Once on my way to Platte, South Dakota, I got lost. I was driving slowly
trying to think of where I had gotten off my route--when suddenly a man in
a field on a tractor waved me to stop. He climbed over the fence, and here
it was Brother Walter Ratzlaf. He said, "How come you are here?" I
answered, "I'm lost." "Turn around," he answered, "and we will drive down
to the house."
Going to the house, there was a young lady I had known in North Dakota. He
introduced her to me as his wife. The last time I had seen them, they were
in North Dakota. Both of them were now members of the committee for the
young people's convention of North Dakota, which was to convene the
following Friday, Saturday and Sunday. George W. Green of Bertha, Minnesota
was to have been the guest speaker, but they had just gotten a telegram
from him saying that he could not be there. Brother Ratzlaf said, "The Lord
must have sent you here. Could you be our guest speaker?" I answered, "Yes,
if you want me. I am on my way home, and Brother Green was expecting to
meet me at my place, and I was planning on taking him from my home on to
the convention." Again, I could see how the Lord directed many times,
unbeknowns to me.
A lady brought her sister who was in the last stages of tuberculosis to the
camp meeting at Saint Paul Park, Minn. Wife and I prayed for the sick woman
and she was instantly healed. So they insisted that I go to their place and
hold them a meeting. I was very busy, so it was sometime before I could go.
Finally they wrote asking how much I wanted to hold the meeting. I wrote
that my carfare round trip was to be $26.50, and I thought I ought to have
that much. They answered that they would give me that much, and that much
more. I went and started the meeting on Friday evening. The folks I was to
stay with lived six miles in the country and we secured the Methodist
Church in town for the services. We had two services on Saturday, three on
Sunday, two Monday and two Tuesday. Tuesday night they left me in the
church. I had coal enough to keep me warm. As I had no money to go to the
hotel, the next morning I walked out to their place in the loose snow,
arriving about dinner time. I had dinner and that evening they took me to
the meeting and left me again. I have no recollection of how I got away
from there. It seems to me a family in town, who knew some of my relatives,
kept me for a day or two. My carfare, which I still have coming from them
as well as the rest, is the only meeting I had held in 52 years on which I
had set a price. A brother belonging to another denomination who often
attended the services and who was an agent for the Furges Kalls Woolen
Mills, Minnesota, whom I met some years later, asked me, "Did you ever get
any money from that meeting?" I replied, "I have it all coming," so he gave
me five dollars and a pair of seven dollar trousers. That experience was
one of the "all things." This was the only time I ever set any price on my
ministry.