My wife, Gloria, had been immersed the previous year. I did not know what that meant. She bathed daily; why did she have to do that in public? Oh, I get it, another religious thing! We had been married for seven years without God's help. We had two small children who could go with her to these Sunday and Wednesday outings; but remember, I was born and raised in a Jewish home. Even though we no longer practiced this archaic religion, I did not see any reason... not until that night that Gloria told me with tears in her eyes, "Larry, I want to be baptized to wash away my sins and be one with our Lord." I saw something in those tears that initially scared me. It was so overpowering, this love she had, that I was scared. I was jealous, not of the loss of her, but for the beautiful emotion that I somehow could not find myself. I went to that service, saw my wife immersed, and saw something that instilled a horrible sense of dread in me. I saw a love blossom in these strangers for my wife and children as they were encircled by Dan Cooper and his congregation in the love circle. We all held hands and they gave prayers and sang of the beauty of Jesus and His world. I did not understand any of it. But to me this was not the evil I had been taught in Hebrew School. It was not the death of all I had been made to acknowledge, i.e. my Jewishness, my years of study of the Torah and the holidays, my Bar mitzvah that marked the entrance into adulthood. This was something greater, this was something I secretly wanted to explore. I was not alone anymore.

Without my knowledge, the congregation had quietly decided that I was to be subjected to, horror of horrors, Friendship Evangelism. Another COOPER CON. Imagine this, complete strangers wanting to befriend me. I considered myself to be a great agnostic, a cynical, hate-filled, anti-social, anti-religious zealot. They didn't care. Why, this group had another future intended for me. They wanted nothing else but to show me that simple rule, LOVE ONE ANOTHER, spoken almost two thousand years before to a world so much like me, still gave off its power. That to stand before your friends and say "I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God" is not a weak fantasy. It is a powerful and lingering beginning. The congregation opened my eyes to the light. Dan Cooper and his family took us in hand and walked us through a very difficult time. I was Jewish. How to deal with the possible and now imminent decision that we needed to see if there was more than the old way to revere God? I started to read the Bible. I started to come to the Sunday morning services, but DON'T PUSH ME blazed from my eyes. I fought with the people trying to give me a new road to follow. I fought Dan; I fought my wife; but most of all, I fought myself. How hard to slowly admit that maybe the hate I had for people was wrong. That maybe the words of the Gospel of John had more meaning than I wanted to admit. Dan and I spent some time with that book.

We started having people into our home. This was the first time we'd had guests in many years. Gloria even went so far as to paint the bathroom and buy new towels. We were starting to become a part of a large family. I started to look forward to the time when one or another would stop into the store I managed and chat for a time. No pressure, guilt, or force was ever used to get me to shake the chains of the world. Only their love and their friendship.

We were not ready. I was not perfect. Only Jesus was perfect. How could I give my life over and lose everything I had created? I was being asked (by myself) to change. Dan explained to me that if everyone waited until they were perfect enough, no one would come forward. We must accept our humanity and our sins, wash them away, start a new life, and go on from there.

At the church party that Christmas, we were asked to write a secret about ourselves on a piece of paper before we went in. When we read them later, it was difficult to decipher who had written them; but Dan's wife practically screamed, "That has to be Larry"! when they read "I am a closet Christian."

Seven months passed. I was still unable to make that walk, until the Flatt brothers stood before us and gave us a little of that old time religion and a little of that down-home philosophy. Wednesday night as we sang JUST AS I AM, I handed Gloria my handkerchief and said, "I think you will need this." I got up and answered that question. Yes, Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

I still fight with myself nine years later. Our fervor has to be stoked and the embers have to be fanned; but the image of that night has never left me. Recently, when my now teenage son told us that he has chosen to follow a path of no smoking, no drugs, no alcohol, and is trying to counsel some of his friends to follow the same road, I remembered that night. I remembered that no matter how low you may get or how distraught we think we are, there is always our Lord to fall back on.

The world we live in is not such a terrible place after all. We just have to stop relying on ourselves and remember that we are not the answer. The Bible has all the answers.

As a footnote to this, the COOPER CON is alive and well. After all, I never wanted to put this down on paper, but somehow Dan Cooper . . . . . . .