If you read my earlier post "My Date With Betty", you probably think that I am a real klutz when it comes to girls.  Well, you ain't read nothin yet.  Wait until you read today's post below, entitled "Date From Hell".

​DATE FROM HELL (1964).  I know that we all have had dates that we would like to forget.  I have had 2.  If you think that the date with Betty was bad, wait ‘til you read about what I call “A Date From Hell”.
The date was February 1964.  I had been in the Washington, D.C. area for about 7 months.  I met a girl, Mary Fran, living in an apartment on the floor above me.  I asked her to go to a movie with me, and she said yes.  As I mentioned, it was February and perhaps the coldest day of the winter so far.  I had picked out the movie “Man’s Favorite Sport” starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day playing at the Lowes Palace.  During our drive to the movie in my now infamous Austin Healy Sprite, we froze to death because of the poor heater in the car.  I had a good idea of where the movie theater was, but I was still unfamiliar with the D.C. area.  I got lost.  I drove around for quite awhile before I asked for directions to Lowes.  When we found the theater, I had to park several streets away.  We froze as we walked to the theater.  When we approached the theater, I noticed that the marquis said the movie playing was “The Victors” starring George Peppard and Eli Wallach.  Then I looked further, and the theater was the Lowes Embassy, not the Palace.  I had brought Mary Fran to the wrong theater.  She tried to rescue me from this embarrassing situation by telling me that she had wanted to see “The Victors”.  But it had started 45 minutes ago and was about half over.  We decided to find the Lowes Palace where “Man’s Favorite Sport” would be starting in a few minutes.  We got directions from the ticket lady and sped to my car.  When I got into the Sprite, I noticed that my vision was blocked by something on the windshield.  When I retrieved it, I realized that it was a ticket for parking illegally.  How embarrassing.
I tried to follow the ticket lady’s directions to the Lowes Palace, but I got lost again.  Soon, by luck, we passed the Lowes Palace.  Not wanting to look for a street parking spot, and not wanting to get another ticket, I drove into a nearby parking lot and left the car at valet for them to park.  We again braved the freezing cold weather (about 15 degrees F) and walked to the theater.  The movie had already started but only 15 minutes earlier.  I bought tickets for the loge area.  Somehow the theater had a maze of fabric-lined passageways, and I got lost in the theater.  Without going up one stair, we ended up in the balcony and not in the loge.  We were lucky enough to find empty seats, and we began watching the movie.  It must have been funny because everyone in the theater was laughing but Mary Fran and me.
