There are moments in life in which
you remember snatches, a mere glimpse and not the whole story. They come in all
shapes and sizes. Some are just the ordinary parts of the day, some funny, some
rather strange. These are two of those stories.
• It was still early in our days in Saskatoon, and we were
living on Osler, maybe a little more than a mile from the church. I had been in
my office late. At that time, my office was still part of the main offices to
the left of the church entrance. I was just getting ready to leave and had left
my office and the secretary’s area and pulled the doors closed behind me when
the telephone rang. Still at the door I unlocked it and returned to answer. The
call was unimportant, a request for information. Weird. It was nearly 11:00
p.m. I left the offices locking the doors behind me again. When I got to the
entrance I reached in my pocket for my keys and they were not there. It was one
of the terrifying moments when your mistake flashed through your mind; I had
set the keys down on my desk when answering the phone. I could no longer get to
them.
I called Della on the foyer phone
and told her what happened and explained that I would be walking home to get
her car keys so I could drive and get some keys from someone. She offered to
walk toward me and we would go together, I had called the church secretary to
see if I could borrow keys from her. She was on the only one I thought might
still be up.
When Della met me, we drove to get
the keys and returned to lock the church. I got my keys but noticed there was
now a light on in the stairwell at the end of the hall. The building was dark
when we left to get the key.
We were aware that occasionally
someone was sleeping in the church. Traces of their presence could be found,
but nothing was taken. We had also had some theft. What to do? Check it out? I
was way to nervous to go down there and see what was going on. I had no idea
what I would find. I left, locked the door and prayed, “God, its your house,
please protect it.” We went home.
He did.
• There was a strange little old man who always came to prayer
meetings. He wrote a weekly paper on end times that annoyed me. It was full of
strange speculation. He often came to pray with the pastor before services.
When Della first met him she had a sense that something was wrong. That was the
first time we were aware of her sensitivity toward the spiritually and thus
potentially dangerous “godly people.”
The first piece of information
that he was a wacko came from a troubled college girl who few considered very
stable. She explained that she was being led into a deeper spirituality and was
becoming “sexless.” The concept was almost laughable. She would bathe at his
home and he would sit naked and watch her without any obvious sexual reaction. This
was his idea of total spiritual purity – the absence of lust. It was Della and
my idea of total depravity, but no one was sure how to check it out. No one
wanted to act on only the word of this girl. It took some time, but other women
other being taught by him and came began to come forward. He didn’t remain in
the church after that.
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| I Could not find a white one, but this is the car. |
• My wonderful 1962 Fairlane 500 with genuine imitation
leather seats was beginning to cost more in repairs than a new car payment
might be. We had applied for adoption and wanted a lightly larger car. We
settled on a white 1968 4-door Dodge Polaris. It was the last new car I ever
bought. Too much depreciation.
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