“Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him. The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (He is Lord of all) Acts 10:34-36
GOD AT WORK! Stay the course Mr. Herb Harris was having quite a bit of heart pain, so he went to the mainland for a few months. Most of the time he was in California at Desert Hot Springs with his sister and brother-in-law, Mac and Eva McDonald. He found a lot of relief for his heart trouble and angina when he was in the hot springs that came out of the ground there. While there, he had meetings with a few believers who lived there and was encouraged when they wanted to commence meeting as an assembly. They began gathering regularly in Palms Springs where the most of them lived.
Bert Joyce and Vernon Markle had a very fruitful Gospel series at Flowers Cove during the winter of 1966. Hazel Rose who had professed to be saved a year before, had shown the reality of her salvation as she lived before her family. Her father and mother and a number of other family members professed faith in Christ during those meetings. The Buckles were living at the right place at the right time to follow up those the new believers there, as well as going to Port au Choix from time to time. He put the portable hall up in that community so he could have meetings there as opportunity arose to go there. Some of those folks used to come to Flowers Cove for meetings when they could.
The Campbell family had increased in size to where George and Mona were realizing they need a home of their own rather than living in the basement of the Gospel Hall at English Point. There was still at good interest from time to time in the assemblies on that coast so there were one or two Gospel series every winter. Linda and I, and our new daughter went to Corner Brook in January, and were there for the rest of the winter. The “M.G.M.” had been leaking more and more each summer and it was getting hard to keep the water out of it when we were in bad weather. The boat was double planked on the bias from keel to deck and brass rivets at each joint, so we couldn’t really get the bottom tight. During that winter we got a man to come and help us fiberglass the bottom hoping that would keep it tight. We also had a Gospel series at Parsons Pond, and had a short series of meetings with Peter Mathews in a rented building just across from his house in Norris Point. A few people from that community came, but most who attended were the assembly believers from Rocky Harbour.
When Mr. Harris came back in the late spring, it was obvious he wasn’t well. Twice within the month we had to take him to the hospital for a stay for a few days until he recovered enough to come back to 8 Valley Road. He didn’t get off the bed very much, but Linda took good care of him, and he really appreciated her care. It took the whole month to regulate his medication to where he was strong enough to walk a little bit and yet handle the angina pain. He had lost a lot of weight, so I thought he might stay in Corner Brook for the summer or go back to the mainland to stay with family members. With that in mind, and the fact that I would be on the boat for the summer, Linda and Lael went west to be with my parents for a few months.
Bert Joyce, Roger Richardson and I went on the “M.G.M.” back to the south coast, and beginning at Grey River, the next place past Burgeo, we stopped at all the settlements along that rocky coast. There are no roads there so we had a pretty good number gather on the wharf wherever we stopped. We stayed in Grey River for about a week and had a good measure of interest. From there we went to Francoise, Push Through, St. Jacques, and all the little places in Hermitage Bay. Then we went up into Bay d’ Espoir to St. Albans, Conne River, Head of the Bay and the other settlements in that bay. Mr. Harris got an airplane to bring him to St. Albans and two other men from one of the Maritime Provinces came as well. Mr. Harris wasn’t well at all, but his heart was in the Gospel work. Bert Joyce left then on that plane, so we went on from there to Hermitage, where there was a fair interest.
We tied up at a wharf there and after being there a couple of days, got a place to put the tent up. It was quite well filled and some coming were interested in salvation. The men from the Maritimes were there two weeks and then went home, so it was Roger, Mr. Harris and me for a week or so. Peter Mathews and Fred Caines came to join the boat there, and it was just at the right time. A couple of people had professed to be saved, and that may have been the reason the bishop, canon and archdeacon came in on an airplane and called a meeting of all the people. Roger went to hear what he said, and the gist of it was that we broke up families, and the boat had to be cut off the wharf to drive us out.
Sunday afternoon a huge crowd came, some to watch and some to participate. Some were drunk and wanted us to fight them off physically, because they wanted to join us in the fight. God was at work though, and when the crowd got there to do what they planned, Fred Caines who was a lumberjack with Bowaters and sometimes with the A, and D company, recognized quite a number of the men, and they him. When they saw Fred, they turned on the crowd and told them to go home. “If Fred Caines is part of this, then this is a good thing!”