When the movie was over, we went to retrieve the Sprite from the parking lot.  Well, the National Theater had just let out from a play, and the valet area was packed with ladies in fur coats and gentlemen in tuxedos.  One by one, huge luxury cars were driving down the ramp for the patrons waiting for their cars.  Finally, my little Sprite arrived, and people were laughing out loud at the sight.  To make matters worse, this huge 6’3” guy got out of my car making a big deal at how difficult it was to get out of this little car.  The embarrassing laughter got louder.  Another valet attendant went over to the passenger’s side of the car to open the door for Mary Fran.  But the Sprite was designed with no door handles on the exterior of the car.  To open the door, you had to reach under the flexible, plastic, side window, grab the handle and lift up.  He did not know how to do this.  I went over and opened the door myself.  The laughter was deafening.  I drove out of the parking lot and headed home down Pennsylvania Avenue.
At this point, Mary Fran dropped the bomb and told me that she was too old for me.  Well, if I didn’t know before, I knew now that this relationship wasn’t going anywhere soon.  As we motored down Pennsylvania Avenue, we reached Constitution Avenue where it intersects with Pennsylvania Avenue at the National Museum of Art.  I began to change one lane to the right, and my steering broke.  It was like I had a hula hoop in my hand.  The steering wheel just spun around and around and the tires did not turn.  I applied the brakes, hit the curb, and the car came to a stop as it stalled.  The Sprite was blocking half the lane.  At 11:30PM on Pennsylvania Avenue and Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., the traffic is extremely heavy.  In about 30 seconds, traffic was backed up as far as the eye could see.  Motorists were shaking their fists at me (or worse) and yelling at me to get a real car.
I got out of the car and lifted the hood to see what I could do.  Meanwhile, the “little old lady” that I was with said she would get a taxi, get her car, and come back for me.  As I poked around under the hood, I noticed a round metal collar laying at the base of the steering mechanism.  I lifted this collar up and forced it into place.  I reached into the car, turned the steering wheel, and the wheels moved.  I quickly tried to get Mary Fran’s attention, but all I saw was the taxi door closing, and it sped away.  I was able to maneuver the car from the traffic lane and onto a shoulder.  I was now not blocking traffic.  I froze to death for almost an hour while waiting for my old lady friend, Mary Fran, to return and rescue me.
Mary Fran followed me to be sure I got home safely and didn’t get lost again.  I felt about 2-feet tall and 6 years of age.  The steering was very loose, but we got back to our apartment building safely.  I walked her to her door, but I didn’t even try to kiss her good night.  If I did, I probably would have poked her eye out with my big nose.
When I got in bed a few minutes later, I relived the night many times over.  I just couldn’t believe so many bad things could happen to me in about 4- to 5-hours of time.  I didn’t know it then, but the next day I noticed all my car’s glass lenses in the back had been broken in the National Theater’s parking lot.  I had to get my steering mechanism fixed, I had to replace all my rear light lenses, and I had a ticket to pay. 
Although Mary Fran and I never went out again, we remained friends.  We often talked about our date.  She told me that she thought I was the biggest clown she had ever gone out with and that she thought it all was very funny.  Personally, I failed to see the humor of it all.

