FROM PIGSTY TO PULPIT: THE UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ERNEST FREDERICK MESSMANN

On the farm there was a pigsty with a barbed wire fence surrounding it. Ernie climbed inside. When a sow charged him, he retreated and cut himself as he ducked under the barbed wire. With blood all over his eye, his mom took him to the nearest medical facility, which was a tuberculosis sanitarium. A doctor there saw the injury was to the eyelid, not the eye. He sewed up the eyelid leaving a small scar. So Ernie was one of the few people in the world who was an outpatient at a tuberculosis sanitarium. It was a busy year for Ernie’s guardian angel.