Testimony of William Lavery

Now we're glad to see you all have come along to the meeting tonight and we trust God will bless you for coming and God willing we will be here Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for the ministry of the word of God this week. Time seven o'clock till about eight o'clock. I promise we won't keep you long so I'd be glad if you could come along.

Now before we open the word tonight we're going to ask God's blessing, we're going to pray. Our blessed God we bow in thy presence and we do thank thee that we have an audience with thee and we can come to thee at all times but especially before we open the word to God, the word of God together. We're here tonight because of the glad tidings of the gospel, the good news for sinners and we thank thee for each one here who can look back to the time of their salvation, the time when they trusted Christ as their own and personal saviour.

If there's any who cannot we pray that this would be the night that they would look back to throughout all eternity as the time when they trusted Christ as their saviour. We do thank thee for the liberties we have to meet in this way. There are many countries in the world where preaching of the gospel publicly is prohibited and we do pray for Christians in those lands that would be preserved, some perhaps already in the prisons.

We ask though God to remember them in thy mercy and give them strength both physical and spiritual and we do thank thee for the privileges that we have here in the United States. We pray that they may continue until the Lord comes to take his own to be with himself. Thy word exhorts us to pray for the powers that be and we do pray for our the vice president, members of the cabinet, those who make the laws of the land right down to local governments and those who seek to enforce those laws.

We pray that no law would ever be passed that would prohibit us from meeting in this way and as well we pray for the salvation of any of these men or women who do not know the saviour. Now we do also pray for the gospel wherever it has been and will be proclaimed this day. We thank thee for souls being saved way down in Central American countries and down in South America.

We think of the work up in Canada and we just ask thy blessing upon the word wherever it is proclaimed. We pray that there might be signs following and the salvation of precious souls and we do remember those loved ones that will not be under the sound of the word. We know that it would please thee, it could please thee to use the word that they have heard in the past.

So we commit them into thy hand and care and look to thee for help here in this meeting tonight. We need thee graciously drawn near and we do trust thee to meet the need in the worthy name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now I'm going to read four scriptures, four different places and the word of God. The first one is Psalm 49. Psalm 49 and we'll just cut in verse number six.

Psalm 49 verse number six. They that trust in their wealth and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother or give to God a ransom for him. For the redemption of the soul is precious and it ceaseth or must be given up forever.

That it should still live forever and not seek corruption. For he seeth that wise men die likewise the fool and the brutish person perish and leave their wealth to others. Now the next one is in Isaiah chapter 55 and verse number one.

Ho everyone that thirsteth come ye to the waters and he that hath no money come ye buy and eat. Yea come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Now the next reading is in the gospel of Matthew chapter 14 verse 25.

Matthew 14 verse 25. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them walking on the sea and when the disabled saw him walking on the sea they were troubled saying it is a spirit and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus speak unto them saying be of good cheer it is I be not afraid.

And Peter answered him and said Lord if it be thou bid me come unto thee on the water and he said come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous he was afraid and beginning to sink he cried saying Lord save me.

And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him and said unto him O thou of little faith wherefore didst thou doubt. And when they were come into the ship the wind ceased. Now the next one we hardly need to turn to is John 3 and 16.

And you likely know the verse for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And we know that God will bless the reading of his precious word. Now these scriptures that we have read together are very near and dear to my heart.

And the reason for that is that these were scriptures that spoke to me just before God saved me the first three of them at least. And the fourth one is a scripture that I quoted to my wife shortly before she was saved. So it's a good thing to be able to go back and get help from the scriptures.

A person doesn't need to really have a verse to be saved they just need to have Christ as their own and personal savior. But being able to go back to a verse sometimes well that would give us confidence if we ever had any doubts that we were saved the scripture is what gives us the assurance of salvation. So that's very important there's no other way I couldn't do it and you couldn't do it.

