Week of October 7
We were on
our way back to Fayetteville NC from Augusta, Georgia where we sang to about
700 people in the First Baptist Church when our old bus broke down along I-95
somewhere in South Carolina. We thought at first we had blown a tire but then
we realized the engine was still running but it wouldn’t go in gear.
Our piano player Earl Britt said,” the only thing I
know to do is to start praying.”
We are on our knees when there is a knock on the
side of the bus. I get up and go to the door and here is an elderly gentleman
with a straw hat, white shirt and bib overalls and a sports jacket. He says you
boys a quartet? Now we’ve got letters on the side of the bus that are three
feet high that say Masters Quartet. I chuckled and said Yes Sir. He says would you boys be able to sing
tonight? I was just getting ready to
tell him no, when my younger brother Tommy jerked me out of the way and says.
“Yes sir we will but we can’t go, our bus broke down.”
He says, “That’s no problem, I can be back in about
15 minutes. with some trucks to take you and your equipment to my house. In
about twenty minutes he came back with two Ford Stake trucks. a station wagon
and a wrecker.
I told the wrecker driver that we didn’t have any money
and to leave the bus be. The love offering we received from the Baptist church
was only $50 and between us we didn’t have $200.
We all pile in the trucks and station wagon and go
to the preacher’s house which is out n the country about 30 miles from the
interstate. When we arrive his wife has dinner ready for us. The food was set
up on two long tables. We finish eating and watch a little TV. What we didn’t
know was that this preacher, his wife and two children all had separate
telephone lines and were calling people and telling them to be at the church at
6:30.
We learn that Pastor Reed had been a preacher for an
Assembly of God church in Indiana. When his parents died he had come to South
Carolina to live on their farm. When the pastor of the local Presbyterian
church died he was asked if he would fill in. He’s been filling in for several
years now.
When we get to this old wooden church in the middle
of a tobacco field it is packed. After singing about five songs the preacher
tells us to go back to where the refreshments are as he is going to take up a
love offering for us. After what happened at the First Baptist church I’m kind
of leery and I stand by the door.
When the ushers come forward with the plates he
looks over the podium and says ,“that ain’t goner work…these boys sang at a big
Baptist church in Augusta and they got $50…that ain’t happenin here. Now I’m
gonna send these ushers back out and when they come back if these plates aren’t
full I’m gonna tell what I know and who I know it on.”
They finish the collection and call us back out and
we sing a little more and the last song we did was Sinner Saved by Grace. We use that at our altar call.
As the preacher is praying this little blonde haired
girl comes running down the aisle to ask God to save her. She had run away from
home and had been gone for sometime and had returned home and asked her mommy
and daddy to forgive her and they said if God has forgiven you we will. And
that is why she was running to the altar to ask God to forgive her and become
her Savior.
After all was said and done our piano player says to
me, “Is that our bus I hear running outside?”
I look out the door and there is the wrecker driver standing by our bus
in greasy overalls with his hat in his hand.
I say, “you fixed it.”
He says, “Yep.”
“ How much do
we owe you?”
“You owe us
nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
He says, “that little girl who just went to the
altar is my daughter. She wouldn’t have come if y’all hadn’t been here
tonight.”
I asked him what was wrong with our bus and he says
all the bolts on the fly wheel had fallen out and were laying in the dust pan.
“ Wait a minute. I’m mechanic enough to know that
bolts don’t fall out of a flywheel, especially on a bus. They have locking caps
on them and they don’t fall out, you have to drill them out.”
He says, “Every
one of them was laying in the pan and not a threat on anyone of them was torn
off. God backed the bolts out of that
flywheel so you would be here so my daughter would hear the singing and your
testimony that you brought here tonight.”
As we drove
home I opened the envelope containing our love offering. We counted out coins and small bills totaling
$ 1200. .
About four months later we got a phone call from
Preacher Reed who said they were trying to raise money to build a new church.
He wanted a gospel sing and would we help. We got three and four other groups
we knew and we drove to South Carolina to sing in the middle of a football
field standing on a flatbed trailer. That night
they raised over $100,000.
They built the church and invited us back to sing at
their first service . When we pulled up in front of the church there was a big
piece of marble block on the Northeast corner of the building. Inscribed on
that block was Masters Quartet and they listed all ten names in our group, the
four singers, the five musicians, and our bus driver.
We kept in touch over the years and we went back and
sang at Preacher Reed’s funeral. He had
filled in for 15 years.
Lee Bissette
Fayetteville, NC