“And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out, and departed to a solitary place, and there prayed. And Simon and they that were with him followed after Him. And when they had found Him, they said unto Him, ‘All men seek for thee.’ And He said unto them, ‘Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth.’” Mark 1:38
GOD AT WORK! The next town also
In mid-August of 1960, Mr. Joyce stopped by in his plane and landed at Lee Wolfe’s camp inside Portland Creek. He was on his way to Corner Brook to get material for a building to put his lighting plant in as there was very few out-ports that had electricity, and he needed that for his ship-to-shore, and other radios beside lighting his house. While in Corner Brook he was also picking up Albert Barbour to build the building for him. Mr. George Campbell also came back from the mainland driving a new Chevrolet van, so he was with us in Daniel’s Harbour for a few days. We were standing on the side of the highroad watching Mr. Joyce take off from Portland Creek, when a car came along and stopped. Two men got out and as we got talking, they invited us to come up to Parsons Pond and preach the Gospel.
“You’ll have no problem getting people to listen to ‘prayers’ there,” they assured us. They told us about “Arthur’s Parlor” that he used to show movies in every now and then. So, Mr. Campbell and I were designated to go up and see what we could arrange. The way opened up to get “Arthur’s Parlor” to have meetings in and the next day the boat was brought up to Parsons Pond. Parsons Pond brook was not the easiest place to get in because of the sand that shifted back and forth depending on the tide. It was necessary to come in on a high tide in a boat the size of the “M.G.M.” Eldrick Parsons was willing to go out and guide the boat in over the shoals and up the brook to the wharf. Mr. Harris made it worth his while financially, and not long after, he brought over to the boat a feed of moose. That was the first time I had ever tasted moose meat.
We had an open-air meeting on the boat where we were tied up to the wharf. Edward Payne was working in Mr. Angus Wentzel’s store at that time and came over to the boat and talked with Mr. Harris quite a while. Mr. Harris said to us right after having that conversation, “God is going to save that man. He’s been dealing with him before we ever came here.”
Even though Mr. Edward Payne used to swear when things went wrong before God saved him, he was a quiet man who had a serious kindly way about him. We learned later from him and his family, that he used to read the Bible a lot, and was looking for something that he didn’t have yet. That was no peace in his heart. He would read the Bible to his family on Sunday and read it personally most nights. There was a woman in that community who died shortly before we got there, who everyone thought was a little off her head because she talked about “being saved” or else a person would go to hell. Mrs. Hannah Payne had heard the Gospel preached in the Salvation Army meetings before. I expect that woman had prayed for years that there would be people saved in that community. After she died, I doubt there was anyone saved living there at that time, until the Lord reached people through the preaching of the Gospel.
Mr. Campbell left for Labrador then, so Mr. Harris, Andrew Bergsma and I continued on in nightly meetings in the parlor. I spoke to the children and Andrew had the first part of the Gospel meeting. Then Mr. Harris, in full form, finished the Gospel meeting. We picked people up in Mr. Harris’ car and Mr. Campbell’s van until Mr. Harris also got a similar van. The meetings continued through August and into September with lots of people attending, open air meetings were also being held and yet no one was saved. During that time Mr. Bergsma spent a lot of time in prayer regarding going to Holland to preach the Gospel. One day Mr. Harris told him, “Andrew, you need other counsel than what I have given you. Go and see A.W. Joyce and tell him of your exercise.” So, in late August, Andrew left for Toronto, then Vancouver, then on to Holland.
Charley Hiscock who had not long been saved in St. John’s, came over for a week or so to help out in visiting and open-air preaching. Being from Newfoundland and a former lay-preacher, a lot of people stopped to consider, when he told his testimony and how the Lord saved him after he had been a lay-minister in the same church that most people in Parsons Pond belonged to. Mr. Joyce stopped by for a night or two when he brought Mr. Albert Barbour to go back to St. John’s. Bert landed the plane not far above the new bridge that crossed the brook, but his floats got stuck in the mud. I was there with rubber boots on so he called for me to come and get Mr. Barbour and carry him ashore so he could get the plane in closer. I was carrying Mr. Barbour on my back through the mud when he reached his hand around in front of me and said, “My name is Albert Barbour,” and went off in a big laugh. I didn’t know then that I had just met my future father-in- law.