Today I am continuing to paste the short vignettes that I included in my memoirs.  I am only one story, and it is entitled "My Date With Betty".  After reading this story, I am sure that you will think that I am 1 beer short of a 6-pack.  Not the swiftest kid on the block.  I hope you enjoy reading it.

MY DATE WITH BETTY (1961).  In late 1961, I was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity.  During the fall, we would have football rallies ending with a bonfire.  I owned the cutest little car, an Austin Healy Sprite.  During the parade to the bonfire, I was in the parade with my Sprite and 2 girls sitting on the back.  The parade had stopped stopped,  and I heard a girl standing as a spectator say, “Hi, Sam”.  I looked and there was the cutest little redhead smiling at me.  She looked familiar, but I didn’t know who she was.  The parade continued on to the bonfire.  While there, the same redhead came up to me, and we started talking to each other.  I didn’t know her name, and at this time, I didn’t have the nerve to ask her.  In our conversation, she mentioned that someone had referred to her as “Betty”.  Hurray!  I now knew her first name.  I asked her to come back to my fraternity and join our party.  She did, and we had a great time.  I asked her for a date for the next night after the football game, and she said yes.
I laid in my bunk that night thinking about how well this had turned out.  Then a horrible thought truck me!  I didn’t know her last name!  How was I going to pick her up at her dormitory?  The policy at URI was to go to the dorm, go to the front desk, and ask for the girl you wanted to see, by name.  I knew that the dorm she resided in had several hundred residents.  I only knew her as Betty.
The next day, I frantically started to call my high school friends to see if anyone knew her.  After many calls, one, my good friend Hank Dugan,  said it could be Betty Brousseau, but he wasn’t sure.
That night, I went to her dorm to pick her up.  I went to the front desk and asked for Betty Brousseau.  The lady at the desk said the only Brousseau living there was named Elizabeth.  Betty could be a nickname for Elizabeth, and I asked the lady to call her.  You can’t imagine how nervous I was when I saw the legs of a girl appear on the stairway coming down.  Much to my relief, it was my Betty.  Hank, bless his heart, had been right.
Betty and I dated several more times during the fall until the Christmas break.  We were hitting it off pretty well, and I know we enjoyed each other’s company.  We only lived a few miles apart in our hometowns away from the university.  I asked her for a date during the upcoming Christmas break.
The date night was during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  I went to her house to pick her up, and I met her father for the first time.  He strongly instructed me to bring Betty back by no later than 11:00.  I believe that he was an officer in the air force, so I said “Aye, Aye, Sir”. 
The horror movie “Psycho” had just come out and was scaring the pants off movie goers all over the country.  I took her to see Psycho, and we both had our pants scared off.  We arrived back from the movie close to her house at about 10:00.  I knew of an abandoned mill close by that was down a small dirt road.  That, combined with the movie we just saw, afforded us a scary place where we could “talk”.  At about 10:45 or so, we knew that we had to leave to get her home before the 11:00 deadline.  What I had not considered was that the dirt road had a thin layer of ice on it, and it had a slight grade downward toward the abandoned mill.  My little Austin Healy Sprite had no weight in the back, and therefore, it had little traction on the icy road.  I tried to turn the car around to go up the hill.  But the rear wheels spun, and I skidded off the road.  I tried all kinds of things to get the car realigned on the road.  I found wood boards to put under the wheels.  I used sticks and branches as well.  Finally, I got the car back on the road and headed in the right direction.  But the rear wheels would only spin on the ice.  I asked Betty if she knew how to drive a stick shift car.  She told me the answer that I did not want to hear.  “No”.  I gave her a quick lesson on how to use the clutch and to shift gears.  When she was ready, I got in back of the car to push and told her to drive.  We did get the car moving slowly.  With the tires spinning wildly, it moved and finally hit ice free dirt.  On the ice-free dirt, the Sprite suddenly lurched forward at a high rate of speed.  With Betty behind the wheel, the car sped up the remainder of the dirt road and went flying across the ensuing paved road.  The car hit the opposite curb and stalled.  We were both catatonic at this point, especially Betty.  Her house was less than 5 minutes from us, but by then it was about 12:30.  I was and hour and a half past the deadline given to me by her scary father. 

