“And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and prayed him, saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.” Acts 16:9-10
GOD AT WORK! Vision (picture #54 stick 45)
Two young preachers, Douglas Howard and David Adams were holding a series of Gospel meetings in Prince Edward Island, and one day they came to visit Herb Harris in the hospital. He showed the map in the newspaper that was telling about what was happening as war news in Newfoundland and then brought up the subject. “I want to go to Newfoundland and preach the Gospel, and I want you men to go with me when I get out of here.”
David Adams replied, “I can’t go with you because I believe God wants me to go to Cuba and work in the Gospel where my brother Arnold is preaching.” Doug Howard said, “Yes, I would like to go with you.” So as soon as Mr. Harris left the hospital a few weeks later, he and Douglas Howard got on a boat to go to St. John’s. Newfoundland. Before going, they had made inquiries and obtained information from Mr. Brennan and/or Mr. McMullen about Aunt Jessie Snow, and where she lived. When they got to Newfoundland, they went around Conception Bay to Freshwater, near Carbonear, and came to her home.
Aunt Jessie’s first response when they found her in the little small house where she and her husband lived was, “Where have you been all this time? I’ve been waiting for you men to come for years?” She was a well-known lady in the community who would go around at night carrying her hurricane lantern to visit people and talk to her neighbors about salvation and give them Gospel tracts.
During the wartime in the United Kingdom, of which Newfoundland and Labrador was a part, two hours of daylight saving was year around so that at night there were very few if any lights showing. The two preachers put up a tent in Carbonear near the railroad station to have nightly Gospel meetings. They could have the meetings in the evening but it was still light when the meetings were over so people could go home in the daylight. The first place they could find a boarding house was at Harbour Grace, but a lot of people were opposed to them being there because they were accused by the clergy and some others of being German spies. Actually, during that time there was a serious fire in the community of Harbour Grace and some even accused them of setting the fire.
They were able to find a place to board in Carbonear at the home of the Framptons who attended the meetings and whom God saved. Mr. Herb Powell Sr. was a believer who had been saved in the Salvation Army and was a good supporter of the Gospel preachers. The first person saved in those meetings was a young woman named Edith Marshall, the wife of Tom Marshall. She was familiar with the Gospel having heard it often in the Salvation Army meetings in Hare Bay, Bonavista Bay, where she was born and brought up. She came to Carbonear in service to a family and met and married Tom who lived in Freshwater not far from Aunt Jessie Snow, who had visited her quite often.
Newfoundlanders on the east coast of the island were particularly conscious of the war because men from the German Navy actually came ashore and sank two iron ore carriers that were tied up to the wharf in Bell Island not far from Carbonear. So perhaps, it wasn’t too surprising that the opposition toward the two strangers from the “mainland” was such that they were forced by the government to leave the colony. Much of the pressure came from religious leaders who didn’t want them preaching the Gospel in “their territory.”
They went to Ottawa, Ontario, and applied for visas to be able to return to Newfoundland but it was about two months before they got papers enabling them to return. In the meantime, Mr. Russell Harris came to the island to care for and carry on the new work that was just getting started. Mr. Harris used to tell us about this years later, when the going got tough in places where we younger men were preaching, “When God is working, the devil will try any means possible to stop it. Don’t slack. Keep preaching. God has souls there He wants to save!”
The “powers that be” finally gave them the needed papers to go back to Newfoundland, because Canada was a Commonwealth country and they both could prove their Canadian citizenship. They also considered their being in Newfoundland was consistent with what the UK stood for. So, they returned and continued working in the Gospel. Later in the year, Doug Howard left to get married, and he and his new wife settled first in Halifax, NS. Over the next number of years, fellow laborers came from Canada to assist Herb Harris in the work in Conception Bay. Frank Pearcy, Albert Ramsay, Stanley Simms, Ernest Dellandrea, Wallace Cudmore and others came periodically to help in preaching the Gospel and establishing the work. Some had families and others were single men.
(picture #5 on stick #45)
During the war, Stanley Beasley, an officer in the Navy who was from Orillia, Ontario as well, was stationed in St. John’s. He had been saved and was a capable preacher of the Gospel who was asked to preach the Gospel in some churches in St. John’s. He also saw some souls reached by the Gospel when he was invited to go down to the east end of Conception Bay. After the war was over and he was discharged from the military, he returned to preach the Gospel at Burnt Point, Western Bay, Old Perlican, and other communities at the eastern end of the peninsula between Conception Bay and Trinity Bay. Souls were saved there and assemblies were established in that area also. He had difficult times while laboring there, but kept pressing ahead with the work in that area as long as he was able. Mr. and Mrs. Alex Stephenson came to join in the work of the Lord in that area in the 1960s. They lived in Old Perlican, Trinity Bay until the outreach work he was doing in the Clarenville area opened up to an assembly being established in Bloomfield.
