My Story 12.3

Around 1950 most people made coffee into a thick syrup, pour a little in your cup and add hot milk. Add sugar according to taste and voila, .....Horrible! But Oma van den Brink always had instant coffee, I am sure it was Nescafe. That I liked. Just a little bonus for dropping in.

I was finished with High school and I had decided to figure out my life and thinking apart from the religion I had inherited. What is the real truth? One day I decided to ask Oma a few things. "Oma", I said, I want to ask you something." She was ready counsel to her grandson." What is the purpose of your life?" She looked puzzled. "Give me a minute.......I have never thought about that...." After a minute or so she brightened up and said: "The purpose of my life was, and is, the bringing up of my children." "And what is the purpose of their lives? Because if their lives have no purpose, then you have no purpose either!" "Well", she pondered, "I just never thought about such things, but let me tell you something, I have always been very happy!" I replied, in the words of Voltaire: "Yet that is a happiness I do not desire." (This "happiness" that comes as a result of NOT thinking.)

Other thinkers such as Immanuel Kant observe that they can only know what the senses tell them. Eyes can see the form, but not the essence of an object. Hearing, touch and such are all interpreted by the brain and only reveal part of an object, we cannot touch the thing itself. In other words an unseen world, a spiritual world, is possible. If I had the proper antenna built in I could detect radio waves. They are there all right but I can not detect them, unless I have the proper gadget. Spiritual beings, bacteria, other dimensions, would come to our awareness if we had the proper receiver. There is a lot more around us than we realize, but we do not have the sensors to detect them.

I was into that kind of thinking. Writing this down It sounds a bit too serious, but that is part of my Life as well. And hey, this is My Story . I found that philosophical thinking ultimately leaves you disappointed and confused. Trying to find your WAY to LIVE and finding the real TRUTH, can be so exhausting. Then you take a break and go for a delicious ice cream in a nearby parlour, and suddenly realize, wiping you chin, that this is the happiest you have been all day. When I got back to my notes that evening I summarized that I was looking for the Truth, the Way and the Life. That sounded familiar. Jesus says: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Nobody gets to the Father except by me." There is no need to figure it out any more, that has already been done. Jesus asks you and me to replace your searching with faith! Simple acceptance brings tremendous peace and joy. That night I decided then that I would be a Christian.

My Story 29

In 1975 I was still operating my little sign business from the home, or rather, from the basement. I received a call from a lady involved in various charismatic ministries. She told me a famous person was coming to Winnipeg for meetings, and she was looking for somebody to drive this man to his various appointments. Well business was slow and I got to meet a famous person.....I said OK.

That person turned out to be Richard Wurmbrand. His ministry was to draw attention to the suffering of Christian believers who were being persecuted in various parts of the world. He did so forcefully and with great dedication. His sweet wife Sabrina, demonstrated equal dedication in supporting him and cleaning up after him. He had a magazine for which he wrote articles all day, unless he had to go out to preach. Typewritten pages were spread all over the floor. Sabrina would quietly come in and sort them out. Both Richard and Sabrina had suffered for Christ in Romania, in prison, and doing hard labour. There was also torture from time to time under the communist regime.

He had an amazing list of appointments, Radio and Television interviews, meetings with the press, with pastors and with substantial audiences. It was a busy week for me. He treated me abruptly, as if I were in his employ. And who paid for the gas? I did. And I had no income at all that week. I prayed: "Lord, I will do this, but you will have to supply my needs, and that of the family."

The next week I got back to work, and I received a call to quote on a set of signs. Just off Notre Dame Avenue I stepped in the office of Bill B. He stared at me, stuffing his pipe, one eye looking straight at me, the other one looked at an unspecified spot 12 inches beside me. "I saw you at a Wurmbrand meeting, your wife sang....." She did indeed and Sabrina rewarded Trudy with the book she had written, and autographed it. Bill placed an order for signs, continued to do that for a few years, ....until they went bankrupt. I bought a chunk of his business and profited from that a few additional years.

My Story 26.1

Shortly after we got married Trudy and I started looking for a church where we would feel at home. Our choice was Calvary Temple. We applied for membership, but there was a problem. I was not baptized. The reason for that was mainly my intense fear of water, to get dunked under with adult baptism was just out of the question.

Unexpectedly, one evening Pastor Barber, with Mrs. Barber, knocked at the door. Now, we were newly married, we had hardly any furniture and we were in no position to entertain unexpected guests. We had to gather up an armful of empty bottles to redeem the deposit and buy a pack of cookies. After I got back with my Peak Frean cookies, which Trudy called Peek and Freak, we got down to business and I explained that I was hydrophobic. I found it hard to be submerged with baptism. "Then God will know", said the wise Pastor, "that for you it will be a greater sacrifice then for anybody else!" Soon after that I was baptized in water, I survived and we became members in Calvary Temple.

