Tom Murr

My life has been full of "guides.  These persons have been like street signs pointing me in the right direction. Sometimes I have watched them. Sometimes I have had to have several guides to get my attention. I give thanks to God for his patience and love for me by giving me guides. I would like to have had one experience where I was stopped by God like Paul on the road to Damascus, but God has shown me his way through the guides he has given to me. So I share with you my life guides who have helped me to grow in knowing Jesus Christ.

My home Methodist Church was in Dallas, Iowa, Rev. Don Bucklew was the minister. He died when I was 10 years old, and Mrs. Bucklew took over the ministry for the rest of the conference year. Mrs. Bucklew taught our confirmation class and one I Sunday I walked down the aisle and joined the church. My parents were not strong church people. I am not sure why I went and became faithful to the church in those first years of my life.

One guide was the window in the Dallas Methodist Church which had been put   there in memory of his mother, Mrs. Goff, by Rev. Charles Goff of the Chicago Temple in downtown Chicago. It was Sallman’s head of Christ. It has been moved twice since the church was torn down some years ago.

Another guide in my life at that time was Mrs. Dawson who sat in the same pew every Sunday and would "A-men" things the minister said. She seemed like a saint to me.

My mother was active in the Youth Christian Temperance League, and she took me to YTC camps as a teenager. I met Rev. Wade Dillivou at YTC and his messages of living a Christian life and abstinence from drugs, tobacco and alcohol were very strong influences in my life. Other than the time when some high school kids poured beer on my face, I never had a drink of beer until I was a senior in college. It has never been a part of my life.

Rev. Don Glaser, Rev. Don Crews, and Rev. Glen Lamb all had great influence upon my life at church camps. Rev. Crews and Rev. Glaser helped me get to camps and home again. When I first knew Rev. Lamb at Clear Lake in 1956 or ’57 he was gone during the day, I asked where he was and he told me he had funerals. That first year I thought he was an undertaker, a very dedicated lay person.

The following year when he led worship around the campfire I came to know him as a minister at Grace United Methodist Church in Des Moines. I went to Grace some when I was in college. Through those years I always worked two weeks at church camp for Rev. Lamb. It was at Wesley Woods that Jesus became more powerful in my life. The trail of silence, the worship around the campfire, the singing and the study all brought me close to Christ. Rev. Lamb was later minister at Indianola and performed the marriage ceremony of my brother to Margaret Powell from Woodburn.

In Anne’s 9th grade I met her for the first time at Wesley Woods. I knew her father was Rev. Paul Hasel. It was at Rev. Lamb’s youth retreat at Indianola that I saw Anne again. She said, "You’re Tom Murr? Are you married yet?" She remembered that I was impressed with another camp counselor at Wesley Woods, I answered her question by saying, “No!" The rest of the day I made it a point to sit beside her and asked her to go hear Al Hirt at the old KRNT Theater So Rev. Lamb led me to the person that I love and cherish as my wife, friend, mother of our children, and companion in life.

I grew spiritually those years from the experiences at Camp Wesley Woods, and the Simpson College Vital Center program was just made for me. The eight great questions of life addressed by Dr. Cell, Dr. Padget, Dr. Hostettler, and Dr. Helfrich in the philosophy, religion and history departments led me to grow greatly. I was introduced to thinking and looking at myself as a person.

Rev. Donald Koontz was in charge of the "Town and Country Program." After my freshman year I walked into his office and told him that I wanted to serve in the program. I felt that God had called me to serve people. He sent me to the Woodburn Methodist Church in the fall of 1960. I served the church and worked with the young people for the rest of my college years. For two years I also went to Last Chance church and served there. At both places the people accepted me and we developed a life long relationship. My brother met his wife at Woodburn.

After college I went to Aurora, Illinois to work with the youth program in a Methodist Church. This was an experience that would lead me away from being a minister. The older minister at the church was appointed to be a District Superintendent, and the 40-year-old minister that came in told me, "We have to get the ‘lay of the land’ before we can do anything." I was young and inexperienced to deal with this type of ministry in the church.

I came back to Iowa and went to Drake University Divinity School and served Lorimor and Murray churches. But the Divinity School seemed to want to explain away "God" and explain everything from the human perspective. The "Miracle of Faith" paper that I prepared for one class was laughed at and made fun of by the professor. I guess Mrs. Dawson and Rev. Lamb just did not make faith seem that way to me.

The door opened to teach and coach in 1965. My parents had both taught school. My grandmother Martin and my great grandmother had both taught one-room schools. After my first year of teaching Anne and I were married. I went to school at Drake University in the summer of 1966-’67 to complete my teaching endorsement.

In the summer of 1967 I went to three worship services each Sunday —Plymouth Congregational Church to hear Dr. Lenhart at 8:30; 9:45 to St. John’s Lutheran Church j and Dr. Valbracht; and at 11:00 I worshiped with my father-in-law Rev. Paul Hasel at Easton Place U.M.C. This was one of my mountain top experiences. I had for years ` always listened to Dr. Lenhart’s last Palm Sunday and Easter sermons. I read the sermons of Dr. Valbracht and my father-in-law Paul Hasel. I went to meet God, and God came to me through those sermons. (I lost the tapes of sermons from that summer in our fire last year.) The faith miracle of Mrs. Dawson and Rev. Glen Lamb were alive in my life.

