Page 7 - Mr Goheen and Me

name “Jesus” kept going over and over in my mind. “This is crazy,” I reasoned, “The last thing on earth I want to be is religious.”
However, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I decided I must go to church to check this out. And that church, without question, had to be Mr. Goheen’s church. He had been such a model Christian to me. There was a quality of grace and love about the man that I deeply admired. So I chose to attend an evening service at Mr. Goheen’s church, Streetsville Baptist, and find out more about this Jesus.
I don’t recall the finer points of the message the pastor shared that night but it didn’t matter. God spoke to me. There’s a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man” wrote philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, “that can’t be filled by any man-made thing but only by God himself in the person of Jesus Christ.” That night it became clear that the missing something in my life was also the person who would accept me just as I am. That week in the privacy of my room I gave my life to Jesus.
But I didn’t tell anyone, especially my family.
Summer arrived and the baseball season was in full swing. Baseball was my greatest love back then. Our team’s home diamond was at Streetsville park, a softball pitch actually, that consisted of a gravel infield, chainlink back stop, bleachers, and a concession stand run by a nice lady named Mrs. Kalapaca. I spent a lot of time at that park with practices and games. It was my second home. So when Mr. Goheen told me the church had evening services right there at the diamond on Sunday nights, and invited me to one, I readily agreed. I wanted to know more about Jesus and the church service was in a location I felt comfortable with. I didn’t have to dress up. I could come in my shorts. I attended the first service, sat in the bleachers and loved it. The pastor, a young seminarian named Paul Smith preached from the pitcher’s rubber, the sermon on the mound as it were. I could actually understand what he was talking about and wanted to learn more. I started growing in my Christian faith. I attended