Fred had been saved five or six years before at Parsons Pond, and when he was in the lumber woods, he had a good testimony and was liked by the people he worked with. He was friendly and outspoken as a person, and he was like that when he spoke about the Gospel. The men in the woods-camps had a lot of respect for the men who God had saved through the preaching of the Gospel over the years. They were marked men because of their changed lives, but they were also willing and glad to help others out when they needed help. In the camps they read the Bible and got down to pray, but did so without a “holier than thou” way about them. There was a respect for God generally among all Newfoundlanders in those days.
While we were in Hermitage in the tent, the word went down the shore to Seal Cove, Fortune Bay, and a good number of them came in two dump trucks each night for a week. They asked if we would go there, which we did when we took the tent down. For two weeks we had open air meetings there and people listened. At that time the government was floating houses from islands and small communities, to centers like Harbour Breton, Hermitage and a couple of other places to carry out the “resettlement plan.” That way they could have bigger schools, less power lines, fewer roads, better health care etc. than try to maintain small isolated places.
In Seal Cove, Mrs. Cassie Loveless and her daughter Nita were already saved and were very open about it. The interest was there, but “saved and lost” teaching was what they all had been taught. When the Loveless ladies saw eternal security from the scriptures, they got great joy by realizing they didn’t have to try to keep saved. God had saved them and He is the One who keeps them. He gives eternal life and those who believe in Him never perish but have everlasting life. Doug and the children were saved later as well as some others in that community back in the late 60s and 70s. It wasn’t until quite a while later an assembly began breaking bread there, but those people all remained steadfast in the faith, in spite of a lot of opposition for a long time. That area was isolated for a number of years, until the road was finally put through from Bay d’ Espoir all the way to Hermitage, Seal Cove and other communities in that part of the south coast.
It was part way into September when we left Seal Cove and went to Harbour Breton and from there to all the communities on that coast until we got to Terrenceville. The Burin Peninsula highway goes through Terrenceville, so we turned back from there in early October and headed for Corner Brook stopping at a few places on our way back. Mr. Harris wasn’t well at all, and he couldn’t really get out of the bunk most of the time, but he stuck with it the whole way. He was very feeble when we got him to the plane to go to the mainland again. I went to Oregon where Linda and Lael were. While there we had a Gospel series at my home assembly and then tried another community about thirty miles away where the young people had a youth work going on. God was pleased to save souls at that time, even in my own family.
Brethren on the “Northern Light” spent the summer preaching and working on the Quebec coast, and going farther along the Gulf of St. Lawrence than they had before. The Lord was working there and souls were saved in several places on that Quebec coast, although there wasn’t a large enough group in one place, to settle in to getting an assembly work started. Isolation has disadvantages as well as advantages. The work in Old Fort warranted having a Gospel Hall built there which was used often for Gospel meetings. Brothers from the English Point and L’Anse au Loup assemblies knew people there, so went there on occasions during the winter. Don Roberts especially had an interest in Old Fort.
During the late 1950s and through the 1960s, there was quite an on-going interest in many places that could be reached by boat. By the mid to late 1960s things started to change in Newfoundland and Labrador that had a real effect on the work of the Gospel.
The TransCanada highway across Newfoundland was finished in 1965, which opened up the island to easier movement from place to place. The highway down the Northern Peninsula was opened up as a gravel road, but people began getting vehicles and traveling farther and easier than ever before. The road to Bay d’ Espoir connected to the TransCanada highway near Grand Falls. Travel by vehicles took the place of boat travel, and access was open to most areas of the province year around.
Centralization shut down many small settlements, as people were paid by the government to move away from their historical homes, to centers where things were “more convenient,” and they were open to a modern way of life. Also, electricity became available to most areas within a relatively short period of time. The Bay d’ Espoir hydro- project made it possible for electric power to be hooked up which was much better than local generators. Radios, television, record players and other things became available to everyone in a short time. The interest in Gospel preaching on the deck of a boat became well down on the list of interests that people had.