Figure 21.  1958 Austin Healy Sprite (See figure 21 below).  I had many adventures in this car.

When we arrived at her house, her father greeted us at the door.  We told him that we had a flat tire, but he bought none of that lame excuse.  He told Betty to go to her room, and he saw me to the door.
When we returned back to URI the next week, I called Betty to ask her for a date.  She said that her father had forbidden her to see me again.  I said that he was back in Lincoln, R.I., and we were here in Kingston, 30 miles away.  But she was obedient to her father, and we never dated again.  Our paths did cross several times on the campus, and I knew she was sorry about how things had turned out that fateful night.

FIGURE 20.  1958 AUSTIN HEALY SPRIT

Chapter 6 of my memoirs is a compilation of very short stories of events that happened to me during my life.  Most of them are humorous because they are events which I would rather forget, but my children and grandchildren just will not let me forget.  They are stories which I have told them numerous times and will I probably will tell in the future.  The 2 stories I post today are entitled "Dropped Off Into the Woods", and "The Fart And Burp Chart".  I hope you enjoy them.

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The following stories are short accounts of little things that have happened in my life.  They are the most often-requested stories by my 2 daughters and my 6 grandchildren.  Most are humorous in some way, at least to us.  Some bring back memories that give us warm feelings of our lives together; and in some cases, memories that I would like to forget.  They are included here primarily for my family’s enjoyment, but I hope any others reading them will enjoy them as well.
DROPPED OFF INTO THE WOODS (1960).  In the spring of 1960, I was a freshman at the University of Rhode Island (URI), and I had accepted an invitation to join Sigma Nu fraternity.  One evening during spring break, I was at the frat house watching TV.  Several fraternity brothers came into the room where I was.  I said hi to them and continued to watch TV.  Suddenly, they jumped me and dragged me outside where they blindfolded me and threw me into a truck.  We drove for about 15 minutes.  When the truck stopped, they pulled me out onto a dirt road and took off my blindfold.  They then said, “Good luck” and drove off.  I looked around and saw that I was on a dirt road, in the woods, at about 9:00 at night.  It was very, very dark.  All kinds of strange noises emanated from the woods, and I was scared.  The truck had gone off in one direction.  I wondered if I should start walking in that direction as well.  Something told me to go the other way.  They may be trying to fool me.  So, I went in the opposite direction. I had only been walking for a minute or two when I heard a large truck motor by.  I picked up my pace and soon came to a state highway.  I had made the right decision.  I immediately started to hitchhike in the direction I thought was right.  Unbelievingly, the first vehicle that came by, an 18-wheeler, stopped to give me a ride.  The driver asked me where I was trying to go, and I told him the university.  He said that he was going right by there and would drop me off.  Again, I had made the right decision.  Five minutes later, he dropped me off only a few minutes from the fraternity house.  When I went inside the house, I saw that the TV was still playing, so I sat down to watch.  A few minutes later, the guys who had abducted me walked in.  When they saw me sitting there, they couldn’t believe their eyes.  I had beaten them back!
This is one of Stephanie’s favorite stories.  Whenever I tell this story, she bursts into uncontrollable laughter.
THE FART AND BURP CHART (1959).  During my freshman year at URI, I lived in a university dormitory.  My roommate was one of my best friends in high school, Eddie Anderson.  Although we were very close friends, we had our little disagreements.  Eddie was constantly complaining about how often I would burp.  Well, I would fire back at him that he farted more than I burped.  This battle went on and on, and we finally decided to develop a “Fart and Burp Chart” and settle this issue once and for all.  Every time I heard him fart or every time he heard me burp, we would enter that onto our chart.  After a week, we would count up the incidences and see who did what the most.  The problem was that when we were making the chart, we couldn’t agree on how to spell fart.  I said it was spelled “Fot”, and he said it was spelled “Faht”.  My reasoning was how we New Englanders say fart.  We drop the “r” and say “Fot”.  I can’t for the life of me remember Eddie’s argument, but I am sure that it didn’t make any more sense than mine.  We asked several of the other dorm residents how fart was spelled, and it was amazing how many didn’t know how to spell it.  I mean, we were only 18 years old at the time.
You are probably wondering who won the contest.  Well, after about 3 days, Eddie ripped the chart down from the back of our room door.  The score was something like 62 Eddie farts to 2 Sam burps.  I would catch him in the mornings when he would just get up, and he would run up a string of farts.  He maintained that it wasn’t fair because he wasn’t fully awake in the mornings.  How did we ever graduate to our sophomore year?

In today's post, I include the last 3 of my testimonial stories.  My testimonial stories are events in my life which I relate to people that I am witnessing.  Witnessing is when I tell people how my life has changed once I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  In today's first story, I present the last of the several times that I had a direct interaction with the Holy Spirit.  The second story is an event which happened during a reunion I attended with my old Naval Oceanographic Office Buddies that I  worked with for many years.  The third story shows how powerful prayer can be.  I hope you enjoy the retelling of these events which I have been blessed with.

