cane. I became dehydrated every couple of weeks. After being passed from one doctor to another, seven different ones in all, even a psychiatrist, they sent a young doctor, (an endocrinologist) who had not been in practice very long. He came to my hospital room door and said, “I know exactly what's wrong with you and I'll have you dancing within a week.” I said, “I don't dance!” He laughed and true to his word, I was home within a week and on my way to recovery.

I found out later. I was one of his first patients, as he started in 1983. Could this be Gods work? I think so. Praise God for sending him. I believe God performs healing in different ways. I thank God for the doctors I have, because He allowed them to gain the knowledge and wisdom they have. As long as we're on planet earth, we'll have trials and sickness, but we serve a God who loves us and will take care of us. Trust in Him first!

In 1986 my 32 year marriage ended, and if this has ever happened to you, you know the heartbreak, and worthlessness you feel and all the questions that clog your mind with thoughts of survival. But God was there!   So were the Bentley's, our pastor and his wife! I know that the older I get I love and appreciate God more. I depend on Him more and more. I am more thankful for His love and mercy in my life. I know without Him, I would not be happy, and I desire your prayers that I'll never leave Him, because I know He will never leave me. He will always be there if you let Him.

From: Russ Walters

I was born on February 20, 1959 . Number seven of a total of nine kids, seven boys and two girls. My oldest brother, Gary, died when he was born. I know this is probably just too original for a starting point, but I  say that to explain I had pneumonia when I was born and believe the Lord in His mercy and love allowed me to live. Shortly after being born, my parents returned to the hospital with me and I remained there until the pneumonia cleared up. Dalzell, the center of my universe for the most part, was where I grew up and lived until about the age of twenty. The population within the considered borders of Dalzell set the record of about sixty-four people during the late sixties or early seventies.

 In the early sixties we had one grocery store, but it burned down and the owners later moved out of town. I lost my driving privileges while driving my tricycle across the street to the store one day. It happened at the same time a car was coming through town and, well my parents and several other people saw it happen. The jury immediately convened and I was found guilty of failing to yield. I really don’t remember the sentencing or punishment, but can imagine it was something that changed my driving habits. Another act of the Lord’s grace and mercy.  

In our home there was my grandmother (my dad’s mom), my parents, and the remaining six boys and two girls. We originally lived in a four room house at the north end of town. Yes, a four room house. It was my grandmother’s home and we lived there until I was about two. Then we moved to the south end of town into the new home my parents had built. This house had four bedrooms downstairs and two upstairs. There were three very large rooms at the south end of the house, the kitchen, living room and what we called “The Big Room”. It was more like “Dad’s Place” or the study. The upstairs had two “part-time bedrooms” but was not heated so there were still some crowding issues at times. We also only had one bathroom, but at least this one was inside and we all managed to work around that.  

We were a close family, but not an expressively close family, if that makes sense. I know we cared for one another and loved one another, but the outward expression of that care and love was not displayed until later years, when we had all left home. I first began telling my mom that I loved her after starting my first job, getting a paycheck, mechanically giving her twenty dollars each payday and just as mechanically saying, “I love you”. I didn’t tell my dad that I loved him until he had his first heart attack. He was lying in the hospital bed with all the medical attachments surrounding him. The room was rather shadowed and dark with only the motor noises from the life monitoring devices. His eyes were closed and there was no one around when I quietly walked into the Intensive Care room. I seldom could look directly at my dad. He could be one of the meanest men I ever knew, but he was my dad and I loved him very much. There was no movement or any indication of breathing going on and I wondered for a moment if he was even alive. I was watching my dad, this big man lying quiet and still on a hospital bed, as time seemed to stop yet ever so loudly tick on within that room.   The blankets told me he was covered up, warm and as comfortable as possible. The monitors might have been trying to say he’s still alive. The scents and sounds throughout the hospital, arriving, passing and fading, played with the emotions like a mind slinky. Now standing next to his bed, I reached out to touch his right hand. We were both startled for a moment, but he opened his eyes, raised his head and quietly said, “Oh, hi”. We talked for a while, mostly about what the doctors and nurses had said. He asked about work and how things were going and talked about mom being in and out of his room. During a quiet moment, when there seemed to be nothing else to say, I told my dad that I loved him. I was somewhere in my mid twenties and dad was somewhere in his mid to late fifties. He was not use to hearing those words and they were just as difficult for me to say. With little hesitation though and with the beginnings of trembling and tears, he said, “I know.” We were both now on a road we had never been on before and neither of us knew which way to go from that point.  

