“He, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God… And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him.” Acts 7:55; 8:2
GOD AT WORK! What next? In the early spring, Wallace Buckle, George Campbell, Bryan Funston, Gaius Goff, Bert Joyce and Peter Mathews all met for a few days in Corner Brook. Mr. Herb Harris had gone to be with the Lord three months before, so we all felt it was only right for us to get together to pray and discuss the work before us. There would be changes in the work, at least in a measure, because we had all had looked to him for approval of things before acting upon our areas of interest. It seemed right that because of the smallness of the population in the province, we should coordinate and cooperate in the different things we each had before us. We had been to Toronto to attend his funeral and then his burial at the community cemetery of Atherly after another service at Orillia. He was buried in the same plot as his parents. In fact, his name is on the same tombstone as theirs. It was very difficult for all of us to realize that our mentor and spiritual advisor was gone at 73 years of age.
We had returned to Newfoundland in January. Father and mother came back with us on the train as far as Kingston, Ontario where my sister, Margie and Phil Hill were living. We bought an Oldsmobile station-wagon there (a real lemon) and drove back to Newfoundland. I had meetings back on the west coast of the island and Linda stayed with Ken and Doris so Lael could go to school in Valleyfield. I came back from time to time. Later in the spring, Linda, Lael and I were in Parsons Pond for some meetings when Linda had to go to the Norris Point Hospital. That was in late April or early May. In late May, Wallace, Olive and Timmy Buckle, Linda, Lael and I went to PEI for the conference. While there, Linda got deathly sick and nearly died. She had to have emergency surgery. We were staying with Mrs. Cutcliffe who was very, very kind to us. She took care of Lael until Elizabeth Barbour came over to help. Wallace and I were asked to have meetings in the Crapaud Gospel Hall. A nice number of people professed to be saved during those meetings. Blessing came from difficulties.
We were all aware that many people would think that with Mr. Harris gone, the vision for outreach in Newfoundland and Labrador would be gone also. Prayer and reminiscences over the work took up the first day we were together in Corner Brook. It was then George Campbell told us about the decision he and Mona had come to. They were confident the Lord wanted them to move to Corner Brook. Within a very short time, the Lord opened the way for them to get the house they wanted on East Valley Road. They had been planning to build a house at Forteau and even had the basement dug out. However, the property they were going to build on wasn’t suitable because of water in the ground and other considerations. After a lengthy time of prayer and discussion, they had decided to move to Corner Brook as soon as they could.
George had been sick for at least six months with hepatitis, and even after the sickness was passed, he had quite a measure of weakness. To build a home was more than he could deal with. They were moved and settled before the next school year. While we were all together as workers in Corner Brook, each of us told of our individual exercise toward the work ahead in the summer. A number of things were considered as to how each one would be able to do what we felt we needed to, and at the same time not interfere with the work of others.
Ken and Doris Taylor had moved to Valleyfield, Bonavista North, to work as the bookkeeper/accountant for Beothuck Fisheries. He was a capable Gospel preacher and teacher who would be able to help in the Templeman assembly. Carl and Annie Payne and their family were living there as well, and they had come into the work to spend all their time in Gospel work. Even though the Lord takes away one of His servants, He gets another servant to step into the work in a different capacity. No one can really take the place of another, because each one is uniquely gifted to fulfill the work the Lord gives him and her to do.
In the summer we did a lot of open-air work around the Loop in villages from Gander and back. Meetings were held in the portable at Deadman’s Bay for a while. Then we put the tent up in Cape Freels and stayed in a little trailer we got from Doug Howard. It was a tight fit. Scott Goff, Dennis Hanna, Carl Payne and Gaius Goff were there. One evening we sat down at the table in the back for supper and the front of the trailer lifted right up in the air and dumped us all, and our food, against the back wall. We had people come but no more than would come to the portable hall. We were there for three weeks. Then we moved the tent down the coast to Ragged Harbour where Freeman Chaulk and
Ruby Stokes had family connections. David Hunt, who had been newly saved, came to join us there for a while. We had meetings in the tent until it got too cold to continue. Things were pretty tight that year but we managed. We went back to Salem, OR that fall for the beginning on the assembly there and to have meetings with Doug Howard at the inauguration. I was very happy to see that work going. People had moved in from other places so most in the fellowship were those who already knew assembly life and purpose. We also had meetings in Lebanon, OR where Leonard DeBuhr had family connections. Nothing came from that effort. When we got back to St. John’s late in the fall, we found a piece of land to build a house on. Then just before Christmas I left to have meetings in English Point, Labrador with Vernon Markle. We couldn’t get across the Straits from Flowers Cove until Christmas Day. They had a Christmas program that night. The meetings in English Point were well attended and a nice number of people professed to be saved. The meetings lasted into February. I got hepatitis there and had to be put into the Forteau hospital. After I got a bit of strength, I got to St. Anthony and then chartered Clayton Pilgrim to take me to Deer Lake. When I finally got to St. John’s after two days getting there, I was as weak as a kitten.
