O love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores it's borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine's blaze it's day
May brighter, fairer be.

O joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust Life's glories dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

 As I've told you before, I tend to make lists. As a bandsman in the Seattle Temple Corps band, I used to make lists of all of the bandsmen and former bandsmen in the area I knew. I would look for these people and wonder why they weren't in the band. I would talk to them and find out what the problem was. Whenever the band played, I would look in the audience for the people on my list. Frequently, I would see a better band sitting in the congregation than was sitting on the platform. One Sunday morning, I counted 15 bandsmen on the platform and 35 in the audience. This grated on me all of my life.

When I first got to the Houston Temple Corps, I was sitting in the band playing a hymn tune and I heard the sweetest cornet playing you could imagine. I thought, "Wow, we've got a great cornet player in this band." I started watching the small cornet section to see who was making such wonderful music. It wasn't anybody in the band. I started watching and looking around, and there, in the second row of the audience, was an older man with a cornet. Whenever the band would accompany the congregation, he would play his cornet. This annoyed the bandmaster. It turns out that the bandmaster never spoke to him and never invited him to play in the band. One Sunday, not too long after we started attending the Houston Temple Corps, a man came in and sat in the back row. I looked at him from the platform a couple of times and he looked a little familiar. I tried to remember where I had seen him before and then it hit me. He was the guy that walked into the Divisional Youth Band rehearsal at YP Councils four years before and was placed ahead of me, much to my annoyance, in the Euphonium section. We had the best Euphonium player in the State of Texas sitting in the back row of our corps building. I was thrilled. Our little band was going to sound great. I watched and watched and never saw anybody speak to him. This was his home corps and he had grown up here. I couldn't believe that he wasn't playing in our band, but he was never invited.

After about six weeks of this, I finally went to the Corps Officer and the bandmaster and literally dragged them to the back row of the corps to talk to John, the Euphonium player. They actually spoke to John, shook his hand and had a conversation. It was obvious their hearts weren't in it and nothing ever came of it. Things deteriorated at the Houston Temple Corps and, after several years and two sets of officers, the congregation was slimmer and slimmer. Finally, avoiding the gory details, the Corps Sergeant Major walked out. Bonna and I watched to see what would happen. The congregation was down below thirty on Sunday mornings. I was working full time and going to grad school full time and Bonna was working full time. There was nothing we could do to help the situation. We didn't have a minute to spare. We were in the songster, the band and Bonna was teaching a Sunday School Class. After the Corps Sergeant Major quit and nothing was done to alleviate his problem, we left for our own spiritual well being. The corps officer's wife had been in training with Bonna and they were close friends. She called Bonna and they both were crying on the phone, but we couldn't help in any way because we had no time. Leaving the Salvation Army was the hardest thing we have ever done in our lives. We began attending the Spring Branch Church of the Nazarene.

   Later, there was a change in City Commanders. We were asked to play in an "Area" band so we did. When I became bandmaster of the Texas Gulf Coast Area Band, I had been attending the Spring Branch Church of the Nazarene for about four years and had played in the Area Band for a couple of years. The first thing I did was haul out my list of people in the area who had played in Salvation Army bands. John was at the top of my list. I talked to Curtis, who had formed the band at the request of the City Commander, and Major Frierson, the City Commander, about getting more of these former bandsmen into the band and he was all for it. He and Curtis added names to the list. There was a total of 50 bandsmen on the final combined list. Half of them were already in the band. I put the rest of them on my mailing list. I instituted a newsletter for bandsmen and sent a newsletter to everybody on the list including present bandsmen and even the people on the list I had never met.

In concerts we had in the Houston area, I would announce that if there were any people in the audience who would like to play in our band, they should come and see me after the concert. I would then tell them what the requirements were for playing in the band. The very first time I made this announcement, a woman stood up at the end of the concert and said, "I would like to play in your band." I asked her if she had ever played in a Salvation Army band before. And she said, "Yes." I asked her where and she said, "I played in the Houston Temple Band." I asked her if she were a Christian and she said yes. Then she told me that her mother was our drummer and her sister played Alto Horn in our band. Her father was the man who played cornet so sweetly from the audience in the Houston Temple Corps. By the time I became bandmaster, it was too late to get that fantastic cornet player who sat in the audience at Houston Temple into the band. However, his wife and two daughters played in the band. The daughter who had stood up and volunteered after the concert brought both of her teen aged daughters into the Timbrel Brigade.

