A Tribute to Robert Parks 1931 - 2008

Robert was a close personal friend. He was not a famous man, in fact he spent his whole life as a very simple yet hard working quite mannered person who never earned more than $8 an hour and yet he was the greatest man I ever knew.

I mentioned that he was quiet? Well he was the best preacher I ever saw, although he never spoke a single sermon in his life, he spoke one every day by the way he lived his life. I knew him very well, and yet could not mention all his faults on more than a couple fingers at best. The world is a lesser place without him, yet is a better place because he was here.

Robert believed in me and it was because of him I started The Loud Cry Ministry back in 1999 and did my first evangelist meeting and started the radio show in early 2000. He gave me the moral and emotional support I needed and during some less popular months he even financially kept this ministry on the radio although it cost over $600 a month to do so. In fact he emptied 2/3's of his $5000 savings account to keep it on the air for 6 months, until others sponsors finally stepped up. Every month I asked, "Are you sure?" He never had a moments doubt. He knew that God wanted the truth on the radio.

He believed in The Loud Cry Ministry almost more than I did. The photo below is a business card used during my radio ministry years. Without Robert Parks none of it would have ever happened. Robert Parks is the one person who stood by me and has influenced my life above all others and shown me what a real man is, and more than that what a real Christian is like, and more than even that, he showed a generous heart full of love integrity honesty forgiveness and unfailing commitment to what is good and right. He always saw the best in people.

Since 1990 to about 2003 he and his wife had housed and fed at no charge over 60 people. Mostly the type that others try not to notice or look at, the homeless, the drunks, and drug addicts, the lost to humanity with no hope of coming back. In fact he and his wife had done that sort of thing for 50 years.

Once he took in a man who was a smelly drunk and hadn't showered in perhaps weeks or more. He first found him sleeping in another homeless man's van at rest stops while coming home from prayer meeting. About four months later this same man was clean and sober and became a converted Seventh-day Adventist Christian. He reunited with his wife and three children, and moved to Texas where he now works as a Literature Evangelist.

Just like Jesus, Robert was always able to see what people could be, rather than what they were. Because of that he brought out the best in people. If you really want others to see Jesus in you, try to see what others can be in Christ, rather than what they are now.

It is not righteousness to be able to identify others faults and weaknesses. It is righteousness to lift them up and love them and help them to become more than they are despite of themselves.

You ask me how I know God is real? Well I saw him in the life of Robert Parks, and no one can tell me different!

I am looking forward to the day when I will see his face again, standing near the tree of life. I know he will be there. I want to introduce you to him. I hope you will be there too.

BLESSINGS IN THE LORD!!!!

David M. Curtis