| Two
weeks ago after my first visit to Pigeon Roost Creek, I felt the call to
return and have services in the homes. I also heard of a different and
shorter route, which I decided to try. However, after I had started, I
wished I had taken the longer route, as one of the mountains I crossed
was so steep it was necessary to hold to the underbrush to pull myself
up the steep path. I at last reached the top, where I had an old fashioned
prayer meeting, high on the mountain top overlooking a beautiful valley,
praying and singing God's praises. He was really with me, and I knew He
would go with me down into the valley where I had recently visited with
tracts and Gospels of St. John, pleading the cause of Christ.
Following the path down the
mountain I soon came into the trial over which I had traveled on my first
visit to this section, and which led through a beautiful valley and over
another mountain. Then on to the head waters of Pigeon Roost Creek.
I arrived at my destination
at about one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, had dinner with one of the
families, and then visited the different homes up and down the valley until
time for the meeting that night. The service was held in one of the homes
in the valley. At about 7:00 P.M. the folks gathered in, some coming from
their homes high up on the mountainside; others from up and down the valley.
Soon we had a good number who had walked over rough and muddy trails to
hear the saving Gospel of our Savior.
We were all crowded into
one room, some sitting on chairs, others on the beds, and some of the men
sitting on the floor. In one end of the room was a large open fireplace
in which was a roaring log fire. Most of the men and women either chewed
tobacco or used snuff, and all through the service they would take turns
in going over to the fireplace and spitting amber into the fire.
Regardless of everything
the devil could do, the Lord was there in a wonderful way. Near the close
of the meeting one lady started shouting and praising God. Then after the
meeting a man who was there, and had left his wife and children, gave me
his hand and said he was going to return to his family.
After the meeting was over
I went home with a former "moonshiner" and spent the night. He was an old-time
mountaineer about 60 years old, and had spent all his life in the mountains.
He had piercing, steely eyes which looked at one through a thick growth
of grey beard all over his face. He can best be described as "grizzled."
That night he told me many
interesting stories of his past life, how he used to make, sell and drink
liquor. He bowed his head in silence for a while, then said, "I am very
much worried about my boys. I believe they are drinking and foolin' with
liquor, but it is all my fault, for when I used to moonshine in the mountains
I would arm my boys with a shotgun or a rifle and station them on the different
mountain passes and tell them not to let any one come into where I was
running the still." He was silent for a moment, then added, "No one ever
came." No one in this world but he and the boys knew just what those words
implied.
I have prayed for this old
man and his boys, and have thought many times of this old moonshiner, how
he would arm his boys, some of them small, and take them to the different
places of concealment in the mountain. There they were hidden but could
overlook the different mountain passes and spend hour after hour, day after
day, guarding their father as he continued to make a drink that would wreck
a life, or a home, or damn some soul. Without a doubt, this early influence
was the direct cause of his own boys' wickedness and drinking.
Next morning we had a service
in a home farther down the valley, and at 2:30 in the afternoon another
meeting in still a different home, after which I started back across the
mountains to the home of a good and kind friend where I spent the night.
The Spirit of God was really in the meeting and these people are responding
to the teachings of Christ.
Please pray that God will
provide the way for a regular weekly service in this neglected section
as well as many others almost as needy. |
