Dr. Rodney Wood, Louisiana Legislative Chaplain played freshman football at LSU and was friends with wide receiver Andy Hamilton.
“Andy told me if I would give control of my life to Christ, he would change my desires. That was an amazing thought, to think that God would do things to me, that he would change me,” Wood said.
Hamilton signed him up for a Campus Crusade Conference in Texas.
“On the first morning of that conference, on Aug. 9, 1971, I bowed my head and asked the Lord Jesus to take control of my life,” Wood said. “He heard my prayer, and He began to change my life. I’m almost 64 years old, and I’m still asking Him to please change me.”
While attending an LSU Campus Crusade meeting later that fall, he met the beautiful blonde girl from Texas City, Texas, who would become his wife. Wood graduated from LSU in 1972 with a degree in business administration and got married on Aug. 19. They just celebrated their 42nd anniversary.
Wood describes how he and his wife, Becky, entered a quiet Capitol rotunda on Saturday, Jan. 23, 1993, and after praying for Divine guidance, “these words of instruction came clearly to my mind; ‘Just pray. Don’t be intrusive. Don’t try to position yourself. Never look at a person’s station in life. And serve whomever I put before you.’ ”
As Chaplain, I say that as a body, our legislators are a group of men and women who are really seeking as best they understand it to do what is right,
Our prayer breakfast group is very diverse — racially, politically, and denominationally, Wood said, with Catholics and Protestants gathering to “experience a beautiful unity in Christ.”
“They definitely leave politics at the door,” Wood said. “It is an extremely warm fellowship. They really care about one another.” Dr. Rodney Wood, a son of Louisiana with deep family roots — a great-great-great grandfather fought with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans — Wood has been married to Rebecca “Becky” Hunter Wood for 42 years, and they have three grown sons, Jake, Jim and John, all physicians, and nine grandchildren.