From then on at Parsons Pond, it was just Mr. Harris, and a 21-year-old man who thought this was the greatest thing in the world and didn’t see any obstacles at all. My biggest concern was that, with all the people coming out, why wasn’t anyone getting saved? The time was coming for me to go back west to finish the last few courses in university and one day Mr. Harris said, “What are you going to do? I would like it if you would stay on awhile but if you decide to go back west, I guess we’ll take the boat back to Corner Brook and call it quits for this year.” Then he said, “I guess we will just have to go back and leave these people to go to hell.”
I didn’t think I could really say to God, “You know Lord, I just have to finish this degree,” when there was 100 or more people coming out to listen to the Gospel each night. So, I did put out “a fleece,” which I don’t think people of faith do very often. Sometimes our faith is weak and we need a special event or “sign” to assure us of God’s leading. I asked the Lord if He would assure me that I should stay in Newfoundland by allowing me to point at least one of three men who were attending nightly, to the Lord, and He would save them. The Lord graciously answered that prayer when on September 9th Carl Payne was reached by God’s grace and saved. The day after, his wife, Annie, Edward his father, and Sam his brother were saved. Harley Payne came to Christ, either that night or shortly after. Then others were saved, most of whom have already gone home to heaven by this time. A good number of people came in faith to accept the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mr. Wentzel was willing to rent the upstairs of his house and Arthur Payne was willing to make it into a meeting hall for us. Before the boat was taken in to Corner Brook and put up on Bowater’s wharf for the winter, we had rooms to stay in and a meeting hall getting ready to preach in.
The “upper room” was not too large even after Arthur incorporated two bedrooms and a hallway into one room. We had over one hundred people there nightly and to the one side of the open space was the small bedroom we slept in and another small room we used for a kitchen. When we had all of those rooms filled with people, we had a heating system of around ninety degrees and the place was wonderful to sing in. When there was no one there but Mr. Harris and I, it was really cold because the clapboard was nailed to the studs and in a good breeze of off-wind, some snow would come in through the cracks.
We started meetings at Parsons Pond in August of 1960 in the open air off the deck of the boat. Then we rented “Arthur’s Parlor” each night except for when he had movies which may have been about once a month. The man with movies would bring a small lighting plant to have electricity for his show, but apart from that there was only one or two other places in the community that had a generator. Mr. Wentzel had a lighting plant, so we had electricity during the time when meetings were held. The rest of the town was lit with kerosene lamps and candles. Quite a lot of souls professed to be saved that fall and some of the people from Daniel’s Harbour came and asked if we would go back there to have some meetings. There was a 16x24 foot portable hall in Corner Brook so we got permission to put it up behind Clarence and Margaret Perry’s house. Some of Clarence’s brothers who lived close by him got really upset, so we had to put up a fence between the houses so that as far as they were concerned, they were letting people know they had nothing to do with the Gospel being preached there.
Mr. Joyce came and meetings were held in Daniel’s Harbour in that portable hall that had been used in Corner Brook. There were some saved at that time in Daniel’s Harbour. The portable had a canvas roof, and was hard to heat, but we had nightly meetings there partway into November. Some of the men who professed to be saved at Parsons Pond came down with us each night and gave their testimonies at the beginning of each meeting. That was perhaps the high point of the meetings, because the Daniel’s Harbour people, knew the men from Parsons Pond and couldn’t believe what they were hearing from men whose lives had been radically changed. Mr. Harris had heart trouble so couldn’t go to many of the meetings in Daniel’s Harbour, but while we were having the meeting, he prayed for souls to be saved.
