My mother was raised in a very quiet Baptist home, and she was scared to death of the Pentecostal church.   When my dad and mom were dating, my dad took my mother to a revival. She says, "They got to screaming and carrying on and hollering.   It scared me.   As long as your daddy was sitting beside me, I felt ok.   But about that time they said, 'Come on and play the piano'."   She looked up and said, "You're not going to leave me, are you?"   But he had to go to play the piano.   Mother said that near where she was sitting, somebody jumped over the pew and nearly scared her to death.

She did not have a real good introduction to Pentecost, so when I was born, I wasn't allowed to go to the Pentecostal church too often.   My Pentecostal granny didn't want me to be a Baptist.   She wanted me to be Pentecostal.   So if there wasn't any meeting at our church, she found a church that was having service and took me.

My granny didn't believe in sitting in the back.   The first time I went to church with her, I was very small, just 18 months old.   By then I was running everywhere and talking, having lots to say.   I still have.

Granny would sit me in the front row.   She was the pastor, and she'd say, "Now baby, sit right here.   Granny is going to the altar to pray."   I'm talking about really praying.   The saints of God would gather around the front before church.   They'd pound those altar benches, weep and cry and scream out to God in desperation until it would scare me.   But, as an eighteen-month-old child, I felt something when my granny went to pray.   I slipped down beside her and did what I saw her doing.   I bowed my head.

My granny used to tell how when she was praying she felt something beside her.   She looked down and saw that I had just cried a puddle of tears, having never prayed before, or been in a Pentecostal church before.   She was so amazed and shocked by it, because she knew I hadn't seen those things.   She said, "I leaned over to hear and all I could hear you saying over and over again was, 'Lord Jesus, make my mommy and daddy go to church.'   That touched my heart.   From that minute on I knew that God's hand was on you."

There had been a prophecy over my granny before I was born.   "The child your daughter-in-law is carrying right now is chosen.   He will carry the Gospel and many souls will be won to the kingdom of God, and he'll start at a very early age."