Possibly the best preparation I could have had for entering my teen years were the weekly Bible studies at my grandparent’s house. I got to know how God works—and what it means to make Jesus Christ the center of my life—through verse by verse studies of the Pauline epistles.

What I did not know at the time was that my grandfather’s parents were in the group that left the Mennonite Church in the Ukraine in 1860 to start the Mennonite Brethren Church. It was such an aggressively evangelistic and missionary-oriented church that it was socially ostracized and several hundred members moved onto a land grant in the foothills of the Caucasian mountains. That heritage came alive in my grandparents, my father and his brothers and sisters—and is now mirrored in our family.

In God’s providence an older preacher led a series of prophetic studies at our church, focusing on the Second Coming of Christ. After thinking on it one evening I decided get ready for that event and the next morning before I headed for school I asked my mother to pray with me. She first introduced me to John 3:16 and then I confessed I was a sinner and accepted the forgiveness Jesus offered. Two years later, when I was 12, I asked to be baptized, giving my testimony before the assembled membership. In our Mennonite Brethren Church baptisms commonly happened between ages 15 and 20, so my request was turned down.

God’s intervention

In a truly God moment early the next morning an older couple asked to be baptized at the planned afternoon river baptism. They were asked to give their testimony after the service. A visiting missionary presented the morning message. He told about how important his baptism at age nine had been in India. After the service an elderly visiting preacher got up and suggested my rejection for baptism be reversed—and I was baptized that afternoon. Even at age 12 I recognized the obvious intervention of God in my spiritual development.

A second God moment happened when my father, having heard my complaints about the boring teacher in my teen Sunday school class, invited the Sunday school superintendent to our house. I was invited into the room to share my complaint. There was little classroom improvement, but I recognized my father cared about my spiritual development.

My next God moment came when at age 15 I was promoted to a class of older teen boys. Somehow my complaint about the previous teacher had reached our new teacher. The first quarter our Scripture Press curriculum focused on the book of Jeremiah. Each boy was given a workbook–and our teacher asked me to correct the lessons most of the boys did during the week. What an incredible learning opportunity as I worked my way through 12 to 15 workbooks every Sunday. The fact the boy’s work was evaluated every Sunday proved highly motivating for them to actually do the “homework.”

My parents were readers

Dad and Mom were readers. My youngest brother remembers Dad reading a book in one hand while doing barn chores. I remember him reading a weekly newspaper. In fact, he even wrote an article for the Free Press Weekly Farmer promoting a family allowance for families with children—later adopted by the Canadian government.

My avid reading habits ran up against our church’s library committee ruling against teens reading fiction before they were 16 years old. So instead, my neighbor friend and I at age 16 were asked to do each Sunday’s check-out of library books, an instance of God’s sense of humor. I was now free to take home any book I wanted to read. By the fifth grade I was reading eighth grade history texts.

The third year in the senior boys’ class the teacher asked me to lead the class when he was on vacation. He also introduced me to a series of apologetic books by Harry Rimmer, then a renowned apologetics writer. That exposure wetted my appetite for biblical apologetics—and prepared me for the apologetic books I acquired as Moody Press editor years later.

Active in outreach

Three other teen developments shaped my future. One summer my neighbor and I organized a Sunday afternoon Bible study for teen boys. The preparation alone deepened my knowledge of God’s Word. The other was that at age 18 my neighbor and I both taught a class of preteen boys at our church’s Sunday school. During the winter he and I also drove to a mission outreach to lead a Sunday school class. We were busy!!

Finally, at age 15 my parents enrolled my sister and me in the ninth grade at the very new Mennonite Educational Institute. For four years we had Bible classes every day based on material prepared by the provincial government’s education department. This truly remarkable series of studies of both Old and New Testament events and literary passages, along with regular Scripture verses memorization, prepared me to skip the first two years of our nearby four-year Bible Institute.

Attending MEI

Of course, we did not only have Bible classes at MEI. I got my first introduction to agricultural practices through, of all persons, our English teacher. I absorbed everything he taught and went home and introduced my father to, for example, crop rotation, the nitrogen delivered by thunderstorms. When he finally was able to have a deep well drilled and strong pump installed, he developed pasture management irrigation practices that won him Master Farmer of the Year award in our municipality. My efforts to become a softball pitcher in our hayloft, however, only proved I was better at pitching hay bales than softballs.

Another teacher in a health class introduced us to the physical and mental issues that my sister and I recognized were troubling our mother, despite her strong support of our educational objectives. The extraordinary election win of Harry S. Truman in 1948  led me to write an essay on his win for our English class. I had never gained an A in any written assignment by our tough English teacher, but the Truman win essay got me an A-, a portent of what was to come for me as writer.

By age 19 an uncle had me preaching regularly at a church planting outreach in a neighboring community. He also provided transportation for me to do mission outreach vacation Bible school.

I still had no idea what God was preparing me for, but I began to get a hint when four of us agreed to work at a silver and zinc mine in northern British Columbia. That story follows in my next chapter.