When he heard that the men who had been newly saved were giving their testimonies, he was overjoyed. He loved souls, and found great joy when people testified publicly to the fact of God’s saving grace. The first one who took public part was Hebbert Goosney who was a quiet spoken man who was as strong as a bulldozer. Others said, “If Hebbert can do that, so can I.” Almost all of the new believing men began to take part there.
When the weather got too cold for meetings in Daniel’s Harbour, Mr. Joyce went back to Red Bay. I helped Mr. Harris in nightly meetings back in Parsons Pond up to the Christmas season. Some more came who had relatives in Daniel’s Harbour who God saved, and that moved them to come to those meetings. The Lord saved some of them. We brought people from Three Mile Rock and from Belldowns Point to the meetings and during that fall quite a number were saved. During that fall and winter, meetings were held all the time in various places but mainly in the upstairs of Mr. Wentzel’s house.
Christmas was a very big deal in the outports of Newfoundland at that time. Homebrew had been in the making for months ahead of time in a lot of houses. Women made special kinds of bread and sweet cakes. We had a Christmas program and I got a big fifty-pound bag of peanuts in the shell, from a wholesaler in Corner Brook and everybody who came ate all the peanuts they could. There was a half bag of peanut shells that I collected the next day.
People would go from house to house singing and telling stories, and the men drank a lot. Some mummers would come around and do their song and dance for fun and some good laughs. One popular man in Belldowns Point was Fred Caines. He had been working in the woods when his family started coming to the Gospel meetings. The first one saved in that family was their twelve-year-old daughter, Linda. When Fred heard the Gospel a few times he became very convicted of his sin and God saved him.
He had a barrel of homebrew “making” in an inside room for “his Christmas,” but when the Lord saved him, one of the first things he did was to roll the barrel out on the back bridge and dumped it all out on the ground. Another thing he did was to make things right with an uncle who had told him years before, when as a mischievous youngster, he had thrown rocks at the uncle’s horse to make it run. The uncle told him to get out of the yard and not come back. Fred decided he never would go back to that house, even though the uncle asked him over and over to come. The morning after the Lord saved him, he put on his cap, walked down the road to his uncle’s house and walked through the door. The uncle was quite old then and was lying on the day-bed in the kitchen.
“The Bible says there will be wonders in the last days,” Fred said, “And this is one. I was never going to come into this house again, but I had to come and tell you God saved me last night. This is both a wonder and a miracle.” They remained close friends right until the older man died. Mr. Harris went away for a while around New Year’s intending to come back after the funeral of a friend of his, Mr. Murdock McDonald of Sydney, NS. It started to snow while he was away and the road was closed and the coastal boats had stopped running, so he couldn’t get back. Even though the winter was difficult with a lot of snow, we missed very few nightly meetings. I had meetings there myself all through the winter and the Lord confirmed His word in saving more people during that winter and spring.
I didn’t mean for this account of the work to have so much of “me” in it, but I don’t know how else to report it. It was such a marvelous time to be alive, and to see God working in so many ways was, almost like it was in the book of Acts. One thing I learned, that prayer is a real exercise, a real work and brings real results. I had been saved eight years and had never seen anything quite like that in my life until that time. I felt like the psalmist who said, “Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul. I cried unto Him with my mouth, and He was extolled with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me: but verily God hath heard me; He hath attended to the voice of my prayer.”
One cold night I remember hearing Mr. Harris get up and move about quietly. He was not a well man and so I waited a few minutes to see if everything was all right. After bustling about some, he was quiet so I got out and looked to see if all was well. He was lying on the floor on his face, and I was about to pick him up when I realized he was praying. He had on his parka and warm clothes and had entered the throne room of God on his face before the Lord as an intercessor for lost souls.
I was able to keep from crying until I got into another room. It was then I began to realize that all that was going on was a work of God. In spite of myself, I think, up until then I had been harboring thoughts that I was doing pretty good because I was active in the Lord’s work. It was God and His faithful servant/intercessor who was making things happen. We were just tools in His hands. How thankful I am to be able to be a tool for divine service.
