Steve Williams

Looking back, it seems to me that God had His hand over our little family all the days of my life. We were the poorest of the poor. My dad was a hard worker, but times were tough for those who worked the land and had little, if any, education. Then, when my dad was just twenty-seven years of age, he took sick with spinal meningitis, and in a week he was gone. Mom was left with two small boys to raise. I was six years old and my brother, Jack, was four. We had no money to pay the funeral expenses and no place to go. Mom was courageous, though, and never gave up hope.

My dad’s oldest brother took pity on us, and though his home was already over-crowded, he took us in. We lived in a tent in the front yard during the day and slept in the attic at night.

Mom did her best to be both father and mother to us boys. She taught us the value of working hard and she taught us not to feel sorry for ourselves. She had no education, nothing she could rely on to earn a living. She worked in the field and did housework, sometimes for no more than 75 cents a day.

She was not a Christian at this time and didn’t know much about the Bible, but she drilled into us that the Bible was true and that someday we would stand before God in judgment and give an account of the life we had lived.

We knew nothing about divine healing, but when Mom got the light on it, regardless of the condition we were in, we trusted the Lord for healing.

During the winter of 1918, Mom came down with tuberculosis. She was dying and we all knew it. Her chest was sunken in and she could not walk across the room without help. I dropped out of school just to be with her.

There were some black people in the north part of town, in whom we had a lot of confidence. These ladies came and prayed for my mother.

One Sunday afternoon Mom was pretty low. It seemed that she had almost spat out her lungs, piece by piece, but during that afternoon, while some people were holding a cottage meeting, Mom was instantly healed! She stood up and said, “The Lord has given me a new pair of lungs.” She was sick unto death one moment and able to walk the next! She was never troubled with that disease again.

Shortly after that a man told us about the Apostolic Faith Church in Portland, Oregon. His mother had received one of their church papers and he brought the paper to us. We read it. That paper was different from any we had ever received. For one thing, it was free. We could hardly believe that anything that good was free. We practically wore that paper out reading it over and over again, and Mom lost no time in writing and asking that more papers be sent to us. Over the years, while I was growing up in Texas, we moved a number of times. Every time we moved, one of the first things mom did was to send the new address to the Apostolic Faith.

Mom had been from church to church and from mission to mission. She had attended brush arbor revival meetings, tent meetings, and cottage meetings, but she had never found what her heart longed for. The words in that paper, though, registered with her heart and she knew she had found exactly what she wanted.

We received that first paper in the spring of 1920, and from then on, we were determined to go to Portland to see these people. Four years passed while we worked and tried to save enough money for the trip. Year after year we worked in the cotton fields, but year after year it was the same old story; we worked hard, but didn’t save enough to get us through the winter, much less to go to Portland. We never stopped planning.

In 1924, Mom decided that we were not going to wait any longer. She knew that my brother and I were getting into our late teens and that if she waited any longer we might never make it to Portland. When she talked it over with us, we thought it would be a great adventure to start out for Oregon. We had just $25.00. We knew this was not enough money to make the whole trip, but we knew the Lord would provide.

With our chicken coop, we may have presented one of the most unusual sights the people had ever seen.

We disposed of our few belongings and then, on April 27, 1924, we loaded what was left into an old 1917 model T Ford. We kept a small coop of chicks for pets. We said good-bye to our relatives which was very difficult, because we did not know if we would ever see them again. Mom was willing to give up everything for the Gospel. My Aunt Fannie gave us a cake that she had baked. She also gave my mom a dollar bill. It was probably all the money that she had. She wanted to give us a good send-off.

It took us three months to get to Portland, because we had to stop and work our way through Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho.

When we reached Pueblo, Colorado we ran out of money and sold a double-barrel shot gun for $5.00. Then in Laramie, Wyoming, I found a job for about six weeks in a garage. They paid me $3.00 a day, which was good money then and more than I had ever made. In Nampa, Idaho, we had to raise money again. All we could get for our mandolin and violin was about $7.50. We still had a revolver, but were not going to get rid of it until we reached Portland.

In Nampa, we parked on a railroad right-of-way and built a little fire to cook some wheat that we had raked off the highway. We found that it took a long time to cook raw wheat. By and by a man and his wife came along. The man was a cook for the railroad company. The woman wanted to serve us supper in the dining car at the railroad’s expense. Mother stayed behind with our things. It was the first square meal that my brother and I had had in a long time. They sent food back with us for Mom and invited us to breakfast the following morning. Mother thought all this was remarkable, but I knew very well that the Lord could arrange such feasts for us. As it turned out, this man knew where we could get work, so we worked in the alfalfa fields for about three weeks before getting on the road again.

One of the most remarkable happenings of the whole trip concerned our car. The rivet on the rim of our wheel broke so there was a danger of its coming off. I would stop occasionally and take a look. One time, upon stopping to check, it seemed the rim was almost off. I stepped back into the weeds and found a wheel with solid spokes the same size we had on our car! I picked it up, made the changeover, and we drove on.

When we finally entered Oregon, it took another two or three days to get to Portland. It was a Sunday afternoon when we finally arrived at the front of the campground on Duke Street. I thought it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. It was so big and so wonderful; it took my breath away.

People gathered around us to welcome us. With our chicken coop, we may have presented one of the most unusual sights the people had ever seen. The people treated us very kindly and invited us to attend church.

We went that night and I will never forget the testimonies of victory that I heard. One person after another got to their feet and told of the wonderful things God had done for them. One of the first to testify was an ex-convict, Bruce Archer, whose testimony we had read in a paper we had received. It was almost too much for us.  We had given up everything and traveled over 2000 miles to find the “treasure hid in a field” (Matthew 13:44) and we found it. We had never seen any church service so orderly and perfectly conducted. Afterwards I said, “Well, Mom, it is just like you said it would be.”

On Monday morning Jack and I went downtown to look for work and we accomplished nothing.

It was as though I had dropped dead and had immediately been resurrected into a new life—the old person had died.

On Tuesday I got up early and went to the bus stop. I struck up a conversation, with a man on the bus, about furniture factories, because I had worked in one. I let him know that I was looking for work, but he didn’t say much. Then, just before we got downtown, he said, “Go to the conductor and get a transfer slip to the west side.” I did and then he told me to transfer and get off at his stop where there was a metal-furniture factory – and he was the superintendent! He introduced me to the foreman and I was put to work. I had been in Portland only two days. I knew the Lord was guiding me and caring for me.

Saturday evening Mom and I went back to church again. After the service one of the ladies asked me if I was saved. I thought, ‘What an absurd question; anybody should be able to tell that I wasn’t saved.’ She said, “Don’t you think you should give your heart to God?”

I knew that was the exact purpose of my coming there—to give my heart to God. The message preached that night was, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18). That was what I wanted and when the service ended, I knelt at the altar of prayer.

At the altar, people began to pray for me. They prayed and prayed and kept on praying. I could actually feel that devilish spirit leave me. I wasn’t saved yet, but I felt different.  Then I asked the Lord, in a simple way, to save me. In my heart I said, ‘I will not leave this place until You save me, Lord.’ Before I was through with the statement, the change took place.In an instant of time, Jesus filled my heart with an indescribable peace and joy. It was wonderful!  I didn’t think such a thing could happen to anyone. It was as though I had dropped dead and had immediately been resurrected into a new life—the old person had died. I cannot describe it the way I would like to, but it was marvelous. That happened over fifty-five years ago and I still remember it as though it had happened yesterday. That is how real the Gospel is! On that night I became a member of the Family of God. After that, they didn’t have to ask me if I was saved; they knew it. It was a wonderful night.

I wondered if the peace that I felt would be gone in the morning. When Sunday morning came, it was not gone. I was still praising the Lord in my heart. I arose and went to Sunday school, and that night the Lord sanctified me. It was a marvelous experience. It has been important to me. It brought more of the love of God into my heart.

The very next night, the Lord baptized me with the Holy Ghost and fire. Although I had read the Bible through, I had very little understanding of what I read, except for some of the basic principles such as God’s commanding all men everywhere to repent. I think anyone can understand that. But of the deeper spiritual experiences, I lacked comprehension. Yet, the Lord gave me the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Jack chose to go his own way, but Mom was saved the week following my conversion. She was also sanctified and received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. When we sought first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, these other precious gifts were added to us.

It is wonderful to have something that is real. It is wonderful to have something that you can lean on, that will never fail you no matter what the distress or emergency.

I have found that the Lord truly does care for His people.

Steve Williams was a minister of the Gospel for many years. He and his wife pioneered the Apostolic Faith Church in Fort Smith, Arkansas (now in Van Buren). The Lord called him Home on June 1, 1990.‍