Bryan Funston had come into the work in Newfoundland and Labrador in a permanent way in 1969. Each of those people: Ken and Doris Taylor, Carl and Annie Payne and Bryan Funston took a step of faith in leaving one area where they had been serving the Lord, to another place and another responsibility. During the late winter and early spring of that year, my family and I stayed in the Payne’s house at Parsons Pond. We had a Gospel series at Rocky Harbour and another at Parsons Pond. While there we had the first of several Easter conferences at Parsons Pond. There was one in the fall there, and also one in L’Anse au Loup and another one at St. John’s, but there was none in the spring. A few years later it was held at St. John’s for a year or two and when the assembly met at Gander, the Easter conference has been held there since.
The Lord continued to confirm His word and work in quite a number of assemblies in the months after Mr. Harris passed away. The Campbell’s made a big effort to move the work in Corner Brook ahead, and a number of people were saved there that winter. Mr. Buckle was the man on the “Northern Light” who had the most experience with boats, so he piloted the boast along the Quebec coast with a regular crew for quite a number of years. The boat was 47 feet long and 13 feet wide. It had a deep keel because originally it had two spars and two sails along with the Kelvin diesel engine. When Mr. Campbell bought the boat, Stanford Fowler did quite a bit of work on it to make it more practical for the work. One spar was taken down altogether and the other one shortened, as well as the hatches doors etc. were changed to make better access. That summer the Campbell family went to Scotland to be with Mona’s family, and George Campbell had a lot of meetings in different places in Scotland. His father’s family all came from the Isle of Lewis, and George got quite an exercise for that place. A few years later he was able to go back there and had a good and fruitful series of Gospel meetings there.
We went back to PEI for the conference in May with Carl Payne. I had a man there make a camper for our pickup as a place to live for the summer workers. At Albert Hull’s invitation, we went to Clementsvale, NS for a series of Gospel meetings in early June.
The series lasted right up to July. While there I got a lot of old well-seasoned pine lumber for window and door boxes for our house. A lumber place had a closeout of floor coverings, so I came back to St. John’s with a camper loaded with building material and we left behind a number of souls saved by God’s grace. We rented the old school in Musgrave Harbour this summer and had meetings for a month or more. We stayed in the small “Howard” trailer and I also bought one from Cron Lynch that he had built. We parked by a brook just to the east of Musgrave Harbour.
LeRoy Junker and Carl Payne were also involved in the work in Musgrave Harbour. We didn’t get too far there. LeRoy Junker left in early August to get married. Bruce Barkhouse came and helped up put up the tent in Ragged Harbour again. He and I were there when a man was electrocuted on the pole near Carmanville. We were on our way into Gander to pick up Mr. Sam Hamilton who was coming for a few meetings before going on to St. John’s.
The loud voice. We were having Gospel tent meetings in Ragged Harbour on the Straight Shore between Carmanville and Wesleyville, Newfoundland in 1969. Bruce Barkhouse from Nova Scotia was over helping Carl Payne and I in these meetings. Late in the summer, an Irish preacher named Sam Hamilton, who lived and labored in Wisconsin most of his life, was coming from Ireland back to the U.S. and stopped for a few meetings in Newfoundland. He was landing in Gander so Bruce and I went in to pick him up and bring him out to Templeman. On the way along the dusty, bumpy road, Bruce and I were talking about the meetings and the fact that a lot of people didn’t take the Gospel seriously. I asked Bruce, “Why do you suppose people can’t seem to take the Gospel seriously enough to come to meetings?” Bruce talks slow and with a Bridgewater drawl and also thinks before he speaks. In a few minutes he finally spoke, “Well, Mr. Goff,” he said, “I guess people don’t think it is real.” “How can we make it real to people? What aren’t we saying or doing that we should be saying?” After another few minutes, “I guess there are some things we can never do. God has to do that.” We didn’t talk any more for a few minutes until we got near Carmanville and I saw a group of people and a couple of cars stopped by a Light and Power truck. “I wonder what’s going on there?” I said. As we got closer, I could see two men up on a pole near a transformer; one was leaning over the other and one was hanging clear back on his belt with his climbing spurs jammed in the pole. He was leaning back at least at a 45-degree angle. “Something’s wrong there,” I commented to Bruce and he agreed because the man’s head was hanging back as far as it could and his mouth was open. We jumped out and ran over to the pole to try to help. A couple of women were there and the young man on the pole trying to help the injured man was his 17-year-old son. The boy was trying to lift the man upright and get him free from the spurs digging in the pole. The electricity had been shut off so I tied a knife on a