Writer of the Week:

 

Sandy Ditoro

I was born in Indianola, Mississippi on September 10^th 1950.  I was the 4^th child of Harold and Isabel Mitchell.  Five years later our younger sister, Kathy, was born making us a grand total of five children.   

 I grew up ten miles out in the country.  My Daddy farmed.  Summers for my siblings and me were spent chopping cotton.  One summer there was a lot of rain and the cotton grew to be around six feet tall.  I was chopping a row of cotton near my sister, Brenda.  I couldn’t see her because the cotton was so high.  My Dad and brother were at the end of the field. My sister and I began to hear a funny noise that we didn’t recognize.  It sounded scary.  I stood frozen for a few moments listening to the noise and trying to figure out what it was. After a couple of minutes our dog ran past going in the opposite direction of the noise, looking very frightened. That’s all it took, I dropped my hoe and started to run too.  My sister had heard the noise, she saw the dog run past.  She saw me run past and she too dropped her hoe and ran.  We got to the end of the field and the look on Dad’s face when he saw us was a look that said, “I’m going to whip you kids if you don’t get back to work!!!”  His expression must have been scarier than the noise because my sister and I turned around and ran back in the direction of the noise.  Later my dad went down and discovered the source of the noise. A fox had built her den in the hole of an old burned out tree stump. The noise was being made by the fox and her baby pups. 

 I didn’t have any playmates, living so far out in the country and my siblings didn’t want me hanging around.  I would get bored and I was always running off.  I would go to my Aunt’s house about a quarter of a mile away or to visit our neighbors who lived on our farm. My Mom was always trying to keep me from running off.  I am sure she even gave me a switching or two to make me stop.  I would soon forget and come up missing again.  

 One way my family used as a means of persuasion to try and stop me from running off was by telling me scary things that might happen to me if I ran off.  They told me that I might get kidnapped if I ran down the turn row that paralleled the busy highway enroute to my Aunt’s house. They tried to convince me that a convict might get me. We lived near a penitentiary. Convicts often did escape and so the danger of running into one of them did give me cause to pause. Therefore for security after I received that warning I would run all the way to my Aunt’s house carrying a big clod of dirt in my hand to keep the convicts and the kidnappers at bay.  I am sure I had nightmares about the convicts getting me, but that didn’t stop me from running off. 

 Well, one summer when I got older, my Dad and I were working on the far side of our farm. Suddenly we saw patrol cars zooming up and down the dirt roads between the farms.  There was a helicopter and an airplane circling.  The airplane swooped low and we could see someone looking at us through binoculars.  It turned out that convicts were hiding in the woods next to our farm.  Thankfully that was as close an encounter I ever had with the convicts. 

 Well, I survived my childhood. I grew up and  met Paul in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  He was a new convert.  I was so impressed with his dedication to God and his desire to teach the lost.  Four months after we were married, Paul left his job as an electrical engineer for the power company and he became a minister of the gospel. 

  We have worked with congregations in Michigan, Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Utah.    

We have three children. Timothy, 33, teaches Spanish at the University of Texas and is in Grad School in Austin, Texas. 

 Our daughter, Sandy ,28, is  married to Sean Tipton.  They have two children, Anna (6) and Eric (3).  They live in Keller, Texas.

 Nina lives in Austin, Texas. She is a student at the University of Texas. 

 My only goal in life is to go to heaven and to influence as many people as I can to go there too. 

 This biography was revised and updated 7/5/06.