At the end of my sophomore year at CBC I decided to transfer to Evangel and go to the same school as my wife. I had been wrestling with the need to change schools for some time. It was quite obvious that CBC was not the right fit for me and I needed to make a change. I also had some idea that God was leading me away from CBC as well.
During my last semester at CBC I got an unexpected phone call from the Air Force recruiting office on the campus of the University of Missouri (Mizzou) offering me an ROTC scholarship if I would transfer there and finish out a chaplaincy program there. At the time I felt like I would be asking my wife to give up too much and I had gone to CBC to become a lifelong youth pastor. But, my wife was willing to follow me wherever I felt God leading, and, in retrospect, it might have been God opening a door. Since I would have been transferring in mid-program, the Air Force would have paid off my existing student loans and then I would have had the same six year post-graduate commitment like anyone who had spent four years in an ROTC program. The only regret I have in my adult life is that I didn't serve in the military. Here I was given an opportunity to finish school without debt, a guarantee to enter ministry, and I would have been serving in the military too. I should have given it more consideration and prayed about it more. It may have been the direction God wanted me to go with my life.
The following Fall I entered Evangel College as a junior and was immediately much more at ease academically than I ever could have been at Central Bible College. Where free thinking and the challenging of ideas had been discouraged at CBC it was openly encouraged at Evangel. Where popular culture was banned at CBC at Evangel it was encouraged to embrace it with moderation and discretion. (At CBC even popular Christian culture was taboo, if it didn't meet their standards for preferable acceptance. During my first semester there the Christian metal group Stryper came to town. A few students almost got expelled because they were photographed praying with the band before the concert.)
Academically I continued to excel. At Evangel the Bible department was part of the Philosophy department. So, to get a Bible degree at Evangel, I had to take more than just an intro course to Philosophy. I discovered that this was a subject I didn't need to fear. I excelled here as well. I made the dean's list my first semester at Evangel.
But, being married, in college and constantly strapped for cash, looking for more work, and trying to find a balance between school work and home life, added to the stress of not fitting in for two years at CBC began to take its toll on my health. I had already started out with the deck stacked slightly against me. I suffered from recurrent ulcers, migraines and irritable bowel syndrome that could cause cramps so severe they were known to trigger seizures. Two years of heightened stress on top of that pushed these donations over the edge and created some new ones.
During my second semester at Evangel I became so sick that I missed about sixty percent of my classes. This gave my teachers no choice but to fail me for lack of attendance.
I still remember the day that I got the letter in the mail from the academic dean telling me that I was on academic probation and that I couldn't return for at least three semesters. I remember that it wasn't even five minutes after I read that letter that my phone rang and it was the academic dean apologizing that I had even received the letter. It was supposed to have been intercepted and not sent out. I was told that they knew about my situation and about how sick I had been. He told me that my teachers had all plead my case and asked that I not be placed on academic probation. He said the school looked at my previous semester's grades and was changing my grades to incomplete. He even said they had worked out an extension of finical aid with the state of California, so that there wouldn't be an interruption in my financial aid. In short, they had taken care of everything for me. The only problem was I honestly felt like if I didn't drop out for the short term, I was literally going to die.
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Location:Carver Dr,Roswell,United States
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