c. 1996 Religion News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. _ Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments carved in stone.

Steve Williams stepped down from his Safeway semi-truck with the same religious edicts etched in two types of marble and slate.

Tradition holds that Moses received the commandments directly from God. Williams’ inspiration came more circuitously.

Six months ago, the Portland, Ore., trucker hopped into his semi and found the radio tuned to KPDQ, which offers Christian programming. He listened all night.

At the end, a minister asked the listeners to say a prayer and accept Jesus as their savior.”Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself saying the acceptance prayer,”says Williams, 44.”It shocked me, but I felt something good from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I felt God inside me, outside me, all around my whole being. From that time, I’ve been on cloud nine.” That night, Wendy Williams knew there was something different about the man she’s known since the fifth grade at Mount Tabor Elementary School.”I hate to say this about my own husband,”she confides,”but he’s a crude language guy, and didn’t always have nice things to say.”When he came home that night, it was almost like I didn’t know him. The crude language has stopped and he has nice things to say now. At first I doubted what he said had happened _ yeh, right! _ but he hasn’t changed back. So I have to believe he believes God has driven him to do this.” Steve Williams started watching religious TV shows and noticed a lot of folks had found God, but then let the experience slip away.

What could he do to prevent it from happening to him? he wondered. When he opened his Bible for the first time in years, a passage from John 15:15 jumped out at him:”If you love me, keep my commandments.” That was it. He would carve the Ten Commandments, literally etching his vow in stone.

The burly Williams looks nothing like the traditional depictions of Moses _ he’s clean-shaven and sports wire-rimmed glasses. Save the blue eyes, he doesn’t even look much like Charlton Heston, who played Moses in the movie”The Ten Commandments.” But Williams has the appropriate zeal.”I feel in my heart that this is so godly and so good, I just want to be worthy and get God’s word out,”he says.

“I don’t know what it is, but everytime I make one, I get this warm feeling _ a tingling sensation through my body _ like someone’s inside me.” Working as much as 30 hours a week and burning up the couple’s savings, Williams etches the Decalogue on inch-thick, 12-by-15-inch slabs of rough slate and smooth marble _ either gray-veined white marble with the words painted black, or gold-flecked black marble with the letters highlighted in gold.

The commandments cover two tablets, rounded at the top like a tombstone, which weigh 15 pounds together. Williams sells them for $199.99, which includes two brass-dipped scrolled display racks.”Where else can you find a gift for under $200 that’ll last for hundreds of years?”he asks with a grin.

He sees the tablets as the perfect offering for weddings, baptisms, religious converts _ or presented in memoriam to one’s church or temple.

Tony Williams is Steve Williams’ mother. She says she took her seven children to whatever church was nearby _ Baptist, Christian Science, Seventh-day Adventist, Presbyterian.

But as an adult, Steve Williams found time to coach baseball but not to go to church.

And that’s why his younger sister, Kim Kasch, once included her brother’s name among the folks to be prayed for by her Sunday school class at Hinson Memorial Baptist Church in Southeast Portland. Kasch _ and fellow church members _ are now praying that Steve Williams’ tablets will be an inspiration to others.

Inspiration or curiosity, Williams has been featured on television, has appointments with art galleries and can’t keep up with the orders that are coming his way from as far off as Colorado and Pennsylvania.

He says:”With all the turmoil this country’s in, if people came back to God’s commandments, do you know how much better everybody would be if they lived by these? I so badly want to do a good job for God.” Williams can be reached by writing him at 8316 N. Lombard #393, Portland, Ore., 97203.

MJP END MITCHELL