At Gladbrook Anne and I led the youth group after the minister volunteered us one Sunday in front of the entire church. We had a great time. We sang and studied.  We listened to "Jesus Christ Superstar. (Some people at the time thought this was terrible music, but when the associate minister’s wife at St. John’s Lutheran Church sang on Easter Sunday "I Don’t Know How to Love Him" Anne and I went ahead, played the records and taught about the life of Christ.) The singing carried over to the basketball buses and locker room-thanks to Anne’s singing and certainly not mine.

While at Gladbrook we became involved in Lay Witness Missions. Through them several things happened. I met a different woman in Anne one Saturday morning in Ames. Her life story explains that happening. I became acquainted with Sam Zikaphoos of the Ames church. I loved Sam. He was a great lay person who touched me deeply as a man of faith. One Sunday, after talking about the woman at the well, he sang "Fill My Cup” and I can only remember my life being lifted up by Jesus. One 16-year-old girl from Texas was at that Lay Witness Mission and on Sunday she stood up and said in her southern accent, "I just wanted to come up here and tell you that I Jesus loves you and he loves me and I love you." Wow!!

At Spencer I met another guide in my life, Dr. Fred Shultz. He preached the word of God and made it live. The size of the United Methodist Church in Spencer made God seem so big. Anne directed the choir with the loving support of Dr. Shultz. I taught Sunday School with Mrs. Hitchcock until she was killed in a terrible boating accident.

About this time Keith Miller came along with the wonderful books Taste of New Wine and The Second Touch. He wrote about being real and knowing that Jesus does come into your life. He gave an example of a successful and wealthy businessman stopping along the side of a road in Texas, getting out of his car and saying, "God, what do you want me to do with my life?" He tried to live a spiritual life and stumbled. One morning he had gotten up early for meditation and his young daughter came into his study. He barked at her to leave and she ran crying to his wife in the kitchen, saying, "Daddy yelled at me because he was reading the Bible and praying? Reading this you can see yourself in that same experience. You laugh and then cry because you know you have done the same thing.

In Waterloo there were several guides waiting for me. One was seeing the East High School Nativity one Sunday afternoon. This, I believe, is something everyone should see. As a southern Iowa boy I was shaken in my understanding of Jesus Christ when I saw a black girl dressed as an angel. When I heard the audience shouting "Amen" to Christmas carols, calling, "Sing it out, LeRoy" and "Yes, yes! Sing it, sing it" saw in a new way that the baby Jesus did come to all the world for all people.

Dr. David Stout was the pastor at First United Methodist Church. He was able as no one I have ever worshiped with to get the congregation to focus on one thought or aspect of God for that particular morning. The worship was centered on that thought and it came through. Dr. Stout wrote personal letters of affirmation to church members. From the letter you knew that he knew where you were on the path you were walking with Jesus.

Through all the years A1me’s parents, Paul and Haven, always finished their phone calls and letters with the thought, "We are cheering for you and praying for you." One birthday gift they gave me was the money to go hear “Carmen." I was hurting and "Carmen" fed me. I called Paul and Haven and told them that their gift had grown more than they ever thought.

When we came to Osceola we found a warm and open church. The building provides for the beauty of God’s world coming through the windows of the sanctuary as you worship. The sun, blue sky, dark clouds and the changing seasons all shine through the church at Osceola. Worship reaches you in a different way. The people have been open and shared greatly with Anne and me. We particularly experienced this care and love on and after the fire on December 27, 1995.

During our first year in Osceola I got a phone call from Fern Underwood saying that she wanted to take Anne and me out for supper. We thought this was nice, but strange. Well, Fern Underwood and District Superintendent Tompsie Smith bought our supper. (I knew there was a serious issue when they suggested we eat fish for supper that night. Fish had a very significant and symbolic place in the gospels as fishermen became disciples and Jesus told them they would become fishers for souls, and in the multiplying of loaves and fishes. Fish continued as a sign in the early church.)

Tompsie and Fern asked us if we would consider going out to Woodburn and leading worship. After they explained the need, there was only one answer. We returned to worship with our life—long friends.

Anne and I have grown in our relationship to the church as we worship at Woodburn. Our friends have been generous and kind to us. Last year I asked Tompsie if she had ever gotten more out of one fish meal in her life, and she only smiled.

People have broken fish for me all my life. They have let God shine into my life like God shines through the windows of the Osceola United Methodist Church. There have been many guides that Jesus has put into my life. I pray that I have been able to keep my grandmother’s favorite verse, 2 Timothy 4:7, "I have fought the good fight and I have kept the faith." This faith has been shown in my life through the guides that God has placed before me. I give thanks to God for all his guides who have shown me the path of growth in faith and love of Jesus Christ.

He cares for you.
(1 Pet. 5:7b Favorite Bible verse,
Rayala Andrew)

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