The winter of 1967 was especially hard with a lot of snow and no mild weather to settle the snow. We drove back from Oregon in January and were in snow the whole way. Because of heavy ice between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, we were two days on the “William Carson” getting across. We moved into the small apartment in the Buchans Gospel Hall, and were able to get Mr. Douglas Howard to come for a series of Gospel meetings there. Every morning we had to go out and look for our vehicles that had been buried over with snow during the night. The road would be plowed in the day, so we could bring people to the meetings in the old school bus. The main interest then was at Buchans Junction about fifteen miles away. The Lockes, the Adams, the Gosses and Archie Sharp were living there at that time.
Mr. Albert Ramsay and Bert Joyce had good meetings at Red Bay and some were saved at that time. They also had meetings at L’Anse au Loup. Mr. Joyce went to Charlottetown on several occasions. The new Gospel Hall at L’Anse au Loup seemed large when it was built, but it was quite often filled when special meetings were held and the assembly at English Point came to the special meetings, and occasionally some came from Red Bay. It was always well filled at the annual conference in the fall.
Mr. Freake and his wife knew some people at Templeman, Bonavista Bay. The men had been in the British Navy together during the war, and they both had married young ladies from England and brought them to Newfoundland. The two Barbour couples in St. John’s came from Newtown which was about a mile from Templeman. The Blackwoods in the St. John’s assembly were also from Bonavista Bay, so there were a lot of contacts in Bonavista North. The men from St. John’s went on several occasions to that area and had open air meetings and visited relatives and friends in that area, and had come to the conclusion there was an interest on that shore. We went there in the early spring to look over the area, and were able to buy a piece of bog land in Templeman from Mr. Peter Blackmore for $50.00. We could put down slabs and sawdust and put a tent on the land to have meetings there.
Plans were made to go there on the “M.G.M.” in the summer, and when Mr. Harris returned in May, he was agreeable to going to that shore and trying a whole new area in Gospel work. Due to ill health, he let me get the boat ready that year, and I in turn got Sid Locke from Buchans to do the painting. He was a professional painter who worked for the company in Buchans, and he did a superb job of painting in two days, that would have taken me two weeks. Mr. Harris was so pleased to see such a good job done on the boat, both inside and out! He had to go into the hospital again for a week or so, and it was obvious that traveling on the boat was out of the question for him.
Bert Joyce, Carl Payne, Roger Richardson, Bruce Copp and Gaius Goff were the crew on the “M.G.M.” when we left Corner Brook to go down north and then up the other side of the island to Wesleyville. The Kelvin engine that was in the “Northern Light IV” had to be replaced. Mr. Campbell went to Liverpool, NS and got a new 100 horse-power Perkins engine for the “Northern Light.” It was installed when the boat, was on drydock at St. Anthony. The “M.G.M.” journey was to Rocky Harbour for a day or two. Then we stopped at Port au Choix, and crossed over to the Labrador shore for a week of open-air meetings in the communities in the Straits of Belle Isle where the three assemblies were located. We waited at St. Anthony for a few days and had open-air meetings there, until the “Northern Light” was ready to go back up the Quebec coast. That was the first and only time the two boats were at the same place at the same time. Wallace Buckle, George Campbell, Fred Krauss, Andrew Bergsma (back from Holland for a visit) and Bryan Funston were on the “Northern Light” that summer. That was Bryan’s first time in Newfoundland. He came back the next year and stayed in the work from then on.
We stopped at a few places on the way to Wesleyville to see if there was some interest in the White Bay, Notre Dame Bay, and Fogo Island. Actually, we had a good hearing every place we stopped, but didn’t get any real contacts at that time. Mr. Walter Gustafson drove down in his station wagon from Maine, USA, picked up Mr. Harris in his car and drove to Wesleyville to help in the work for the summer. He and Mr. Joyce held the Gospel meetings at night in the tent on the piece of land we bought. The rest of us had children’s meetings and open-air meetings, and visited the area from Valleyfield to Lumsden. We distributed hundreds of “Kember Texts” that were well received by most people. The numbers who attended the meetings over-filled the tent, so we were able to get another tent in a few days and put the two up together.
Quite a number of people were saved at that time, so Linda and I decided to stay there and keep at the work there for the winter. After eleven years of traveling in rough weather, the “M.G.M.” started to leak more than ever. The fiberglass that we covered the bottom of the boat with, started to come away from the wood because the wood was old and soaked up to a certain degree. The boat had been built in 1928, and the joints were getting loose. So, we took the boat to Lewisporte an put it on drydock there. A man wanted to buy it and gave a fair price. The boat was sold, and the funds were put into a tractor-trailer unit which we could use all year around and stay in as well as move about easily without a lot of maintenance required. We stayed in that trailer all winter at Templeman.
