A Walk with God: Autobiography of Stanley Jacob Rexroth

By Stanley Jacob Rexroth

Reverend Stanley Rexroths Walk with God is spiritually uplifting. A reader will learn and gain inspiration of a faithful life journey with God. You will feel that you are present witnessing this faith mission. You will experience the poor souls of the world who yearn for love and healing. Over and over again, you will be filled with Pastors sharing the bibles loving message of truth and wisdom. We experience the sacrifice of suffering of Pastors saving souls for our God. One is given tremendous insight into their own lifes faith journey. Yes, the story of Walking with God will change your life as it helps you listen and grow in spirituality with the love of our Savior.
Jerry Lemons Senior MSgt. USAF Retired
Note: Jerry Lemons has witnessed the suffering of the worlds poorest of the poor in the Philippines, Vietnam and other areas of our world

When I first became acquainted with Stanley Rexroth, I was suspicious of his intent. I was teaching in a public school at the time and he was speaking out on an issue that was dividing our district. He then was elected to the school board. We became acquainted by being on opposite sides of a controversial issue but through time we gained a mutual respect for each other and have become friends in recent years.

After reading Stanleys autobiography A Walk With God I came to realize that despite humble beginnings, he has led a truly remarkable life. Stanley is a deeply religious man and his book centers upon his growth in faith and service. He served in the USAF and founded mission churches while stationed in the Philippines. He has made numerous mission trips back to the Philippines and to Nigeria throughout his life. He started his own church. As his congregation struggled financially he went to college to become a public school teacher. He taught American history and agriculture, in part to support his congregation. He served his community in various capacities and extended his influence religiously by organizing a national convention of pastors of independent Churches of God, which continues to meet annually after 21 years. Throughout his journey he remained steadfast in his belief in and commitment to his family, his God, and his country.

This book can benefit the reader in that many people give up on their attempts to make a commitment to God because they expect a revolutionary event to occur similar to St Pauls conversion on the road to Damascus. A Walk With God enables one to understand that such a commitment is more likely to be an evolutionary process, one that results from an ongoing journey filled with questioning, occasional doubt, and often blind trust.

Upon reading this book one cannot help but be reminded of Marks gospel (RSV Ch. 4) where Christ is explaining the kingdom of God with the parable of the sower who went out to sow. In clarifying the parable for his disciples he explains in verse 20, But those [seeds] that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold. Stanley Rexroths autobiography, A Walk With God, is the witness of one who represents the seed that fell on good soil.

A VIVID PORTRAIT OF HIS LIFE AND MISSION WORK
Stanley Rexroth, long time school teacher, pastor and missionary, has written a very interesting account of his life. He is very exacting and detailed in his descriptions of different involvements through the years.
If you want to read a good book, which has incidents to which we can all relate, or are interested in mission work, I encourage you to read Stanley Rexroths autobiography, A Walk with God. The stories Bro. Stanley shares of his life are very heartwarming and intriguing. We have served on the mission field together, and I have always looked up to him because of his wisdom and experience. He has been a true brother in the faith.
Rube Gayheart, Chairman of World Missionary Fellowship, USA
President of Ohio Bible College

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514480953

Stanley Jacob Rexroth

Stanley Rexroth, a ninth-grade dropout, obtained a master’s degree and became the president of his school board. He took the Bible seriously and allowed his God to direct his life through twenty years in the United States Air Force, through thirteen years teaching school, and through a lifetime of service as a pastor and a missionary. God led him by dreams, visions, and impressions. He was one of the founding board members of World Missionary Fellowship of the Church of God (WMF). WMF was formed to help indigenous pastors of the Church of God around the world. Rev. Rexroth made preaching and teaching mission trips to the Philippines, Nigeria, and Cuba. He published a monthly newsletter called the Info Plus for seventeen years. Reverend Rexroth served as a member of the board of directors of Ohio Bible College. To enhance unity among churches, he organized ministers’ meetings for independent Church of God pastors for twenty years, 1988–2008. In 1974, Rev. Rexroth founded the Church Of God of Cumberland Valley in Shippensburg. He was involved in the community as a board member of Community Services Incorporated (CSI), and one of the board members of Christ Among Neighbors (CAN).

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Background

In 1957, my wife, Martha, and I began to attend a little church by the road called Possum Road Church of God just outside Springfield, Ohio. The first message that I remember was Enoch walked with God. I’ve heard a lot of messages through the years, but this was the first one that I remembered. It sounded so good to me, and I made the decision that I was going to do my best to walk with God. I decided that day to do as Enoch did and walk with God. Never could I have imagined the wonderful and blessed life that God had for me. That’s when I began to really live.

