There weren’t really home-stays for everybody in Georgia but there was a connection with either a town government official or maybe the newspaper in Texas and this guy said, “Come on out we’ll find something for you.” So Rusty, myself and another guy, Joe Goodman, we drove out together. My first home stay was with a family in St Angelo, who I’m still in touch with. They were Southern Baptists. It was an eye opener for me. I was very cynical about my own religious background, which was Catholic. To see these people, their whole lives centered around it. The husband was a pharmacist and they really walked the talk. I mean he would take time to go to jail and talk to prisoners and read to them. You know, we went to Mexico, the border towns. They were very generous with people there. It was uncomfortable only in that I felt so inadequate with my own spiritual foundation. If anything they were just showing me by example what my life could have been like if I would have accepted Jesus as my lord and savior. But there was never any pressure. I would stay late up into the night with the father, Daryl, asking him questions. My family I don’t think even owned a Bible. I would ask him all the obvious questions about, you know, all the tragedies in the world and how could a just God allow these? Daryl was just real patient. Yeah, at one point I came close. But I had some sort of a stumbling block with the whole concept that if I have to agree to do it or make a decision, then that’s me creating God. I teetered real close.

Dick Slade '74