THE BEGINNING

My Dad was raised in The Salvation Army.  My mother's parents were not regular church attenders.  Dad knew about God, but would be the first to say that he was the black sheep of his family.  He played cornet in The Salvation Army band and regularly attended the Sunday services.  Hence Mom was attracted to Dad because she thought he was a religious man.

Mom told me that the first time she heard that God existed was when she was about ten years of age.  There was a terrible lightening and thunder storm, one hot summer evening, and a woman in the neighborhood exclaimed, "Maybe God is coming back!"

Those words from a neighbor put a thought in Mom's mind that if there was a God, she wanted to know more.  So in her teen years, she and one of her sisters started attending William Street Baptist Church, in Chatham.  She did not immediately become a Christian, but told me that she dates her salvation, the time when she personally invited Christ into her life, to a time around my birth.

As for Dad, he continued to go through the religious activities, but says he never personally received Christ as his Savior until January 28, 1941.  I remember when that happened.  I was nine years old.  From that point on Dad was a different man.  He turned his tobacco money into Christian books, joining two book clubs, The Sword of the Lord Book Club and Pinebrook Book Club.  I would often go to the Canadian customs after school, pay the duty and pick up another new book for Dad from one of those book clubs.  A few decades later, Dad had approximately 4,000 books, many of them Bible commentaries and study books.  Both Mom and Dad continued to grow in their faith and became active in many Christian ministries.

It was to this couple, Dan and Ada Goldsmith that I was born, June 20, 1931.  I arrived that hot day at my Grandma and Grandpa Goldsmith's house, 86 Baxter Street, Chatham, Ontario.

86 - Baxter Street, Chatham, ON