Extraordinary Ordinary!Sample

As a boy, Bobbie was described as fanatically determined to amount to absolutely nothing. His temperament strongly clashed with that of his father’s and Bobbie’s back got stiffer as he entered his teenage years. Bobbie was not only the biggest hulk in his class, but he was also the dumbest. He hated school and wanted to break out the windows and kick out the school walls. Bobbie was never interested in going to school, and to the chagrin of his Christian parents, he left home at fourteen and became an apprentice to an ironmonger. Bobbie studied mechanics from a correspondence course, although he never completed any assignments. Bobbie moved to California where he learned welding and became familiar with the application of electricity. His temperament continued to get him into trouble wherever he moved. After a foundry superintendent called Bobbie a “back-talk smart aleck,” he became homeless on the streets of Portland, Oregon. At seventeen years old, this strong-willed man-child found himself big, dumb and unemployed. Bobbie turned his heart away from pride and toward God. It was when he turned his life over to the Lord that Bobbie found that God had given him special abilities that could not be measured in a classroom, but in the creativity of foundries, factories, and patents. Robert LeTourneau was the inventor of the electric wheel and held the patent for three hundred other inventions. During World War II, this genius, who grew up floundering for purpose and fulfillment, produced 70 percent of the world’s earth moving machines and spoke of God as his “Chairman of the Board”. Robert gave 90 percent of what he made to the work of God, and lived only on 10 percent of his income. The formerly homeless teenager said the money came in faster than he was able to give it away. LeTourneau was convinced he would never be able to out-give God, although he spent the rest of his life trying to do just that. “I shovel it out,” he said, “and God shovels it back, but God has a bigger shovel than I do!”