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up the subject of the June revival, I suggested that this might be the year to skip the revival and have a week of prayer instead.
    â€œThat’s so boring,” Fern Hampton said. “Let’s think of something else.”
    It was then that Dale Hinshaw told about Billy Bundle, the World’s Shortest Evangelist, who was preaching in the city. Dale had gone to hear him and was greatly impressed by this little man who was so short he couldn’t see over the pulpit. He told how Billy took the big pulpit Bible, placed it on the floor, said “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet,” then stepped up on that Bible to preach.
    Dale Hinshaw was captivated and vowed to bring the World’s Shortest Evangelist to Harmony Friends Meeting as our June revival speaker.
    â€œYou should have seen the crowd,” Dale exclaimed. “The place was packed. The offering was so big they had to empty the baskets halfway through. We do this right and we can maybe raise enough money to buy new cabinets for the church kitchen.”
    Fern Hampton said, “I’m for that.”
    So that is how Billy Bundle, the World’s Shortest Evangelist, came to speak at the June revival of Harmony Friends Meeting.
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    B illy Bundle hadn’t always been an evangelist. He’d started out as a professional wrestler. My brother Roger and I used to watch him Saturday afternoons on Channel 5. The wrestling matches were held at the armory in the city. If we wrapped tin foil around the television antennas and slid it up and down, Channel 5 would come in clear. We were little kids, and professional wrestling made a great impression. We’d push the furniture back to the walls and wrestle in our underwear, just like Billy Bundle.
    Except that they didn’t call him Billy Bundle on television. They called him “The Mississippi Midget,” even though he wasn’t from Mississippi, nor was he a midget. He was from the Bronx and came from a long line of short people. He spoke in a Southern drawl and wore bright red wrestling trunks. As he walked to and from the ring, he wore a top hat, which he took off in the presence of ladies. A Southern gentleman.
    Billy was one of the good guys, at least at first. Then he became one of the bad guys and would kick his opponent when the referee wasn’t watching. He hid brass knuckles in his trunks, which the referees never found. He hit below the belt. He was an easy man to hate.
    Then Billy had his accident, which everyone watching Channel 5 witnessed. He got tangled in the ropes, fell, and broke his right leg, which caused him to limp for the rest of his life.
    While Billy was in the hospital he watched Channel 21, the religion station, and realized his true calling: evangelism. He quit the wrestling business and began traveling from town to town, preaching revivals. On the last night of the revivals, Billy would do a dramatization from the book of Genesis, Jacob wrestling with the stranger at the river Jabbok. He would ask for a volunteer from the audience, whom he would fling around the platform, using flips and body slams and headlocks. At the stirring conclusion of his story, you’d hear a loud c-r-a-c-k and Billy would rise to his feet, grimacing, and hobble away—just like Jacob. It always brought in a good offering, and afterwards Billy would autograph pictures of himself dressed in his wrestling trunks, back when he was “The Mississippi Midget.”
    This was the man Dale Hinshaw chose to bring a message from the eternal God.
    The revival lasted three nights—Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The weekend before, the Friendly Women’s Circle posted fliers at the Laundromat, the Krogers, and in the front window of the Coffee Cup. Bob Miles Jr. ran an article in the Herald about Billy, chronicling his early years in the Bronx, his fame as a championship wrestler, and his triumph as the World’s Shortest Evangelist. He printed a picture of Billy in