​HOLY SPIRIT FOR THE FOURTH TIME.  I am not sure when this next event took place, but it was in the summer of about 2005.  My daughter Monica, my son-in-law, Bob Smoot, and my 3 grandchildren, Karlen, Rowan, and Liana were visiting us for a week from Austin, TX.  This was always a special treat for us when our Austin family visited us.  During this visit, about mid-week, a bizarre thing happened to me.
I had to go to the Bi-Lo grocery store for a few items.  I backed out of my driveway and headed down the street.  I saw Monica walking back to our house from the beach.  She had gone there to take photos of the wildflowers growing in the sand dunes.  I put my window down and asked her if she needed anything from the store.  She smiled and said, “No.  I’m good”.  I said OK, closed my window, and began my short drive to Bi-Lo,  I went about 10 feet or so, and a wave of love for Monica swept over me.  I can’t describe how intense this feeling of love for her was. The next thing I remember was that I was parked in the Bi-Lo parking lot, and I was crying actual tears.  I do not remember driving there.  I was totally shaken.
The rest of the day and that night, I kept thinking about what had just happened to me.  I knew that my love for her was no stronger than what I have for my youngest daughter, Stephanie, or for my wife, Sylvia, or for my mother for that matter.  What was this all about?  The next morning, I was lying in bed still thinking about this.  Then, the voice mentioned in the 3 stories presented earlier in my memoirs, that of the Holy Spirit, said to me these words, “Now you have some idea of the love the Father has for each and every one of you”.  These are the exact words I heard.  I remember them clearly.  It is interesting to note that the words “some idea” were used and not the word “know”.
Why did the Holy Spirit give me this message?  To this day, I have no idea. The message is certainly an important one, but why me?  One thing that I do know however, is that this episode has been the last time the Holy Spirit has communicated with me in this way.  Of course, I am constantly being given guidance by Him daily on what I should or should not do.  But the guidance is more of a feeling than the loud, clear messages given to me by the Holy Spirit as described in the stories I have posted.
​
THE NAVOCEANO REUNION (2013).  In October 2013, my buddies from my early days at the Naval Oceanographic Office had a reunion on Hilton Head.  My Pueblo friends, Dunnie Tuck and Harry Iredale, were the primary planners of this event.  We rented a large 7-bedroom, 7-bath house to accommodate the approximately  20 people who attended.  Sylvia and I housed 2 of the couples in our home which was 2 streets away.  During the first night, I was inside taking pictures when I noticed that the men were all outside on a porch talking and drinking beer.  I went outside to join them.  As soon as I walked onto the porch, one of the guys said, “Here’s Sam.  He’ll remember that joke”.  Well, I had been the master of the “dirty” joke in my NAVOCEANO days.  But now I looked at them and said, “I’m sorry guys, but I don’t talk like that anymore”.  As they say, the silence that followed was deafening.   I explained to them that since moving to Hilton Head, my Christian values had grown, and I just stopped using foul language or telling dirty jokes.
The next day, several of the guys and their wives came up to me to tell me that they were believing Christians and were thrilled to know that I was one as well.  At the evening meal, we asked the others if they would mind if we asked the Lord to bless the food for our use.  No one objected, and we thanked God for providing us with the food we were about to enjoy.  We said the blessing for each meal that followed.
An interesting note to this story is that the people who first approached me were Dunnie Tuck and his wife, Vi.  Dunnie, as you now know, was one of the 2 civilian oceanographers onboard the USS Pueblo when it was captured by N. Korea (the other being Harry Iredale).  Vi told me that during the 11 months of captivity in N. Korea, Dunnie had been the spiritual leader of the American captives.  In this role, he kept the morale of the men up and helped them get through their terrible ordeal.  I had no idea of the spiritual strength of Dunnie Tuck.

THE POWER OF PRAYER (2005).  In January of 2005, my father suddenly became seriously ill.  He was, at that time, living in the same nursing home as my mother.  He had gone into a coma and was unresponsive.  I went to the hospital to visit him and to talk to his doctor about his condition.  The doctor gave me the bad news that my dad’s kidneys had shut down and that he had 3 or 4 more days to live.  Palliative care was the only thing we could do until the end.
Now, I had the unenviable task of telling my mother that her husband of almost 65 years was going to die.  I had no idea of how I was going to do this.  My head was swimming in confusion.  I went to Burger King to have lunch and to try to sort this dilemma out of how I could break this news to my mother.  I came up with no clear plan.  I left Burger King to go back to the nursing home to tell my mother what she had to know.  On my way to her room, I had to pass by the nurse’s station.  The nurse at the station saw me and asked, “How is Mr. Tooma doing”?  I started to tell her, but my voice broke, and I could not speak.  The nurse saw this and immediately rushed to me to give me a hug and say how sorry she was.  How was I going to tell my mother the bad news when I could not even tell it to, essentially, a stranger?  My mother’s room was near the end of a long hall, and I began my walk down this hall.  As I walked, I began to pray for help.  I prayed for the words I would need so that my mother would understand and accept the situation without breaking down.  Somehow, when I walked into her room, I had a new-found feeling of confidence of what I had to do.  I don’t remember my words, but I do know that my mother took the news calmly.  Somehow, I had delivered my message in a way that she accepted without breaking down.
How did I go from a man who could not even talk to a stranger about what I had to do to being a man who was cool, calm, and collected? All within a few seconds!  The only answer that I have is the power of prayer.

