31. The Move to Fort St. John

© 2020 Daniel Yordy

August 1998 – April 1999

The Next Eight Years 
These next eight years, from August of 1998 to August of 2006 stand as an in-between time in my life. In August of 1998, I was numb and frozen inside, filled with a million unhealed wounds and unanswered questions. I was basically just trying to survive one day at a time. In August of 2006 I heard the most wonderful words that have ever come to me across the pulpit, and in that moment, my thirsty soul was fully ready to receive those words as the very River of God.

I have penciled in six chapters to cover these eight years, plus three explanatory chapters including the next one, titled “Why Did We Leave?” Through the first half of these years the task was to receive the gentle healing of God and the second half was to re-awaken my desire to know the living God.

I made firmly two critical mental positions that would carry me through the slow unraveling of all my hurt. The first was towards “hearing from God” and “seeking His will.” – I refused. I refused to vacillate any longer over the issue of “will, will, what is God’s will?” I refused to entertain any “check” or to seek any “peace” or “lack of peace.” This was not throwing God out, but the opposite. I determined that I would live in the expectation that God alone directed our steps. I have not altered that determination from then until now.

The second is that, in leaving the move, I took EVERYTHING I had heard or believed or taught and put it all on a shelf in the far recesses of my mind. I kept one thing only, the grace of the Lord Jesus inside my heart. Everything else went onto that shelf. You see, I knew that God had spoken to me and revealed Himself and His word to me over many years. I knew that I had received many things that were truly of God. My problem was that I also knew that I held many ideas in my theology that were contrary to the gospel and that I had heard many things that were not of God. And I simply had no idea which was which.

I made a covenant with God concerning everything that had come into my life, every understanding I had received, the true and the false, that God Himself would bring those things back off that shelf in His time, arising inside of me in present revelation. And that if God did not bring something back off that shelf, then I would know it no more.

God is a keeper of Covenant.

Our House in Town
You can see the townhouse into which we moved in the picture below, probably on September 1. This would be our home for eight months.



This was a nicely apportioned home. The street level was living and kitchen area; the upstairs was three bedrooms and a bath. Then, there was a full and open basement beneath. The laundry and storage were downstairs, but also a large corner for my office. 

One of the first things that I purchased with the student loan money, in September of 1998, was my first computer. I was finally on the Internet. I built a nice little computer desk, having plenty of space in the basement for such construction work. I still use the same desk now.

Maureen homeschooled Kyle and Johanna. Little Katrina was much more active at this point. She was the mischevious one. She would see me heading for my chair and run to leap into it first, laughing while I lifted her out. She would sit on the stairs up next to Kyle and scream loudly, just so I would get after him for messing with  her, even though he was not.

The wide spaces of Canada meant that it was normal for children to grow up in isolated places, and so education in the provinces was always geared towards meeting the needs of everyone. For this reason, homeschooling was much more prevelant and supported by provincial education. There was a nice educational building available for our use, with a craft room and library. We also made extensive use of the Fort St. John library, right in the center of town. Spending our time wandering among rows of books or sitting and reading this or that was becoming a trademark of our family.

There was also a large gym/swimming pool available for the children. We enrolled Kyle and Johanna in swimming classes, and thus they learned to swim well.

Since we were no longer “in the move,” we also bought a television set. I still continued to read many books out loud to the children and Maureen, but we also began to enjoy many good family movies together. Watching good family movies together was a shared experience and would be an ongoing and wholesome part of the fabric of our family.

At the same time, we enjoyed connecting with real Canadians in Canadian life on a regular basis. Our outing became Subway, at least until we tired of Subway.

I want to add here a large book I checked out from the FSJ library and read all the way through, The Sovereign Individual, by William Rees-Mogg and John Davidson. I responded to the liberterian approach to understanding human life found in this book. Because I had the Internet, now, you can be sure that I searched widely to understand the world. In this search, I connected this book with a man named Bill Bonner, whose writing I enjoyed. I bring this in, because this connection will take me, after we move to Lubbock, to the most important source in the present time for my understanding of this world, and that is LewRockwell.com. 

Fall Semester at Northern Lights
I began college a second time at Northern Lights Community College. My path forward was not clear, so I just started at the beginning. Among the courses I took this fall were a first year Composition course, Canadian History, and Physical Geography. I also started with a computer course, but soon dropped it since its slowness drove me bananas. 