My family was not Christian, or at least we never claimed that title or lived that life style. My grandmother, who lived with us until her death in 1994, attended the local church in Dalzell. When I was about five or six years of age, I attended church with my grandma for several months, I can remember the clean yet school book odor of the church. I remember the song leader using his “mouth harp” or “tuner” to try and get everyone on key and ready to begin singing at the same time. Each Sunday was a day I would smell the scent of wine when the Communion plates were passed and the adults would participate. Much of this I did not understand. Later in life I’d learn the meaning and importance of Communion, baptism, giving, prayer and many, many other great and precious promises God had to offer.

When I was fifteen, I really fell in love for the first time. At least that’s what my fifteen year old mind thought. Her name was Wanda and she attended church with the Margaret Biss family. Margaret and her family lived about a mile past Dalzell and because of a simple invitation from Wanda, I began going to church with the Biss family. I still did not understand everything, partly because most of my interest was in a girlfriend. Still, I learned and knew I needed to let the Lord make some changes in my life. In January 1975, I experienced receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost (look in your Bible, Acts, Chapter 2), was shortly thereafter baptized in Jesus name and began attending church three or more times a week with the Biss family. Margaret and her family were so very kind to me. We hardly ever missed a church service and my life suddenly had some very precious and wonderful people engrafted into it.

Sometime after turning sixteen and knowing all there was to know about life, church became less important, girlfriends changed and other pleasures eventually won out. I slowly began missing church, eventually quit going all together and returned to a typical life of a teenager living in the country. The town of Dalzell was a town that seemed to have people come and go, then return again. Many people seemed to be drawn back to our small town, but I never knew what the attraction was. Maybe because it was home and there’s just no place like home. Dorothy did have that part right.

As time continued to pass, my “Mayberry” also changed. Being a teenager and smoking cigarettes was a “cool” thing to do as well as sit around the older neighbors homes and listen to their stories as they drank Blue Ribbon and Wild Irish Rose. Now and then the local “teens” could sneak a drink or two, steal a cigarette or save some money so we could “roll our own”, if that’s what we could afford at the time.  

One pair of my older friends was named, “Bud” and “Mouse”. They were a couple of guys with a small camper. They’d move it to different locations in the neighborhood and live at those locations as time and owner permitted. In the country a neighborhood consists of more than a few blocks covered with houses, garages and alleys. Our blocks stretched for miles at a time and were bordered by county and township roads.   Bud and Mouse were the first to “turn me on” to marijuana. I didn’t smoke it with them at first, but they gave me my first “joint”. I walked away from their trailer with the marijuana rolled in a plastic bag. What was I going to do with it? Would I really smoke it? What would it do to me? How would I feel? I’ve always been a thinker and spent time walking back towards town considering what I had, how cool I might or might not be and how dead I would be if my dad knew about it. I walked along the county road that passes through Dalzell, north of the town, to a place where there were no homes, but only turns at each end and space between. The turns caused passing cars to travel slow and the space between the turns allowed time to hide anything someone should not be doing. The abundance of trees along the roadway was also an advantage. It was at that “secret place” that I smoked my first joint of marijuana. This was the beginning of seven years when I lived to wake up and smoke a joint. I continued my walk up the road to the local grocery store. I remember stepping into the store by taking about a twelve inch step when only a six inch step was required. Ernie, the store owner, took a funny look at me, but only said “hello”. I learned later how “glassy” the eyes become when “stoned”. Making whatever purchase I did that day, I left the store and began the half-mile walk back to town. Just out the road from the store was a neighbor’s home.   I walked to their front porch with plans on seeing someone, but that someone was not at home. I sat on the front steps and talked to another “Ernie” for a few minutes.   This wasn’t a hallucination or mirage. This other Ernie actually lived there, it just happened to be the house nearest to the local store. I think I had stopped there to talk to Brian, but Ernie, the step dad, said Brian was not there. After talking to Ernie for a few minutes, I began walking back across their yard to the roadway. I had walked for what seemed several minutes, turned around to take a look at the house I just walked from and realized I was only half way across their yard. This amused me as I continued to walk for awhile, pause, turn around and see I was not getting anywhere too fast, and begin laughing. This was the greatest thing this teenager had ever felt. (Forgetting what the Lord had done for me a few years earlier)   Time seemed to slow down to almost a stand still and in a small town where time never seemed to pass, this new feeling turned into a great way to pass time.  