People in the early part of the assembly work in Carbonear, included Mr. Herb Powell Sr. who used to be involved in taking fish in sailing schooners from Newfoundland to England and Europe. He was an old man when I met him, but he certainly loved the Lord and he was a good asset to the assembly. He was a fairly tall, slender man who always had a word of ministry ready to give to the Lord’s people. When sailing schooners were loaded with good salt cod, they would sail out from harbors on the east coast of the island and catch the Gulf Stream not far off shore. In that current they could make fairly good time crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Good Newfoundland fish was desired in the European countries. When they unloaded the fish there, they would load with cargo for Newfoundland and the West Indies. The Gulf Stream circled around the Atlantic and went west from off the coast of Africa and gradually turned north close to the West Indies. There they would off-load some freight and load up with barrels of molasses, and other things including rum.
Mr. Powell said usually they would get back before the ice floes came and they could get to shore without too much problem. But one winter there was a storm and the rigging on the schooner kept freezing up faster than they could break the ice off, so they couldn’t get to shore. That winter they had to go back to the Gulf Stream and go all the way around again. They didn’t get back until late spring the following year.
Mrs. Mammie Pelley and Mrs. Winnie Pelly were widow ladies who lived together on the south side of Carbonear. Winnie had four daughters, so she had full-time work at the fish plant and as soon as they were old enough, her daughters got work in some of the stores in Carbonear. They had no vehicle, and not much money, but their home was always open to visitors. Quite a number of Mammie Pelly’s family connections were saved and were part of the Carbonear assembly. Ed Pelly was trying to get away from the conviction of sin that was bothering him, so one night he went to see a movie, and as soon as the title came up on the screen, he was so convicted that he couldn’t rest until he was saved. The title of the movie was, “Heaven Can Wait.” He saw those words as a message from God to him telling him he would be lost if he waited to be saved while looking for more of the pleasures of the world.
Frank Pelly was either the youngest in the family or almost the youngest. He had two brothers who had gone to Corner Brook for work, so he decided to go there too when he was in his late teens. While there he was hospitalized with a burst appendix and was dying. Mr. Herb Harris went to see him knowing he was not saved. “How are you Frank,” he asked, and Frank answered, “Oh, I’m going to be alright Mr. Harris. I’ll be out soon.”
Mr. Harris “took the bull by the horns,” one of his favorite sayings, and said, “Frank, you are not going to get better. You are dying.” Frank could hardly take that in, but he knew Mr. Harris would not say that if it was not true. “But Mr. Harris, I can’t die. I’m not ready to die!” Herb Harris opened the Bible and explained the Gospel again to Frank, and this time Frank was ready and willing to listen. Now on his dying bed, his ears were opened to hear the word of God, and his heart was softened. Mr. Harris carefully gave him the Gospel and explained the way of salvation, and Frank accepted the truth of the work of Christ for him as a guilty sinner and put his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
A very few minutes later a nurse came to the room and offered Frank a glass of water. “I just got saved nurse,” he said. “What’s that got to do with a glass of water?” was her response. Frank said, “I won’t be in hell where there isn’t any water.” “I’m not afraid,” the nurse scoffed. Mr. Harris told me with tears in his eyes, Frank spoke to that nurse so tenderly; “What nurse? You’re not afraid of the everlasting burnings?” Mr. Harris repeated that story often when he was preaching as a warning to people to not put off God’s salvation to what they think will be the eleventh hour.
Opposition to the Gospel work was strong at first. Mr. Harris couldn’t find anyone willing to sell him a piece of land in Carbonear on which to build a hall for preaching the Gospel. Finally, the man he boarded with said to him, “I haven’t much land here but you could probably get a small building in my backyard.” So, a Gospel Hall was built with only the entrance able to be seen from the street and the body of the hall was behind the two-story house in front. Souls were saved in that building. It is still the meeting place of the small assembly in Carbonear.
A brother who had professed to be saved, died not too long after they came to Carbonear, but when it came to burying him, local church leaders refused to allow him to be buried in the family plot because he “left the church.” There was a real time of testing as the days passed, and appeals were made to the lieutenant governor, who finally told the churchmen (he was the king’s representative and the king was the head of the Church), “Bury that man today!” So, the funeral was held in the little Gospel Hall and the bier was carried to the gate of the graveyard. From there it was taken by other people and buried. It was then Mr. Harris realized that a cemetery was needed by each local assembly outside of the main cities.
