Man on the Ice (6 page)

NOW I
’
M GOING TO
talk a bit about religion.
In 1975, I was tired of the way I was living. I was tired of the booze, the
nightclubs, and I had a family to care for. The life I was living was taking me
nowhere. One day our eldest son, Denley, came home from Sunday school and said,
“Dad, I got saved in Sunday school today.”

Something happened inside me and I started to cry. I said, “You did the right
thing.”

I went to my bedroom, laid across the bed, and cried
like I
never did before. My wife came in and we talked for a while. She always went to
church, and so she said to me, “You should come to church with me
tonight.”

I said, “Maybe I will,” but I started drinking again. When it was almost time
for the evening service, Irene told me that if I was going with her I shouldn’t
drink anymore. And so I didn’t. I went to the Pentecostal church with her in
Happy Valley, Goose Bay. She went toward the front of the church and I sat in
the last seat in the back. I listened to the service and the pastor preaching.
During the after-service, they started singing an old hymn: “
Just as I am,
without one plea / but that Thy blood was shed for me / And that Thou bidst
me come to Thee / O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”

I made my way up to the altar and knelt down. I began to pray. “Lord be
merciful to me as a sinner and save me from my sins.” That was November 23,
1975. I haven’t been perfect since then, but I’ve tried to live my life for the
Lord. I’ve made lots of mistakes, failed lots of times, but the Lord has been
faithful and good to me.

Monday morning came and I knew I had to face all of my woods buddies on the
bus. It was a big bus, the same as a school bus, with about forty-five to fifty
men heading for the woods. I was always the last to get on in the morning and
the first to get off in the evening. When I boarded the
bus that
particular morning, someone said something that I will not repeat. I pretended
not to hear, and they repeated it again, but I still didn’t answer.

“What’s wrong with you this morning?” he asked, then someone else interrupted
and said, “I think we should leave him alone. He got saved last night.”

The other fellow agreed not to say anything else, but said I wouldn’t be saved
after coming out of the woods that evening. When the day finished, and I got on
the bus, the same old things were said, and I continued not to participate.
Finally another co-worker said, “Okay, if you don’t show up to the club on the
weekend, then I’ll know you’re really saved.”

While working in the woods in Goose Bay, a tree fell on me and broke the lining
out of my hard hat. I was taken to the hospital in Happy Valley. I was okay,
with only a few bruises and a real bad headache. I spent three or four nights in
hospital, then went back in the woods again.

The following year, I was still working in the woods. I was operating
a 230 timberjack one evening when, after coming home form the woods, I noticed
one of my feet was very sore. The skin was starting to peel off, so I went to
the hospital and the doctor determined it was eczema. They gave me something to
put on it and told me to take some time off work. That was impossible to do. I
had a wife and
a family of five children to look after. Rent
needed to be paid, a car to be paid for, with no insurance of any kind, so as
long as I could walk, I had to work.

My foot got worse as the weeks passed. I would get up in the morning and my
wife would smother my foot with Vaseline. She would buy the big jars of that
stuff, the kind that she could fit her hand right down inside. She would wrap my
foot with gauze, and pull my sock over the top and stuff my foot into my hard
leather workboot. It wasn’t so bad at first, heading into the woods, but it got
worse as days passed. I had good men cutting for me and they really helped me
out. My buddy Harold Adams and my brother Sherwin would be waiting when I backed
the timberjack up to their wood, and they would grab the chokers and go. All I
had to do was stay on the timberjack and winch the load of wood in to take for
the landing. They made it easy for me. I didn’t have to walk on my bad foot as
much as I would have if not for them.

As time went by, my foot got worse. I would come home in the evening, where my
wife was waiting with a pan of warm water to soak my foot. I would soak my foot,
sock and everything, to allow the warm water to help me peel the gauze away from
my skin. It bled so much that Irene made a comfortable space on our chesterfield
for me to lay back and continue to soak my foot. The kids were
still young and they would crawl all over me, tormenting me, and Irene had her
hands full, trying to keep them from bumping into my bad foot.

I was exhausted after working in the woods all day. They didn’t mind when I
raised my voice at them. I would often say, “Irene, can you do something with
them youngsters? They’ve got the guts almost kicked out of me.”

She would then try and keep them under control. Derrick, our third-eldest, was
the worst. He would run across the living room, hardly ever walking, and when he
would get within four or five feet of me he would make a big jump and land right
on top of me. If I was asleep, I would wake up in a hurry. After a good night’s
sleep, I would get up and Irene would do the same thing all over again: her
fingers down inside the Vaseline jar, giving my foot a good greasing, and then
wrapping it in gauze, putting my sock over it, and stuffing my foot back into my
workboot. I would wait for the bus to take me back into the woods again.

After several days of trying to take care of my foot on my own, there was
barely any skin left. I found myself in hospital again. Things got very bad. We
had no money coming in, only the family allowance. We didn’t have enough money
to pay the rent, or for car payments. Things were getting too tough to manage.
My wife and the church
community were praying for me, and I knew
my mom was praying real hard.

