Testimony of Brother Lonnie Jenkins (Part 1)

August 13, 2003

While you’re standing, open your Bibles, if you would, to I [II—Ed.] Corinthians, chapter 1, two verses. Chapter 1, verse 3 and 4, “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” I want to read that again. I still heard a lot of pages turning. To me that is significant. Verse… Did I say I Corinthians? Oh, no wonder I heard pages turning. It’s II Corinthians. I’m sorry. No wonder I heard pages turning. Second Corinthians, chapter 1. I’m sorry. I marked on my little tab sticking up here “I Corinthians,” and then I turned to II Corinthians because that’s where I had the tab. Sorry about that. Second Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 3, “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (There’s an understanding of the Godhead, right there.), the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” So how can you be a comfort to somebody else if you haven’t learned how to receive and give comfort from God? Amen.  Romans, chapter 8. These are very familiar verses that are read many, many, many times but it ties in, so I want to read it again. Romans 8, starting at verse 27, “And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he (makes) intercession for the saints according to the will of God. (For) we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we… say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered (up, delivered) him up for us all, how shall be not with him also freely give us all things (all things)?”  Lord Jesus, take the service, bring glory to Yourself. Edify Your children. Put the right words in my mouth and the right understanding in the hearts of the saints. In Jesus’ Name. Amen. You may be seated.

For me, this is very, very difficult. I have been asked many times to give my testimony. And for those of you that don’t know me, this may be a very boring service. And, but for those of you that love me, well then, you may enter in with me a little bit.  I found that in going over notes, that, I felt I couldn’t go strictly the spiritual side and still have full understanding. In that, I could start with where I was when Jesus grabbed a hold of me and took me from there. But I don’t think you could appreciate what a hard “nut” I was to crack when He got a hold of me unless you know a little bit about my background, because it’s not the usual. I wasn’t a criminal. I didn’t, you know, go in and out of juvenile hall and these kind of things. I was a different kind. I was the kind that Jeff said, “Good is the enemy of perfect.” And so, I had that somewhat, not entirely (I was no angel), but somewhat it was kind of that way.  This is going to be part one. And I’m going to start working on the natural side, and I hope we can get up to the point, at least, where God starts dealing with me in my life. And when you’ve got 70 years behind you, it’s hard to do it in two nights. So, that’s the direction I’m going to go. And what I determined this afternoon was, is as I go into my time at that time, I want to try and speak it to you with the enthusiasm that I had about it at that time, rather than the disdain with which I look back on it now. So understand what’s going on. Do you understand? I want to try and enter into the enthusiasm so you can feel like I felt at that time. And then, don’t say, “Man, oh, man, look at there, he loved all that.” No, that isn’t it. I look back with shame on most all of it. But still, I want to present it that way so you can get the feeling of what I was at that time and the way I was thinking. How many would want to be turned back to your old thinking? Well, I think nobody would say yes, but rather… No way! See? But once God, until God has changed you, you don’t know you think any certain way; that’s just you. But then once He changes you and you go through the time of washing and separation, then you begin to look back; oh, you just want to cover your face for things that you did, things that you’ve said. 