My geography teacher was Wim Kok (pronounced Vim Coke). I see that he is still teaching geography at that same college, these many years later. Wim Kok was one of the three or four best teachers in my educational experience. I loved geography as a subject, and I loved how Wim Kok taught it. I learned so much. He would explain things in such clear detail on the board, starting on one corner and working his way across, filling the entire large whiteboard with clear and complete explanation.

I learned something interesting about teachers in secular colleges. Those who have a “Christian” base teach real things, things that mean something or are useful. Those who do not have a “Christian” base have replaced such thinking with Marxism. These teachers have nothing real to teach and leave you with useless and empty so-called “ideas.” My “English” teacher was one of those, but I was just being introduced to the role of Marxism in college education and was not in a position to be overly bothered by it.

On the other hand, Wim Kok had a Catholic background and my Canadian history teacher was Mormon. Both of these saw the world as practical and real and imparted useful understanding. I had also signed up for an introduction to Sociology course. The teacher was a Marxist lesbian feminist up from Victoria. She saw her role as the one who would break these young people away from their “false ideology.” I saw her as one who wanted to be the high priestess of a new religion in the minds of these students. Needless to say, it was not long before I dropped that course as well.

But I love college, both as teacher and as student. And so, in wandering these “halls of learning,” I noticed two things on the bulletin boards. One was a contest by the local radio station that offered $2500 towards schooling costs for writing three to five Canadian short stories, which they would then read over the radio. I applied to this contest and was accepted. I wrote a great little story set in the Peace River country, drawing from a true event, but expanding on it with an historical fiction approach. They liked that one. My second was similar, but just okay. For the third one, I wanted to write a story about First Nations people. I thought I could interview some in order to get the basis for my story. However, I ran into a massive internal block that shut me down. Though I worried myself against that block for several months, in the end, I could not write that third story. This puzzled me deeply; now I know of it as Asperger’s. The result was that I received only half the money. Being unable to finish what I had agreed on troubled me deeply, however.

Then, I also saw a notice regarding an election for a student member of the educational council of Northern Lights College. I got someone to nominate me and, lo and behold, I was “elected.” (I doubt that very many students voted, and I may have been the only nominee.) And so, I became a full voting member of the governing body of Northern Lights College. This also paid for my entire tuition for the year. Now, I was 42 years old at this point, more than twice the age of most of my fellow college students.

This meant that once a month, starting in October, I rode with the administrator of the Fort St. John branch, Casey Sheridan, down to the main administration building of the college in Dawson Creek for the meeting of the educational council. These were several individuals, including the college administrators from each branch, myself as a student representative, and several others involved with the academic side of things. We would make the final decisions regarding courses offered, etc. This also gave me an hour’s time each way for conversation with Mr. Sheridan, which was awesome. I did raise the issue of the Sociology teacher pushing her religion in the classroom. He thought that was wrong, but I’m not sure he understood I was speaking of Marxism. Of truth, I did not understand that whole arena either.

This was a remarkable experience for me, coming on the heels of being an elder in the move and sitting in the decision-making meetings in that context. There were a lot of similarities in how the governing meetings were conducted. But there was also one large difference, and that was the policy-management approach to governance. As the educational board, we set the policies, but it was the administrators who worked those policies without our “micro-management.” If there was a disagreement, that would be addressed only in terms of “were the policies followed or not.” Otherwise the manager was free to manage as he or she saw fit. I pondered these things deeply, since I had come away from move community governance with some troubling questions. I attended about seven of these meetings, from October to April; they were a rich experience for me and gave me an important new view of education.

Then, a ways into the fall semester, a new course was started called “Portfolio Development.” I enrolled in this course since it seemed to be geared towards my goals. In this course, we were trained in how to express in concrete terms what we learned through life experience. In this way, we could obtain college credit if our learning matched specific college courses. My hope was that I could skip many of the required courses to obtain a second bachelor’s degree, and maybe even bring in many of my Covenant Life College credits. I could see two-plus years towards obtaining a teacher’s certificate, but not five. 

This was not easy for me, however, because to describe my learning, I had to go back through my years in community, most of which caused me great pain for which I had no answers. No healing could yet start, not for three more years. At the same time, I still talked too much, and that made things even more difficult for me. In this course, we took the Myers-Brigg personality test, a very reasonable approach to different human personalities. I came out as an INTJ; that is, introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging. This personality type is one of the rarest. BUT – this was the extraordinary thing; as I was reading about the life experiences of INTJ individuals, I was reading about me. Other people were like me! This was the first time I knew such a thing.