I remember one Friday evening I got the go-ahead from the doctor to return home
for the weekend. He scheduled an appointment for me to return to the hospital on
Monday morning for a follow-up. They gave me a pair of crutches and I made a
phone call to Irene to come and pick me up. Just the same as the nurses at the
hospital, she cleaned and dressed my foot. Gangrene began to set in and it
looked very bad. At one point the doctor told me that if my foot didn’t start to
heal, I could be facing amputation, and he would have to refer me to the Health
Sciences Centre in St. John’s.

The thought of having my foot cut off really scared me, but I didn’t have any
pain or feeling; it just looked really bad. My toenails were falling off, the
bottom of my foot was cut the full length across, and in the middle of my foot
there was a hole big enough for me to put the tip my small finger right inside
and touch the bone. Most of the skin from the middle of my foot to my ankle was
gone, hardly any skin to be seen anywhere. My foot looked like a piece of raw
meat. Irene went to church that Sunday evening and requested that the
congregation pray for my foot to be healed, but nothing happened.

I was supposed to go back to the hospital the next morning, but instead I told
my wife I was going to call
Pastor Perry and ask if I could come
to the church to be anointed with oil, just as it reads in the book of James,
Chapter 5, Verse 14: “
Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of
the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name
of the Lord.”
Verse 15 goes on to read,
“And the prayer of faith
shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he has
committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
”

I called Pastor Perry at the parsonage and told him what I wanted. He was very
glad to help me in any way he could. He said he would contact the church’s board
members and get as many of them to come. It was Monday and most of them would be
working, but I headed down to the church, hopeful that someone would be there.
In our Pentecostal church at that time, there were seven board members,
sometimes known as Church Deacons. They were elected by the church congregation
and took care of the church business. I walked up to the front of the church
where the pastor and three or four board members waited for me. I was on
crutches and couldn’t walk very quickly. I was anointed with oil while Pastor
Perry and the board members prayed for me. When the prayers were done, I walked
down across the church and went home. Nothing had changed and I felt very
discouraged. I wanted to get back to work in the woods operating the
skidder.

I began to question the Lord about what was happening. I didn’t
think I deserved to be in this position, and as a new Christian I didn’t have
much faith, but I still believed the Lord would heal my foot. I thought of the
lame man in the book of Acts, Chapter 3, Verses 6-8. “
Then Peter said, Silver
and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus
Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand, and
lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.
And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple,
walking, and leaping, and praising God.”

I thought it would be great if that could happen to me. I was desperate, ever
reminding myself that I had five children to care for, along with a mortgage and
a car payment, and only the family allowances coming in. Irene and I prayed for
about an hour after I got home. I was lying down on the chesterfield, with my leg
up on the coffee table, and looking at my poor foot. It had only one toenail
left. I said to myself that one toenail was not much good, so I took hold of it
and pulled it off, tearing away the flesh along with it. It didn’t hurt or bleed.
I just put the nail in some tissue and threw it into the garbage can. As I
stared at my foot, I began to feel pain and I noticed it was starting to
bleed.

I yelled out to Irene, who was in the kitchen washing dishes, “I
just pulled off the last toenail and now it’s starting to pain and my toe is
bleeding!”

She ran into where I was and said, “If it’s paining and bleeding, that means
life is starting to come back in it. It’s getting better! The Lord is healing
your foot!”

She began to wrap tissues around my toe to stop the bleeding. We were praying
and praising the Lord for what was happening. We knelt down at the chesterfield
and prayed for a while, looking at my foot from time to time. Each time we
checked, we could see a small difference. It looked as if it was beginning to
heal. About three or four hours later, the bottom of my foot was completely
healed and the hole in the middle had completely closed up. I was feeling much
better by the time we went to bed. I was walking and leaping and praising my
God. My foot had a new layer of skin forming and it looked very smooth and
shiny. Sometimes Irene and I would find ourselves talking about it with someone
and we would say it was like the big hand and little hand of a clock. You don’t
see the hour hand moving, but you look away for a little while, and when you
look back you can see it had moved. That was what it was like each time we
looked at my foot, seeing it starting to heal. I didn’t have to go back to the
hospital, but I thank them for what they did for me.

Every summer, our church in Happy Valley would host a party for
the Sunday school kids, parents, and teachers. Irene and I, along with our five
children, attended and participated in the games. The men tied a rope from one
tree to another, and the object of the game was to run and jump over the rope. I
was able to jump as high as anyone there. That was back in July of 1976. In
order to play a game of soccer, we stuck four sticks in the ground for goalposts
and had someone pick teams of boys and men. I can still remember that I was so
excited about the Lord healing my foot. Here I was with a pair of leather
workboots on and kicking around a soccer ball while running around with the
other men. I scored two or three of our goals.

I remember Pastor Perry saying to me, “Are you sure you’re the man with the bad
foot?”

I replied, “No, I don’t have a bad foot anymore!”

We were all very thankful to the Lord for healing my foot. The days of miracles
are not over yet. The following Monday morning I was back in the woods and on
the skidder, or timberjack, with my hard leather boots on, hauling chokers and
cables and hooking up the wood and hauling it to the landing. I haven’t had any
more problems with my foot since that day. Praise the Lord for His wonderful
healing power! And I never lost a day’s work since.