So, beginning the testimony of Brother Lonnie Jenkins: I was born
… a long time ago. [Congregation laughs—Ed.] I had a believing mother. My dad became a Christian when I was about in high school. I don’t remember exactly, but I remember as I was growing up he was still a smoking man. And we used to have beer in the house, but there were never any wild parties or nothing like that. It was all very moderate.  And then I remember my mom’s mom moved from Texas to be with us, and she dipped snuff. And so, she used to keep a tobacco can by her chair full of sand. And she would chew the snuff in her bottom lip, and then when she’d spit, she couldn’t control quite right so she’d put her fingers here and pick up the can and [Brother Lonnie imitates spitting—Ed.] into the can.  The whole house began to smell like wet snuff. And so, my dad says, “Grandma, I’ll make a deal with you. If you’ll quit snuff, I’ll quit smoking.” And she said, “All right.” So he quit smoking and she quit dipping. But she went back to it, but my dad remained away from cigarettes after that.  And then, even, God was starting to clean up his life. And then he got to the place where he started studying the Bible to be able to argue with the preacher. He didn’t really believe it, but he wanted to prove the preacher wrong with his own Bible. And the first thing you know, he had himself convinced, rather than the preacher, and so he became a Christian. So I was in church every Sunday ever since I can remember. But I never liked Sunday school because so often they ask you to read. I was, I felt, kind of behind the class in my reading abilities, so I was always very embarrassed to read out loud. So I was hesitant to go to Sunday school because of that. And it was the same with my Math skills. I was kind of lagging behind in those things. So, I’ll come back, like I said, to the spiritual side later.  In the summer between 5th and 6th grade, I took my first full-time job. Can you imagine that with kids today? I took my first full-time job working on a farm in the summer between 5th and 6th grade, and I made minimum wage which was $.25 an hour. I was weeding with a hoe tomatoes and bell peppers there in southern California; that was in the early summer. And then in the latter part of the summer we were picking apricots and walnuts, in the latter part of the summer. In early spring, so that we could get the jump on the market, we would plant the tomatoes and bell peppers in a little wax paper cones. I don’t know whether anybody here has ever seen such a thing or not. But you’d put the little tiny plant in the ground, and then you had a galvanized piece of metal that you shoved this cone up inside of, and you put it over the plant. And then you threw dirt down on that, which would then cover this little piece of paper that stuck out like this. Then you’d pull the metal cone off, and then this little miniature hothouse was over each plant. And that way we could get our crop to develop quick, before the normal season and you’d get a little bit more money for the early season stuff. So we used to do that.  And, of course, we had to do irrigation. It wasn’t like here, so everything had to be irrigated. So we had to take up ditches for irrigation. We had a few pigs, a few cows. But the ranch I was working on was owned by a man, Mr. Showalter, and he was the mayor of the big town of Orange, California, at that time, which is now close to a million. But when I was a kid, it was about 9,000. And his son worked with me, and he was two grades ahead of me in school. And he liked to go to the library and get books (I had never done that before.), so I started going with him. And so after we’d work, we’d lay on the bails of hay in the barn and do our reading. And Black Beauty was the first library book I ever checked out, I remember, ‘cause I was just crazy about horses back then. And that summer of reading, with the work on the farm, brought me right up to speed. And when I went back into school the next year, I wasn’t embarrassed anymore. Just that one little summer of reading library books made a difference and kind of brought me up. (I’m trying to encourage you that are young and slow readers.)  On Saturdays, I would ride my bike about 7 miles up into the hill to a place called Irvine Park, where they had a horse-riding stable. And I’d feed the horses, water the horses, brush them, and all that just for free, just to be around the horses. And I loved it. And then I can remember, often… There was about a ten-acre field of alfalfa out beside this stable. And when we weren’t doing anything and weren’t riding or anything, I can remember often laying in the field and looking up into the blue skies, and clouds going by. And I would often think, “God, if You’re up there somewhere, won’t You just look out and let me see You.” And then I turned right around when I came in the Message, and Brother Branham says, “Did you ever as a kid look up into the sky and wish you could see God?” He said, “That’s that attribute calling out for expression. See?” I can remember that, so I’m sure many of you can too. That something, … you want to know God, but you don’t know how or what, how to look for Him. I can’t recall my age, somewhere between 7 and 8; I’ve told this part of my testimony before, so some of you will remember it. I was sitting on the second row back from the pulpit, I remember, one, two rows back. And I remember my mom was on my right hand side and her left hand was on my leg. I just remember all this real clear. And we had a visiting missionary preacher, and he had talked about work over in India. And he was showing slides of starving babies and skinny kids, and laying there with flies crawling in their eyes, and all that stuff. And it just, like it was torment to me to watch that. And I just thought, “Oh, how awful! I don’t even want to be around that.” And something spoke in my heart and said, “One day you’ll preach my Gospel in India.” And it scared me because I was a kid and when, I thought if I went over there, I’d be starving too. And so, it so frightened me that I put it out of my mind. And I didn’t even want to think about it, ‘cause I thought, “Well, if I don’t think about it, it won’t happen.” 

And in 1973, when I was preaching in India… I’d gone for years with that thought never entering my mind. And I was standing in the pulpit preaching, and something inside said, “See, I told you, ‘One day you’ll be preaching my Gospel in India.’” And, of course, when He reminded me about it, I was so glad, because it was like a confirmation “I was in the right place.” So I was happy about that. So from a very young age until I was in my 20’s, I had a bad stomach. It reacted in various ways; certain foods seemed to just not digest during bad seasons, which would last for a few months and then go away again. Certain foods I’d eat would just rot on my stomach and that night they would all come up. Certain things I’d eat, pinto beans, eggs, watermelon; certain other things were just always that way. So I wasn’t totally healthy as a kid.  Summer between 6th and 7th grade… Now, the last one I mentioned, now, was between 5th and 6th grade. This is between 6th and 7th grade. I moved over to another farmer’s house; his name was Mr. Wickersheim. And he raised me to $.50 an hour, and I thought I was a millionaire. And I was delighted. Now with him, I worked with him in the orange orchards, and with his dad raising sweet potatoes. And in the orange orchard, he would drive a big caterpillar-type tractor with a cleat track on it, and we were dragging a rig behind there. And the first part of the rig plowed the dirt soft and then the second part of the rig would then (all one thing), would kind of pull it up into ridges. And then the next part had a paddle wheel effect that was shaped like that, and it would clean out the ridges. This is getting ready for irrigation. And I had to sit on that thing. And when I would pull the paddle wheels, that would put a rise across the ditch, ‘cause that’s where we wanted to stop the water for irrigation. And you’d learn the slope of the land, and so you knew where to pull. So you’re sitting back there, caterpillar tractor, dust so thick you can’t even see and you’re trying to watch and pull these ropes, you know. And you come back at the end of the day and you’re just one big dust ball. But I was making $.50 an hour, so I was glad to do it.  And then, with his dad, he worked with a horse-drawn rig digging up sweet potatoes. And he said that the horse rig damaged less potatoes than the tractor rig, so that’s why he liked to use the horses. And I had a job that was right along behind the horses. And I remember that some of the stuff would fall off the conveyor belt. And as you’d make the row and come back, back again, the horse would just reach over and grab it and eat the sweet potatoes. And I found out horse that… sweet potatoes really create gas, those horses. [Congregation laughs—Ed.]  Then the summer between 8th and 9th grade, I got a job in a vegetable market. And we had no computers back then, no automatic cash registers. So I had to learn how to figure out 8 pounds of apples at so much a pound, that’s so much. And then, here’s the way you count back change. And that summer of working with the vegetable market and counting back change, I went back to school and I was up to speed on my math. And so I wasn’t so embarrassed anymore.  Like I said, we were in church every Sunday, and I was raised in the Church of Christ. My mom’s dad was a Methodist preacher, originally. But he saw that “sprinkling” wasn’t according to the Bible, and so he switched over to the Church of Christ and became a Church of Christ preacher. So that’s why mom just continued on in the Church of Christ, and so that’s what I was growing up in. And the Church of Christ preacher at every, every sermon, he made a pull at the end. And you’d think it would get old, but every time he pulled, I felt the tug. But I’d sit and sit and sit, until finally when I was about 13 (I can’t remember now whether I was 12, 13, or 14, but right in there), I remember I finally responded and I went up. And when I responded, it was like, oh my, it was like the whole world changed. It was like I walked through a door into something else that I hadn’t experienced. It’s like I’d been back here in the fog and dense, and bound. And then, when I finally broke free and went forward, it was like some kind of liberty came with me up to the pulpit.  And I remember they prayed with me and then they took me back to baptize me. And I was so excited about what was going on and so happy in the Lord. And they, that particular preacher immersed in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, I came up out of the water. They had a little door right behind the pulpit, which the platform (excuse me), the baptistry was behind the pulpit, and then there was a little door went right in to the baptistry. And I stepped through the door, and there was a little deacon there. If I can remember, he had slicked-back hair and a little pin-stripped mustache. And he handed me a towel, real sober face. He said, “Well, you don’t look any different. You don’t feel any different, but you did what God said do.” And I thought, “I don’t look any different? I felt like they could turn out every light in the place and I’d illuminate it.” And said, “Don’t feel any different.” But I did feel different. But he was a deacon and I was a kid, and it threw me into confusion. I thought, “Well, if I’m not supposed to look any different, feel any different, what’s this going on inside of me?”  And it sent me on a spiral that took me years to come out of it, just because of that one deacon’s comment. Of course, now I can look back and say, “Well, that man never had any kind of experience with God; that’s why he said that. ‘Cause he never felt anything (see?), never knew anything.” But anyway, it set me back. 

