ross lindberg's tribute to ron criswell #4:

[Martin Earl]

Ross Lindberg tribute to Ron Criswell:

Part 4-

I have saved my all-time favorite Ron story for last, and I will tell it as he

told it to me. When Connie and I were first married we were looking

for a church to call home. We had attended several different churches

before finding one we really liked. As the offering plate came around

Connie nudged me and told me to put something into the plate. All I

had was a twenty dollar bill. Now, I liked the church, but twenty dollars

was a lot of money back then and I wasn t about to part with that

much. I liked the church, but wasn t yet sure if it was a like worth

twenty dollars. Connie was insistent though that I put something into

the offering plate, so I reached into my pocket to see if I had some

change. Feeling something in my pocket I took a handful and dropped it

into the offering plate.

The day before I had been working on my motorcycle and some nuts,

bolts and washers had found their way into my pocket. As we had been

running late for church that morning, I had just transferred the

contents of my pockets from one pair of pants to the other. So, instead

of a handful of spare change, I had deposited a bunch of hardware into

the church coffers.

Connie glanced at the plate as it passed by her and realized what I had

done. Of course she was mortified. You have to get that out of there!

What are these people going to think? They are going to know it was

us because we are the only new people here! Do something! But it

was too late. The offering plate moved quickly down the line and was

soon out of sight. Connie was right. I was imagining the puzzled looks

on the ushers faces as the counted the offering and it wouldn t take

them long to figure out where the hardware-store-offering come from.

Worse yet, I wanted those nuts and bolts back myself as I still needed

to put my bike back together .

The ushers brought the offering to the pastor, who lifted them high in

the air and said Oh Lord, please show us many interesting uses for all

these gifts we have just received. That was the final straw. Connie and

I got the giggles, which soon turned to barely contained laughter. We

were laughing so hard that we had tears steaming down our faces and

had to lean against each other for support. Yeah, we didn t go back to

that church again which was kinda sad. I really liked that place

end Part 4