And the scriptures that I read before God saved me quite a while before weeks before were the first three that we read and you know I didn't really know where to open the Bible. Oh I knew the Bible I could quote lots of verses from it but when I come right down to it I was very didn't really know where I should turn but I was searching for salvation. And the reason I'm telling you this is tonight is that on the 10th of March another 12 days or so I'll be saved by the grace of God for 50 years.

I should have been saved maybe for more like 70 years because I heard the gospel but I rejected the gospel. But I'm very thankful that I can look back to 50 years and of course I'm not going to tell you all what happened in those 50 years that's really the best part of a testimony but we won't be able to touch very much of that tonight. But some will know I was born into a Christian family and I was born in Belfast in Northern Ireland and my father and mother were both part of a an assembly in that city before I was born.

They didn't have the same privilege that I had. They weren't born in Christian homes or at least my father wasn't. My mother had a her mother was saved but her father wasn't until later years.

They were brought up in a couple of the different denominations in the city of Belfast and my father went to Saint Patrick's they called it was a protestant church and as far as he knows he never once heard the gospel. Now he said as far as I know because people can listen to the gospel and not know that's the gospel. So he gave the preacher the benefit of the doubt.

He didn't ever remember hearing the gospel but one day when he was a young fellow about 19 years of age he was walking along one of the main thoroughfares in Belfast and there was a funeral taking place down one of the streets and in those days they buried people right from their own home and they had a service in the house and people were standing in the stairs and everywhere to hear the word. They're just little row houses and then they would bring the coffin out to the street at little treadles and they'd put it just a wooden pine box and they'd put the flowers on it and they had in those days there were the funeral horses, black horses to pull the hearse and to pull a couple of little coaches for some that would be able to go to the grave. There weren't too many cars in those days.

They would walk after the casket for quite a while and it was a privilege to be able to say would you like to have a lift. What they meant was would you like to carry the casket of the person that had died. That was a kind of an honor to do that but anyhow my dad he stopped and the people began to sing outside the house and they began to sing safe in the arms of Jesus, safe on his gentle breast there how does that go there by his love or shaded, sweetly my soul shall rest and he thought I would love to really know that and that's the first time that he ever believed that God spoke to him.