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Author in front of cars

And that’s when it started, 1957. We all come into our experience or our relationship with God with some sort of a background, and I’m going to give you a little bit of my background and touch on a few things from my memories. This will allow you to understand what kind of a person I was and that I am an ordinary individual.

My parents—Jacob Marshal Rexroth Jr. (March 6, 1903—December 20, 1975) and Margaret Irene Souders Rexroth (September 4, 1909—August 21, 1978)—told me that in 1934, on February 11, I was born in the depth of the Great Depression on a very cold night to very poor parents in Ayre Township, Fulton County, Pennsylvania. There’s nothing outstanding about me. I say several times that my family was the family the poor people called poor.

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Jacob Rexroth family

When I was about two, I nearly died with pneumonia. Because I had no toys, the doctor gave me a little rubber toy car; I still have it as it was my only toy for a long time. My earliest memory was sitting in a high chair, watching Mother work in the garden. Maybe that has something to do with me liking to do garden work. Ever since I was able, I helped Mother in the garden, and I still love to work in the garden.

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Author’s garden at home

When I was about four or five years old (I don’t remember), my mother sent me and my brother and sister, Carl and Louise (Louise was older and Carl was younger),

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Author between Sister Louise and Brother Carl

and we were to go down to the end of the lane and wait on the traveling store. She wanted us to buy something—I believe sugar. I’m not sure what it was that we were to buy, but she gave each of us one penny. And with that one penny we would be able to buy some candy. In those days, we were able to buy some candy for one cent. We were waiting on the travelling store to come by our lane, which was about one quarter of a mile up in the mountain; it was a very rough lane, but in those days, you didn’t pave driveways. In fact, the main road was not paved. While we were waiting for that store to come by, I lost that penny. I was ordinary—a kid, you know—playing around, and I lost it. I never did find it, and I remember to this day where I lost it. I looked for it many times. I’ve told this story several times; I tell this story when I am on the mission field to mission people because I want them to understand that I know the value of money.

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Author standing where penny was lost

My job at home, in my early years, was to carry water from the spring. My dad put me on the payroll, and he paid me twenty-five cents a week. This was the first work that I can remember getting paid for. The spring was about a quarter mile away and my job was to fill the buckets with water. I did that for I don’t know how long. One day I came home from school, and there was a well driller drilling a well in the front yard. That was really great; I didn’t have to carry water very far. One day, a farmer wanted people to gather potatoes for a harvest that was pretty good that year, and I worked all day picking up potatoes and that farmer paid me a dollar. That was the first dollar that I ever gotten a hold of, and with that dollar, my parents took me to the bank, and I opened a savings account.

We had no electricity or gas in our house. We cooked on wood stoves in the winter, and in the summer we had an oil stove that used kerosene. TV hadn’t been invented yet, but we had a battery radio. It took three batteries: an A, a B, and a C. Each battery was different, and on Saturday evening, the family would listen to the radio, and we listened to things such as The Great Gildersleeve and The Lone Ranger and few things like that. Life was really different. I remember my dad made us a sled with hickory wood because he could curve the wood to make runners.

In the fall of 1940, I started school in a one-room schoolhouse called Jugtown School.

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Author standing in front of Jugtown School in 2015

There were eight grades, one teacher, and fifty-one students (and on a good day, about thirty-five in attendance). Except for one year (1943-1944), I went to Jugtown School. The one year that I missed, we had moved to Saint Thomas. I went to Jugtown School for six of seven years, and then I skipped the eighth grade to go to high school. You took an eighth grade exam in those days, and I think the teacher wanted to get rid of me, because she allowed me to take the exam as a seventh grader, and I passed and went to high school. That didn’t work out too well. In high school you had to ride a bus that was in town and you had to wear shoes. There were too many strikes against it. I quit school when I was fourteen years old.

We lived in the country about two miles south of McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania, on a three-acre piece of land that Dad bought for seventy-five dollars by paying three dollars down and making payments when he had fifty cents or so. The house we lived in was made of logs that Dad had bought for five dollars. It had previously been a house that was torn down, and Dad hauled the logs to his property and rebuilt it. Dad worked odd jobs like cutting corn and husking corn and general farmwork. I remember the family husking corn together and earning ten cents a barrel (three bushels). Then, Dad got a job working for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). He broke stones with a twelve-pound sledgehammer to build roads in the county and shoveled dirt, building fire trails in all kinds of weather even when it was so cold that the dirt froze to the shovel. He was paid with a certificate they called a ten dollars per week bean slip, which was cashed by the grocer. One time we kids were with him at the store, and the grocer gave us each a bottle of soda. Dad always had a car even if it was an old Model T Ford; he sold one for ten dollars.