Even though I kept going to church, it was never the same after that. I was about 12 or 13.  At age 14, because we were in WWII, now, I got my driver’s license at age 14. Because so many men were off to war, they were giving driver’s license down younger where there was a need. I had to have an adult in the car with me, but I could drive. So from my farm work, I had saved up enough money that my freshman year in high school I got myself a little Powell motor scooter. I was looking up to see if I could find a picture of it on the Net. I couldn’t find anything. But they mentioned it that they said Powell had done this and done that back after WWII, up to Korean War, and then went out of business. Well, during that time, I had bought a new one. And then I smashed it up, not because of my own, but somebody pulled a car in front of me. Sometimes they don’t see scooters and motorcycles.  So that next summer then, I bought myself a 1934 Chevy Coupe and that was my first car. The paint job wasn’t real good on it, but it was just wear. So I remember I sanded it down and repainted it, overhauled the engine. And my dad guided me in those things, but he said, “I’m not going to get my hands greasy, son.” But he said, “If you want guidance, I’ll give it to you; ‘cause he was a good mechanic.” So it was good training for me. And when I painted the car, I used a paint that’s illegal now, which is lacquer paint. And I remember I put about ten coats on it. And for those of you that know what I was trying to do, I was trying to get a good shine. And what you do is you just keep thinning the amount of paint you actually put in it, and more and more thinner. And it just gets that deep-coat look, which is automatic now, but it wasn’t back then. And so, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years and junior years I worked in a service station: pumping gas, lubing cars; self-service wasn’t in yet. Every car that came in we washed the windshield, checked the water, checked the oil, often checked the air in the tires. We also did lube jobs, oil changes, fixed flats, flushed radiators, checked spark plugs, all the simple stuff. A lot of this, like I said, is just history. But it’ll help to understand part II if you understand where I came from. 

So in my sophomore year in high school (Kids, don’t listen to this part now.), I started dating. That was just a common thing. All the other chickens in the chicken yard were doing it. I didn’t know I was an eagle yet, so I started doing what all the chickens were doing. So I started dating. But soon as I did, my dad, told me, lectured me long and hard about showing respect to the weaker vessel. And he said, “And don’t you ever take advantage of some girl.” And that’s where you’ve heard me say this before. He said, “And don’t you ever tell a girl, ‘I love you’ until you’re old enough and ready for the next words to be, ‘Will you marry me?’” ‘Cause he said, “When you tell her, ‘I love you,’” he said, “she drops a certain guard.” And he said, “You don’t want her to do that.” And he said, “Any boy that will tell a girl that when he’s not ready to say, ‘I’ll marry you,’” he said, “he’s got something in mind that isn’t right.” Yeah. I can remember bringing home a towel one time, you know every kid in public school, anyway, you’re kind of proud of your public school. And I can remember I brought a towel home from school that said “Orange Union High School” on it, ‘cause I was going to use that down at the beach. 