A Gospel Hall was built in Flat Rock, near Freshwater, and meetings were held there for several years. Aunt Elizabeth Snow, Aunt Minnie Snow, and some others who lived in that area were saved as a result of the efforts in that place. Bill and Lillian Butt were saved there and then moved to Corner Brook where he found steady work as a carpenter. Most of the men from Flat Rock would go to St. John’s to work during the week and stay in boarding houses, coming home just on the weekends to be with their families. The road and the buses that went “around the bay” Friday evenings were filled with cars and people who needed the work they could get in the city, but wanted their children raised in the style of life found in the out-ports. Sunday afternoons and evenings, the road was filled with traffic going into St. John’s. Stanley Simms and his family spent a lot of time in Gospel work in Flat Rock. In the 1960s the provincial government had a “centralization project” in which people in small settlements were paid to leave their homes and move to large centers where the schools would be consolidated, electricity would be available, health care facilities would be more accessible, etc. Flat Rock was one of those places, so the little Gospel Hall there was closed.
For twenty years or more, there was a large Sunday School that nearly filled the Carbonear hall. Even though the assembly was small, the Gospel message went into many homes in that community through the children and later through, the next generation of children. In past years, there were some from the St. John’s assembly who used to go to Carbonear and assist in the meetings there on the Lord’s Day as the numbers of people attending dwindled due to younger people moving away for work. In the last twenty years or so there has not been quite so much of an exercise to do that. There are second and third-generation people who had connections with those who were there at the beginning, but many years have come and gone and most people are committed to where they live for the most part, and life seems to have become much more complicated now.
There is a new demographic in society today in which people, want to “do their own thing” when they want to do it at their convenience. In the earlier days, instead of people taking a holiday and going away to some distant place, they would go to visit from one assembly to another and have meals in their homes without wondering whether it was good enough or not. When people came from other places to their community, it was no big deal to share what food they had and for children and sometimes adults, to sleep on the floor so the visitors could have the beds. Their joy was in being with people, and sharing meaningful times together as well as helping to support the work in which another assembly was engaged. Young people have moved away, and older people have died. There are a few faithful believers who still meet there at the time of this writing. Cron and Louise Lynch have recently gone home to heaven, and Ernest and Beverly Powell and three other sisters are in the assembly now. They have a desire for the things of God and they love the assembly and the Lord’s people, but it remains to be seen how long that work can continue. Faithful sisters in Christ still commit themselves to the assembly in Carbonear, and perhaps the Lord still has work to be done there
Seventy-six years have passed and times are changing all over Newfoundland as well as the world in general. Newfoundland out-ports, for the most part, are getting smaller, and most small communities have only older people living there. Young people get an education and go to the cities to practice what they learned. We are thankful for the first assembly gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ alone that still shines as a light in this dark world.
Since the church age began, assemblies have been formed, have been a testimony for several generations, and then have concluded for some reason. For a local house of God to close is not evidence of failure particularly, because any number of reasons can cause that to happen. The changing dynamics of an area may make it necessary for people to move away to get work. Resistance toward the Gospel over the years has kept people from attending the meetings of an assembly or even paying heed to personal testimonies because the social costs are too high for them to be willing to pay. “Fear of man bringeth a snare.” Even children of believers find it more than they are willing to pay to trust Christ, so they choose to be like everyone around them and lose their souls.
For many years, Gospel preaching in the Carbonear area by the believers from that assembly has left hundreds of people without excuse for rejecting the Gospel. Many of us have joined the local brothers and sisters of the Carbonear assembly in open-air meetings on Water Street in Carbonear, at Harbour Grace, Victoria Village, and other places in that part of Conception Bay and have been impressed with how many people have said they have listened to the Gospel from the south side to the top of the hill. Mr. Ernie Dellandrea spent a lot of time in that area preaching in the open air.
Mr. Frank Pearcy and Mr. Wallace Cudmore were having some discouraging meetings in one place and so decided to have some open-air meetings. They went to Heart’s Content to preach and when they put hymns on the loudspeaker, a good number of people gathered to listen. Mr. Pearcy had a deep clear voice and so his voice resonated well in open-air meetings. Mr. Cudmore had a high voice that could be a bit shrill when he raised it a bit high and shouted a little too loud. They had parked their vehicle near a fence, and when Mr. Cudmore got going and his message really stirred his soul, his voice got higher and higher. A dog that had been lying by the house near the vehicle must have found the pitch more than he could take, so the dog ran up to the fence, put his head up high, and began to howl.
That stopped Wallace Cudmore because the sound went over the loudspeaker all over Heart’s Content. When he stopped speaking the dog stopped howling. When he started speaking again, the dog started his howling again. He did that, three times, and the dog did the same thing each time. Frustrated he said, not realizing the loudspeaker was carrying his words, he said, “Let’s go, Frank! The devil’s in that dog!”
Over the years of public testimony on the south side of Trinity Bay, there has been a lot of open-air preaching. On many occasions there have been ten to twenty vehicles, and occasionally even more, with people listening to the whole meeting, as brothers told their testimony to people who knew them. One man who stopped to listen, told me that it was hard to believe that a particular brother who he knew in his unsaved days, was so able to clearly preach the Gospel. “It’s not hard to understand what he says,” was his comment. “What a change there is in that man!”