During that winter the snow was higher than the fences. Then it rained and froze and we could walk on top of the snow five feet above the ground. Sometimes we had to walk quite a lot. Mr. Edward Payne, wanted to go to Cow Head and talk to his brothers about the Gospel and asked me to go with him. So, we put on rackets (snowshoes to mainlanders) and set off to walk the ten miles or so. Part way along he said to me, “I think we should stop here and boil the kettle. He pulled out a tin fruit can out of his “nunny bag” and told me to fill it up with snow. He pulled some bark off a birch tree and broke some dry limbs off a dead tree and before long had a fire going.
I learned then how to start a fire in the middle of a pile of snow. After we had some tea and the edge of the tin can burned my lip, he said, “I think we should pray before going on.” Now this man had only been saved a few months, but he had a real consciousness of our need of God when we talked to his brothers. He too, lay right down on the snow and prayed. So did I. How often have I thought of those two older men in their sixties! One saved for years and one a few months, and yet they both had learned and practiced their dependence on God. Hopefully I have at least some of the sense of the presence of God with me that those men had.
It was a real encouragement and privilege to me to be with those men the Lord saved in 1960 and early in 1961. That winter the drift ice brought a patch of seals close to land not too far down the shore, so the men along the shore were able to walk out from land and get a lot of them. That was a good source of cash money that didn’t come too often. When it got dark, we all went into the nearest house to get warmed up before going on our way. Robert Goosney had a clear loud voice and he liked to sing, so he started to sing a hymn. All the men sang along with him, and the people in the house were thrilled to
***hear them sing. They urged them to sing another, which they did. Before long the house was filled up with people and they sang hymns for a half hour or more. When they took a spell, I pulled out my New Testament and read John 3:16 and preached the Gospel for ten or fifteen minutes. Years later the lady of the house told me that was one of the best nights she and her family had in their lives.
When people are first saved, there is a holy fire in them put there by the Holy Spirit and they want to tell others. It is good if we give opportunity to new believers to express their new-found faith as quickly as possible. It makes a clear line between what a person was before they were saved and who they are now. Before a year or two passes, much of that enthusiasm and concern for precious souls to be saved, is lost to a measure. As they begin to study the Bible and learn new truths about the Christian life and walk, as well as assembly truth, they grow in faith. Then, when assemblies come together and gather in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, what we do begins to correspond with what we believe. If we are not careful, we can get away from the power of the Gospel message.
The year before, Mona Laird had come from Scotland to nurse in the cottage hospital at Markland, about an hour’s drive west of St. John’s. When she could get off, she attended the Gospel Hall in St. John’s. She had been saved when she was in nurses’ training in Scotland and had wanted to serve the Lord in the tropics. However, the opening came to come to Newfoundland first, so she came believing that was the Lord’s will for her, so she could get some more experience in out-of-the-way places.
Nothing had opened up after the first year as far as her going to the tropics, so when Dr. Thomas asked her to go to Forteau, Labrador to take the place of Mary Taylor for a year, she believed that was where she should go. When George Campbell got back to Labrador, he didn’t have his van at first, so drove around in a little small English car he had. He was thirty-plus years old at the time, apparently figuring on being a bachelor like Mr. Harris. That was, until he met Mona.
His offer to give her driving lessons changed his mind somewhat, and by 1961 he had asked her to marry him, and she had accepted. Mr. Harris came back from being away on the mainland in April that year so he could attend the wedding of George and Mona in L’Anse au Loup, Labrador. She never got to serve the Lord in Africa, but she did serve Him faithfully right where He wanted her. Mr. Harris went back to Corner Brook after their wedding, but as soon as he got there, he sent George a telegram saying, “Have you announced for Gospel meetings at Parsons Pond.” George had intended taking Mona to see his family in California, but instead George and Mona Campbell spent most of their honeymoon having a Gospel series in April at Parsons Pond, with a bachelor living at the other end of the building. And some good souls were saved. By spring it was clear there was a work of God to be established here. The Campbells got as far as St. John’s for a short private honeymoon rather than just down the hall and a few steps away from this bachelor.