A couple of days ago, I said I was going to tell you how I met Becky Bacon:  I went to a study at our church covering the second Chapter of Philippians, and sat down in the only empty chair.  The lady on my left was someone I had never met.  I introduced myself, and asked where she was from.  She said she had just recently moved to Pryor and didn't know anyone.  Her name was Becky Bacon.

She told me that her former pastor had been a missionary to China, and had told her that one of his close missionary friend's home base was in Pryor and was one of the most wonderful persons this pastor had ever known--that she and Joe should get to know him. "What's his name?" I asked.  "Bill Swan," she answered.  "He was a pilot in the Navy before he went to China--a flight surgeon.  He worked at NASA as an astronaut physician.  Have you met him?"

"Yes I have," I told her.  "What is he like?" she asked. "Is he as wonderful as my pastor said?"
"Absolutely not," I told her.  "He's a brat."
"No!" she said.  "That can't be true.  My pastor said that he was a doctor, and gave his life to help people in China regain their health, and to tell them about Jesus."
"Well," I told her, "I have a different point of view.  He's my ornery baby brother--five and a half years younger than me.  Just enough to drive me crazy when we were growing up."  She realized that I had been teasing her.  "I can't believe that the first person that I met in Pryor is related to Bill Swan."

"Yep," I told her.  He may be as wonderful as you heard, but he made my life miserable when we were growing up--because he was such a pest.  For example, when Ken and I were dating, Ken wrote me two or three times a week.  Bill would get home from school before me, hide the letters and make a clue-trail with one note leading to another.  Sometimes it would take me an hour before I could find the letter.   He would leave clues in trees, the attic, in the washing machine...I could have strangled him--easily.  And I could give you a dozen other ways he was a major nuisance in my life."

"I was married and gone before Bill grew up.  But he came to live with us one summer when Ken and I were in South Carolina, and I decided that maybe he was going to turn out okay--maybe he wasn't such a pest after all."  He and his wife Janet spent 37 years in China.  "Go ye therefore and teach all nations. Whatsoever I have commanded you..." Matthew 28:19-20.  Bill and Janet did just that.