During a difficult childbirth Lois’s mother Allene had a vision that comforted her. She said in her vision she could see Lois sitting in church. Thus was prophetic. At 13 Lois became a follower of Jesus and was baptized at a small Baptist church with a southern flavor in her neighborhood in Ypsilanti, Michigan in the West Willow subdivision. Her youth pastor encouraged her to attend Bible College where I met her in the fall of 1978.
On September 8, 1979 we married. Since then Lois has spent a large part of her life sitting in church–and listening to me preach. For most of my ministry I have preached three times a week, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening and Lois has been there to listen.
Today our friend Ken Wyatt snapped this shot just before I rose to preach. It was Lois’s birthday. We have been blessed. We have served the Lord together for 39 unbroken years.
I wrote this on Facebook on her birthday yesterday morning:
At 13 years old Lois walked down the aisle of the Southside Baptist Tabernacle in the West Willow subdivision in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she lived at the time, and became a follower of Jesus.
39 years ago today on a grey autumn day she walked down the same aisle and vowed to spend the rest of her life as my wife.
We drove away in our little green Plymouth Duster. She changed from her wedding gown to a pretty mint green dress in the car. My heart raced at the intimacy of it. We sat close on the bench seat. She smelled like “Windsong.” The song “We’ve Only Just Begun” by the Carpenters played on the radio as we drove south along Interstate 75.
We stoped for our first meal at Bob Evans in Lima, Ohio. She had ham. I had chicken noodles. We started our life together in a cozy apartment in the up-stairs of a neat farmhouse near Pleasant Hill, Ohio. On autumn nights the wind off the fields blew the curtains in our open windows and scented our love-nest with the fragrance of autumn air.
God has given us an amazing life in spite of our very real brokenness and ever-present faults. She’s been a tough, loyal, woman of stubborn conviction and simple faith. She is still following Jesus and she is still my loyal wife. God has given us four sons, four daughters and soon 12 grandchildren. God has allowed us to be in full-time Ministry almost 40 years starting in the corner of a corn field in the parsonage of a little country church.
This is a testimony to the truth of the Bible and the every-morning new mercies of God.
Two simple kids drove off together crunched together on the front seat of a little Plymouth—looking back over the decades I know we were not alone.
Thank you, Lord for Lois. Thank you Lois Pierpont for the Life you have given us.