We picked up the bandmaster of the corps where Captain Bob Clemons first played in a Salvation Army band. We picked up a school music teacher who lived right down the street from the Pasadena, Texas, corps building. This has got to be the largest Salvation Army corps building in North America. It seems to me that it seats between 3,000 and 5,000 people. One day I was walking through the office area at the Pasadena corps and saw a little magazine. It was "The Musician." It looked great so I thought this would be a great thing for our bandsmen to have. I took my mailing list and sent an order to the Trade Department in Atlanta, Georgia, and subscribed to "The Musician" for everybody on our list including the people I had never met. Lo and behold, I got a letter back from Atlanta. Four of the bandsmen whom I had never seen were already subscribers to "The Musician." They had been going to other churches after moving to Houston, but were still holding on to their Salvation Army music roots.

I was always trying to figure out how to convince people to play in the band. One night we went to the University of Houston for a little program called "The Christmas Kettle Classic." The UH had a pretty good basketball player by the name of Akeem Olajuwon. I don't follow sports so I had never heard of him, but I have played in a lot of bands and I know a good audience when I see one. Akeem loved the Salvation Army because he had played basketball there as a kid. His UH coach apparently liked Akeem and so he would do anything Akeem wanted. Between the Akeem and the UH basketball coach and some Salvation Army officer, they had decided to play exhibition games around Christmas time. They would call it the "Christmas Kettle Classic" and invite colleges from around the country to come and play these exhibition games against the UH. The players on the other college teams would give their eye teeth just to be able to walk on the same court as Akeem. Between quarters, the Salvation Army would make an appeal for donations. It was a fantastic experience.

The stadium held around 10,000 people and it was standing room only every night. The first time I walked into that place all I could think of was "Wow!! What an audience for a Salvation Army band." We sat in the end of the place and shared the playing with the UH Cougar Brass, a great pep band. We played the standard Salvation Army Christmas marches and such. The first time I heard the Cougar Brass, I thought, "Uh Oh. They're louder than us. We need MORE POWER!!" Being a Euphonium player, I knew that no Euphonium player could resist this opportunity. The next day, I called John, the best Euphonium player in the division, except maybe for the guy who had moved to Houston to work for Major Frierson, and who was now playing Euphonium in our band. I literally begged John to come and play. I told him we were outnumbered. I told him the Cougar Brass was louder than us. I told him there were 10,000 plus people there. I told him God would love him and his family forever if he would come and help us. I told him "WE NEED MORE POWER!!" Then I told him the clencher: "YOU CAN WATCH AKEEM PLAY FOR FREE!!"

That night John was there with his Euphonium. He became a regular band member. Being a Euphonium player and knowing where the big ego sits in a Brass band, I took a chance and placed him in first chair ahead of our top Euphonium player. I knew how I felt when I was playing first chair Euphonium in the Texas Divisional Youth Band and the bandmaster stuck a chair to my left and put John there. I knew how I felt when I was playing first chair Euphonium in the Divisional Band in Dallas one night when the bandmaster stuck a chair to my left and let a perfect stranger, William Himes, sit first chair. Those occasions turned out OK because I wasn't embarrassed by the playing of either of these guys. Both William Himes and John had taken my first chair seats in Divisional bands and now I was watching to see how our Euphonium player would react when John sat in first chair. He didn't bat an eyelash. He took it like a man. So I became even more bold later and handed John the Euphonium solo "The Better World." He played it flawlessly and our other stalwart Euphonium player stuck with us. If you would like to hear how John sounded, click on The Better World. You'll hear the Canadian staff band playing John's solo. John sounded every bit as good as the Canadian Staff Band soloist. I was absolutely amazed.

