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Barb Nesbit - Dunkerton, IA Print E-mail

Barb Nesbit - Dunkerton, IA

I was saved at the age of 10, on July 9, 1954, at 8:30 p.m., in a gospel meeting, at the Stout Gospel Hall. Mr. William Warke and Mr. Oliver Smith were having gospel meetings.

I was born into a Christian home although my parents did not take us to meetings. We had Christian neighbors who were willing to take 3 of us with them to the Hitesville Sunday School. They had 5 in their family so it was a car full. I was the 4th from the oldest in our family of 7 children so I had to trade off with my brother going and I remember I use to cry when I couldn't go. I learned many verses in Sunday School and learned I needed to be saved.

I was 7 years old in 1954 when I got polio and had to be taken to the University Hospitals in Iowa City and left there. I will never forget when my dad dropped me off at the big doors and the nurse said they wouldn't be able to see me until I was better. I was so scared and so sick with a high fever, convulsions and a terrible headache. I remember thinking I was going to die and many in beds around me did! I prayed to God and asked Him to make me better and I would get saved. For a week I was so sick, so afraid, so alone. Then I got better and was able to go home. When I got home, I had a new baby sister and my promise to God that I would get saved didn't happen.

When I was about 9, we started riding to meeting with a different Christian family (John Alberts, who went to the Stout Gospel Hall). Alberts had 6 in their family but crowded 3 of us in. I wanted to be saved and wanted to go to meeting so bad.

When the gospel series started in Stout in the hot summer, I couldn't go every night but my cousin Shirley Wessels got saved and when she told me, I thought there was no hope for me as I wanted to be saved so bad and I didn't know she did.

On a Friday night, we were able to go to the meeting and we sat in the second row from the front. When Mr. Warke got up, he announced this would be the last night of the long series of meetings. I started to cry; I wanted to be saved. He started preaching and I was looking through my Bible at all the verses I had learned and underlined. My older sister kept poking me and telling me to listen to Mr. Warke. At 8:30, Mr. Warke was done speaking. I thought to myself, "I will have to go to Hell, I can't get saved". Then my eyes fell on my opened Bible and I read John 3:16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that "whosoever", I stopped, I thought, thats me. I am a whosoever and I continued to read, whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Right there I realized I was saved. Jesus died for me, the whosoever. I told my sister and she told me to be quiet and listen. I did. After the meeting, a dear old sister sitting behind us said she was watching me and she could tell the minute I got saved. Praise the Lord.

 


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