My mother was saved in a denominational place and the assistant preacher was a little man Mr. Murphy, HH Murphy. He went by and he was a man that was a real Christian and he preached the gospel but he also found out that the person should not only be saved but they should be baptized by immersion so he began to teach that and he didn't last too long in the large denominations so he started a little place on his own and he was a minister and that's my grandma and my mom they went with him and my mom professed to be saved as a little girl but she wasn't too sure she never maybe heard a clear gospel but later on there was a man came from America he was an Irishman that had gone out and came back his name was Pastor Nicholson he was a Presbyterian minister but he held gospel services they called them revivals but we all know it's Christians need to be revived sinners need to be saved but he went to Presbyterian churches and they couldn't they couldn't hold a number of people that came to the gospel meetings and so many from the shipyard in Belfast a big shipyard where they had built a Titanic so many of them were saved by the grace of God that they took back all the things he had stolen from the shipyard and they had to build a hut to hold all the stuff that they brought back so there were real conversions and those days he worked 44 hours a week and after they got off work they marched at as they called him Pastor Nicholson's meetings singing hymns and poems were written about it and it was a great work and my mother said if I wasn't saved as a child I know I was saved then this was a man that really preached the gospel without any nonsense or anything like that so that was their background well my dad he studied his Bible he didn't have much money I think my mother bought him a Darby Bible another translation and he studied that and she bought him Scott's book on Revelation and a few other books and he saved all the money he could to try and get a few commentaries that would help him and then you know he at that time before he was ever in an assembly or knew anything about them he and one of his friends used to preach in the street corners and give out tracts and then one day came when they they both discovered that there was something better than what they were associated with some little mission hall so they decided and unknown to each other they both arrived and sat back in an assembly that very same day one didn't know the other was going and it wasn't long before they were received into the assembly my father I'm not going to go into all the background of my father but he developed quite a hunger for the word of God and he learned the word of God and he taught others the word of God he had a tremendous memory he used a little Bible about this size about this wide without notes and he would conduct Bible readings and do all his ministry and gospel preaching while he still worked in the shipyard he had a Bible reading in the shipyard and he didn't tell me all about this I've heard a lot of it after he was gone when I go back to Ireland aren't too many that would remember him now but some even were told about him and I found out they had 60 to 70 men all in his Bible studies and dozens of them were brought into the local assembly through the his Bible studies even when he retired he still went down he walked down to the shipyard and still had these Bible studies he had Bible studies on Saturday nights and Mr. Tom Bentley on our missionaries in America and I mean Malaysia he said that he had received more help from my father than any other person so this was a kind of a background now you think that I would be saved when I was a young boy and maybe following his footsteps well I was a rebel I'm not proud of that I'm ashamed that I wasted so much time but anyhow I had no time for the word of God I got I wouldn't blame the company I got into for my life because their mothers probably blamed me for the way they turned out too but we got into like the ballroom dancing was big in those days and I'd be the ballroom six days a week I even went on Sunday nights after the gospel meeting I went to the gospel meeting when my teenage years and then I would leave and go to a dance in the Catholic church uh way up at a place called fruit hill uh north Belfast a lot of Protestants went there and Jews and everybody I don't know if there are any Catholics but that's what we did Sunday night after the gospel meeting I found out the truth of that little saying be sure your sin will find you out because it's not often you can do things and your parents don't know about it my parent my mother was showing some photographs to some people she knew some women and she said this is my son and one girl says oh I know him I dance with him on Sunday nights and the cat was out of the bag and I couldn't make excuses but that's the kind of life I lived and when I first went to dance I was timid if you didn't believe that maybe but I was afraid to ask a girl to dance so my friend he said well I know what you need and of course you need something out of the bottle to give you courage and I'm not going to tell you all the things I did I'm ashamed of them but I got into those things and I thought I was enjoying life and uh Saturday no Friday nights three of my friends and I would go to the little villages around Belfast there'd be dancers in different places and one of my buddies didn't drink and he had a car so we knew we could get there in safety and come home in safety and we went one time to a place called Cumber to a dance in the Andrews Memorial Hall you wouldn't know the Andrews family but this was built in memory of a man that went down in the Titanic they were big mill owners and owned some parts of the shipyard and he perished in the Titanic so that was built in memory of him and it was there that I met a young woman and that young woman eventually became my wife it's very funny in a way but her