One Saturday, I showed up at band practice and two of our players were missing. They were a young married couple. I asked where they were and someone told me thy had quit the Army. Somewhere along the way, they had become upset, couldn't take it any more and walked away. Since one of my favorite songs starts out " O love that wilt not let me go,..." I could no more let these people go than if they were my own children. I could not sleep if I knew there was a Salvation Army bandsman anywhere in my sphere of influence who was not playing in a band so after band practice, I went home and got my trusty Thompson Chain Bible out. This is one of my most cherished possessions. I bought it in Seattle when I was in high school. I cannot stand to see someone writing in a book so there is no mark whatsoever in my Bible. A lot of people like to take notes in their Bibles and they have color coded pens and pencils to mark places with special meanings. My Bible looks like nobody has ever opened it, except that the front cover wore out and fell off one day. I opened my Bible to the scripture verse that Norman Bearcroft had used in our corps which had such a good influence on our band. I wrote the couple of missing bandsmen a letter. I wrote out the sermon that Norman Bearcroft had preached including the scripture verses that he had used. I pointed out that they weren't the first bandsmen to become disillusioned and leave a musical group. I explained the scripture verse and I told them how we loved them, we would miss them and we wanted them back in that band.

The next Saturday, they were back in the band. One of their parents came to me later and said, "I don't know what you did, but I want to thank you for bringing my daughter and son in law back." Those two kids had never been asked to be a part of the Salvation Army. They had been born into it. Their parents were officers. I never spoke to this couple about this incident or about hardly anything else. I said it all in Norman Bearcroft's sermon and in the scripture verses he read to our band at the Seattle Temple Corps almost ten years before. They knew they were loved and wanted and how important they were to all of us.

One Saturday, I showed up for band practice and one of our Alto Horn players was missing. I asked where she was and nobody knew. The song "O Love that wilt not let me go ... " came to my mind. In the spirit of Divine Pursuit, I wrote her the Norman Bearcroft letter. She was back the next band practice. She came to me and said, "I want you to know that I have been in the Salvation Army for over 30 years and that is the first time anybody has ever told me that I was needed in the Salvation Army and that I was loved. Thank you." She played in the Band and the Timbrel brigade until we moved back to Seattle.

One Saturday I showed up for band practice and one of our Alto Horn players was missing. She had moved without leaving a forwarding address. There was nothing I could do. Then one day, Bonna and I were approaching a large department store. Out the door came our errant horn player. Like a deer caught in the headlights she recognized us, but it was too late. We had sort of casually got in her path. We asked her if we could talk for a minute and asked her how she had been. One thing led to another and that thing led to the Norman Bearcroft sermon. It works just as well when spoken as when written. She was back in the band and stayed there until after we left Texas.

One Saturday, I showed up for band practice and one of our cornet players was missing. I asked if anybody knew where he was. I was told I could forget him, he wasn't coming back. This was a little disconcerting since he was the Houston Temple Corps officer. He was a Lieutenant and his wife had decided she had to leave the corps and go home because of problems which had come up. The Lieutenant and his wife lived in McAllen, Texas. Some time later, our regular annual band trip to Mexico was being planned. When we went to Mexico, we would always drive to the town on the American side of the border, have a concert, get a good nights sleep and cross the border in the morning. This time, our trip would go through McAllen, Texas. You know the story,  "O love that wilt not let me go, ..." Our cornet player was there without a band. I went to Major Frierson and asked him if we could pick up the Lieutenant in McAllen and ask him to play in the band with us. He said, "I'll think about it."

I believe he went to the phone in the next couple of days and called the Divisional Commander for permission. When an officer leaves for almost any reason, there is a "shunning" that takes place. This is outrageous to me, but it is common practice in the Salvation Army. I don't even know if it's official policy, but it's there. One day you have friends, then you have a problem and decide to resign, the next day, no friends. Major Frierson came to the next practice and told me to have all of the music ready for the Lieutenant. We got to McAllen and the Lieutenant met us for the annual dinner. We had his blazer and music for him. The Divisional Commander was there and spoke to the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant was so happy he almost cried. He crossed the border with us and played the whole trip. These were very hard trips. Since the Mexican officers rarely saw a band they used us and abused us. We started playing in the mornings around 10 o'clock and didn't stop playing except for lunch and supper until 2 AM sometimes. We were shuttled from one appearance to the next as fast as the bus driver could drive. At 1 AM it can get cold in Mexico and we had to keep punching each other to stay awake.

The people in this band were so happy to be there and they loved each other so much they would do just about anything for the band. One day I asked one of the cornet players who worked for City Command if she had heard the march the Salvation Army Rose Bowl Parade band had played a week or so ago. She said, "Sure. Pretty good wasn't it?" I said, "Yeah. I wonder how we could get a copy of that." She said, "Why don't you come over to City Command. We might have it. We get all of the new music that comes out." I exclaimed, "What!?! You've got new music at your office and we're playing this old stuff?" She said, "Well, nobody's ever asked for it before. It's all in a drawer in our office." I could look down from my office right into the font door of City Command so the following Monday I walked over to the office where the music was. She took me to the drawer and there was all of the music that had been published in the past five years. I couldn't believe it. I took the whole lot back to my office and went through it.

The next Saturday I brought all of this new music to the practice. I pulled out the festival march "Salvation's Song" by Gordon. We started that march and the band perked up something fierce. They played it as if they had been playing it for years. This march contains the tune "The Bells of St. Mary's" and the words used by the Salvation Army are:

We'll sing in the morning the songs of salvation,

We'll sing in the noontime the songs of His love.

And when we arrive at the end of our journey

We'll sing the songs of Zion in the courts above.

 As the band rolled through this march I could tell they loved it. I was getting goose bumps. We played the last note and the band started hootin' and hollerin' and cheering. The next level of this kind of joy in Texas includes fire arms, but nobody was packing heat that day so the ceiling was safe. They were shouting "More!! More!!" So we played it again. Then we got out a terrific piece by Heaton that includes "When We All Get To Heaven." Next it was Broughton's surreal avant garde Soprano cornet solo "The Prayer Meeting" which we immediately dubbed "The Prayer Meeting at the Drug Rehab Center." We also found the new march that we had heard the Rose Bowl band playing on television. We played that at the Houston Opera House when they put on "Guy and Dolls." Our next concert was at the Houston Temple Corps on a Sunday night. The band was so excited about all of this new music that they were inviting everybody to come to the concert. I knew some of these people were married, but I had never met some of their kids or spouses. I met people who had not been inside an Army building in a decade. It was a real fun evening and there were a lot of new faces in the audience. We had broken out of a rut that had lasted for years.

The people in this band gave up a lot to play but they were extremely generous. I was getting ready to go to band practice one morning when I got a phone call. It was one of the ladies in the band. She told me she couldn't make it to band practice and she apologized. I asked her what the problem was and was there anything I could do to help. She put me off for a few minutes and then she simply said, "I don't have enough money for gas. I'm all out of gas." I asked her if she had enough gas to get to band practice. She said she thought she might. I told her if she could make it to band practice we could fill her tank for her. She got there and we filled her tank. This happened on more than one occasion among different people in the band. Whoever had money that day would help the ones who had no money. There are things I would love to tell you about this band, but they are confidential and can never be told, but truly, this was one of God's finest groups of people you would ever want to meet.

I would do anything in my power for the people who allowed me to lead this band. I was looking for something to do for them and it hit me. God's band should have God's word and I loved my Thompson Chain Bible so much I started asking around about the status of Bibles in their homes. Some of them weren't too well stocked up on Bibles so I bought a Thompson Chain Bible and had a drawing in the band. I gave one of the ladies in the band a Thompson Chain Bible. Eventually, I gave away five Thompson Chain Bibles to the members who needed a good study Bible. Part of this included the ulterior motive. You had to be present to win. Two of the Bibles were given out during band practice. The last three were just given quietly in a little drawing among the people who needed them.

In my whole life, I've never heard anybody sing this song. The only place I've ever heard it was when we played it at band camp and in the Northwest Divisional Band for several months one year. I liked the melody so much that I looked up the words. Today, when that girl played it on the piano, I recognized it the instant she hit the first note. I almost fainted. After working for a week putting it on this page, praying for guidance and hearing that song for the only time in 36 years, I know God answers prayer.

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