Not only was there no emotional experiences in the next year and a half that followed, there was nothing period. I mean nothing nothing. No word of God in my spirit, no new revelations out of the Word of God, and maybe one or two conversion experiences in the length of time of the valley. For a while I thought I was going out of my mind. Not only was there no new revelations of truth, but it seemed every time I opened my mouth death would come out instead of life, confusion instead of peace, strife instead of rest.

What did it all mean? Like most people, my reaction was, "Well maybe this Baptism of the Holy Spirit is of the Devil and this is why nothing is happening in my life. Nothing is happening because I am oppressed of the devil, or maybe worse, possessed!"

After several months of this silence, I heard that a missionary friend of mine was home from Hawaii, Lauri Eklund, which is now Lauri Long. I thought maybe she could help me. She was not home, but her mother, Marge Eklund, was, so I related to her my problem. What she said at first did not seem like much of a word of encouragement but what followed did end up becoming a present word of encouragement. She said to me, "Dale even those who do not know God are obligated to give God worship and praise because they are created by God." At this point it had been well over a year since the valley started and I was beginning to have doubts even of my salvation, but what she said made sense, so I decided to give it a try.

After I hung up the phone, I went into my room and got on my knees and began to praise and thank Jesus for what I was going through and acknowledged that He was worthy of my praise whether I was saved or not. You have to understand at that point this was an honest prayer, at that point of my inward stress. As I began to praise and worship Jesus, He began to flood me with His presence and His love. Then He led me to a passage of Scripture in the book of Isaiah,

"But now, thus says Yehovah, your Creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched. Nor will the flame burn you.’" (Is 43:1-2).

It was not an answer to what I was going through or why, but it confirmed what I was going through, and it also assured me Jesus was with me in it. He had not left me.²⁰ What I was going through was certainly opposite of my expectation of the myths I had heard about concerning those who received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. I was not getting more dependent on emotion because there was no emotion, nothing. I was not hearing Jesus’ voice more often, I was not hearing His voice at all. When I did, finally, a year later, it was not an assurance at that point that I would, but only a confirmation that He was taking me through this valley and no indication of when or if it would end.

What was Jesus doing with Me? He was taking me through the fires of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. What were these fires doing? They were purging me of self-initiative. Jesus was stripping me of self. He was bringing me to a place of not speaking or acting out of my own initiative. How was He doing this? During this valley, every time I would open my mouth death and condemnation came out. I got to a point that I was afraid to say anything anymore. I did not even want to try. Every time I went out to try and share the Gospel I ended up seemingly driving the person further away instead of closer to the truth. Nothing that I tried to do was working and that was Jesus’ whole point in what I was going through. He was not blessing me in my efforts because He wanted me to learn to wait for him. He wanted me to wait for Him to tell me when to speak and what to speak; when doing Evangelism what to say and what not to say; when to pray and how to pray; etcetera.

As I came near to the close of this valley, the Lord led me to another passage of Scripture in Isaiah,

"Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. And Your ears will hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it," whenever you turn to the right or to the left." (Is 30:20-21).

The climax of this valley of nothing came right after breaking up with my girl friend. Several months earlier a friend of mine I had known from my catholic days, who had tried for several years to bring me back into this faith, out of desperation said to me one day, "Dale, if I go on a retreat of your choice, will you go on a catholic retreat?" After I thought about it I realized I could get him exposed to the Gospel. So I said I would. I had him go to a Basic Youth Conflicts Seminar. I on my part kept putting my end of the commitment out of mind.

Finally, one day he came up to me about a retreat that was going on in the bay area. This was just before my girl friend and I broke up. I shared with her about the retreat and she said that I should go. When she said this, the Holy Spirit went through me and I knew this was the retreat I was to go on.

What I did not know was that this man I had made this commitment with had gone up to the Priests and Nuns that were running this retreat and had told them that he had been trying desperately to bring me back to the faith and had failed, that this would probably be their last chance to reach me.

At this time I was working full time for a car dealership as a lot boy. I had gotten permission to get off early on Friday so I could get up to the bay area retreat from Fresno California on time, about a 3½ hour drive. Something happened that afternoon, however, that delayed me several hours. They sold some cars and needed them detailed.

I ended up working over time several hours and so did not even get up to the retreat until midnight. The only person that was still up was a blind man who took me to my room. He did not know who I was and since I had missed orientation no one else knew who I was either.

A week earlier I had broken up with my girl friend and was very depressed. I was not in the mood to witness or talk to anyone about Jesus. When I got up the next morning they had us go through some feely touchy exercises. I was keeping a low profile making sure I did not get to deep in conversation with anybody. I was just going to get through the weekend and get it over with.

After the second session and realizing my attitude was going to make for a miserable weekend, I went to my room and got down on my knees and prayed:

"Jesus, if you want to use me among these people this weekend, I am available to You. You can use me, but don’t expect my emotions to be involved because they aren’t."

I got up and went to lunch. I made sure I was sitting alone. A few minutes later this man came up and sat in front of me. He introduced himself as Steve Fitzgerald. He shared with me that he had just arrived, that the night before his Volkswagen had run out of gas while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and so was delayed. He then asked me what the agenda was, what was coming up? I then shared with him that I had arrived late the night before and did not know myself.

He asked me where I was from, meaning what bay area Parish I was from? I told him I was from Fresno. He responded:

I proceeded to share with Steve the Gospel. About forty-five minutes passed and Steve said, "Lets go outside and continue this discussion." When we got outside I decided to cut to the chase and pulled out an Evangelism Tract and went through it with him. Steve told me he would like to pray and receive Jesus into his heart as Savior and Lord, so we prayed.

After we prayed Steve looked up with this big smile on his face and then said the following:

Steve: I just remembered who you are! You don’t know this, but your friend John (fictitious name, real person) came up and told us that you were coming and that this would probably be our last opportunity to reach you, but You just gave ME the answer to life!

Steve turned out to be one of the leaders of the retreat. He was so excited about his new found relationship with Jesus that he went around telling everyone what had just happened to him.