maiden name was Savage so I tell people I married a savage I didn't tame her but anyhow uh she went to Africa with me one time and somebody thought there were enough savages there without taking another one but anyhow that was her maiden name and would you know but her mother was a Christian she wasn't in a local assembly but she had been saved in in a meeting in a local assembly it was just down the street from where they lived and I actually remember the man that was preaching Mr. Mawinney I heard him preach myself years ago so at least there was still some connection with the assembly now we after a year we were engaged six months later we get married and then we thought maybe we would like to emigrate see the world a little bit get a better living and we thought of Australia we thought of Canada because British citizens could go there for twenty dollars I think it was something like that and they paid your fare you paid twenty dollars they paid your fare and then if you stayed for two years you didn't have to pay it back so that's how they got emigrants for Canada and Australia but my wife had an aunt that lived in Michigan and Aunt Lily was in the assembly in Ferndale she and her husband they had no children and when they heard that we were they were married late in life actually when they heard that we were going to emigrate Aunt Lily said why not come to the United States they would like to have some of the family over and we'll sponsor you and if you can come so we thought we'd come to the United States well then we found out that we're about to have our first child so we thought well we'll wait and after the baby's born and sometimes we wanted to leave and other times we thought leaving all our family my wife was one of nine leaving your family and I had three in our three that I would be leaving and my father and mother and grandparents so really a big step so anyhow just about that time Rosalind was born in 58 and 59 I won five thousand dollars gambling that was a lot of money in those days it was a small fortune it was a legitimate gambling that was tax-free so I thought well maybe we'll just stay in Ireland but after a while we got to have a hankering again to leave and I don't know if you could say God gave me that money but at least that's the money that brought me to the United States I came in 1961 in February left my wife Margaret and Rosalind our daughter and at that time we had a son just born a few five months before I left so I came to see if I could get things set up for them to come and they came over in June now 1961 wasn't a big year for jobs in Michigan everything was all centered around the auto industry they had three shifts with Ford and Chrysler and GM and they had laid off many workers so there wasn't much work and I struggled I won't tell you all I tried to sell a service to gas stations and small businesses restaurants and so on I made enough to live and that was about it I worked for a company and sometimes the checks bounced and their wages and it was really kind of rough but anyhow we got settled down and and I had a few jobs and I ended up getting a job in an export office in the city of Detroit and after a few years my boss died or left rather he left and I became manager of the export office so I ended up with a fairly good job and I got invited down to all the parties on the ships that came into Detroit Harbor some of them were right from Belfast to Port Lyon I think it was I forget now it's a long time ago but it was one of the lines that came right from Belfast and I thought this is a life for an Irishman got invited to all these cocktail parties and banquets they all want to get your business you know and I thought I was really living it up but you know I wasn't really happy there was something missing in my life and I knew what it was I never thought I would ever be saved it's not that I was always looking for it I wasn't but God began to deal with me and and you know when my wife would be away out with the girls and I'd be babysitting when the children were in bed I would get down a Bible and as I said I wasn't sure where to open but I opened it random and the first time was in Psalm 49 and I was thinking you know it would be good if you could just get ahead in the world and have a little place in Florida to go in the winter time and so so on but then I read about the rich man he couldn't by any means redeem his brother no matter how much you had or give to God a ransom for him for the redemption of the soul is precious and the thought is must be given up you can't do it you might as well give up you can't do it and then they're laid like sheep in the grave life was only going to last so long and then the important thing I could see from that was eternity where am I going to be in eternity I knew I never needed to be convinced that I was a sinner I knew I was a sinner and I knew scriptures I could I could quote chapters and parts of chapters and I could still quote them that I learned in Sunday school but here now I was just as dark and I thought when I was reading this today this afternoon what we have in Psalm 49 we have men without ability they can do a lot of things but they can't redeem their brethren you know there's a lot of men running for office today and Hillary Clinton and all they'll tell you what they're going to do and you wonder how much they really will do if they ever get into office they usually never fulfill all that they promise but there's one thing none of them can do and even Mr. Trump with his billions can by no means redeem his brother the soul is a very important thing there's nothing of more value than the soul what sort of profit a man we should gain the whole world and lose his own soul and I thought well I don't have much I don't have anything to retire but even if I did I could never redeem and no man can redeem it doesn't matter who he is the pope or anyone else no matter how much authority