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Left: 3rd Grade, Right: 9th Grade

One year of the early years, during World War II (1943-44), we moved to Saint Thomas, and in Saint Thomas, we went to Sunday school and church for about five weeks. And then one Sunday morning, we got up, and there was three feet of snow on the ground, and that ended that. I didn’t have much experience going to church, and that was a Lutheran church that we attended. We had gone to Sunday school and church a few times earlier; there’s a Methodist church in Cito, Fulton County, and we had gone there a couple of times. As a child, I remember other children who attended church memorizing parts for the Christmas play and things like that. As a child, I wished that I was part of that, but I wasn’t.

My parents decided they were all going to go to church, and we went one time to the United Brethren Church. We met with a couple of my dad’s brothers, my uncles, and aunts, and we went to this United Brethren Church. All I remember about this church was that when we came home, they were all upset because they had taken the mourner’s bench out. That’s all I remember about that experience, and for whatever reason, they had decided to go that Sunday, but they never went back.

I remember a lot about World War II; that was the reason we moved to Saint Thomas. My dad worked in Chambersburg, and it was a twenty-two-mile drive from McConnellsburg to Chambersburg, so Saint Thomas was much closer. Gas was rationed. You got these ration books and were only allowed so much gasoline, and you were only allowed so much sugar and so much meat and things of that nature. The meat didn’t affect us much because we lived in the country, and Dad always butchered a number of hogs every year, but the gasoline was a big thing. We couldn’t get enough gas. The speed limit was thirty-five miles per hour, and I don’t think anyone went over the speed limit. One thing I remember particularly when we lived in Saint Thomas is the blackouts. They would turn on the sirens, and everyone would turn off all the lights. If you had candles, you would close the curtains; everything would be black in case we would get bombed. The enemies wouldn’t be able to see the cities or the streets. The police would go around in automobiles with shades over their head lights where they could just barely see and everybody would get scared. There were no new cars built in 1943-45. You can’t buy a ’43 model automobile because there weren’t any built. They dedicated all their efforts to the war and built jeeps and vehicles for the military. So you couldn’t buy a new car even if you had enough money to buy it, because there weren’t any.

While living in Saint Thomas, one day I was playing with a girl, and she wanted me to put my penis into her because she had heard that was what boys and girls did. I refused. Sex wasn’t talked about in those days, so I said nothing about the incident to anyone.

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Author with First Calf Born to His Heifer

Shortly after moving back to Fulton County in 1944, Dad bought a ninety-acre farm (about half was woodland). It had a big double house (we lived in one side, and the other side was empty most of the time), a large barn, a hog pen, and a chicken house. I emptied my bank account and bought a young heifer for thirty-five dollars.

Dad bought a few cows, two horses, and some pigs. Dad had pigs previously while living on the three-acre place and butchered every year. My pay was increased to seventy-five cents per week as I learned to milk and do farm work. There was a large spring on the farm. Dad put a pump in the kitchen so my water-carrying days were over.

We lived in Fulton County most of the time, and as we grew older, we got into the habit of going into town every Saturday night. Now every Saturday night was special. We all took a bath. We had a big washtub, and if you were first you got the clean water. I’m just telling you these things because it gives you a sense of where I came from and what life was like back then. We would walk to town (two miles) during the war. Dad worked at night, and we would go to town, and we would hang out at Aunt Mildred’s (one of Mother’s sisters) house. Dad would get home around one o’clock in the morning, and then he would take us all home when he would get there. What we generally all did when we would go to town on Saturday night was go to the movies. That cost eighteen cents, and they generally had a western on, Roy Rogers or Gene Autrey or Red Rider or something like that. They were always showing news reels about the Japanese trying to kill us and whatever. That’s how you got the news. You got about five or ten minutes of news during every movie you went to. I liked ice cream, and I could buy a pint of ice cream for fifteen cents.

In those days, my wages were about seventy-five cents a week, so I could go to the movies, buy a pint of ice cream and still save some money. That wasn’t too bad out of seventy-five cents.

They built a few new tractors. You could get your name on a list for a new tractor, but there were very few built. They put price controls on it; you were only allowed to charge so much for the make and model, so what they did to get around that was at a public sale they would sell some old junk piece of machinery that wasn’t any good, like an old harrow or something like that, and whoever bought that got the tractor for free. People would trade ration stamps; I remember Dad was always trading something to get gas. However, he bought an old tractor called a Do All which he rarely used but got extra gas rationing stamps because of it. Later, he bought a Farmall F-12 and sold the Do All. I learned to operate the F-12; you started it with gas and then switched to kerosene. Dad kept that tractor for several years, so the horse did most of the work.

