"How did you get in the Word?"

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A bustle of believers had arrived at Headquarters. Mealtimes were always fun with visitors. The tables in the dining room were filled with chatter. There would be songs, announcements, sharings, prayer.

One of the visitors at my table had lived in North Carolina, my home state. I enjoyed meeting folks with whom I could share about aspects of our lives that included commonalities, points of interest or experience, outside the Word. Though, in reality, all of life was about the Word; everything pointed back to that Word. "The Word, the Word, the Word, and nothing but the Word!" as Doctor regularly proclaimed.

I don't recall the young man's name. He was in my age range, early twenties. I'll call him Luke.

"Where in North Carolina are you from?" I inquired.

"Charlotte," Luke replied.

"That's where I first spoke in tongues, in Charlotte," I stated warmly. "At a church, Resurrection Lutheran."

I had warm memories of Pastor Mirly from Resurrection Lutheran. He had led me into tongues before I had ever even heard of The Way. Even though the Word taught at Resurrection hadn't been rightly divided, even though they didn't practice the manifestations correctly; Pastor Mirly leading me into tongues was genuine. God had his hand on my life leading me to this point where I was in The Way Corps.

I was thankful for Pastor Mirly. Funny, he also had warned me about deceptive cults. One of them was a group called "The Way." Ha! That name, The Way, had stuck in my mind and culminated when I met some Way believers. But I understood that Pastor Mirly just didn't have the rightly divided Word; the adversary was always trying to water down and distort the Word to keep people from the truth. Yet I was confident Pastor Mirly was born again, an "unbelieving believer" as we referred to born-again folks outside the Ministry. We. in the Ministry, were the "believers."

"That's where I first spoke in tongues too!" Luke responded with excitement. "A man named Pastor Mirly led me into tongues. And then later I got in the Word with the Ministry."

"Wow! Pastor Mirly led me into tongues too. That is soooooooo cool! Both of us here, at this table, in podunk New Knoxville, Ohio, in the Ministry. And Pastor Mirly first led us both into tongues! He's got some rewards coming, even if he never comes to the truth of the Word." I responded back, just as excited as Luke.

It was unusual. All Way believers spoke in tongues, but most didn't do that until after they got involved with the Ministry, usually at the end of the Foundational Class. It had to be God that Luke ended up at my table. We exchanged stories of how we "got in the Word."

So often that was the conversation starter with believers, "How did you get in the Word?"

Whenever I answered that question, my story culminated at 18 years old when I first sat through the Power for Abundant Living class. After all, that is how I got in the Word. The rest was somewhat irrelevant and anti-climatic.

Over the following decades I would ask that question of others countless times, and I would answer that question countless times. I had 3 parts to my answer, though I seldom got to the last two parts:
1) How I came to the Ministry. That was the most important after all.
2) How I ended up in the Way Corps.
3) That I left the Way Corps, but that I was still faithful to the Word. When I left the Corps the second time, Craig had written me that I had a lot to offer and that there weren't enough of us for any to sit on the sidelines. He had encouraged me to stay involved and to use my Corps training.

But after so many years I would find myself wondering, Why does my story stop with the Ministry? It seems I am missing something somewhere.

I'd push the thought aside. Besides it wasn't that important.

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