This book is roughly in chronological order, so it begins with first steps. Maybe I worry too much, but if you start to feel impatient and skip ahead, I won’t be offended. After all, journeys tend to start small. Faith journeys are no different. In my case, the first steps occurred when I was very young. In those days my family lived in Bingen (pronounced “Binjun”), Washington. It sits on the banks of the Columbia River across from Oregon and the scenic Mount Hood.
On a cool day in January, 1957, a train pulled up to a depot. It was a scenario I would see again as I grew older. After a train pulls up, a conductor grabs the handrail and swings to the ground. He then retrieves wood steps from the depot and places them next to the train. On this day, he helped a young woman and two small boys into the arms of her waiting husband. At eighteen months of age, I was the younger boy.
The railroad depot in Bingen, Washington as it appears today.
Earlier, my parents graduated from Northwestern Bible College in Minneapolis where they met. After they married, they 11
learned of a small group in the state of Washington seeking a pastor. In response, as my father tells it, he booked a train west.
The group then drafted a charter and chose the name, “Grace Baptist Church.” Not long after, my mother, brother, and I also made the trip. Within days, we moved into a small house near the train tracks, between the local sawmill and the river.
Grace Baptist first met briefly in a building on Bingen's main street and then moved into a large house. Some of my earliest memories include walking a few blocks on warm summer evenings to services. At those meetings, I recall annoying pats on the head, and playing in the back with my older brother Steve.
During one service we were so loud that our mother pleaded with us, promising ice cream if we behaved. The gimmick worked, and visits to an ice cream stand became a regular Sunday evening treat.
However, to us kids, the most important thing in our lives was not church – it was trains – since trains ran past right in front of our house. We would often watch them go by in amazement.
Then, in 1959 Oregon observed their 100-year Centennial celebration of statehood. My grandparents visited from Wisconsin, and we attended. To a four-year old it was amazing.
Steve and I were in awe when we rode a tour train, and for months afterward, our little red wagon became that train. We would pull it around our yard so often that we wore trails into the front and back lawns – to the frustration of our parents.
It was as we pulled the wagon that I recall my first discussion about faith. You see, in those days, Steve and I did not think faith was complicated. But on this day we strongly disagreed about a memory. After much arguing we finally agreed that someday in heaven we would learn who was right.
We also believed that God could do anything. At some point, our parents led us in a simple prayer to ask Jesus into our hearts. For more than a decade, that prayer was the depth of my relationship with God. But even today I look back at those experiences as important first steps in a spiritual journey.
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Grace Baptist Church moved from Bingen to White Salmon, Washington, into this Grange Hall building, also known as the Odd Fellows Hall. In 1960 it was white.
Some have questioned whether little children can be saved at such a young age, yet Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3). Little children simply believe and trust. Sometimes I think we adults try to complicate the path to God.
When I was five, the church moved up the mountain to the town of White Salmon. Our family followed, moving into a house on Spring Street. Services were held in the Grange Hall, also known as the Odd Fellows Hall. I can't believe I still remember those names. On Sunday mornings we attended Sunday School, where we learned Bible stories and songs including, "Jesus Loves Me," and “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” After morning services, my brother and I would approach the pianist and ask for candy. She would invariably dig a couple of Hershey's kisses out of her purse. We thought it was wonderful until Mom suggested 13
that begging for candy was rude. After that, we no longer asked.
But that wasn't the only treat church offered. We also discovered that gum wads from the undersides of pews are quite tasty!
Grace Baptist Church today as it appears in Google Streets.
Early memories
Winters in White Salmon were milder than the Midwest where I now live. Still, one blizzard dumped so much snow that I couldn't see over the edges of our shoveled walk – an experience I thought was incredible. The snow could also make driving on mountain roads treacherous. My dad would put chains on the tires
– a practice I have not seen in the Midwest.
One of the more treacherous roads ran up the side of a mountain overlooking a lagoon. Steve and I were afraid of it, and would beg our parents to avoid it, but we often lost the battle when it was the shortest way home. I was still too young to understand how to release worries and place them in God's hands.
In 1961 we moved to Washington Street, and our house faced south. Through the front window we had an amazing view of the beautiful snow-capped Mount Hood across the river. It was a view my brother and I simply took for granted.
When I started first grade, my teacher's name was Mrs.
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Logan. I recall her insistence that we cut smooth curves with scissors, and I remember her frustration – and mine – that I seemed unable to grasp the meaning of words on paper.
Obviously, her efforts paid off, and sentences like "see spot run" soon came alive. Then, before second grade, my dad accepted a position as associate pastor at Harbor Baptist Church in Hoquaim, Washington, a city southwest of Seattle and close to the Pacific shoreline. So we moved.
All of this may not seem important to a spiritual journey, but journey's often begin small. Soon little miracles would come that would dramatically shape my young faith. •
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Protected in the storm
Second grade began in Hoquaim, Washington, a town on Grays Harbor, not far from the Pacific Ocean. By this time Steve and I had younger siblings – Karen and Keith. One Friday after dark, the chore of washing dishes was mine. As I toiled over the sink, a glance out the window revealed trees and bushes whipping wildly in the wind. When I ran excitedly to the living room, my mom said I should stop imagining things and go back to washing dishes. Just as I began to protest, the lights went out. Thankfully, the dishes were forgotten.
