It was a hot August night, and I found myself standing in a church pulpit for the first time.

Danny Johnson of Webster, South Dakota, contacted me a year ago about speaking at a fundraiser for a nonprofit called the St. Pauli Foundation. I regretfully declined as I was undergoing chemoradiation therapy for tonsil cancer at the time. There were days when I could barely muster the energy to walk from my recliner to the bathroom.

I now feel strong enough to wrestle a bear — a teddy bear, that is — so when Danny contacted me again about speaking, I quickly agreed.

Like many country churches, St. Pauli Lutheran saw its membership gradually decline. After being abandoned in the 1970s, time and the elements began to exact their inexorable toll.

“This church is 125 years old,” Danny said. “It sat a few miles north of Wallace, South Dakota until 10years ago. They wanted to burn it down and we thought it would be a shame to lose such an important part of the area’s history. So, we formed a nonprofit and moved the church here.”

Now called the St. Pauli Center, the old church sits at the outskirts of Webster, across the road from the Day County Fairgrounds. Arriving at the Center, my wife and I found Danny and other volunteers selling SDSU ice cream as part of their fundraiser. We chatted with Danny and Rick Froslie, who are on the Foundation’s board of directors, to learn more about the humble structure.

“This was my church when I was a kid,” Rick said. “It has a special place in my heart.”

“We hold a Sunday church service during our fundraiser,” Danny said. “There’s an elderly gentleman who attends every year and always takes a seat by one of the windows. That was where he and his family sat, and he said that he wouldn’t sit anywhere else.”

Knowing the significance of the evening’s event elevated my anxiety about addressing the assembly. The church was historically correct in that it lacked air conditioning. Its windows were thrown open, letting in a hairdryer-like breeze that kept its interior toasty. I was sweating long before I began speechifying.

The appointed time arrived, and I mounted the pulpit. It felt strange to be way up there instead of down in the pews.

A swine show was being held across the road, and its PA announcements could be heard. Halfway through my talk a freight train blew its airhorn as it thundered by on the nearby tracks. A baby cried, rendering a brutally honest opinion about my presentation.

Despite these challenges, I managed to muddle through my speech. My wife and I chatted with some of the attendees afterward. Those pleasant interactions were an unexpected reward.

One of the ladies who spoke with my wife mentioned that she (my wife) deserves a sympathy card for putting up with me. Another lady said to my wife regarding my first turn in a pulpit, “Maybe he has a new career?”

“Maybe,” my wife smiled.

“I could never be a preacher!” I later exclaimed to my wife. “I cuss when I’m overstressed and giving a sermon every Sunday sounds awfully stressful.”

“That might be OK,” she replied. “Maybe it would keep people from nodding off.”

We stood in the narthex and chatted with Danny and Rick. Danny insisted that we have some ice cream for the road. He was so persistent that it almost felt as if I were being forced to accept ice cream at gunpoint. Knowing that my wife likes Cookies and Cream, I gratefully took two cups of the tasty treat and went to our car.

The ice cream was the perfect coda for the sweltering evening. We noshed the frosty indulgence while we motored homeward, peering through a shifting constellation of bug spatters on the windshield as a pumpkin moon played peekaboo amidst the ragged nighttime clouds.

The fragrance of the summertime twilight and the rhythmic “thup, thup” of the tires on the highway brought back a flood of boyhood memories. Memories of riding home with my family in our 1959 Ford station wagon after a warm evening of playing 4-H softball, the windows rolled down to admit the cool night air, the car’s headlights boring a tunnel through the infinite darkness as I sipped on a straw that was plumbing the depths of a strawberry malt.

It’s wonderful that Danny and Rick and others are working to preserve local history. Perhaps, fifty years from now, a former kid might recall enjoying ice cream with his family on a steamy summertime evening after listening to some guy who was full of hot air.

Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide