It was a large vinyl rectangular package sealed up with so much masking tape it would make you wonder if there was something top secret contained inside, and enemy spies were being discouraged from finding it or something...I know. I'm being dramatic. But that's what happens when you end up staying in a chair for an hour just peeling and peeling layers of tape.
But I began seeing bulks of what looked like packets of photographs and then large envelopes of documents. But the inside vinyl showed a certificate...a bright yellow-orange diploma attesting the completion of a special wartime teaching degree...DADDY FOUND THE OLD CERTIFICATE! That was 1944! One of the first things that fell out were 2 sheets of paper. I'd been working on a family history back then and had asked my Dad to look for 20 documents and about 30 photos.
He had gone and looked for all of them--including the program of the evangelistic rally the night he was saved--and carefully taped every document, article, photograph, onto construction paper measured to fit just right in the vinyl package he prepared. He'd measured them so carefully to have them fit so well, he managed to have them all fit and stay in so good condition I was almost afraid to touch them. The outside had been protected by stiff cardboard layers, so that there were no folds or wrinkles, and the vinyl and layers of masking tape had made everything virtually waterproof.
I was noticing on the back of the Rudy Atwood "Old Fashioned Revival Hour Quartette" program put out by the Alberta Youth for Christ, its Missionary Emphasis states: "We have felt the burden to bring the Gospel to every creature in this generation around the globe--even unto the uttermost parts of the earth." I wonder if the person who designed that program knew there was a boy who left Okinawa in 1932--this is his passport picture--who would get saved at their evangelistic rally 12 years later, go to Bible school; and return to the island taking that Gospel with him?