they think they have they couldn't redeem one person and then I opened again at Isaiah 55 and I read that and I thought well here's something that's free although it's a strange thing it says buy it talks about buying without money we can do that today but you have to use credit cards or checks or something but there's still money but that's not what it's saying it's saying here's something it's it's important and it's valuable but you can't pay for it and you don't need to pay for it so we are buying without money and I thought well that suits my pocketbook because I didn't have very much money just enough to get us through and then I opened the bible again but random and I read Matthew 14 and there we have walking and I call that walking without gravity it didn't sink that's an important thing but I just read that and remembered what I had read and eventually I'll bring you right to the time when my wife and I was March the 10th the 9th really it was the 9th 1966 we went to bed and I asked her a question and the question was this I said do you think you'll ever end up in heaven and she said well I hope that I'll end up in heaven well I said you know you could lay your head on the pillow uh tonight and die in your sleep and you'd be in hell the only other thing I remember that night was quoting John 3 16 to her for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life I went to sleep this was about two o'clock or so maybe a little before that a.m. and I went to sleep and my wife couldn't sleep she said if I lay my head in the pillow I could die in my sleep I'd be lost so what do you think she did she started to pray for me she thought I knew more about it than she did and if I could get this salvation then I could help her to get it so she prayed for God to save me and she prayed and she prayed and she didn't seem to be getting anywhere and then she thought you know I should be asking God how I can be saved not my husband so she changed her prayer and said Lord show me how I can get this salvation and God brought John 3 16 back to her memory she had learned it in Sunday school she went to a gospel hall Sunday school uh like a lot of children and in the United Kingdom and she thought maybe she heard this in Sunday school would I give my son for the best person in all the world she said no I wouldn't but God gave his son for me and there and then she wasn't very sure but she thought well that's I think I'm saved so she was going to wake me up and ask me what I thought and then she thought if I wake him up he'll never get back to sleep so she told me in the morning when I was flabbergasted I didn't expect this I had thought that if I was saved it would be so difficult with my wife not saved so I didn't have to worry about that anymore she told me she said I think I got saved last night well I said what happened she told me she says do you think I'm saved well I said I'm not an expert and I'm still not an expert a person saved they'll know it and they'll be sure and they'll know it on the authority of the word of God there's no other way it's not by dreams or anything like that or hearing voices it's by the word of God so anyhow I went to work but you know I couldn't work thinking my wife saved and here I am not saved two o'clock in the afternoon I went to where I could be alone left my office at two secretaries and I left them and I told the Lord I want to be saved right now and I thought of all the verses I'd known and could quote and the more I remembered the more muddled I became I just couldn't figure it out and just when I was about to give up I thought of Peter walking on the water and I said Lord that's me I'm like Peter not walking but sinking he began to sink and I said I'm sinking right down to the depths of hell that's where I deserve to be and then I remembered what Peter did he said Lord save me and the Lord stretched forth his hand and caught him and it just dawned on me that's the best way to explain it that I'm the sinner that can do absolutely nothing but Christ is the Savior who has done everything he's the Savior and I was saved about 12 hours almost to the second I think after my wife was saved when I went home and told her well I didn't tell her I asked her do you still think you're saved she said I know I'm saved well I said what makes you so sure now she didn't know before well she said I got down the Bible and like me she didn't know really where to open the Bible but she opened the right book anyhow but she opened it Lamentations and Mr. Paisley one of our old preachers he used to say that's the clean part of your Bible but anyhow she read words like this in Lamentations 3 I cried unto thee out of the low dungeon hide not thine ear at my breathing out my cry that drew us near in the day that I called upon thee thou hast redeemed my life she said I know because God has told me and I was able to tell her well I was saved this afternoon in work so I tell you there was a big change in our house and we started going to the meetings right away we didn't know where to go we had to decide that our children had gone to the Sunday school in the gospel hall when we weren't going to the beach or somewhere else and I had gone to a denominational place that was a good place the pastor was a converted Jew and they had lots of music which I liked but we sat down and said now where can we go we wanted to go to some place that was scriptural and we couldn't in our Bible we couldn't find a one-man ministry where one man did all the preaching so that cut out a lot of places and I didn't think I could find a musical instrument in the New Testament I knew enough about those things so of course they ended up in the local assembly they were amazed that we had gotten saved they were praying for us for years for five years it was five years after we came so that was 1966 just almost 50 years ago and they were amazed but they were thrilled and they give us a lot of help