How We Came - June 23, 2017

(This piece was published June 22, 1992 in Bits of News Articles)

Elva and my pilgrimages started in the States, hers in Intercourse, Pennsylvania and mine in Nappanee, Indiana. Obviously it has not yet ended, but at present we are stationed here in the Norseman Capital of the World, Red Lake, Ontario! (Elva has since passed away in March 2016)

From there to here has been to us an interesting, varied, and sometimes difficult, but rewarding pilgrimage. The exposure to and involvement  in three languages and cultures plus two countries has offered its own flavor to life. All that has affected our emotions of anxiety, embarrassment, anger, compassion, love and other less conscious feelings.

The statement I made as a young lad, that I will always be a farmer and not a public speaker, was an unfulfilled prophecy. That attitude hindered me from preparing for what has since become a life ministry of sowing, cultivating, and investing in people's lives.

It has been good to be alive and walk with the Lord through all this. A look into the past encourages us for the future.

In my early 20's, after the realization of my desperate need for Jesus Christ as Lord of my life, I made that surrender to Him. Then for the first time, Winter Bible School was an option....then an experience, resulting in a vision beyond myself and our home church and community. That initiated a series of "steps ordered of the Lord."

In June 1953 my first 'hands-on' mission outreach began when I moved to Northern (Kitchi) Minnesota. I was assigned the Ojibway community for my contact people in the emerging church there.

The following year, also in June, I made my first journey north on the dusty, rough, six year old gravel road to Red Lake. During the following four months all NLGM staff (all 3!) lived in an old abandoned log and frame gold mine warehouse.  When Brother Irwin, the founder of NLGM, and Lorraine, the secretary went to Loman for business, I had to cook for the remaining staff ... I didn't mind my own cooking.

In September (1954) Irwin flew me into Poplar Hill to manage the construction of a school house. I had never even built a dog house! It got built. I had entered into a new world....of Indian people that all looked and talked alike. It was a world of language and culture learning, of dog teams, attempting to show and tell the love of Jesus to our new friends, and of nearly overturning our canoe in the middle of the Hallelujah Rapids on the Berens River. There were a few other interesting experiences.

The return of the Lord was too close to think of getting married, until Elva showed up at Loman Bible School in 1953. A correspondence-and-occasional-seeing-each-other courtship ensued. In February,1955, she started her pioneer missionary experience with two other mission personnel in an unfinished house at Pikangikum. Later she was involved in opening a new mission outpost on the Deer Lake Reserve.

Eventually we were engaged and set our wedding date which was to take place in Pennsylvania the following March. Irwin rejoiced with us and asked if we would consider moving to Pikangikum after we were married. He then looked on the calendar and asked if we would please plan to have the wedding a week earlier. There was a big pile of logs on the lake shore at Pikangikum that needed to be sawed before break-up. We consented.

Though it was our honeymoon, two people needed a ride to Red Lake, so since we were going there right after the wedding, we brought them. There were a few adjustments in marriage life and our new ministry immediately after moving into our little honeymoon house at Pikangikum...a fellow living with us....sawing the logs....language learning...attempting to have church services in Indian...living with a bride (and husband) that couldn't get to see mom and dad etc.

A church  building was constructed, a Holy Spirit revival swept the Reserve, and a church was born.

Our son Lynn arrived in 1958, and his sister Wanita made her debut in 1962.

I read, interpreted, and wrote the Chief's (of Pikangikum) correspondence. We bought our first snowmobile. We built a house on the Reserve and eventually moved into it from across the lake.

The needs of the local church, by then under Native leadership, changed, and so did our family's needs and we moved to Red Lake in 1973. Responsibilities with the Mission and Church in Red Lake have varied since then and the Lord had a house called Beth-el (house of God) built for us on a lot entitled Canaan (the promised land) and we are living happily ever after...well, mostly so.