Everybody, all of the kids were there from Fullerton, Anaheim, Santa Ana, all the competing teams around the area. So I was going to lay down my Orange Union High School towel to let everybody know where I was from. And mom saw that thing, said, “Where’d you get that?” I said, “I picked it up at school.” She said, “Did you buy it?” I said, “No.” She said, “That’s stealing. You take that back. You take that right back.” I did. I kind of had a different car each year. I love cars. And like Brother Branham said about hunting, “Conversion didn’t take it out of me.” [Congregation laughs—Ed.] And my next car was a ’36 Ford Phaeton. And I ran across this picture on the Net, and I’ll describe to you about… That’s a Ford Phaeton. Mine had suicide doors on it; that one doesn’t. The back door opened up the wrong way that if the winds would catch it, it would [Brother Lonnie makes a sound with his mouth—Ed.] open. Mine was black. And we filled in the grill, just a little bit on the sides to narrow the grill, and then we took the ridges off the sides, smoothed the panel. We had skirts on the back fender. Lowered the body down and put on it what’s called a “Carson top.” Anybody have any idea what a Carson top is? A Carson top was a convertible top that was padded, so it was nice, smooth lines, but it wouldn’t retract. You had to pick it up and take it off when you wanted to take it off. But it would really look slick.  And we put in a Columbia rear-end, which was an overdrive (back in the days before they had overdrive); it was vacuum operated and I could go into overdrive. That was pretty snazzy. And for those of you that are up on these things, I had milled heads, port-and-relieved block, dual carburetors, and chopped flywheel. (Some of the guys are, “Yep, yep, yep, I know;” ‘cause they went down that same road.) It was all-leather upholstery, and it was in amazingly good condition. You’ve got to remember now that I was raised in a war era and cars were not manufactured from about ’42 to ’46. Forty-six they started bringing out some cars; Hudson was first and then some others. This was my first car, which was a ’34 Chevy Coupe, and that was what it looked like. [Congregation laughs—Ed.] Got to remember, folks, I wasn’t raised in Ohio. I was a California boy, and so, things are different. I remember one night I was standing in the bathroom primping myself, and dad walked by and said, “Where you going?” And I said, “I’m going out.” (It was about 9 o’clock.) He said, “Nine o’clock at night and you’re going out?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “What are you going to do?” “Well,” I said, “a friend of mine knows a couple girls that work at a drive-in and they get off at 10 o’clock, and we’re going to pick them up and we’re going to go out on a date.” He said, “Son, no good thing happens on a date that starts at 10 o’clock at night.” I said, “Aw, dad, it’s all arranged.” He said, “You’ll see, son, no good thing.” Man, I found out “no good thing.” What they had in mind and what I had in mind were totally different things, but I never had any late dates after that one. It was just… I was shocked! Nevertheless, dad knew better. But I thought, “Aw, it’ll be all right.” He said, “You’ll see.” I saw. ‘Course, I have to admit, now, on those kind of things my flesh wanted to go one way, but something else took me another way – it’s that keeping power of God. 