Today, I continue to post the events in my life which I include whenever I am witnessing my Christian walk with others; believers and non-believers.  As I said in my introduction to my previous post, these stories often are received with disbelief, both by believing Christians and non-believers.  But they did happen to me, and I present them without shame.  I hope you enjoy the 2 stories I present today.

HOLY SPIRIT FOR THE SECOND TIME (2002).  In August 2002, I was very enthusiastic about the renewal of my faith.  It was a time that I was beginning to really get interested in the Bible.  However, one thing that I did not want to do was to burn myself out in this area and begin to lose interest.  I had 3 options of Bible study  to choose from which were all going to begin in early September; Community Bible Study (CBS) which was going to begin study of Galatians and then Hebrews; a Bible study of Romans offered by St. Luke’s; and a very small, small group which was going to study the Essentials of Discipleship.  I only intended to select one of these options, and I was pretty sure that I would select Essentials of Discipleship with 2 other men, George Irwin and Jim Way.  However, with decisions like this, we Christians are always asked to pray on it in order to see what the Lord says.  So, dutifully one morning, I prayed to ask the Lord’s advice on which study I should take.  With my mind already made up, I was not expecting an answer.  I was shocked when the same voice as in the story I related earlier this week, the Holy Spirit, said clearly into my head, “Take two”.  That’s it.  Only 2 words; take two. But those words were more of a command and not a request.  I said aye, aye, Sir, and I signed up for Essentials of Discipleship and CBS.
Two of my dearest friends, Karl Meyer and Tom Gaffney, were extremely happy that I elected to enroll in the CBS class.  Karl had been badgering me for almost a year to join the CBS studies, and Tom was the Teaching Director for the Hilton Head evening chapter of CBS.
It is interesting to note that I only wanted to take one study so I would not burn myself out with Bible studies.  Well, I not only did the Essentials of Discipleship study and the CBS study of Galatians and Hebrews, but 3 weeks later, I joined my wife in her study of Romans at St. Luke’s church.  The Holy Spirit certainly knows what He is doing.

HOLY SPIRIT FOR THE THIRD TIME.  In October 2003, we had a tragic event occur in our lives.  Chris, a boyfriend of my youngest daughter, Stephanie, died from a drug overdose.  We did not know that he used drugs, and we never found out if his death was accidental or self-inflicted.  Stephanie and Chris were not in an active relationship at the time, but they were still good, close friends.  We knew little about Chris’s family, other than his mother lived in Florida.  After his death, there was no one to make any kind of arrangements.  So, Sylvia, Stephanie, and I took on that responsibility.  Through one of his friends in Florida, we were able to contact his mother and break the sad news to her.  She was very poor, and in very poor health. Chris had been in the navy, so we arranged a military burial ceremony for him and located a Potter’s Field in Florida for his burial place.  This whole event was very sad for us because Chris was fun-loving, so full of life, and had been part of our family for many years.
One Sunday, a few days after the death but before the burial had occurred, Sylvia and I were sitting in church, and I was thinking about what we had to do with the arrangements for taking care of Chris’s body in Florida.  Then, loud and clear, I heard the same voice that I talked about in both the testimonial stories I've posted.  There was no mistaking that it was, once again, the Holy Spirit.  It was a simple message, “It’s a blessing”.  I could not understand how this tragic event could possibly be a blessing.  A young man in the prime of his life had tragically died.  I pondered this message from the Holy Spirit for many months.
Needless to say, this happening was devastating to Stephanie.  She blamed herself for Chris’s death and was suffering greatly.  Several months later, she and I were sitting and talking in my car outside of the nursing home where my mother was living.  She opened up to me and told me of how crushed she was about Chris’s death.  She told me that she had tried to contact several self-help groups that were made up of people who had experienced similar tragedies in their lives.  Not one of these groups got back to her.  Stephanie then told me that she finally turned to Jesus Christ for help.  Where human beings did not help her, Jesus did.  Stephanie told me that without His help, she wasn’t sure that she could have gotten over what happened to Chris.
How is this a blessing?  All I know is that Stephanie became a believing Christian soon thereafter.  She eventually married Jordan Sturm, brought him to the Lord, and is raising her 3 children with strong Christian values.  This is certainly a great blessing to me and Sylvia.

