Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Friday, August 24, 2007
Goose Island baptisms show public display of commitment
About 30 people were baptized in the water off Goose Island last month.
Todd Wolter was one. His story begins Feb. 18, a day he was high on meth again.
Wolter, 33, had lost a lot before that Sunday. His first wife had divorced him and lived with their two kids. He’d lost his trucking company. And he’d lost whatever you lose when you spend much of an adult life on cocaine and alcohol, and three years doing meth.
On that Sunday in February, Wolter listened to the Rev. David Holt give a sermon about addiction and temptation. High and paranoid, Wolter thought Holt was pointing at him.
Wolter, who is remarried, went outside, broke down in tears, asked Jesus Christ to come into his life, and hasn’t touched drugs since.
He said his baptism this month gave him a cleansing feeling.
Holt, pastor at First Evangelical Free Church in Onalaska, Wis., begins the conversation about baptism by describing it as an act of obedience by a follower of Christ.
“Any parent loves to reward their children for their obedience,” Holt said about the sense of God’s presence he and others have felt after their baptisms. “God does the same.”
Raised Lutheran, Holt said he was saved his senior year of high school and baptized as a freshman in college.
“I can remember the week after I was baptized as a college student, I just had an overwhelming sense of God’s presence and a new hatred for sin,” he said. “I can remember walking on the University of Georgia campus and seeing sinful things that used to not bother me and I was just repulsed.”
Baptism, Holt said, does not save a person, but is a beautiful, outward
display of salvation, as well as a way to publicly proclaim one’s allegiance to Jesus.
After beginning to attend First Free, Lisa Turnbull walked into Holt’s office June 29, 2006, read through a booklet with Holt about living a life in Christ, said a prayer in the back of the booklet and received Christ into her life.
Turnbull, 42 and married with a 5-year-old daughter, also was baptized in the river last month.
“It’s out of obedience,” explained Turnbull, of Houston, Minn. “It’s to publicly declare your commitment to God.”
Ken Hansen, 66, said he has done his fair share of sinning.
“Where I worked, if you didn’t swear the f-word every other word or every third word, you were a square,” said Hansen, who lives with his second wife in Trempealeau, Wis.
When Hansen called his son and told him he’d been saved at Good Friday service this year, his son, who’d been saved more than a decade ago, broke down in tears.
Hansen said he felt like a baby coming out of the womb as he emerged from the water during his baptism.
“Everybody told me I just let out a big ‘yahoo,’” Hansen said. “It was a clean, brand new life moving in.”
Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
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