I thank God. In all my ignorance, I didn’t have a Message to guide me back then; neither did our church preach any degree of holiness at all. But yet there was something that, though my flesh many times wanted to go a certain way, there was something else that just kept me.  The end of my senior year I swapped my ’36 Ford Phaeton for a very, very special ’37 Ford Coupe that was all kind of fixed up. And so, I was working all this time in summers and then during the winters, I had a job smudging. I doubt that Ohioans know what a job “smudging” is. But out there we had orange trees everywhere, and they’re very sensitive to frost. And so they had these “smudge pots” that were about this big around, had a tank about that high, and a big smokestack up here. And when it was going to frost, you’d walk, go through the orange grove and light these smudge pots so that the radiation from them would keep the oranges from frosting.  So right where I lived, here was… The dividing road was right here, there was houses starting on this side, but on this side was the break where houses were, and all this was just orange groves and walnut orchards, and everything over there. So the guy that owned the walnut orchard, he’d come over and knock on my bedroom window whenever it was cold, and we’d go out and light smudge pots. They became outlawed later because they so polluted the air. And everybody had to put in “wind” machines then to keep the frost from settling on the trees, by big windmills. Nevertheless, that’s what I would do during the school year.  Summer between my junior and senior year there was a service station that came up for rent, right on the corner, up from our place. And my dad asked me (because I’d been working service stations), he asked me if he would lease it, would I like to run it? Well, of course, I thought that was great. Now, you remember, now, this is the summer between my junior and senior year in high school. And so, I jumped at the chance, and he leased it. Of course, he did it for my training, not cause he expected to make any money. I think he hoped that he would at least break even, but I know he did it for my training.  So I ran the business. It was a service station with basic groceries attached. You know, just the basic essentials, attached with the service station. And so, we did that. And so during school, my mom, who is very personable-type person and she always loved people, she’d pump gas, and wait on the people, and sell groceries. And then after school, I’d take over. And then on weekends I had it. We were closed on Sundays. And we had a couple places nearby: one was a Sparklets Water delivering place with a bunch of big trucks {like Culligaan water now}on one side of the station; and down across the other place was Al’s Carpet Cleaning that had a whole bunch of trucks that they had to keep going. Because I was young and energetic, they gave me all their business. And so I was able to take care of their trucks and do all of their lubes. And so business was booming on up, and I was feeling so glad about everything that was going. But now, I was still going to church every Sunday, all this time. Still praying every night.  We had an aptitude test in school about “where’s your strengths.” And my strengths came out scientific and mechanical, were my two strengths. And then following the chart down, what would combine scientific and mechanical, I went down the list of everything that would combine the two. And so, scientific and mechanical crosses very nice at being a dentist, cause you’ve got to work with your hands, work with tools, and yet you’ve got to know the scientific thing. So I decided I would become a dentist. So I went into college. The first two years of pre-med are the same for a doctor as the same for a dentist, so I went in at that. And I got a job, part time, in a dental laboratory. And I’d go around to the dental offices and pick up their castings, where they were going to make false teeth, and castings where they were going to rewire for braces and stuff, and bring them back to the laboratory. And then I worked on making wiring braces, and polishing up the new false teeth, and then would deliver them back out again.  That year, I started taking swimming in college. We had no pool in our high school. And in high school, I was in football, shot put, broad jump, and some tennis. So that summer then, between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I took a job as a lifeguard in the local city pool. And about that time, I also started wearing reading glasses for the blackboards in school. I found I couldn’t read them, so I started wearing glasses in class. I didn’t have to wear them out of class because I was farsighted okay; I could see okay out, little ways. No, the other way around (excuse me). I could see okay, but I couldn’t see out there too good. But, nevertheless, it was enough to drive with.  In high school, I had been class vice-president. In senior year, I was class president. In sophomore year in college, I was class president again. And my steady girl, which was a cheerleader both in high school and in college, she was the one that she came right on over. And she was one year behind me in school, and so she came on over to the same college I was going at and became a cheerleader there, also.  All of my spare time I went down to the beach, and I was surfing and snorkeling and spear fishing and diving for abalone. Abalone is now protected specie. You can’t dive for it anymore. How many know what abalone is? Yeah, not very many, my goodness. Abalone is a univalve. It’s a single valve shellfish that clamps on the sides of rock. And they’re about that big, and the meat inside is very good. And you have to go down with a tire iron and pop them off the rocks. But when they clamp down, you couldn’t hardly pop them off. So if we were out diving for abalone and other guys would come out, we’d go down and spot them and just tap them, tap them, tap them, tap them. They’d clamp down, and they couldn’t get any. Then we’d come back out after they relaxed, and then we’d go back out and get them. [Congregation laughs—Ed.] In my sophomore year in college, a friend of ours, who was on the local draft board, (they were drafting back in those days) told us that our numbers were coming up. And that if we didn’t want to go in the Army, we’d better join something real fast, because in just a few weeks we were going to be called into the Army. Well, I didn’t particularly want to go into the Army, so three of us joined the Air Force. And we joined on what was called a “Buddy System,” where you could stay together at least for a portion of your tour.  For me, we joined in Los Angeles, California. We rode the train to… Excuse me, we joined in Santa Ana, California. We rode the train to Los Angeles, California, which was about 35 miles away; took our exams, and that’s the last I saw of my buddies. [Brother Lonnie and congregation laugh—Ed.] So I went into the Air Force on January 1, 1951. And, of course, the night before that being New Year’s Eve, they threw a big going away party for us. So I tried drinking, and all I got was sick. And I was so sick. I hadn’t drank, so my body wasn’t used to it. And I got… oh man, was I sick. And the next morning, the 1st, we had to report for duty, and I was still sick. I was sick when we rode the train to Los Angeles, and still sick when we had to take the exams and the IQ test, and all that kind of stuff. I’d have to go out of the room to the restroom and back again. I’d work a little while and then back out and back in. I didn’t flunk, I guess, so I got in. I don’t know what these figures mean, but I remember on the IQ… I always wondered what it would have been had I not been sick and going in and out. But I got, I think, it was either 129 or 137; I forget which it was on the IQ, whatever that mean.  In basic training, all of sudden, they selected me to help in the training of other new recruits. And I wondered, “Why me?” My lead officer selected me to go to officer’s training school. He started pushing the paperwork through and then realized I was too young to enter officer’s training school. And so, he says, “Well, I’ll put the paperwork in motion and as soon as you’re of age, you can go right into officer’s training school.” I said, “Well, what does that mean?” He said, “Well, that means you’ll go through training, which is nine months,” he says, “and then when you graduate from that, you’ve got to spend another four years in the service.” I said, “No thanks. I’ll get out in my four years without going to that.”  So on my first leave home, I married the girl that I had been going with in high school and college, at the ripe old age of 19. I thought of myself as quite “mature,” and most 19-year-olds do think of themselves as quite mature. In body, yes. In judgment, no. It takes instruction and life experiences before proper judgment can begin to come. But we had no Message guidelines back then.  So I found a couple Christian buddies in the Air Force, and we formed a little Christian singing trio. We had fun. I don’t know what the people thought of it that listened, but we had fun. And we went to chapel or church off base on a regular basis. I went through aircraft and engine school. They don’t call it that anymore, but that’s what it was called then, A&E school. In Texas, my wife joined me there.  After the first year in the Air Force, finished the schooling, I went over to Japan and I finished the next three years of my four years in Japan. I went over there as a flight line mechanic and a crew chief on the airplanes that we were using at that time, during the Korean War. And the stuff that would be shot up in Korea that could be gotten back to Japan, the hanger crew would fix it, or if they had special modifications, the hanger crew would do that. And then we, as the test flight group, we’d go down and test it out. And then if we liked it, we would what we’d call “buy it,” and then we brought it up to test flight. And then anything that went wrong, we had to fix it. So we really checked them out before we took it away from the hanger crew.  And the “check out” was: You get in; you run up the engines, where there’s one, two, or four engines. You run them out; go through all the mechanical tests. You’d call the tower; you taxi the airplane out onto the runway and you ask for clearance. Then you’d give it everything you’ve got, and do right up to take-off speed and then chop it back. And if everything checks out okay, up to that, then you take it back and you list it on the board for a pilot, and say it’s ready. And then they’d take it up and test fly it. And a single engine airplane they’d test fly for one hour, double engine for three hours, and a four-engine airplane test flight was five hours.  So it wasn’t very long until I got on flying status, and then I became what was called a “flight engineer.” So I was not only working on the ground, but when the planes would go up, I’d go up with it and then do all kinds of tests while we were in the air. My wife did join me in Japan, but before she joined me, I got involved with cameras over there. Most cameras were made in Japan. They were very cheap in Japan, so I got very involved in photography. And then, the wife joined me. My first two children, which are daughters, were born in Japan. And by now, I wasn’t going to church anymore. There were no churches off base and the chapel was absolutely dead. They just didn’t preach hardly anything, ‘cause they had to please all religions. And so I just kind of quit going to church.  So in staying in the ranks there, the stress of the kind of work I was in, long hours and test flying, my nerves started acting up and my stomach problem came back again, only manifold this time. And so whatever I would eat during the day, I’d lose it that night. And I dropped from 185 pounds down to 145 pounds. And then, finally, they found an old-fashioned medicine called “belladonna” that settled everything out and got it all straightened out. I made staff sergeant; they threw another party for me. I tried the same thing again and got sick again. So I tried twice, lost twice. Well, maybe won twice.  So my two daughters that were born in Japan, that’s Sharon Denise and Launi Kae. Most of you have met them. Sharon lives in Canada, about half a mile from Brother Byskal’s church in Cloverdale. And Launi Kae lives in the San Jose, California area, Silicone Valley, in computer work.  So after the three years, we came home. I tried to use my hobby skills as a photographer, so I went to work for Sears & Roebuck in their camera department. And we also sold office supplies, tape recorders, watches, and diamonds. I was in Santa Ana, California. Jeff was born during that time, while we were in Santa Ana. 

