My Dad

My friend, Ron Unruh, recently wrote this note about my dad and sent it to me.  The Lord blessed me with a wonderful, godly father (see picture).  Dad has been "with the Lord" now for 18 years. Thanks, Ron, for sharing those memories with me...and now with my Pilgrim Scribblings readers!

Ron wrote:

David, I just walked past a small leather top table on which stands a twenty-inch wooden carved Ecuadorian lady with a baby on her back. She came with us from Ecuador and she has travelled with us from Peterborough to Toronto to Cloverdale BC. Our children and grandchildren have grown up with her. She rarely draws attention any longer until a moment like this when I am able to recount how she came into our lives.

When I pastored in Peterborough, you were a friend to me. I enjoyed your company and conversation. We didn't move in the same circles apart from perhaps occasional Ministerial gatherings but I was often in your store and I appreciated you.

Your father and I met occasionally too, customarily in connection with a Ministerial function. Always I welcomed his gentle spirit, his appetite for the LORD and the Word and for holiness of life. I marvelled at someone who made a successful business and maintained a good testimony and was so active in the work of the Lord. Perhaps our strongest connection was HCJB, Word Radio Missionary Fellowship in Quito. He was on the Canadian Board of Directors. Christine and I had college friends who served at the station in Ecuador. One Sunday afternoon after I had already preached at Ferndale Bible Church, Christine and I went to a nursing home with our two children, Cari and Jeff, in order to lead in some singing, to do a couple of special numbers and to give some encouragement from the Bible. Our kids were 7 and 8 years old perhaps, Cari sang and played piano and Jeff played violin. This was the nursing home in which your grandmother lived.

This was about 1977. I was virtually penniless, earning a small salary and living in a house owned by the church. Your father happened to be visiting his mother that day and when the service was over he came to me and spoke for a while and then dropped a line like, "If you would like to visit Ecuador, give me a call and I will help you get there." I answered something lame like "okay, thank you." Christine and I went home and I mentioned this and said, "Ches would not say something like that if he didn't mean it. I will call him tomorrow." Well I did call him and he invited me to his office. We met and he told me that he would buy flights for all four of us to go. And then he gave me $400 cash for extras.

We made that memorable trip to Ecuador, stopping in Florida overnight at a missions compound which Ches had arranged, then on to our friends in Quito. We visited Shell Mira and every place in between. We sang on radio and were interviewed.

When I left Peterborough and went to Wishing Well Acres Baptist Church as it was known then in Agincourt, I was invited to be on the Board of Directors of WRMF (HCJB) and did that for ten years. Ches had already retired from the Board.

I have strong memories of a godly man who could see where investing a bit of money with which God had blessed him, could reap larger dividends, and he didn't hesitate.

Good morning David, have a great day!