rope and called up to the boy to tie the rope around his father and then cut off his belt and we would lower him down. When he did that, we were able to lower him down until his feet were higher than his head and the spurs came loose. When we got him to the ground and went to work on him, we could smell that he had been badly burned. Finally, after a few minutes of fruitless effort at CPR, we decided we had best get him to the Gander hospital. We put him into the Light and Power truck, which I drove. His head was on my lap and his son bent over and continued to try to breathe life into his father. About half way in over the Gander Bay road the son said to me, “You’re a preacher, aren’t you?” “Yes, I am.” “Yeah, we were working across the road from your tent this morning and heard the children singing. We made a few jokes about it.” I had noticed that in the morning but said nothing about it now as I was driving as fast as I could and it wouldn’t help anything if I had commented. The young man spoke again; “Do you think my father’s alive?” I replied, “I’m a preacher, not a doctor so I couldn’t make a comment on that. All we can do now is try to get him to the hospital as quick as we can.” Again, came a question, “Do you believe people go to heaven or hell?” “Yes, I do. People who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ go to heaven because they accept the payment He made on the cross for their sins.” “Why does God send people to hell?” “People go to hell because they refuse to accept Christ and what He did for them to give them eternal life. God doesn’t want anyone to go there. People make that choice for themselves,” I explained. When we got to the hospital a doctor and others were outside waiting for us because we had been able to call in on the truck’s radio. The woman doctor came to the truck door and made a quick off-the-cuff assessment and said, “Poor fellow’s as dead as a stick.” Well, the young man ran over to the wall and banged his head and cried. His father had died instantly and the son wasn’t sure where he had gone. It can never be emphasized enough that we need to prepare for eternity now, because we never know what might happen. That man had changed hundreds of transformers but this one time his had come too close to where it shouldn’t have. We may not have a chance to make any comments, make any choices, and form any new commitments before we die. That needs to be done well in advance; that needs to be done now.
Edgar and Yvonne Pardy professed to be saved at this time. Linda and I were renting the basement apartment at 53 Wishing Well Rd., her parent’s house and we were expecting a new baby. So, I stayed in St. John’s and worked on our new house during the fall. During Christmas week the snow just kept piling up until we didn’t have a place to put it.
Vernon Markle was with us for a while as the “Northern Light” crew were having a time deciding what to do. They finally decided to go to Fogo Island and a work started there that summer. Wallace Buckle piloted the “Northern Light” there and later Bert Joyce flew in there in his airplane. The interest in the open air was such that they knew a work needed to be done there and followed up. A Christian doctor from Scotland was the resident physician in the Fogo hospital and his wife also was a committed Christian.
Their support was very valuable, both because of the fact that he supported the Gospel work, and because he was a good doctor. Bert flew over to Ragged Harbour one day so, I went over and helped them put up a tent in Calvin Payne’s garden. Bryan Funston and George Campbell kept at that work regularly. Bryan moved there that fall. The meetings were continued in Mrs. Keefe’s store building after the tent season was over.
An open door was there, and the Lord had His servants ready, and in position to go through that door. Mr. Albert Barbour and Mr. Ephraim Freake had been building a portable hall in St. John’s for outreach work, and when they heard about the opening in Fogo, they offered the portable to the work there. Mr. Freake was born and raised on Fogo Island at Joe Batt’s Arm, so he had a special interest in that work that he followed up on for the rest of his life. He assisted Bryan Funston in Gospel meetings as often as he could. George Campbell tried to make it a point to go to Fogo to help Bryan once a month. The Lord saved a good number of precious souls in Fogo and some of the other near-by villages. Bryan stuck by that work for all the years he was in Newfoundland.
He gave everything. After a Gospel meeting in Fogo, Fogo Island, Newfoundland, an old man named Parmenus Wells, asked me to visit in his home, as he had something he wanted to tell me. We walked to his house that was lit with kerosene lamps and sat down in the kitchen warmed with a wood stove, and settled down to hear what he had to say while his wife got a cup of tea ready. He was a bit emotional even before he began.
He said, “Quite a few years ago, when all the traveling was done in these parts by boat, a schooner came down the coast one night under full sail. It wasn’t a bad night but there was a good draft from the southeast and she was making good time. The only trouble was the skipper didn’t keep the vessel far enough off shore and she struck a sunker right out there,” and he pointed right out through the harbour.