The dental colleges were full of Korean [war] vets. So when I came back, they told me it would be a three-year waiting list. I had a family and kids; I couldn’t wait three years. So I switched my major to “salesmanship and marketing.” Because I was working for Sears, I switched it to that and finished out college. And Sears arranged my schedule so that I worked Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at Sears, and Tuesday and Thursday evenings. And then I went to college on the opposite schedule. And so I was carrying 15 to 16 units in college, working 40 hours a week at Sears, and Saturday nights and Sundays at a service station to make ends meet. And that was so tight. You college students can appreciate that – 40 hours a week, part-time job, and 16 units. That, when I finished college, I dreamed for years, every night, I was going down the hallways, “I can’t find my classroom. Can’t find my classroom. Are my books ready? Are my books ready?” The pressure was just so ingrained in my mind, ‘cause I had to make every minute count; but got through. About the time I’d finished… No, I wasn’t quite finished with the four-year degree and Sears offered me a promotion to move to another store. So I went and talked to the store manager. I said, “I’ve got my choice of either taking the promotion or finishing college.” I said, “What do you recommend?” He said, “Well, the college, of course, will do you good.” “But,” he said, “the only time it will do you good is if you and another person are on exactly equal par in every qualification, but one has finished college and the other hasn’t.” He said, “Then it would be to your detriment.” He said, “Other than that,” he said, “you’ll be completely on merit.” So I figured, “Well, I’ll take that chance.” So I dropped out of school, took the promotion, and they moved us about 80 miles away to San Bernardino. And then, at that church (store) they started asking me to teach salesmanship classes. And then later I was moved to the Pomona, California, store, which is about 40 miles away from there. Somewhere right in there Paul was born. And then, again, they moved me up to San Jose, California, which was about 500 miles up north. Then while in the San Jose store, they gave me a larger set of divisions to manage, because the division managers are paid override on how much they make, how much their volume is. And so, I got that. So from the time I got out of the Air Force until up to that place, up in San Jose, California, which has been almost a ten-year gap, I had gone to church very little. I had put job and family first. But still I was praying every night and I felt so guilty, cause I knew I wasn’t right with God. I wasn’t living a sinful life, but I knew I wasn’t right with God. So it was just on my heart all the time, all the time, that, “You’re not right with God. You’re not right with God.”  While I was in the Air Force, I started smoking cigarettes and a pipe. And so, while I was in San Jose, God started dealing with me. I was about 29-years-old. And I told my wife, I said, “I want to start going back to church. I want to start taking the kids.” And she said, “Well, that’s fine.” I said, “Well, I’d like for you to go with me.” And she said, “Well, I—I may go sometime.” So I went back to the Church of Christ, because that was all I knew as a kid.  And so I went back to the Church of Christ. And I went several services but my hunger was growing, just growing for God. And so, finally, I went to the preacher and I said, “I want to draw close to God.” And he said, “That’s good.” I said, “I want to meet Him.” He said, “Now, now, now,” he said, “don’t go overboard.” He said, “Just read your Bible and pray.” I said, “God is a person, right?” He said, “Right.” I said, “He’s real, right?” He said, “Right.” I said, “Then I should be able to meet Him.” He said, “No, no, no.” He said, “We don’t do that. You just read your Bible and believe.” Well, something in me said, “I want to meet Him.” So I knew this man couldn’t help me, so I left that church and started a search.  At the same time, you that are spiritual you’ll understand this, when God began to anoint me for a direction, he also anointed my wife. And she, suddenly, wanted to start going to parties; we never went to parties. She wanted to start going to dances; we didn’t go to dances. She wanted to start doing all the things that we had never done. Because I had started going to church, she started wanting to pull exactly the opposite direction.  So she announced to me one morning, she said, “We are walking to the beat of two different drummers.” And so I asked her, “Do you still love me?” And she didn’t answer. She just went to bed. And the next morning I came out to eat breakfast, and there was a note at the place, everybody usually has a favorite place they sit, so I had my favorite place where I sat. She wasn’t there, but there was a note at my table. She said, “I thought about it last night. I don’t think I love you anymore. I want a divorce.” And that, to me, is how fast it came. I did not see it coming at all. There was a question one evening and a request for a divorce the next morning. And it just blew me away.  Well, as you can see somewhat by my background, I had pretty well had many things under my control. And so I thought, “I can work this out, because I’d been able to work out all these other things.” But I couldn’t. 