In today's blog, I will post the first of 6 stories that have to do with my Christian walk.  I include these 6 stories whenever I am sharing my Christian life experiences to fellow believers and to non-believers.  Often, eyes grow wide or body language tells me that the audience does not believe what I have just related to them.  But, I assure you that these events happened in my life and are reported here just as I have remembered them.  The first story is the first time the Holy Spirit interacted with me in a direct, unambiguous way.  This audible contact with the Holy Spirit blew my mind then, and it still does now when I think of it.  I have called this story Holy Spirit For the First Time.

I have many faith-based stories of events that have occurred in my life, and I will provide some of them below.  However, I have already included other testimonial stories in Chapter 4.  Miracles because I felt that they were so miraculous that they belonged in the miracles chapter.  In any event, I still feel that the following stories are miracles in their own right.  Hopefully, you will agree with me.

HOLY SPIRIT FOR THE FIRST TIME (2002).  I started the renewal of my Christian faith in 2001, right after we moved to Hilton Head in February 2000.  We joined St. Luke’s Church, and we began to study the Bible and to join church small groups to study Christian-related topics.  In one of my first small group study lessons, we were discussing the temptation of Jesus Christ by Satan (see Matthew 4).  I was familiar with this story since my childhood years.  I had always wondered why this particular story was so important and why it was so widely discussed.  I understood that Jesus was fully God and fully man at the same time.  Therefore, being fully human, he was subjected to the same temptations as we all are.  Yet, he thoroughly rejected the temptations that Satan threw at him.  I thought, Jesus was also fully God, so what is the big deal here?  Defeating Satan would be a piece of cake to Jesus.  So, at this time, I missed the lessons learned from this story in the Bible; that Jesus is the perfect role model for us to follow in dealing with the many temptations of life and to use Scripture to defeat Satan, as Jesus did.  I did not have these lessons learned in my data bank at the time.
One night, I was lying in bed thinking about the temptation story.  I had my eyes closed when I heard a clear voice in my head say “What does this story mean to you?”  I opened my eyes and looked to the side of my bed fully expecting to see someone standing there.  That’s how clear the voice was.  There was no one there, of course.  I was shook up, but I realized that the Holy Spirit had just asked me a question.  I put my head back down on my pillow and pondered His question.  I answered, “To become more like Jesus?”  He said, “That’s true, but think deeper”.  After a short time, a vision appeared in my head.  The vision was a 45-degree line from the lower left going up to the upper right.  At the top right was Jesus, all that is good.  At the bottom left was Satan, all that is evil.  Near Satan were evil people that would kill their own grandmother if they thought it would benefit them.  As you went up the slope toward Jesus, the more good you became.  It then became clear to me what the Holy Spirit was trying to teach me.  I told Him that although I could never reach the top of this line where Jesus is, I should try to become more like Him each and every day.  He answered me, “You have it” and was gone.
This story almost seems like a fairy tale.  But it did happen to me.  This was the first time that I had a direct interaction with the Holy Spirit, but what He taught me that night has had meaning for me ever since.  My goal in life is to become more like Jesus Christ every day.  Another huge benefit of this experience with the Holy Spirit (and more were to follow) is that whenever little doubts of my Christian faith creep into my mind (and they do to all of us), I just remember what He taught me that night, and the doubts just go away.
An important sidebar to this story is that for 37 years I functioned in the scientific community.  In this world, you cannot say “Trust me”.  To succeed, you have to prove everything you say.  At this new time in my life, I had to think differently and trust what the Bible was telling me.  The Holy Spirit, in His infinite wisdom, knew that I would relate to a continuum line stretching from Satan to Jesus.  He taught me an important lesson that night in a way that I would understand.