and in June that year we were baptized my wife wasn't sure about baptism she said I'd like to see it from the Bible so she did and we were baptized and received into the assembly in Ferndale and she was there until the Lord took her home and I tell you it's good to know when death comes as you can look back to the day of salvation how could you live if you couldn't go back to that my wife died very very suddenly last preacher she ever heard preach was me in the gospel and quoting that well well the verse I preached on is for we must needs die and there's water spilled upon the ground that cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any persons yet if he devised means or by his banish be not expelled from him not 2nd Samuel I think it's 14 and 14 and I quoted that verse boast not thyself of tomorrow for I knowest not what a day may bring forth so you see that becomes very precious when death comes along to know it's all the most important thing nothing else really matters when it comes to the end not a good a Christian I was even there are many people I saw saved there are many people I helped ministering the word of God it's knowing Christ is one savior before I had wanted to be popular in the world but I used to drink I drank with international soccer players people that really meant something you think you know people see you with them and they think well he doing well look at his friends they all they played for Ireland and one of my friends before salvation was a light heavyweight boxer who fought for the British crown he didn't win but he fought for the championship so that was quite a thing his name was Garnet strange name Garnet Denny his father was a doctor from Jamaica and his mother was Irish so I thought that really counted for something but what did it count for I took a girl at one time she was a flight attendant and later it was rumored that she was going with a movie star a big star in Hollywood boy my stock went away up but you know when you look back what does it mean it's absolutely nothing nothing just wasted time thinking that the the world's going to bring you pleasure it does but it's not lasting pleasure and the most important thing is to be able to go back to be able to go back and have a time in your life when God saved you so I was saved then I was 33 years of age wasted all the time I could have been learning from my own father I've been saved in Ireland I maybe never would have come to the states and maybe that's what God had for me to bring me to the United States so anyhow after a while I thought maybe God could use me some way in his work and how would you know if God was calling you to to the work you can't just well one one man told Mr. Clay fight he said well my I never get tired talking and my throat never gets dry and he thought maybe that was an indication and you've all heard with Oliver Smith when the man saw PC in the clouds and preach Christ and he said I think it's plant corn you need to be sure it's a big thing to take a step to be in the Lord's work so I asked the Lord uh well first of all I said I'd like to see a soul saved I'm going to see soul saved I'd like to see somebody saved now and then I thought that's not asking very much I should ask for a few so I asked him to give me three souls and you know God gave me three souls the first one was my daughter the second one was an Irish lady that was in the hospital I'd never met her but friends of mine went to visit this woman they were Christians they weren't in an assembly but they were Christians and they wanted to take their pastor down to talk to Mary Mary Smith was dying from cancer and her husband Kenny Smith he said you know we never went in for religion when she was well we're not going to go in for it now that she's not well well they said her name was Molly said to Kenny we know a young Irishman and would it be okay if he came down to see her well you know blood's thicker than water they say so I was Irish and he said okay you can you can bring him down so I was invited to go down to the hospital to visit Mary Smith I visited her for I don't know maybe three three four weeks every other night every other day and the first time I went I thought what am I going to say how am I going to introduce this because Kenny said she's not to be told that she's dying I think Mary knew she was dying but anyhow you have to honor what they say so anyhow I went down and I had it all worked out and I'm going to say Mary sometimes God has to put us in a bed like this for a purpose here's a purpose for it and tell her the purpose this time was that she would hear the gospel so anyhow I went down talked about Ireland of course she was from a down that I had been in and we talked about that and then to my surprise she said to me maybe God has put me here in this bed for a purpose so I knew that God had sent me down there and I preached the gospel to her and every night I went her husband says have you got your little black book with you and he would I don't think he ever professed to be saved but anyhow one time I took Mr. Crawford one of our good preachers down with us and I told Kenny it looks like Mary's going to die and since you have no church affiliation I'd be glad to get Mr. Crawford to preach her her funeral and he thought that was okay everybody loved Mr. Crawford Mr. Crawford all of his brothers and sisters were all born in Ireland I don't know if you knew that but he was the only one born in Canada when his folks emigrated but anyhow she died she professed to be saved Kenny told me and he said I want you to get Mr. Crawford for a funeral so I called Norman and he said I'll preach on one condition and I said what's that he said did you help me I'd just been saved a couple of years and I wasn't I'd preached the gospel but I've never taken a funeral and I said I don't know well then he said if you're not going to do it just forget it I don't think he would have