Seemed like the harder I tried, the worse it got. So I began to really want to seek God about my situation and get help. And when I really had to get a hold of God for the first time in my life, I found I didn’t know Him. I thought I did. Intellectually, I knew Him. From the Bible, I knew Him. But when I had to get a hold of Him, not just pray to Him, but get a hold of Him, I realized I didn’t know how to get a hold of Him.  And suddenly my desperation switched. It wasn’t so much my marriage anymore, although that was important; I’ve got to get a hold of God. If God’s going to help me in my marriage, I’ve got to get a hold of God, and I don’t even know how to get a hold of God. So now I’m really desperate about this search for God. 

Now we’re up to about December, 1962. I always use to take all the girls that worked for me out to breakfast on Christmas Eve. It was kind of my gift to them, because there were several girls that worked in all my departments and one guy who was my stockman. So I took them all out to breakfast. All the women were yakity, yakity, yakity, yak; just talking, talking, talking about things. And I was thinking about God and what I had been hearing. And I’d heard about “gifts of the Spirit.” I didn’t know about those in the Church of Christ. I heard about “baptism of the Holy Ghost.” I didn’t know about that in the Church of Christ, in a true way.  And so, there was a pause in the conversation, and so I just popped out with what was on my mind. I said, “Did you know that God can give a person the ability to speak a language they’ve never studied, and He can give them the ability to speak it, another language, another tongue.” And they looked at each other and looked at me, and, “Oh, really?” [Congregation laughs—Ed.] And I thought, “Why did I say that? The subject wasn’t anything like that.” So we finished our breakfast and we walked out. And the youngest girl in my department, who was a high school girl working for me part time, she came up. She said, “Mr. Jenkins,” she said, “I heard what you said and I saw the reaction of the girls,” so she said, “I didn’t want to say anything in there.” But she said, “Do you understand what that is you’re talking about?” I said, “No.” I said, “I just heard about it.” She said, “Well, I think my pastor can help you. I think he’d be willing to talk to you.” And she was an Assembly of God girl. 

And I said, “Well, I need help. I don’t know what it’s about, but I want to know more.” So she got a hold of her pastor, right away, and made an appointment for me to go over. So I went over to this Assembly of God man, and believe it or not, he was an Assembly of God minister who did not believe in “tongues” evidence. He believed in the baptism of the Holy Ghost. He believed in speaking in tongues, but he didn’t believe it was the evidence of the Holy Ghost. So he began to instruct me about these things, which are all new to me.  By the way, let me back up just a little bit. In my search, just before I ran across this Pentecostal, Assembly of God man, in my search before that, I had walked down the road, about two blocks away from my house and there was a Lutheran church. And I walked into the Lutheran church, and I introduced myself to the pastor. And he took me into his office, and I said, “I’m on a search for God. I’m hungry for a deeper walk. I want to meet the Person of God. And so I’m looking for something, someone, somehow that I can find this experience.” And he looked at me sweetly, kindly, and said, “I’m looking for the same thing.” I said, “Is that right?” I said, “I thought all preachers had God by the coat tails.” And he said, “No.” He said, “I’m looking for the same thing myself.” So we formed a friendship over our mutual hunger. And I never became a Lutheran, but I used to come back by his church. Because he’d always tell me, he said, “As a Lutheran minister, I can’t go searching.” But he said, “When you find things, come back and tell me.” So I’d come back and report, “I found this. I learned this and this.” And he was just moving right along, enjoying what I was discovering.  And so, when I had this experience with this Pentecostal… No, not experience yet, just Bible knowledge come to me, I took that to him. And then I went back. The Pentecost man, Assembly of God man said, “Now, we’re having a visiting minister, a Presbyterian minister, who received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. He’s going to be here on Sunday and tell his testimony.” He said, “Why don’t you come and listen?” So I said, “Okay. I’ll do that.” So I listened to the testimony and I found that he, seemingly, had found what I wanted.  So then at the close of that, he said, “Now all you people that want the baptism of the Holy Ghost,” he said, “I want you all to come into this side room.” So, “Okay.” So I went into this side room. Now I’m going to tell you just the way it happened. He said, “Now,” he said, “you may know that in the Bible the word for Spirit is “pneuma,” which is “air.” So he said, “We’re going to use faith and, almost like, our imagination to make the faith work.” So he said, “We want the baptism of the Holy Ghost; we want air.” So he said, “You say, ‘God, I want the Holy Spirit.’” [Brother Lonnie makes the noise of sucking air into his mouth—Ed.]. And he said, “Just believe that God is filling you. Just believe that God is filling you.” I got so dizzy. [Congregation laughs—Ed.] I hyperventilated. But I wanted the Holy Ghost.  And then somebody began to speak in tongues. I’d never heard that. I didn’t know what to think. A couple of sisters raised their hands and began to scream and weep. Church of Christ didn’t do those things. Like I’ve told you before, they called it “reverence;” I know now it’s “rigor mortis.” And I literally got scared. These people were speaking in another language. They were shouting. They were screaming. They were weeping. And I stood up and I backed towards the door; I dare not turn my back on these people. And the guy says, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “Well, I’ll be back.” And I just left.  I came back during the week then to the pastor. Well, I came back for the next service. 