It was about this same autumn that we were to return to school for another year. Our Junior and Senior High School bus ride began around ten after seven in the morning and ended about forty miles later and at about twenty after eight. Dalzell was in a geographical corner where three school districts met. For a year or two the toss up was between Frontier, Skyvue and Fort Frye . My oldest brother graduated from the Frontier District, but the rest of us ended up under the Fort Frye District when they took Dalzell under their care. My first day on the bus that year  I made an embarrassing blunder. But I didn’t discover it until later that same day. Our bus driver normally had the girls set on one side and the boys set on the other side of the bus.   This was known by regular students year after year, but this one morning I sat in front of someone new and apparently not aware of this “on-going” rule. I turned around, glanced at this long haired person and told “her” that the bus driver will probably “make you go to the other side of the bus”. Nothing was answered and nothing further was said by me or this new student. The embarrassment came later in the day when I learned this new “she”, was actually a “he”. His name was Paul and we later became best of friends in a friendship that would last for several years.  

Through these several years of our friendship, we did what was needed to get through school and did our best to get high each day. Marijuana was my life and my god. I was into the music of the sixties and early seventies, letting my hair grow, and wearing the clothes that let everyone know I was a “hippie”. I use to have this flat, round, polished stone that was polished black and had a hole through the center of it. On one side of the stone was painted a gold marijuana leaf. I ran a leather string through the hole in this stone and wore it tightly around my neck. Not tight enough to cut off the circulation, but only to make sure the gold leaf was always facing outward. It was my statement to the rest of the world; A statement that helped no one and changed no one’s life.

Once in the dead of winter, a cold February day, Paul and I wanted to get high, but neither of us had anything to smoke. We both had a car, but the snow on the road made it too treacherous to try and drive the forty mile round trip. So, we did the next best thing (that’s what we thought at the time, I guess), we rode his Yamaha 250 Motorcycle into town. I froze out at about the half way point and waited at an Exxon Station for him to return from Marietta . That’s how determined and committed I was to the life I wanted to live. Marijuana was the only drug we lived for from day to day, but we also did our share of smoking hash, angel dust and several years into this season of fun, I had tried LSD a few times. We’d been through a few car wrecks, nothing serious, we hitchhiked many, many times and put thousands of miles on his parents Subaru. I’m not bragging, but only building a case for the everlasting grace of the Lord.

I did eventually move from Dalzell and to the outskirts of Marietta . It was actually along the Ohio River between Marietta and Reno , into a small mobile home that I rented for a year or so. It was at this temporary home that I met my wife, Sandell. I lived there by myself for some time and one day, during December of 1979, another friend named Rick, stopped by with a female friend. I thought it was just a casual visit until Sandell just up and said she needed a place to stay for a few weeks until she could leave for the Marines. She said she was having problems at home with her dad and brothers and Rick brought her by to see if I could let her stay at my place for the few weeks. I was shocked, speechless and dumbfounded, but we talked about it and in the end she stayed for the two weeks.  

When the two week period was over, I took Sandell to where a Greyhound bus would pick her up and take her on to the Marines. We wrote to one another during that time. We missed each other and after about three weeks, she was out of the Marines and back “home”. Well, it wasn’t quite that easy. She called to give her flight plan and when she would be landing at Wood County Airport . I had a 1973 Ford Econoline van that was carpeted in the back and finished with a bed and bench seat. It was a true hippie’s dream vehicle. The day Sandell was going to fly in also brought in about six inches of snow. Rick and I drove to the airport and sat there for eight hours waiting for the flight to come in. I did not have much gas in the van so we could not come and go as we learned of the flight delays and cancellations. Cell phones did not exist then, but we learned through pay phones and airport service that Sandell had made it to the airport in Pittsburgh . We had no idea how she was going to get from Pittsburgh to Parkersburg , so we just waited while we watched the snow and the blue runway lights.  

