I had the privilege of being brought up in a godly home and was saved as a boy of eleven.
In our home the Bible was daily read, and I bowed my knee daily with the rest of the family as we were committed to the Lord by my Father. Twice on Lord’s Day and twice during the week, we walked a couple of miles to the regular meetings in the Arnstein Gospel Hall. In 1948 a new Gospel Hall was built, and a couple of preachers Mr. Albert Joyce, and Mr. Frank Pearce came for a series of gospel meetings in the new hall. They were powerful preachers of the old school, who were not much concerned with scholarship in a gospel meeting, and as I went to listen to them preach nightly, I was brought, by the Spirit of God, under conviction of sin, and awful soul trouble. All thoughts of playing and sporting myself were gone, as I had but one burning desire, I wanted to be saved. One day while lying on a couch on the veranda, my very wise mother who could detect something was wrong with her son, came and very gently sat beside me and said, "Son, you want to be saved don’t you?" And with a quivering lip I answered, "Yes, mother, I want to be saved." She told me to stay behind and talk with the preachers, and that I did, but it was to no avail, for I knew all that they were telling me.
The meetings ended, the preachers left, and I was not saved. My awful distress though, never left me, I was in total misery and fear. One night I lay in bed, looking out through the window across the horizon, unable to sleep for fear the Lord might come or I might die during the night. As I lay there in my desperation, I told the Lord that I could not believe any more than I did and that I would have to go to hell because my belief was too small. As I lay there giving up, knowing I was lost, a verse from a Sunday school text flashed into my mind, and I quote it now as it came to my young mind "if thou shalt believe in thine heart, that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." In a split second it dawned on me that Jesus had died for me, and that God had raised Him from the dead. I believe it, and God says I’m saved. It’s more than fifty years now, but the moment is as fresh in my mind as the night I got saved.
I was baptised and received into the Brock Avenue Gospel Hall in the city of Toronto, Canada. There I was married to Marlene Booth and we served the Lord in that assembly for a number of years. There was always a deep exercise to know the Lord but I had great problems concerning the old man who was supposed to be dead, but in my experience seemed to be very much alive. A brother from Scotland, called David Craig, who served the Lord mostly in Ireland, came to visit Canada. He never knew it, but God sent him for me, because he took up the great subjects of the gospel and I learned what positional truth was, and at long last I realised I was free. From then on I began to grow spiritually, and a great desire to tell others of the gospel gripped my soul. This we did in open air work, hospital visitation and as brethren throughout the city invited me to preach the gospel at various meetings, on Sunday nights.
There came a time when I wanted to give my life in some way to the service of the Lord, and one day in His presence I bowed before Him, and put my life, and all I had on the altar of dedication. It was a very real experience and is still fresh in my mind though initially done so long ago.
Having always loved the gospel, and having learned from Mr. David Craig that God put me in Christ and thus gave to me all that heaven could give, I felt I owed it to others to tell them of the same glorious gospel that set me free. We moved to the Birchcliff assembly and after some years of prayer and soul exercise before the Lord, my wife and I made known, to the responsible brethren, our exercise. They assured us they would not stand in our way, and so we took the next step and wrote to brother Danny Usher of Trinidad, whom we heard give a missionary report of his work in the Caribbean in general and Trinidad in particular. He informed us that there were a number of Islands in the Caribbean with no missionaries. He advised us to come and visit the islands. This I did, and visited Antigua, Trinidad, and Dominica. It was here in Dominica I met Mrs. S. McCune and a very small assembly with six in the fellowship, and a whole island lying in spiritual darkness. God seemed to say to me, this is the place for you. I was thirty years of age, strong and adventurous, qualities which I later realised I needed. I went home to Toronto and was told by a preaching brother that I should not go to this island with my little family, for we would never last. Within a few days we got a letter from a brother in the Caribbean encouraging us to come, and expressing the great need. So in happy fellowship with our assembly, in September 1969 we set off for Dominica. There we spent twenty five years, the best years of our life. Sinners heard the gospel, many were saved, and assemblies were formed. They are at this present time functioning as New Testament assemblies and preaching the same gospel we took to them many years ago.
We would covet the prayers of the saints for the continuation and the preservation of the work.