It was hard, however, to make friends there, and we decided to change over to a smaller church related to Calvary Temple. In Weston Gospel Church we quickly settled down and made friends. We got involved in various minor aspects of the ministry.

One Sunday we met a guy there who introduced himself as a travelling minister. He was staying in a cheap hotel, and since we had a spare room, it seemed the Christian thing to do was invite him to stay with us. Later during the evening Trudy and I began to feel a bit uneasy. Our guest, before he was converted, had been a gang member in New York, and he was relating the times he committed crimes including shooting at police with his zip gun. I don't remember his first name, Trudy and I refer to him as "Killer McCaffrey." Later that evening a friend from church stopped by our house and told us to be careful. We were pretty tense by then, concerned about our safety and that of our baby, Ron. Time for a silent prayer!

Then the phone rang. It was Henry Redekopp, the man I worked for at the time. He asked me to open with prayer the next morning, as was customary in this place of business. I explained the situation we got ourselves into. He said to bring Killer McCaffrey along and he would settle him in the YMCA. After a tense night sleeping with a hunting knife under my pillow, I got to work the next morning. Henry Redekopp took our guest off our hands and did as he promised, took him to the downtown YMCA. What a relief! And I suppose we had learned a valuable lesson.

WARNING

WARNING

My Story 5.3

5,3

While I was on the farm towards the end of the war, I almost always carried my harmonica with me. Remember I was only 12 years old. One morning I was up early and I went out to the field where they kept the horses. I sat down and began to practice.

A little over a year earlier, on my birthday I had asked for a harmonica. I was promptly turned down because this would be the source of more noise in the house. My aunt, however took my side and suggested that maybe this, the least of all musical instruments, would uncover a great musical talent. So, behind the "Grote Kerk" was a little store named "Hogenbijl", marketing musical instruments of all kinds, and I picked out my harmonica.

The horses, about six of them, responded to my "talent" and formed a semi circle on the other side of the ditch. That was the first time I remembered playing for an audience. Six horses! And in the distance was a black horse, on the other side of the field, who made no effort to come closer. Well even among horses there are individuals that don't appreciate talent. When I got back to the farm I told the farmer, Alte Oosten, about the horses and that the black one that refused to come. "That horse is just not musical", I observed. "Just the contrary", Alte replied, "that is the most musical horse I got, he just refused to listen to your crap." Well, maybe so , but he sure was alone in his opinion. I have often thought about this. To be too critical may very well isolate you from the others. And I have often felt like that black horse.

A little more then twenty years later Trudy picked up the autoharp and began to sing in church and old folks homes. I soon joined her, playing the bass guitar. We wrote many of our own songs, providing in my opinion a temporary high in the art of songwriting, and home music. Unfortunately the next generation joined the black horse.

My Story 12.2

12,2
At another time there was a Pentecostal conference in Hilversum. Just before that our local church had gained a family of converts including Herman O., a big guy a few years older then me. In an effort to "shepherd" him into his new Christian lifestyle he was invited to come along to Hilversum, and I was asked to befriend him.

I soon realized that this particular conference was not suitable for a guy like him. Pentecostals tend to get very serious, and the preaching was certainly beyond Herman's understanding. In addition the meetings were very long and drawn out.

One lady, a pastors wife, was into poetry and reading. As I understand it, she was well known in dramatic circles for her readings. She had written a poem about a child, a relative who was sick and subsequently had died. Here and there in the people in the audience were moved and pinked away a tear. At last she herself was overcome with tears and could not continue her reading for a minute. There was a weird silence in the room. Herman looked at me puzzled and said something like this: "Is it always like this in church?" I whispered:" Nah,...., just look at that, she is sniffling at her own junk...." Herman perceived this as funny and burst out in a loud uncontrolled laugh. And he would not stop. Ruined the whole atmosphere!! I was never more embarrassed. All the eyes were now fixed on us in a silent, but stern rebuke. I finally managed to usher him out of the building to talk to Herman on the parking lot.

We were soon surrounded by people giving us a comment or two. I am not even going to try and tell of the various rebukes we received. The people talking to us outside were nothing like the saints they were when inside the building. Herman in particular found it hard to digest what he had learned that day. But when he got home, for him it was over, and he was safe. I, on the other hand, had to deal with additional comments for weeks to come.