My father, H.B. Charles Sr., led the Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles for four decades. He passed away in 1989. I was sixteen-years-old. Mt. Sinai met on November 5, 1990, to select a new pastor. E.V. Hill Sr., Pastor of the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, moderated the church meeting. I attended the meeting to cast my vote. In the meeting, I was nominated from the flood and the congregation voted me to be its new pastor. I was a seventeen-year-old senior at Los Angeles High School. E.V. Hill returned to preach my pastoral...

This past weekend, I was scheduled to fly home to Los Angeles to join the Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in celebrating 75 years of Christian witness and ministry. But flight delays and bad weather prevented me from even leaving Jacksonville. I was greatly disappointed. I was grateful for the invitation to speak at the anniversary banquet and looking forward to the opportunity to preach to the Mt. Sinai family I preached my first sermon at Mt. Sinai, as an 11-year-old boy. I preached every year after that, as an associate minister under my father. Then I preached to the...