First let me say that I am 65 year old.  My Dad and Mom took me to church every since I can remember.  They took me, not sent me. Back at that time we didn't even have an automobile to go to church in.  Sometimes we walked, caught rides, and sometimes I rode a horse, as did several of the young boys about my age.  We all went to the Yuma Missionary Baptist Church, at Yuma, Tn.  At that time we only had preaching once a month, usually on the first Sunday of the month.  The other Sundays we only had Sunday school.

In the summer that I was eleven year old, during the revival and near the end of the revival, I became aware that I was lost.  I had seen all my life that I could remember, others older than me going up for prayer and being saved and heard their testimony afterward.  Near the end of the revival, one night I suddenly became worried of what would happen to me if I died in my condition.  I tried to push it out of my mind, but I had this terrible feeling inside like my whole insides were on fire.  I didn't go up the rest of the revival.

Next year when the revival started, there it was again, stronger than ever.  I just kept sitting there.  In those days different members of the church would walk back down the aisles and talk to the ones that they thought might be lost and ask them if they felt like they should go up. On this day I saw one of those, a man that I respected highly, who was always a worker in the church.  He started back up the aisle.  I knew as soon as I saw him start back that he was coming to me.  He did .  He asked me if I felt like I was lost  and I told him that I did.  I almost ran over him getting down to the altar.  I went down and just tried to pray as best I knew how, and beg the Lord to save my soul.  That day just before the service ended he did just that.  I felt good and just like a terrible load had been lifted from me. I was twelve year old at that time.  We all continued to go to church while I was growing up.  When I was nineteen year old, I had to go into the military service. I was just an old farm boy, had never been around much or traveled on my own much.  After getting away from home and out on my own, the devil started to work on me.  I started going out and doing things that I had never been raised to do, and had never did.  I started drinking the bunch, and not going to church.

In the military, I did real well as far as my job was concerned and advanced up rapidly.  I was doing pretty good I thought, and even considered making a career of military service.  Things were really good.  EXCEPT, I had forgotten who made all this possible,  I never gave the Lord credit for anything, After six years of doing so good, I fell on my face.  I couldn't seem to do anything right. I got out of the service after six year.

I came back home, and worked at various jobs around the country. Over time I would do real good for a time, and then everything would go wrong.  I still was not going to church and living right.  When I would do good and think I was really doing something, the  Lord would show me just how little I was, but I still kept trying to do things on my own.

I used to come home and see my mother, and we would talk and she would ask me to start going to church and living right.  When I would leave she would want us to have prayer and she would pray for me and ask me to pray I couldn't pray because I was so out of fellowship with the Lord that I felt even worse than I did when I was lost.  Mom never gave up praying for me. I was living in Florida when I got a call that my mom was in the hospital and not expected to live.  Mom passed away before I could get back to Tennessee  to see her. My Dad had a stroke about a year before Mom died.  He lost the use of his right side and could not talk.  He finally had to be put in a nursing home.  A year after Mom passed away, I lost my Dad.  I now had no one to talk too, or pray for me any more.  I went back to Florida, and one night I was in bad shape mentally.  I took a drive along a stretch of highway around a swamp area.  Here they had built a long ramp running out into the swamp for tourist to walk out and look at the alligators and animals.  On this night I parked my car and walked out on the ramp. Seemingly I was alone in the world.  I began to talk with the Lord.  I said, "Lord I have got to have some help"  "Please help me "  I needed someone to share my life with that I could talk too and I desperately needed the Lord. A short time later I had the chance to come back to work around where I could be in my old home town often.  A nice lady who had stayed with and cared for my mother for a long time saw me.  I had known her every since she started staying with my Mother but that was as far as it
went.  We later talked and  became real close friends.  In fact we were so close that we got married about a year later.  We started going back to church.  When I got my life back in order and started to give the Lord credit and thanks for what he did for me, things made a complete turn around.  My wife Linda has been a blessing to me and the Lord has blessed us in so many ways that I just could never begin to thank him enough.

It worries me that I wasted so many years out in the world when I could have been truly happy and serving the Lord.  I thank him daily for his mercy and long suffering.

I would like to say to any young person that might read this, to please don't let the devil tempt you and go astray and waste such good years as I did.  The only place that there is true happiness is with the Lord.  I fight a battle with him daily, but with the Lord's help I will never go back, It is my sincere prayer that this might help someone, sometime.

Robert Prater