LEROY: I'd stay out all night.
I'd work all the way through the night. What happens when you get junky equipment,
the moisture comes in Minnesota. All the corn stalks plug your plows, plug your discs. So you're
getting off every few hundred feet kicking that stuff off. You're covered with mud. You are cold.
You're tired. You're hungry. You're whatever. But you're doing it because you're hoping dad walks
out of that house in the morning and goes, no he's got to know, I didn't come home, right, or sleep
but boy's he's going to say, "thank you, gosh, he did a great job." Not once in my entire life.
God's been gracious to me. I know what it's like to feel success in the temporal as a
man and I think that's important to most men to feel successful. My dad never had that feeling.
I was born on a small farm outside Leota, Minnesota as one of four children,
second from the oldest. The only boy to Nelson and Grace Landhouse in 1955. My first memory
is my dad is, he was, I didn't like him at all, he was very tough. He would hurt you.
He would punch and kick you. He'd knock you right down, hit you in the face. If you're a harsh man,
your family doesn't see the love of God, they just see the fear of God. So, I read the Bible.
I believed in biblical values, i just couldn't get to the Jesus loves me no matter what part,
I couldn't hold on to it because of the hate for my father. Things were so harsh between us,
it was like when the scattering of the seed but that ground was rocky and rough and
didn't change my belief in it, but it didn't hold on. I never felt safe
growing up with my father because he'd always take the outsider's side. These are school pictures,
so I knew about those, but I'd never seen that one before. This is my great grandfather.
Mom and Dad. This is the only picture i have where my dad was ever touching me without punishment.
I never had a picture in my life before today of him holding me.
And so I went to the service. I was involved, ironically,
in the chapel. I always would go to church on Sundays if I was not working
on duty. But in 1976, I went to a Bill Gothard seminar, institute of basic youth conflicts.
At that seminar, I was convicted that, you know, I needed to do something, but the conviction came
with a caveat that I needed to ask my father to forgive me for hating him all those years.
And I know that that was God talking because that was the freedom I had to let go of.
I just wouldn't do it. And they discovered my perforated ulcers within six weeks at the Air
Force. So, I get out, go in to real estate. In a very short time I was tremendously successful,
but I went back as an alumnus, what do they open up with? "If you're not at peace your parent,
your prayers will be hindered." So I go home. I'm sitting by myself in this room and
it's like finally, okay, I've got to call my dad and I've got to do this thing.
And then this voice goes, "you know if you do this, all the beatings you received,
and all the times he told you never have any friends, you're just going to validate
all that if you do this." But just like a voice in this room something goes, "LeRoy
this doesn't have anything to do with your father, this has to do with your having peace with me
and understanding the purpose of why you were created and brought on this earth."
Wow! Now I understood that statement and that's what I wanted. Why am I? Right, you know the
perpetual question? I have read almost every book in this place. I would say less than 50 books
in this library I haven't read and when I study, people are nice enough to provide me good reading
materials. I don't want flowery books. I want who gets after it. Well, R.C. Sproul's name comes up,
then, right? And R.C.'s teachings that I was exposed to, and I couldn't even tell you all
the books. You know, the Holiness, got all those are obvious, everyone knows. But now you'd see
a person that had a gift for being entertaining as well as encouraging while writing scriptural
truths. Now, in four and a half years, I've never called to talk to my father. There was wonderful
things that I was missing because I was so focused on being afraid and between my father and me.
So dad gets on the phone, I said, "Dad you're not gonna understand this, but I need to say
this to you. That I'm really sorry for hating you so terrible all these years and for anything
I've done to cause problems in the family because of that." Now I had a watch laying here because I
knew he would not respond, but I was going to wait 45 seconds. That changed everything in
that moment. For one, it's the first time I felt freedom. That's fundamentally our whole purpose,
for all of us to be back with the creator to be in that relationship and once you have that and
you understand your heavenly Father loves you and His Son Jesus Christ died for you and is a
partner with you in your life through the Holy Spirit, what is it you wouldn't try to dare to do?