By Jill Morikone
Wayne and Mary Lou McGill are two of the sweetest, most gracious people I’ve ever met. As I visit them in their lovely, rustic home, the joy on their faces and the presence of Jesus fills their home with light and peace.
They each sit in their favorite recliners, their rat terrier, “GG,” claiming first Wayne’s lap, then Mary Lou’s. I sit in a red, straight-backed chair that belonged to Wayne’s grandfather. Fingers poised over the keyboard. Eager to hear their story.
“I was the second child of five,” Wayne begins. “You know, the one who doesn’t get much attention,” he chuckles. “My dad was a farmer, till the oil fields came in during the late 30s. My parents were good people, but didn’t attend church much, so my religious background was almost nil. However, when I was 14, two of my friends and I decided to attend a local church revival. The preacher knew we hadn’t been baptized, so he told us, ‘If you boys don’t join the church tonight, when you die, you’ll go straight to hell and burn forever and ever!’ I wasn’t that versed in the Bible, but I’d always heard that God was a loving God. It didn’t make sense that He could be that cruel, so that night I left the church—and didn’t go back!”
Like Wayne, Mary Lou was raised in southern Illinois. Her dad farmed, but during World War II, he began working for the railroad, and then later, for the park service.
Since her parents and grandparents were actively involved in church, she also attended regularly. Mary Lou had an older brother, who died years later in a car accident.
“That was very difficult, because we were so close,” she says, pausing as she remembers the pain. “That’s life on this earth. We all have our hardships and trials.”
Family Life
However, life has its sweet moments, too. Wayne and Mary Lou met in high school, and her eyes twinkle as she remembers that time. “I had another boyfriend then, but it was altogether different when Wayne came along! We married right out of high school in 1949, and our daughter Sandy, and son Larry, followed in fairly quick succession.”
Wayne began a construction business right away, and they moved to DeKalb, Illinois, where he and his crew kept busy building homes and commercial properties. “This fellow was meant to build houses,” Mary Lou says, “and he’s built a lot of them!”
Although they’d stopped going to church for a while, when the kids came along they started attending again and life was good—until Wayne developed health problems. After endless doctor visits they finally discovered that he had a large aneurysm, and a specialist in Chicago said, “Go home and enjoy Christmas, then come back and we’ll try exploratory surgery.”
“We didn’t have any hope whatsoever,” Mary Lou says, “but our banker suggested we go to The Mayo Clinic. We did, and Mayo was our miracle.”
The Last Place for TV
God had a plan for Wayne, and he pulled through. With renewed energy, he opened a cabinet shop, and later a car dealership in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. It was at his dealership, Economy Motors, that he first heard about 3ABN.
“Two of the Shelton brothers came into my dealership, and we started talking about church. I said, ‘Well, I belong to a church,’ and then one of them said, ‘We’re getting ready to start a TV station.’
“ ‘Oh yeah? Where at?’ I asked.
“ ‘In Thompsonville,’ he said.
“Thompsonville? I thought. That would be the last place you’d put a TV station, but now I wish I’d paid more attention to them.”
Despite being active members of their church, Wayne still had some unsettled questions about the Bible. Although he’d accepted the idea of an eternally burning hell, he had a new question about the seventh-day Sabbath.
“One day I asked our preacher about it,” Wayne says, “and he told me the Sabbath was changed to Sunday in honor of Jesus’ resurrection. I accepted that for a while, but Mary Lou and I went over to Eldorado for church one Sunday, and I asked a deacon about it.
“ ‘Why don’t we keep the Sabbath?’ I asked at different times. Finally he got tired of hearing me talk like that, and said, ‘If I were you, I’d start looking for another church!’
“ ‘You know, that’s what I’ve been thinking,’ I answered. And I never went back.”
A Deep Loss
In 1995, tragedy stuck their lives. Their son Larry was driving home on his brand-new motorcycle, and as he topped a hill, an elderly man in a pickup truck appeared, driving on his side of the road. Larry laid his motorcycle down on the road to avoid a head-on collision, but was struck by another vehicle and died instantly.
“I got deathly sick about the time it happened,” Wayne says. “I just sensed something was terribly wrong, so I went in and lay down. Within the hour, our daughter and son-in-law came and said, ‘Dad, Mom, we’ve got something to tell you.’ ”
Wayne takes a deep breath. “You just go into deep shock, and while some people get angry at God, that thought never even entered our minds. It never shook our faith.”
Mary Lou’s sweet voice wavers. “No, we never blamed God. We couldn’t do that—God is a loving God. But it’s very hard to get over. That’s just part of you—you know, it’s your child.”
We sit for a moment in silence as the words blur on my computer. Then Wayne continues. “Before Larry was killed, I had just retired again, and we’d purchased a small motor home. We were beside ourselves and just couldn’t stay home, staring at the walls. I think we would’ve lost our minds. So we began to travel, and went to Florida every winter, coming back north in the summer. The travel really helped to keep us going.
“I believe it was while we were in Leesburg, Florida, on one of our first trips, that we found 3ABN, and the more we watched, the more we liked it. Everything they presented followed the Bible exactly, and I realized this was the TV station the Sheltons had talked about years before!”
(Note: After checking for the nearest 3ABN TV station, I discovered it was over 80 miles away—but that’s not the first time God’s done the impossible!)
“After watching a couple of years, we began attending our church on Sunday, and Seventh-day Adventist churches on Sabbath wherever we traveled,” Wayne continues, “and we first attended the Thompsonville Seventh-day Adventist Church near 3ABN in the early 2000s. We came in the door and Pastor John Lomacang, Danny Shelton, and John Stanton, were all right there. We sat down, and saw the prettiest blonde girl, who I thought must have still been in high school, and a dark headed, good-looking guy,” he chuckles. “You and Greg sat right behind us!”
In 2005, Mary Lou had heart surgery and they settled down at home again. They also began attending the Thompsonville church on a regular basis. “We knew this was the right place to be,” Mary Lou says. “The people treated us so nicely there, and we knew what they taught was the truth.”
Shining Ever Brighter
The McGill’s were baptized on April 19, 2008. “We were taught so many things that weren’t quite right,” he says, “so we decided we needed to be baptized into our new faith. Mary Lou and I are so thankful that the Lord impressed Danny to start 3ABN, because we might have never realized these truths otherwise. We still have a lot to learn, but we’re so thankful for what God has shown us.
“Oh, and one more thing,” he adds. “When we first saw Pastor Jim Gilley when 3ABN was in Dallas, we both liked him so much that we said, ‘If we ever get close to where he’s preaching, we’ll go hear him.’ And then he became 3ABN’s President!”
As I drove away from their home, my heart was so thankful for how God had led this precious couple, step by step. What a joy to watch God at work! Truly, the McGill’s path has been “like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” Proverbs 4:18 (NIV).