Sometimes I don’t hear very well. My dad said, “Get a 9-to-5 job,” but I tried to turn it into some sort of missions work. The best I could do was find a job selling Bibles door-to-door. Seriously. I sold family Bibles door-to-door.

I was paid straight commission. No salary. And I wasn’t very good at it. I was so excited about what God was doing in our lives that I talked about it whenever I could… instead of sticking to the sales script.

One day, when I knocked on a door, an African American woman with a giant smile on her face opened the door and said, “What are you selling?” Then she invited me in, told me to sit on the couch, and asked me about my faith. I was completely off my sales script again.

It wasn’t long before she explained my need for a ”baptism of repentance” like John the Baptist performed in the wilderness. I explained that I had been baptized in a Lutheran church as a baby, and again in a Catholic church when I was ten years old.

All of a sudden she screamed, jumped up, and ran around the corner. I followed to see what was wrong. Water was flowing over the kitchen sink onto the floor like a waterfall. I immediately wondered if this was another “sign” that I should pay attention to… After she cleaned up the mess, we sat down again to discuss my need for a “full-immersion” baptism. She told me her husband was a deacon and he could baptize me.

About that time, guess who walked through the door. The deacon.

He took over the conversation and showed me some scriptures to convince me of the importance of being baptized (again) to publicly demonstrate my faith. He told me he could do it Sunday morning. And I agreed to meet him after his church service.

I was lying through my teeth. I had no intention of ever going to his African American church in one of the roughest parts of Washington, DC, to be baptized.

My conscience bothered me a little, but I soon forgot about that meeting.

A week later, when I was wrapping up a Bible sale miles away from the deacon’s home, there was a knock on the door. My customer opened the door. It was him. The deacon from the week before. Out of nowhere.

I reached out and shook his hand and apologized for not showing up on Sunday. He asked if I “still want to be baptized.” I told him I did, but I couldn’t do it this coming Sunday. I had plans. He asked about Saturday, and again I had a conflict. Friday wouldn’t work either. He kept asking, until we got to that night… I had nothing planned. No more excuses. I agreed to meet and follow him downtown to his church.

It was cold and raining that night in late February or early March. I walked through the wide-open front doors of the church into a small, very dark lobby. When I looked to my right, I was startled by a very tall black man standing right next to me in the stairway. He smiled, but it didn’t help much. I was scared.

Another guy took me upstairs to change into “baptismal clothes” and then back down to the sanctuary. A few women were singing gospel songs in the front of the church, and a few more were sitting in the pews. The “baptismal pool” was made out of cinderblocks about 4-ft. high. There was one metal folding chair outside the pool and another on the inside. They served as the stairs in and out of the baptismal pool.

I followed the deacon into the cold water. It seemed to be about the same temperature as the air outside — freezing! I wondered why they left the front doors open, and why the church didn’t have any heat. My teeth were chattering and my knees were shaking. Literally.

The deacon asked if I believed that Jesus Christ died for my sins, and then he dunked me all the way under that freezing water, as he proclaimed, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

I can’t explain what happened afterward. It sounds crazy, but I stood up in the water, cold and shaking, and then stepped up on the chair and then onto the cinderblock wall, and I was totally warm. It was as though I wasn’t wet and the room temperature was normal.

Don’t feel bad. When I got home and told my wife about it, she thought I was crazy, too.

But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.         – Acts 8:12