I guess I’ll start as far back as I can remember. My Grandmother Wilkinson (Mom’s side) and my mother both read Bible stories to me. I can remember about how God created all things, the story of Noah and the flood, David and Goliath, David and Saul, the 10 Commandments and also about Heaven and Hell and sin.

The next thing I remember, at age 7 to 10, I had to get a cow back in the field that some how got out and she got away on me. I couldn’t out run her. I got real mad and jumped up and down and cursed and swore in the middle of the road, and the thought came to me, “It would serve me right, if the Lord struck me down right here.”

The family always went to Church regularly, but I don’t remember much that stuck with me. Then in about 1948 or 1949, a man by the name of Stanley Wells came to the house and asked Mom and Dad if John and I could or would come to Bible School and Sunday School. So we went and I learned John 3:16 (For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believeth in Him should not Perish but have everlasting life). I didn’t get saved at that time, and I wasn’t really interested but John 3:16 was in my soul for eternity. After that I got thinking I was too big for Sunday School and all that, also I quit going to church. Mom and Dad felt bad over that. I can still remember a bit of how they looked. After that at age 17, I joined the Air Force and got away from home and out on my own. I can remember thinking “I’m out on my own now. How am I going to run my life now?” I thought I better start going to church again on my own. I went probably a couple times and that was that.

From then on it was mostly down hill. I had my first drink, heard many theories about if there was really a God or not, and heard about Evolution. I would have liked to believe there was no God. Then I could do just as I pleased, sin and all, and wouldn’t have to ever give an account of my sin or ever meet God.

In 1955, in August or September, I got out of the Air Force and got a job at Charlottetown at Maritime Central Airways, and met Brendon Good. We hit it off good right from day one. He had been brought up in a saved family where the Bible was read every morning and he went to a Sunday School where the word of God was taught faithfully and where it was taught that, “except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” and many other Gospel verses. The word Gospel means good news. It is good news to find out that you don’t have to go to hell, because another died in your guilty stead (Christ). Brendon never mentioned any of these things to me at that time. He was living just like I was. He hadn’t got saved either and he knew a lot more about it then me. The Bible says,”Man (Man Kind) is born like a wild ass’s (or donkey) colt. That sure was exactly what I was like. I could have been killed many times in cars, aeroplanes, and on motor cycles, but the Lord had mercy on me and kept me alive till I got saved. (Preserved by Jesus when my feet made haste to Hell).

Brendon and I went to Alberta together. He and I both got married out there. In 1960, Brendon decided to come back home. I had been out of Air Force and back in by that time and stationed at Cold Lake, Alberta. I took my leave – 30 days plus travelling time – and made an old trailer to put Brendon and June’s belongings in and came home with him while on leave and went back with my brother, John. He went out to Alberta to work. In February, 1961, there were Gospel meetings in Charlottetown and Both Brendon and June got saved a short time apart. Brendon had gotten sick of that kind of life.

Then in May, 1961, we moved home. I was sick of Air Force life, being moved around and sent on hard electronic courses. So as soon as I got home, I phoned Brendon to arrange a party, so we could get together again. But Brendon said he would like to see us alright but he didn’t want to go to any party because that winter the Lord had saved his soul. My first thought was “well, what ever Brendon did, he did it all the way.”

Later, we would talk about eternal things and I would ask him many questions and he always had answers, especially questions about the Bible.

The next thing I remember, was standing out in the yard of the old White Rose Service Station in McNeils Mills and looking at my son Donald, being 3 or 4, and thinking, “where am I leading this boy I brought into the world.”

I gave all these matters a lot of thought from 61 to 64. Once in that time Brendon asked me, “What about you now, don’t you think you ought to get saved?”, I said, “I am trying to live a better life now and trying to cut down on swearing and all that.” But Brendon told me “that is not it, we were all born in sin and sins have to be dealt with and paid for or I’d be in Hell for all eternity. But that was why Christ died, to put away our sins.

More time went on and I realized more and more that I was not right with God and not fit for Heaven. Then in August 1964, Brendon dropped by and told me there were Gospel meetings in Cascumpec in a tent in Lester Lewis’s yard, and would I come. I went and they preached the word of God faithfully from the Bible. I had never heard preaching like that before, although, it was a lot like Mr. Well’s preaching in Enmore. They preached about man’s ruin and God’s remedy, about the flood in Noah’s day and about how God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah in Lot’s day in Genesis 19, and remember Lot’s wife. I went home from the Gospel meeting and thought all this over. I didn’t go back the next night but the following night I went again and heard more. I was to the point where I wanted to be saved and I was impressed with how they brought out so many things from the Bible, so many serious things that I didn’t know were even in the Bible, even though I went to church a lot, I thought, but didn’t really know anything.

So I went home thinking all this over and that evening and into the night I asked God to save me, But nothing happened, so I fell asleep after quite a while. I woke up with these things still on my mind. I went out to the body shop, and when I got in, I wondered where the smoke was coming from. I looked all around and went up into the attic and found a bare light bulb on lying on the floor from the day before where I had been looking for a car part. It had burned a 3 inch whole in the 1 inch board and nearly through the wall board. I put the fire out and while I was up there, I got down on my knees and prayed and asked God why I hadn’t got saved the night before. I also asked again to be saved and still there was no answer. After a while I thought there is no salvation for the likes of me. I am really really on the way to Hell. Then it just came to me, “I don’t have to go to Hell,” because of what’s in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish but have ever lasting life.

I had my ups and downs since then, but everything changed that morning.