Jim Williams

Something was missing in my life. At the age of twenty, I had a very restless nature and decided to explore the world for myself. In the spring of 1934, I determined to go to Alaska. I had a little money from working in the orchards of Southern Oregon. After trapping a couple of wildcats and some rabbits, I tanned the hides. By sewing them together and adding a waterproof cover, I had a very serviceable sleeping bag. I took this, along with some cooking utensils, a few clothes, a pistol, a fishing outfit, and my money and left home.

I landed in Seattle and purchased a steerage ticket on the Alaska Steamship Line to Seward, Alaska. I arrived there with about ten dollars in my pocket. It was late in April and the rivers were still frozen over. There was lots of snow in the mountains, and it was very cold. With no job in sight, there was only one way to travel—by freight train. It was not easy, as the police were guarding the trains with rifles. Sleeping in “jungle camps” and associating with men who followed that life, I saw a side of life that was completely foreign and shocking to me. I had been reared in a good moral home. My brothers and sisters and I were brought up very carefully. We were not well to do, but even in the depression years we fared quite well.

When I left home, my mother put a little Bible among my things. I would try to read it, but couldn’t seem to understand the meaning and decided it wasn’t for me. After working in a fish cannery through the summer, I decided to return home. Upon arriving in Southern Oregon, I found my mother had an affliction that would soon take her life. A neighbor told us of a group of people holding services in a little hall over a secondhand store in Medford, Oregon. We were told that these people really believed in God and were receiving wonderful answers to their prayers.

The next Sunday my mother asked me to take her to their service. Sitting there that morning I heard a story that sounded different from anything that I had ever heard before. A fine-looking, husky man rose to his feet and said he had been a prizefighter. He said he had left home to get away from the influence of a Christian home. Up in Canada he received letters from his Christian mother and she always said, “Boy, we are still praying for you.” He said, “I destroyed those letters because I didn’t want anyone to know I had a Christian mother.” He finally decided to go home for a visit. While there, God gave him another chance, and upon his knees, he prayed until the Lord came into his heart. He said, “For five years I haven’t had a drink of liquor, smoked a cigarette, or crawled between the ropes to fight my fellow man. God has kept me.”

I was amazed at this and other stories I heard. I had only been in Sunday school a couple of times as a boy. It was all foreign to me, but how wonderful it sounded! Soon another man stood and said, “I was a drunken brakeman on the railroad, living a hard, fast life with regard for no one. But one day on top of a boxcar, while the train was going along, the old load of sin got so heavy I couldn’t carry it any longer. I dropped to my knees and said, ‘God, You’ve got my number.’ And right there God saved me.” He said, “I got to my feet. The train was still rolling along, but I reached in my pocket and got the liquor and cigarettes and dropped them off. God had cleaned me up on the inside, and I started cleaning up on the outside.”

Listening to these and other testimonies, I was convinced that what they had found must be real. And when they said, “Prove God for yourself,” and invited me to an altar of prayer, I went. There I did prove the Lord for myself. He saved me. My mother also prayed and was saved. When I had come that day, I had expected to be in that one meeting and then be on my way again. But more than fifty-two years have come and gone since that Sunday morning, and it has been wonderful all the way.

That summer, Dad, Mother, and I went to the camp meeting. By this time Mother was very sick and she stayed in a home just a short distance from the campground. She soon passed away, and the thought came to me, now my dad will never get saved. But that very day, a few minutes after my mother died, my dad dropped to his knees on the trail that led from the house to the campground and prayed until he was saved. It was a definite transformation. He had lived sixty-two years of his life in sin. He said that just a short time before, he had looked at the Rogue River and thought of committing suicide. His conversion was a real miracle.

He had lived a life that was all covered up to the world. He was born in Germany and came to this country as a boy of about twelve. For about a year he was a bartender in his brother’s saloon. But soon he left home. Before long he and another man got into trouble and he had to leave town. He also had to change his name. After prospecting for gold for a few years, he made his way to the West Coast where he met my mother and they were married.   In all the years that followed, my mother never knew he was living under an assumed name and that he was actually an illegal alien. He hadn’t contacted his family in more that forty-five years. He had borrowed money from a brother when he left home and after being converted, one of the first things that came to him was to pay that brother if he were still alive. After much searching, he found that all of his family had passed away except the wife of his brother. Upon inquiry he learned that when his father had died about forty years before, he had left some money in a trust fund in a bank in my dad’s name.

We lived on the West Coast and had to make a trip to the East Coast to prove Dad’s identity and claim the money. The amount in the trust fund was just enough for him to pay his many restitutions. After this there remained just one big obstacle. Since he had never filed United States citizenship papers and was living under an assumed name, he knew he could be sent back to Germany. He had signed up in the military with a false name saying he was born in the United States. After much prayer and legal work it was all resolved, and for the first time since his boyhood days, he had a clean record and lived a real Christian life for over two more years before he died.

I have found that being a Christian hasn’t always been easy. But no matter how bad the circumstances have been, the Lord has always given the victory. In March of 1941 I was inducted into the United States Army, supposedly for one year. It turned out to be almost four-and-a-half years. One thing I knew, in order to live a Christian life in the army, one would have to take a definite stand for the Lord. Arriving at Fort Lewis, Washington, I was assigned to the Medical Corps of the Third Division. One evening shortly after arriving, I was reading my Bible when one of the men said, “You might as well forget that. It won’t do you any good here.” But I knew it was more important than ever before.

My unit went to Casablanca, Africa on November 8, 1942. Shortly after midnight we landed between two enemy forts and then descended from our troopship on rope ladders into landing crafts. Powerful shore lights from both forts were turned on us and soon the night was ablaze with tracer bullets, artillery shells, and bombs. I remember the Lord assuring me that He would see me through and I would return home again.

In the next eighteen months we made amphibious landings in Italy. When you see death all around you, it is a great feeling to know the Lord is with you. I can’t tell you the many times my life was spared in those eventful days. In 110 days in Anzio, Italy, we were bombed 288 times and under continual artillery fire. Land mines were everywhere. One evening, while we were going to pick up some wounded men on the battlefield, a large artillery shell burst close to our ambulance. A piece of the shell came through my helmet, entered my neck, and almost severed the main nerve. I was in a hospital for a while and then back to the front.

Later I left the Anzio Beachhead and started on my way home for rotation. I was taken to Naples, Italy where I was put in the replacement depot. While there, we had to wait for ship space to transport us. From time to time they called off a list of names of those who would be going home. During the three weeks I was there, I went up several times to listen for my name. Finally my name was among the ones called to go home. I thought to myself, ‘That is much like it will be when the Lord comes. There will be some people ready, and those who have their names on the list will go up to meet the Lord. Some will fail to have their names on the list, and they will be left behind.’ I was so thankful that I knew I was ready to meet the Lord.

I will never forget what a beautiful sight it was when our ship came into Newport News, Virginia. It was nighttime and when we came in sight of the blaze of lights on shore, what a shout went up! It was a hospital ship and many were seriously wounded, but we were happy to be home again. I know Heaven will be more beautiful.

In 1947 I married a fine Christian girl named Naomi Frost. Just recently we had our fortieth anniversary. We have had a wonderful life together and the Lord has been so good. We have had the privilege of serving the Lord in many different states: Oregon, California, Washington, Missouri, and Hawaii. The Lord has truly been with us all along the way. Now in Portland, Oregon, with the family of God, we find the Lord is still working out any and all problems that come our way. What a blessed joy it will be to get to Heaven to be with our Lord forever!