Roger Thompson

After the goodies-filled intermission, Gentle Ben introduces Roger Thompson, a real cowboy. As Ben said during his introduction, Roger was the only one in the show who wasn't in costume. During Roger's long cowboy history, he was a rodeo clown, he's ridden broncs in rodeos all over the west, he was in movies (e.g., McKenna's Gold) and television shows (e.g., Bonanza), and is a member of the Fellowship of Christian Cowboys, based in Colorado Springs, where he goes around to rodeo camps and teaches kids, 8 to 18, how to rope, how to ride broncs and bulls, and how to serve God.

Roger shared his testimony of how God got a hold of his life, starting in the early 1950s. The thing that got his attention was when he was coming down a Yellowstone mountain on a horse, leading a couple of pack mules. The trail was on a long slope of "slide rock" (shale), and the larger of the mules got spooked by its load shifting, and jumped off the trail--onto the slide-rock, on which he couldn't regain his footing. The mule started pulling Roger's horse and the other mule down the slope, since they were all tied together, and Roger couldn't even cut the rope--his knife was in a pants pocket that was held shut by the rope pulled tightly across his leg. The same rope that was pulling him off the trail!

Roger couldn't even jump off his own horse, because of that same rope across his leg, binding him to the saddle. He had basically resigned himself to tumbling about a thousand feet down a landslide with a horse and two mules, not to mention the rocks they would dislodge. No one would notice his absence for about a week, and yes, it was grizzly bear country. The big mule was pulling the horse and other mule inexorably off the trail. But suddenly, and miraculously, Roger heard a chorus of heavenly voices, singing the most beautiful music he had ever heard--but unlike any music he had ever heard. As this music, coming from everywhere and nowhere, reached a crescendo, the lead mule found, of all things, a little tuft of grass growing out of the shale. The mule caught his footing on this little tuft of grass, and he was able to get back on the trail. And the voices faded away. That's not the last time he heard those voices, but it took twenty years before he heard it again. . .

Roger finished his story with a rendition of Amarillo By Morning, accompanied softly by the gentlemen behind him. Roger's rendition had the words changed to tell his own story. All in all, it was quite a inspiring story.