On December 28, 1944, my youngest sister (Darlene) was born.

In August 1945, I was in the Chambersburg Hospital when the war ended; I had been operated on for appendicitis. All the people were going up and down the street blowing their horns and celebrating the war ending. By this time I had become a part-time student, and the operation gave me a good excuse to stay out of school most of September. I worked on the farm and would stay home to help Mother wash clothes or cut wood. My parents did not put much value on education; Mother had quit school in the seventh grade and Dad had quit in the eighth grade. They allowed me to skip school two or three days a week. The school was at the end of our lane (about one-fourth mile), all downhill. Our farm was up against the woodland part of the mountain. During the winter, about half the time, the lane would be covered with snow or ice. Because it was too steep, Dad would let the car sit at the end of the lane. My brother, sister, and I would ride our sleds all the way to school.

Then when I did go to school, I would go for a day or two, and then I would take a day or two off. My mother would always write the note Stanley was sick, but what I was really doing was helping her do the wash or cleaning out the barn or something of that nature. It’s not really the best way to get an education, so I didn’t really learn a lot of things.

So I skipped eighth grade and went on to the ninth in the fall. In March of 1948, we moved to a large farm (over one hundred acres) in Franklin County between Pleasant Hall and Upper Strasburg. I took advantage of the move to drop out of school. After all, school was in town, and I had to ride a bus and wear shoes.

The farm had electricity so we got a refrigerator; there was a water pump in the well, and all you had to do was turn on the spigot to get the water. That was super. That was when I quit going to school entirely; I worked on the farm, I worked for neighbors, and I worked in the orchard. We went to the United Brethren Church one Sunday, and all I remember from that experience is the message was We used to wash feet, but these are the reasons we don’t do that anymore. That didn’t impress me too much. Another week we went to the Lutheran church. And what I remember about going to the Lutheran church was Well, we all sin every day, more or less and that didn’t impress me too much. I thought, If we all sin all the time, what is the point in going to church? I mean, I knew that before I came here.

We had a neighbor, Lawrence Baker, who worked the night shift. He took an interest in my brother and me, and he would take us fishing; I remember going up to Fannettsburg dam night fishing, throwing the lines out, propping the lines up, building a fire, and roasting hot dogs. We never did catch many fish, but we ate a lot of hot dogs.

I got into hunting, living on that farm. I would walk to hunt and hunted rabbits and squirrels and deer. And when I hunted deer, I would walk to the top of the mountain. The farm was about a mile from the mountain and then I would walk to the top. I did that many, many times. And I enjoyed those times immensely.

In 1949, one night I had a wet dream; I thought that I had wet myself. I was to discover that the sex drive was part of God’s plan for man to reproduce. I struggled with it in silence for years. It was much later in life, 1997, too late in life to be of much help to my own children, that I read an article written by Dr. Dobson about masturbation. Today we have the internet and organizations like Focus on the Family where we can get all kinds of information about sex. This is something that we all have to deal with. When Jesus was discussing marriage with the disciples in Matthew 19, he told them that not all men are born with the same sex drive. The Apostle Paul said he wished all men were like him, not having a wife, but he recognized we are different. However, no matter—the sexual drive to have sex outside of marriage is sin.

In 1950, I was sixteen years old; I got a driver’s license. Now, I never did pass the driver’s license test, but I got a driver’s license. I had my learner’s permit for about a week, and Dad and I were in town for some reason. Then Dad asked me if I wanted to take my test because I had driven tractors and trucks and stuff all over the farm. I said OK and went in and took the written exam and passed that. Then I went out and took the ride with the policeman. I thought I had done pretty well, and when we came back, the policeman asked, Why did you drive to the left when you went up this street?

I said, You mean that alley? I was trying to miss those mud holes.

Well, he said, There’s just as many on the left as there are on the right. I think you need a little more experience. You’ve only had this permit for a week. So he punched a hole in it, which meant you took the test one time. I happened to be the last one that day, and while I was taking the written test, the officer inside stamped FAILED on a bunch of the forms. If your form wasn’t stamped FAILED, it automatically said PASSED. When the policeman went in, taking my paper, he picked up his signs because that was the last one of the day. I suppose that he went in and got to talking to the other officer and handed him the paper, and they never did stamp it. Thus, a couple weeks later, I got my driver’s license in the mail. So I’ve been driving for over sixty-five years without ever passing the driver’s test!