And I don’t remember what happened in that service, but after the service, I went to the pastor. And I told him, I said, “I want that baptism of the Holy Ghost. But,” I said, “My background is more quiet than what happened last Sunday evening.” And I said, “I have to admit it kind of scared me. But,” I said, “I do want the Holy Ghost.” So I said, “If you can help me, I want the Holy Ghost.” So he said, “Stay here.” And he ran out and he gathered a bunch of the elders of the church. And they came in. And he said, “Brothers,” he said, “this Brother wants the Holy Ghost. He’s not used to noise; hold her down, Brothers, hold her down. Let’s pray.” And so, he said, “You kneel here.” There was a row of chairs along the wall there, and I knelt by those chairs. And about ten men put their hands on me to pray for me, and they were all full of enthusiasm. And the only thing I could think of was, “I am going to be crushed.” All those hands on me and each one saying, “Brother…” [Brother Lonnie makes a sound of “Ooh, ooh.”—Ed.]  It took me a long while to get over the pressure, but they were praying. They were sincere. And then I entered in because they were so sincere, and I got used to the idea of two tons on my shoulders. And so, pretty soon I am totally lost in prayer. I don’t feel the weight. I don’t hear their voices. I am gone somewhere. And I see a little pinpoint of light right out there, and it starts coming toward me – bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And I thought, “That’s the Lord. He’s going to come. He’s going to stop, and He’s going to tell me what I’m to do.” And I just watched that ball. It was fascinating. It was coming so slow, and just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, coming right on up, big like this. And it didn’t stop and talk. It passed through me, through my skin, like I wasn’t even there; and it was in me and I was in it. And that sweet presence of love and everything, that Brother Branham talks about on the tapes, I never felt anything like that in all my life. Peace, warmth, love, ah. I was lost bathing, bathing in it. Not a word was said.  Then I began to come back to myself a little bit and I heard the Brothers praying. And just as I was coming back to myself, the pastor who had been standing beside me with his hands on me, he started kneeling down to say something to me. ‘Cause I was kind of coming back to myself and I could see him kind of kneeling, coming down beside me over there. And as I was listening, I heard that same sound that I had heard in the room over there of people speaking in tongues. And as I came to it more, more, and more, I realized it was me, that I was the one that was speaking in tongues. And so, he was kneeling down to say something, and as he got down close to me, he heard me speaking in tongues and he jumped up and said, “He’s got her, boys, he’s got her.” [Brother Lonnie and congregation laughs—Ed.] And they all started rejoicing. They all started rejoicing. And I was crying, just crying, crying, crying.  And I walked out of that office, and Jeff and Paul were little bitty kids then there. And they were sitting in this empty church, way back in the back, waiting for Daddy to come out of the back room. Do you remember that at all? No. Waiting for Daddy to come out of the back room. And they could see Daddy had been crying, so they were really concerned, like, “What’s wrong with Daddy? What’s wrong with Daddy?” And some big, heavyset woman came down the aisle, just as I was going out, and she just kind of pinned me with her eyes. And she said, “I see somebody that just got the Holy Ghost.” Well, I thought I had. I thought I had received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, but it turned out… It was a wonderful experience, but it wasn’t the baptism of the Holy Ghost. But it was a genuine experience and it was real, and it was a turning point in my life. And I’m going tnt a divorce.” And that, t. And we’re going to pick it on up from there. ‘Cause I want to show you God starting the further work in my life and what the real baptism of the Holy Ghost was all about, and so on. 

So we’ll go on from there. Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, seems like when I recount my past and talk about You, You just get more precious as I talk about, because it just seems so sweet and so real. It’s like I’m back there all over again and just reliving it. And I thank You, Lord, for all those experiences. And, of course, every Christian has his testimony, but it turns out this has been my call tonight to tell my testimony. So we’ll pick it up again next Wednesday. So, Lord, may the people not just hear a testimony, but some, maybe, can be, identify with it along the way. And maybe to encourage them along the way, maybe see something they need or lack I their life. Or maybe just say, “Yep. I’ve been there myself, done that.” And let, God, may we just rejoice in Your work. We ask it, Lord. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

[Brother Lonnie speaks to the congregation about a convention in Crimea.—Ed.]

SOURCE: http://believersfellowship.co.uk/bro_lonnie_pt1.htm