i’ve not asked my son’s permission for what follows.<\/p>\n
I wonder whether Neil ever gives thought to the debt he owes to three very special Christian ladies whom God used to do good things in his life.<\/p>\n
Neil is my firstborn son.\u00a0 Joe Neil McKeever, Jr.\u00a0 Born to a 20-year-old mama (Margaret Ann Henderson McKeever) and me. I was 23.\u00a0 This newborn son was nine pounds nine ounces.\u00a0 Big from the first.\u00a0 He got his size from Margaret’s dad. J. W. Henderson, a career Greyhound bus driver, was six foot three.\u00a0 Neil ended up close to six five.<\/p>\n
I’m going to skip over his upbringing and growing up years.\u00a0 He was the pastor’s son, raised in a Southern Baptist church. He sang in the youth ensemble, sang in the college ensemble, and took an active role in church life.\u00a0 At the same time, he also was being drawn into the world. He struggled some in his later high school and college years. (Yes, didn’t we all?)<\/p>\n
When he finished college, Neil tried different things.\u00a0 He lived away from home, worked in various enterprises, was searching. And was not going to church.<\/p>\n
A year or so after he finished college, we moved to a church in Charlotte, North Carolina.\u00a0 Our sons Neil and Marty and daughter Carla came too.\u00a0 The boys rarely if ever attended church, busy with jobs and who knows what.\u00a0 Carla, a high schooler, attended but made few friends.<\/p>\n
That pastorate did not go well and four years later, Margaret and I relocated to New Orleans to lead a church by the airport. Large church with a huge debt and a troubled past.\u00a0 I took a cut of over thirty thousand dollars in salary.<\/p>\n
The church had a Christian school that went through the eighth grade.\u00a0 Our principal was Pam Mancuso<\/strong>. She’s the first of the three special ladies.<\/p>\n Pam was a prayer warrior.\u00a0 Sometimes in the mornings she would tell me what God had told her in her prayer time. At first, my thought was, “Oh boy.\u00a0 I’ve got one of those!”\u00a0 Then I began to see that everything she said was on target.<\/p>\n One morning during my first year there, Pam said, “Brother Joe, the Lord told me this morning he wants Neil to teach in our school.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bear in mind that Neil was still in Charlotte, was not going to church, and was helping Marty’s father-in-law run a party supply store. Teach in a Christian school? Like that’s going to happen.<\/p>\n When I told Margaret, we both dismissed it as not going to happen.<\/p>\n Months later, Pam brought the subject up again.<\/p>\n I said, “Pam, you don’t even know Neil.”<\/p>\n “True,” she said, “but God knows him.<\/p>\n I said, “He certainly does.\u00a0 As often as we talk to God about him!”<\/p>\n Pam said, “Aren’t you going up there soon for a revival?”<\/p>\n I said, “Yes, to Roanoke.”<\/p>\n “Mention it to him,” she said.<\/p>\n I said I would. Couldn’t hurt.<\/p>\n I flew into Charlotte, spent the night with Neil at his apartment, mentioned what Pam had said, and left for Roanoke.<\/p>\n A few days later on arrival back in Charlotte, I said to Neil, “You’ve not mentioned teaching school.\u00a0 I assume you’re not interested.”<\/p>\n “No,” he said.\u00a0 “I am.”<\/p>\n I was completely surprised.<\/p>\n He soon began talking to Pam by long distance (remember long distance?) and sitting in on classes at Charlotte Christian School.<\/p>\n Late that summer he moved to New Orleans to teach in our school.\u00a0 Margaret and I were delighted to have him, of course.\u00a0 Leaving the three children in North Carolina had been particularly hard on Margaret. So, she loved having number one son at home.<\/p>\n Before he moved south, I told him, “If you’re not going to go to church and live for the Lord, don’t come.\u00a0 My ministry doesn’t need the kind of non-support you gave in North Carolina.”<\/p>\n He joined the church, joined the choir, and began going to singles Bible studies on Thursday night.<\/p>\n And that’s where he met Julie Gatwood.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n A few months before Neil moved south, Julie joined our church.\u00a0 I remember she that she was thin, rather short, with a ton of curly hair. With the prettiest hand-writing I had ever seen.