Mr. Harris had a pretty good summer, but by September he had enough, and went back to the mainland for the winter. I met him in Detroit when I went up there to get a tractor- trailer unit to take the place of the boat. He was not looking very well then. Even though he was in his early seventies, it seemed like he was aging before our eyes. He needed a surgery but the doctor wouldn’t do it until his heart got stronger, so he spent the winter resting.
While we were wondering what changes we should make in the work, I saw a photograph of a portable hall Robert McIlwaine built for the work on Prince Edward Island. It was two trailers that could be put together to form a 20x40 foot hall for preaching in. It could be easily moved with the tractor unit we had. The “Northern Light” was needed on the coast of Quebec where there were no roads, and would not be in the foreseeable future. The south coast was opening up and soon there would be a road to Seal Cove. As far as Newfoundland island, travel by road and open-air work from vehicles was a more versatile way to get around to places to preach the Gospel. So, it seemed like a trailer unit like Robert had made would work well for Newfoundland.
During that winter George and Mona Campbell and family had gone away, but they were planning on building a house in Forteau in the near future. He held a number of Gospel meetings in the Vancouver area while they were away. Bert Joyce was busy on the Labrador coast, and Wallace Buckle was working in the Flowers Cove area. Peter Mathews was living in Norris Point and would visit the Parsons Pond assembly as well as keeping at the work in Rocky Harbour.
Early in 1968, we went to St. John’s and rented a warehouse on the waterfront to build a double wide trailer-portable hall. Robert McIlwaine came over for a few weeks and helped us out getting the main things done for the frame, the trusses and the main beam for carrying the roof. While he was at St. John’s he had meetings at night in the Gospel Hall. We had the portable finished by spring and were taking it to Templeman one half at a time. It was when we were on the road, towing half of the portable hall that we heard Robert Kennedy had been shot.
The “Northern Light” crew went on the Quebec coast again that year. Fred Krauss was on the boat that summer and Bryan Funston was back again. Actually, the summer of 1968 was a good season of blessing with precious souls being saved in the various places outreach was extended. Perhaps the Lord of the harvest was giving us some assurance that He was still wanting the Gospel to go forth into new places, in view of what He was going to do at the end of the year. It was an assuring time even though there were quite a few changes, not the least of which the “M.G.M.” was no longer usable in the work.
Doris and Ken Taylor were married that year and were willing to go to Rocky Harbour to help the work there while the Mathews family went west to visit family and be at their home assembly for a while. The “Northern Light” crew went back to the Quebec coast, and this time Bryan Funston had it in his mind to stay on that coast at Old Fort, so was there when the summer work was past. Walter Gustafson came back in the summer with his family and got a house to stay in at Templeman. He and I had meetings in the portable hall at Templeman, while Carl and Sam Payne had meetings in the tent at Deadman’s Bay.
The interest in the tent meetings at Deadman’s Bay was good, and the Lord saved some there as well. Mr. Harris came back late in the summer for a while but it was no trouble to see that he was not well. The Gustafsons were staying on for a while and the Payne’s were willing to stay on that fall and winter, so our family went to Oregon to try and start a new work at Salem where a number of believers were now living. The Paynes moved the portable to Deadman’s Bay for the winter and had Gospel meetings there. Carl and Annie Payne and their family moved there to live in the trailer unit at Templeman.
While we were at Salem, Mr. Harris got so sick when he was in Ontario, that he felt something had to be done. “I don’t want to live if I can’t preach,” he told me on the phone one day. I talked to the doctor and he said that if they could take out his gall bladder it might give him some relief, but his heart was so weak they didn’t want to do surgery unless it was absolutely necessary. Mr. Harris finally persuaded them to go ahead with the surgery, and I had a talk with him on the phone just as he was going to surgery. He came through the surgery, and as soon as he could talk, he called me on the phone. “Thank the Lord, I made it.” I cried for joy. The next day his sister called me, and said he had just passed away – and I cried for sorrow. That was December 8th, 1968. An era was over!