The next few hours were frightening as high winds buffeted the house. Our dad was across town at a church meeting, so Mom took charge by lighting candles and leading us in a prayer for safety. Then we all huddled on the couch watching a large picture window bow dangerously inward only a few feet from us. Fortunately with our prayers and God's grace the window held.
By sunrise the wind subsided. It was only then that my mom realized the danger we had been in from the bowing window. With all the wind noise we hadn’t heard an upstairs window break which was directly above the picture window.
Mom regretted not moving us to safety away from the window but expressed thankfulness that God had protected us. Was it a miracle? I wasn't sure, but for me this became my first awareness that God can answer prayer.
Soon my dad made it home, and told of power lines and trees down everywhere. In addition to our broken window, our chimney had fallen, and many trees on our street were uprooted.
And then, of great interest to my brother and I, a two-story house about a block west of ours had become a single story house when its lower level collapsed!
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A scene from Newberg, Oregon after the Columbus Day storm of October 12, 1962. (National Weather Service photo posted on Wikimedia Commons)
Although the storm was originally called Typhoon Freda, it came to be known as the Columbus Day storm. Thanks to the modern wonder of the Internet, I have learned that it has been called “the most powerful windstorm to strike the Pacific Northwest in the 20th Century.” (Wolf Read, Phd., 2018).
Pennies from Heaven
This storm was just the first of two faith lessons in the same month. Not many days later, the Cuban Missile Crisis also required prayer. One Friday afternoon teachers at our school announced we might soon find Russia had conquered America, replacing all our teachers with communist soldiers 18
To a seven-year-old this seemed really bad, so it was time for action. On Sunday morning I put my new-found faith to work, asking God to send money to buy weapons to defend the United States. I even set a time limit, making it clear that I expected an answer by bedtime!
By the end of the evening service my prayers hadn't been answered. But then a small miracle happened. As I was walking toward the exit, a younger kid asked me if I would like some money! I knew this was the answer to my prayer, and I said
“Yes!” But then he only placed eight cents in my hand.
I knew eight cents wouldn't buy tanks, but even though it didn't seem like much, I think my inability to explain away this simple answer to prayer helped keep me from the brink of spiritual idiocy as a teen when I was tempted to buy into the faithless view that God isn’t real, or that prayer is powerless.
Second grade was also the year that Sunday School lessons began sinking in. Basic life choices became front and center, such as whether to live selfishly, or to live for God and others. The temptation was to simply toss out faith, and lie, cheat, and steal, or do whatever advances one's own cause. Of course the other option was to treat others as you would wish to be treated.
A 1962 photo of the Hatch family dressed for church. Shown are my parents, Duane and Lois, with myself (smirking), and siblings Keith in my father’s arms, Karen, and Steve.
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In the end, the Golden Rule was persuasive. I decided that Christ's command to "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" contained simple logic that is hard to deny. I suspect the paths of many other lives have been altered – and improved –
by those few words. As years passed I became aware that many reject or ignore the Golden Rule altogether and choose to live lives filled with selfish ambition, arguments, fighting, rants and discord, so I am glad for those early Sunday School lessons. •
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Grandfathers' angels
In the third grade, during the Christmas break, we moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin to live with my maternal grandparents.
My grandfather, John Longard, didn't talk much, but when he did it always seemed to be with wit and wisdom. It was then he told a story that had a lasting impact on me.
The story took place in the fall of 1947 after he had purchased an Indian motorcycle. He soon ran it off the road into a ditch near home. The result was a broken back and other injuries.
He then found himself floating up and away from his lifeless body and watched from above as an ambulance crew arrived and loaded his body onto a stretcher. Soon he was met by an angel who took his hand and asked if he was ready to die. His thoughts went to his family, and how they depended on him, so he replied in the negative. Suddenly he found himself back in the ambulance in great pain. Later, the doctor told him he was lucky to be alive, because the accident had bruised his spinal chord.
I found this story to be memorable, and assumed it was an extremely rare experience. It also seemed to be strong evidence that angels and Heaven were real. But not long after hearing this story I was surprised to hear something similar. It happened after we had moved to Illinois and took a trip to Phoenix to visit my paternal grandparents. Richard Hatch had spent a lifetime farming, but now was semi-retired. Unfortunately, he was suffering from emphysema, a disease his doctor said resulted from farming dust, since he had never smoked.
He told how one night he was having difficulty breathing, and was in torment. Suddenly, he found himself floating above his body in the darkness of his bedroom, and he was totally free of pain. He recalled being amused that even though the room was pitch black, he could still see his body as if in daylight. Then he floated up through the ceiling into a long dark tunnel toward a 21
A page from my John Longard's journal describing details and medical costs of his motorcycle accident.
bright light in the distance. Along the way, he was met by an angel who asked if he was ready to die. Like my other grandfather, after thinking of his family, he said he was not ready.
Then, also like my other grandfather, he found himself back in his body, again in pain.
At the time, it seemed my grandfathers’ stories were proof that the Kingdom of Heaven was real. Years later, when the book
"Life after Life" was published, everyone else became aware such experiences were relatively common. But for me, when I went through a crisis as a teenager, my grandfather's stories, along with the earlier answers to prayer, helped me not discard my faith. •
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