“We could hear the ship’s bell ring as they were abandoning ship so we right quick-like gathered wood and browse and set a fire at the water’s edge on the beach. By-n-bye people started coming ashore on life rings and boards; on barrels and anything that would float. It wasn’t a bad night and so they weren’t having a real bad time of it. All hands around here had them into the houses and dried them off and gave’m a cup of tea to warm them up and then served lunches to all hands. One young man over by the stove looked up whenever another person was brought in and then he’d put down his head and tried to keep from crying. By n bye he did start to cry and we thought maybe he was getting a bit mental from the cold or something so I went over. ‘Nothing to worry about, my son,’ I told him. ‘You can stay right here and you’re safe and sound until you get a passage home.’
“Oh, I know I’m okay,” he replied, “but when I came off the deck of that boat into the water, I didn’t have anything to hold on to. When my head broke water, I found I was beside a young man holding on to a rum barrel. I put my hands out to catch hold of the rum barrel too, but it wouldn’t hold up the two of us.”
(A rum barrel is a small, oval shaped barrel about a foot to sixteen inches long and six inches through at the widest point.)
The man by the stove continued; ‘When we found the barrel wouldn’t hold both of us up even though we kicked and struggled, the young man who had the barrel first said to me, “Are you a married man?” ‘Yes, I have a wife and children.’ “You keep the barrel,” he said, “I’m not married,” and he let go the barrel.
‘He hasn’t come in to the house here,’ he stated looking around at all the other people in the kitchen. We both were silent as we waited for others to be brought in. Soon no one else entered the room and we waited the whole night until dawn hoping and praying that the young man got in someplace. In the morning when it got light, we went down to the land-wash and there was the body of the young man. The only one who died of the crowd who was on the schooner, was one who gave the barrel to the married man with a family.”
Mr. Wells stopped talking and I could hardly speak. I thought about what a good illustration that was of the Lord Jesus Christ giving Himself as a substitute for us on the cross. He, who had eternal life, gave His life that we might have eternal life.
The assembly hall at Fogo had become unsuitable, so in the late 1980s, George Whey, Marvin Derksen, Peter Mathews and others helped in the building of a new Gospel Hall there. The fist building coming into the community is the hall. The assembly isn’t as large as it once was, but the work of God still continues. An annual open-air Gospel series is held most years in the late summer shortly before the Labor Day conference that is held there. The Lord has saved some souls in recent years and hopefully they will be able to continue to make a living there even though the island has only about half the number of people living there compared to 1970 when Bryan Funston moved there to continue working in the outreach of the Gospel.
1971 We began the New Year in the Grace Hospital as Linda went into labor late on the last day of the old year. Alison Dawn was born New Year’s Day around noon. She was a special baby to us because the doctor had said we would not have another. God knew different but had us wait nearly 5 ½ years to bring it about. We were able to move into our new home shortly after Alison was born. That was a great time. During that winter we started to build another portable hall in St. John’s. The trusses were made to be bolted together for a strong roof and the same with the sides. The sides had Ranch Wall on the outside and were painted and looked good. We never got it completely finished before the summer.
George Campbell had moved his family to Corner Brook and wanted to make a major push there. So, we got a new and larger tent from Vancouver and put it up on Country Road where the assembly had bought two building lots. All the workers came together for a few weeks there in the summer. Bert Joyce and I preached at night. Bryan Funston, Scott Goff, Steve DeMasters had the youth work and George Campbell and Wallace
Buckle coordinated the visitation that included every house from Humbermouth to Petrie’s Crossing. They also had open-air meetings some afternoons. Some professed to be saved and the work progressed well from there on. A new hall was built that fall under the supervision of Peter Mathews.
Bryan Funston and I had a series of Gospel meetings in a tent at Joe Batt’s Arm on Fogo Island later that same summer. A number of people from Mr. Ephraim Freake’s family attended, but there was no real interest in that community as far as the Gospel was concerned. We tried the tent one last time in Ragged Harbour late in the summer. The assembly started breaking bread in Templeman around that time. There was a fairly good number of people in the assembly there when it started. Carl and Annie Payne were now living in Templeman and Ken and Doris Taylor were living in Valleyfield. At the end of the summer we went to Fogo and put up the portable hall that had been built in St. John’s. It became the permanent hall there for close to 20 years. In the early fall we went to Corner Brook again to help in getting the hall up and covered. We put the shingles on in the snow. Wallace Buckle and his family moved to Corner Brook from Flowers Cove for a year to help in that work.