In 1950 I bought a car—a 1946 Chrysler, which I discovered would go over ninety miles per hour. I liked to drive fast and would race others on the open roads a lot. I went to the auto races a few times and considered becoming a race car driver but gave it up because it was so dangerous.

We got a telephone in 1950; the telephone in those days was a party line. You had to identify your ring, which was two shorts or three long or whatever. There were like ten people on that party line, but it was a telephone, and it was something new. Dad and Mother decided that they would like to have an inside bathroom, but in order to have an inside bathroom in the house, we needed a hole dug for a septic tank and a ditch dug for a drain line. So I dug the hole for the septic tank and the ditch for the drain line with a pick and a shovel. We put a bathroom in the house when I was sixteen years old. However, I still preferred the outhouse most of the time.

In 1952, I took over the farm and expanded the operation. I farmed for other land owners and did custom work with a combine, baler, planter, and plow. Shortly after turning eighteen, I went to work for Swift Company’s chicken processing plant. My job was stacking the boxes in semis at the end of the line. The boxes were weighed, and the weight was marked on each box, then a shovel of ice was thrown on top. The box was closed and sent down a roller track to me, where I caught it and stacked it in a semitrailer.

One day they needed someone to record the weights on the boxes. They gave the job to a man who had not worked there as long as I had because he was a high school graduate. I discovered the world is prejudiced about education. It doesn’t matter what you know or how well you do your job—education counts more than ability. Well, at least that was my opinion. A few weeks later I got a job at Letterkenny as a fork lift operator, and I quit working for Swift. Let someone else stack the chickens in that truck. I worked the second shift and farmed through the day.

Our country was at war with North Korea, and I decided to enlist in the marines. The marine recruiter was in his Chambersburg office every Thursday for a few hours; I waited two hours, and he did not show up. I filled out a card and left it there. I went back the next week and again the next week. By this time, I had changed my mind and decided to quit my job at Letterkenny and go farming full time. I went by the bank and borrowed $1,000, which I took to a livestock dealer, Guy Timmons, and bought seven heifers. When I got home, the marine recruiter was at the house. He tried to talk me into enlisting, but he was too late.

Looking back on it, I’m sure God had a lot to do with it because I believe that God knows all about us from the beginning, and he’s looking out for us even when we are not looking out for ourselves. I quit working at Letterkenny, though I had a good job driving that fork lift. I worked there for about a year and a half, and I quit there to farm full time because I liked to farm. I sold the Chrysler to buy a cow, and I bought a 1940 Chevrolet. Because I was milking twenty-two cows and my mother and sister were helping me, I bought milking machines. The year 1953 was the first time I had milking machines. I wasn’t too sure I should have bought them because we could do the milking just as fast by hand. Milking machines weren’t as good then as they are nowadays. The dairy was paying $2.50 per hundred pounds of milk depending on the butterfat content.

In 1954 I met a young lady, Martha Mae Harmony, through a blind date. We talked about how we wanted to take our children to church although neither of us was going to church at that time.

One evening, we went to visit my uncle and aunt; they had bought a TV. The Ed Sullivan Show was on. I was disappointed, for I had gone to visit, not to watch TV. It was all black and white and only two or three channels were available. It seemed to me to be a waste of time.

In 1955, I began making a lot of life changes. After two dry years and some poor management on my part, I was losing money farming, so I decided to start a new life by enlisting in the United States Air Force. After having a public sale in September, I was left with my 1940 Chevrolet and a debt of fifty-five dollars. Martha and I were married on October 1, and I left for basic training on November 11. Martha was in her senior year of high school.

Well, it was a new start, and in those days, everyone went to the chapel the first Sunday whether you wanted to or not. In the chapel, they sorted you out based on what your religion was. They asked you what faith you were and because I went to the Lutheran church more than any other, I put down Lutheran. The Lutheran minister got all us Lutheran boys together and gave us instruction for how to send in our membership letter. That was church in basic training. That didn’t impress me very much, so I didn’t go to church anymore in basic training.

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Author in basic training

After eleven weeks of basic training, I was assigned to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Wright Patterson, in those days, was four hundred miles away, and there were no interstate highways yet. I drove my 1940 Chevrolet to Wright Patterson in 1956 on US Route 40, and most of it was two lanes. If you got behind a truck, it took you a long time to get somewhere. Trucks in those days would hit those hills, and they would be down to about ten miles per hour before they got to the top. Life was really