I have known Darris McNeely, managing editor of World News & Prophecy, for some 36 years. Even after all these years I learned some more about him during his recent visit to Germany.

I first met Darris in the summer of 1970 when some friends and I visited the Cape Girardeau congregation of the Worldwide Church of God. We had both been accepted to Ambassador College for the fall semester and were introduced to each other. It was a time when the hippy movement was in full bloom across America. No, Darris does not have really have some hidden hippy background in his past.

Instead, he is a very practical fellow and had the right footwear along for our many hours of walking around Berlin. On the first day Darris got some bad blisters on the heels of his feet, even though he had "broken in" the shoes he was wearing. Since you can’t see as much if you aren’t able to walk properly, we picked up some bandaids at a drugstore. But Darris did not need them. Instead, he just wore the sandals he had packed in his luggage. The next two days we did a lot of walking to see the various sites, and Darris wore his sandals, without socks. You see him here just outside the famous Pergamon museum in what used to be East-Berlin. And his practical remedy worked fine. The blisters were not irritated and by Saturday his feet had improved to the point where he could wear his shoes to attend church services. When he went to Trier and Aachen the following week, he broke down and wore socks with his sandals.