<\/p>\n After meeting at the singles Bible study, they quickly began dating.<\/p>\n Julie was a rock.\u00a0 Her home was Slidell, on the northshore above New Orleans.\u00a0 Raised by godly parents who were strong in church. Her dad was a Bible teacher.\u00a0 Julie attended a Christian college in Cleveland, TN for a few years. She was working as a legal secretary for a New Orleans law firm.\u00a0 Then, when President Bill Clinton appointed one of the lawyers to the federal bench, Julie moved with her to the federal building. Bigger salary, more off-days and a better parking spot.<\/p>\n They married one year later, August 1 of 1992.\u00a0 Margaret and I quickly learned to treasure this precious lady whom God had brought into our lives via our son.<\/p>\n Julie is a woman of prayer, a person of the Book, and a lover of God’s people.\u00a0 When her girls were growing up she took them to conferences on Christian womanhood ( they weren’t called that, but that’s the point).\u00a0 She is every person’s dream of what a daughter-in-law should be.<\/p>\n These days Julie is the administrative assistant to the pastor of West Mobile (Alabama) Baptist Church where they now live.\u00a0 Their children are grown and married, and Neil and Julie are grandparents to two-year-old Emory Erskine of Pensacola and one-and-a-half year old Leah-Ray Clark of Mobile.\u00a0 This is a godly family, and to me Julie gets the lion’s share of the credit for that.\u00a0 Neil is chairman of deacons at the church.<\/p>\n How they got to Mobile is where the third woman comes in.<\/p>\n Marty Perkins<\/strong> of Moss Point, Mississippi is her name.<\/p>\n In the mid-1990s Neil and Julie began enlarging their family.\u00a0 Grant was born in 1994 and twins Abigail and Erin arrived in 1996.\u00a0 And at this point, they decided in order for Julie to stay home as a full-time mother, Neil should find a better paying job.\u00a0 He could not support the family on a teacher’s salary in a small Christian school.<\/p>\n One interview he had was at the New Orleans shipyards, across the river at Avondale.\u00a0 Marty Perkins interviewed him for a position as a teacher for a contract firm that did continuing education for the thousands of shipyard employees.<\/p>\n At one point she asked him, “Do you know Joe McKeever?”<\/p>\n “My Dad.”<\/p>\n She said, “Joe and my mother were on staff together at First Baptist Church of Jackson back in the 1970s.”\u00a0 Her mother, Frances Smira, headed our women’s ministry.\u00a0 I can recall meeting her daughter Marty more than once.\u00a0 A wonderful family.<\/p>\n Before the interview ended, Marty told Neil, “I cannot say you will get this job. But we definitely want you working for this company.”<\/p>\n He got the job.\u00a0 And for several years, he taught shipyard employees in special classes on their grounds.\u00a0 And, when they were hiring human resources workers, Neil applied and was hired.\u00a0 Recently, he celebrated a quarter century with the shipyards.\u00a0 A dozen years ago, they closed the New Orleans shipyards and channeled all their work to the Ingalls Shipyards in Pascagoula, Mississippi.<\/p>\n Neil and Julie moved to Mobile, Alabama, not far east of Pascagoula.<\/p>\n On several occasions I’ve preached in First Baptist Church of Moss Point, MS (next door to Pascagoula) where Marty Perkins belongs.\u00a0 I have never failed to thank her for blessing my family as she did.<\/p>\n At some point in our lives, all of us can look back and see critical moments when our Heavenly Father sent just the right person to our rescue.\u00a0 They made all the difference.\u00a0 I’ve not asked Neil’s permission for this, but because I was close by I was a near observer to what God did.<\/p>\n When my children were at home, I regularly prayed for their teachers.\u00a0 I recall saying on several occasions, “Whoever blesses my child blesses me.”<\/p>\n Pam Mancuso is in Heaven.\u00a0 I praise God for her. Julie Gatwood McKeever and Marty Smira Perkins are still with us, and forever occupy places of great honor in my heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" i’ve not asked my son’s permission for what follows. I wonder whether Neil ever gives thought to the debt he owes to three very special Christian ladies whom God used to do good things in his life. Neil is my … Continue reading