I think it was around ten that evening when we noticed some reflections in a window and saw Sandell come through the door at the airport. She said a group of people decided to all pitch in and rent a taxi or limo so they could make it home. That would have been a cold, winters day in February of 1980.  

We lived in that mobile home for several months and we both continued our “high life”. One day that summer she received a letter from her brother Wade. He was in the Navy and stationed in San Diego at the time. It was a letter she never expected to receive from him and Wade said many things she never thought she would hear him say. He wrote in this letter that he loved Jesus, that he had received the Holy Ghost and that he loved her and was praying for her. I knew what he was talking about.   The Ghost of a Christian Past was letting me know He was still there. I explained a little to Sandell of what her brother was talking about and let her know that if she ever wanted to see what he was talking about, I knew where the right church was.  

We were married later that year in September at Lynch United Methodist Church .   Our first child, our son Adam, was born in November of 1981 and we were ready for divorce in September of 1982. Everything a couple hopes for and holds to came to a sudden halt. We had both made our mistakes, had our differences and hatred for one another, but we did have a son and somewhere inside, I knew what I was going to have to do if saving my marriage meant enough to me. Sandell had left us and went to the sunny south where she felt the environment, climate and company was going to be better. This was on about a Tuesday and on Wednesday she called to say she wanted to come home. We had both had enough of each other and I wasn’t eager or willing to just throw the door open and say, “Come on in”.  

My parents were married for almost 58 years before my dad passed away. My mom still wears her wedding ring although dad’s been gone since May of 2005. I know that (still wearing the wedding ring) might be a common thing, but staying married that long was far from common in 1982 and even more uncommon today. Some “friends” told me that Sandell had made her own bed now and she would have to sleep in it. I know that could have been the easy answer, but that’s not why I married and that’s not the example my parents had lived. I knew where I was going to have to go, who I was going to have to talk to, and if I was truly willing, knew I’d have to do whatever it would take to mend our marriage.  

Sandell wanted to come home, but I knew that just coming home would not have worked. Her brother, Wade, lived in Millington , Tennessee at this time. He had married and was going to church there. We decided to meet at her brother’s home to see how we might salvage what seemed to be unsalvageable. I was scheduled to go to work that evening for the graveyard shift, afterwards there was a four day time off period. I called my employer to let them know that I would not be in, packed clothes for Adam and myself and headed out the next morning in our 1976 Ford Maverick for Millington .  

Wade and Cricket (his wife, her actual name is Teresa) were very kind and would have done anything for us. The first available church service coming up was that Friday night. It was a youth service and the Lord used his presence and some very kind ladies to talk with Sandell, pray with her and talk to her about repentance, baptism in Jesus’ name and receiving the Holy Ghost. Wade wanted to baptize her right then and there, but Sandell said she was going home to be baptized there. We did return home, home to Marietta and began attending services at New Life United Pentecostal Church .   Sandell was baptized by immersion in water in the name of Jesus and she also received the Holy Ghost. This was in the fall of 1982 and we’ve been members of New Life Church since then.  

We just celebrated our 26 th year of marriage this past September, 2006. We’ve had many, many trials, arguments, failures, good times, bad times, sad times, mountains and valleys, but the Lord has been there every moment! We have our son, Adam, as well as two daughters, Sarah and Rachael. God continues to keep us and cover us with his presence, grace and mercy. He’s been more than we could ever imagine and he’s done more than we could ever ask. The Lord does prosper, but there are different measurements and types of prosperity. The more important ones are those we are promised on the other side of this journey.

We have a wonderful church family in Marietta and around the world. Our prayer is that our natural family, friends and acquaintances will become part of the Family of God.

“Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord” II Peter 1:2

God Bless.

Russ Walters