What was your favorite memory of your childhood or something that stands out to you about growing up?
A: Being trained on the farm with parents that were loving, honest with integrity, hard workers; to build character and respect.
What was your dream or an ultimate goal of yours when you were younger?
A: While growing up on the farm, I always wanted to be a farmer, but time began to change on the farm. As I grew up I began to want to fly in the air force but when I was about 8-9 years old, I found out I was blind in the left eye and it could not be corrected.
What is the accomplishment in your life you are most proud of?
A: I finished high school in Morven, Georgia at the age of 18. I worked one summer in the local tobacco warehouse in Hahira (Georgia), inspecting the tobacco of a company from England that was buying the very best of 'smoking tobacco'. And my oldest brother Wallace and I went on up to Smithfield, N. Carolina following the market as it moved north. Finished there, and we came home and I went to Miami, FL, and got a job in construction work, til December, 1949, and I came home for Christmas, and daddy told me I was about to be drafted in the military, during the Korean War. I certainly did not want to go into the Army, so I joined the Air Force, and took 3 weeks of "Boot Camp" in San Antonia, Texas for my basic training and in about four weeks they shipped me to Rapid City, S. Dakota.
I was very home sick there, so far from home and not knowing anyone, but began to regularly go to church in a town called Bethel Temple Assembly of God, and I loved it there. On Good Friday in 1951 we were in a revival and I got saved.
I was beginning to grow up and become a real man. Soon I met Eleanor (my grandma) and in about two years we got married. God was now working in my life as I was filled with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in Wichita Falls in Texas in November 1951. That's where I was going to Airplane and Engine Mechanics school for seven months.
I finished the Air Force 12-1954 with an Honorable Discharge, and I felt the Lord calling me to go to Bible college in Minneapolis, Minnesota, full time for almost four years.
It's a long story in the Air Force, but the Lord was really working in my heart to go into ministry. My studies in college was pastoral theology. By the time I finished college, three boys were born. Paul was in Rapid City before I got out of the Air Force, and Bob and David were born in Minneapolis, and Andy (my dad) was born in Fitzgerald, GA as we moved there and started a new Assembly of God church. It's a beautiful building in the southern pines now.
And writing two books that I am proud of, for I've gotten many many compliments for them both.
If you had a chance to re-live a certain moment your life, what would it be? Would you want to change anything about that moment?
OH! YES! It would be the sins I've committed since I've gotten saved, and believe you, I've prayed and prayed and asked God for conviction of the Lord, which He certainly has. But, oh I've hurt and would not want to share them personally with any of them.
What is the legacy you hope to leave behind or the one thing you want people to think about when they think of you?
That I have been an honest man of integrity, that the four sons God has given Eleanor and I will lead a great life for their children. That they would all be loved by all of their friends, be saved, and filled with the baptism of the Holy Spirit setting a pattern of the life of Christ.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
I'm going to give you what I wished that some spiritual mentoring person would have given me at your age. To answer this question, I want to answer what the leading of the Holy Spirit has given to me. That is to give you and everyone that I can make contact with to do in the later part of my life. And these are the scriptures that would keep me in the perfect will of the Lord. I would encourage you to study hard of these up coming scriptures to get them in your soul, spirit, and body.
Know the correct methods of Bible study-2 Timothy 2:15
The discernment of our hearts-Hebrews 4:12
The eternal word of God-Isaiah 55:11, Psalm 119:71
Spiritual malnutrition-Isaiah 50:2, Psalm 32:8-9, Proverbs 3:5-6, Proverbs 1:33.
Now, there is so much more words of wisdom that will be of help and you get hungry for the word and study it daily.
That's all for now,
Shelby
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