forgotten it but he was putting pressure on me and I said well what can I do he said you can preach at the funeral chapel or you can preach at the grave and I said I think I'll preach at the grave well he said that's not always the easiest but he said you'll be sure to tell the people that God was good to Mary giving her an opportunity to hear the gospel she was 46 years of age she had two boys so anyhow we had the funeral and after the funeral service at the grave this fellow Billy Johnson another Irishman all of my old Irish buddies drinking buddies were all there and he came and he said well Billy he called me he said Billy the last time I saw you you didn't have a bible in your hand you had a bottle of whiskey in your hand and that really spoke to him and you know I received a phone call from him a little while after he said come see me I just got saved and I went to see him he was pouring beer down the sink he said I'm saved and I don't care who knows it he actually sort of half swore when he said that but he was a raw Irishman but anyhow I believe he got saved he didn't go on too well but when I was in Ireland one time a young woman in one of the assemblies asked me if I knew Billy Johnson I said I certainly do well she said you know he's moved back to Ireland and she said he's in the hospital and he'd like to see you so I visited him in the hospital and you know he wasn't long before he died really but he still maintained he said I know I haven't lived like I should but I know Christ died for me I know I'm saved so he was the third one so that was my indication and I ended up going up into northern Ontario with Mr. Eddie Dougherty I had known him from Ireland he was a missionary in Cuba and he took a chance he took me up there for meetings without ever hearing me preach but I found later on the first time he ever preached was with my father on a Sunday night gospel meeting he said your father asked me to open a meeting for me and he said had nobody else asked me until another year was up but anyhow he was such a tremendous man a great friend of mine so we went up to Englehart Ontario five foot of snow on the flat northern Ontario I could just see over the snow but you know God worked and hearts were warmed in the snow and there were think about eight souls professed and eventually each one of them ended up in local assemblies so I had another indication what God wanted me to do and since then as you know I won't go into all the details but I've been very fortunate I've been invited to preach different lands I've been in China Hong Kong and Japan twice in Zambia and Zimbabwe in South Africa and in Russia and Siberia for five weeks in Siberia that's where you they send you in Russia when you misbehave up near Tobolsk they send you to the salt mines they didn't send me there but and I had a privilege to preach there down the islands Antigua and St Lucia and in many of the United States I've been to every state I haven't preached and I hope I can still keep preaching I'm getting older now I have my problems medically and so on but by the grace of God I hope I can still tell others great thing to be saved there's nothing more important than being saved except maybe being saved and really knowing it nobody needs to flounder you know eternal life if it's really eternal there's no end no matter what happens eternal life it's not eternal if it ends you know someone asked Oliver Smith a Lutheran preacher one time said well here here you're preaching people can have eternal life he said I certainly am but he said how can you tell them that but eternal means without beginning and without end so how can they get it if it's without beginning well he said you know down at the fairgrounds is an oval track and there's no beginning and there's no end but he says I can get on it so I thought that was a pretty good illustration we can have it and no one can take it away from it it wouldn't be it would be a slight in the work of Christ if we could lose what he has given us he he he says I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand so how can well you know what some people say you can pluck yourself up you know even if you could it says and they shall never perish so it's a great thing nothing greater and I've been glad to be in the Lord's work and see a few souls saved here and there and try to be a help to God's people but that's not going to get me to heaven Paul did a great work didn't he but he said God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ that's the only thing that we can glory in not in ourselves but in Christ and what he accomplished on the cross so I hope this will be a help and an encouragement if you have loved ones that aren't saved keep praying for them a lot of people thought we would never get it and after we were saved I found out people were praying for me in Australia and Canada and all different places and of course my folks and others in Ireland one man told me and he was brought into the assembly steam my dad's work in the shipyard and he says he told me himself or his wife told me that since he met my dad and heard about me he prayed for me every day another man Mr. Cotton in Chicago prayed for me every day it's tremendous prayer so we don't give up we'll keep on praying for loved ones even though it may seem impossible nothing is impossible with God and if he could save me and use me I'll tell you he could save anybody and use anybody and shall we pray our blessed God we bow again before thee and we do thank thee for thy goodness and ever saving souls that thou receive your God gives us great comfort and we thank thee for words that in the scriptures that say I will save thy children and so on and we have that confidence that God will work on our families some may seem to be afar off but we just commit them to thee and thy word and the trust of the encouragement of God's people for we ask in the worthy name of the Lord Jesus Christ amen