I want to include one experience at Blueberry that I read about in the Myers-Brigg literature. Before we moved back down to Oregon, in 1993, I had drawn up a set of plans for the remodeling and expansion of the school building. In my mind, my ideas in the plans were there ONLY for the purpose of providing a starting point for discussion. But when I asked Sister Charity if she and Sister Delores could talk with me about their ideas for this plan, they refused. I pled, but they refused. Then, when we returned in 1995, I discovered, to my horror, that they had followed my plans completely. This was part of my reluctance to enter back into teaching in the Blueberry school. Those lines on the paper were just starting points for discussion, they were NOT meant to be the final plan.

The reason Delores and Charity had refused to discuss the plans with me was that they believed that my mind was set and that I would refuse all their ideas. I never thought that way, ever, but all I could surmise was that there was something terribly wrong with me. Now, I was reading that INTJ people were just like me, needing to set out a clear possibility in a plan before being capable of discussing it, and had experienced the exact same reactions from other people. For the first time the thought that I might be “normal,” just different, was hovering around my consciousness. As I said, there could not yet be any healing, but at least some form of mental stability was coming into view. Being INTJ is not the same as being Asperger’s; it carries its own set of difficulties in life.

Through all these experiences, then, I thought about the thinking processes taking place inside the Blueberry elder’s meetings. I began to realize the meaning and extent of what can be called “group think,” that is, how we define our world by how we perceive the most influential people in our world would define it. “Group think” has the power to blind people to things others outside the group see clearly. This was indeed a factor in my separation from the Blueberry eldership.

Different Fellowships 
There were quite a number of people living in Fort St. John who had once lived in the move communities. Some of these were still connected with the move, including Rick and Shirley Annett, but others wanted nothing to do with the move, including our good friends, Peter and Barbara Bell. Maureen and I maintained our friendships with many on both sides of this divide.

We began attending a small home fellowship with the Bell’s. This was led by a father and son pair, the Wilson’s, who had lived at Graham River in the early years, but had “left the move” before I arrived at Graham in 1977.  After a couple of months with them, Maureen and I switched over to a larger Spirit-filled church, called Christian Life Center. There were a number of former “movites” attending there. The Lord was with us in both gatherings, but in neither did we find what we really needed. Of course, we had no idea what we really needed; we just knew what wasn’t.

The Meaning of Friendship
I want to bring in the critical things God was taking Maureen and I through inside of this topic of friendship. It is clear to me now that, inside God’s intentions, Fort St. John was simply a transition point for us; no fulfillment would happen there in any part of our lives – except one.

First, leaving the move was an overwhelming experience of identity. For 21 years, I had identified myself by the move. My entire relationship with God had been in terms of move-of-God practice and theology. Now we had broken from that identity. Even inside God’s great care for us, this was overwhelming.

The Wilson’s who had left Graham River years before had the opposite experience. Brethren from the communities (all of whom themselves later “left the move”) came to them in town to rebuke them for their iniquity and rebellion in “departing from God.” 

Then, at Christian Life Center, I gained an insight into a massive phenomenon that was part of the fabric of Fort St. John, something I had never considered or known existed. In 1998 it was now twenty-six years after the communities had first started in 1972. For twenty-four years (and continuing even until now, in 2020), the Christian brethren in Fort St. John, of whatever denomination or outlook, had been receiving an unending stream of broken, hurting, and confused people leaving the “farms” and moving into Fort St. John in an attempt to rebuild their lives and their sanity.

Deliverance services for “move demons” were not unknown.

This was a terrible, but true aspect of the move-of-God experience, one which we had kept ourselves ignorant of, because of our “religious superiority.” This is not the only view one should have of the move communities, but it is a vital view, nonetheless. 

You see, from the time we left Blair Valley until now, I have never left off my determination to be a part of a Community of Christ, the community of my heart. Now, I was gaining the first definition of a community with whom I would walk. That definition is this – “People WILL BE more blessed in their going then they are in their coming.” Indeed, I practice this definition of Christ life every time a reader unsubscribes from my letters. Though I feel normal human hurt, nonetheless, I bless them in their going with all my heart. They belong to Jesus and never to me.

The problem we were experiencing, however, was that even those who had “left the move” still practiced the same things for which Maureen and I had left, that is, this favorite human practice of manipulating and controlling other people. I was beginning to realize, right from the start, that these things were not “move problems,” nor Christian problems, but human problems.

At Blueberry in particular, an effort towards me was to “fix my problem,” by getting me to acknowledge my problem and then to change my performance. I never connected with their definitions of “my problem” because those definitions did not fit, and even if they had, I was utterly incapable of pretending the change they wanted to see. As the prophet said, “Can a leopard change his spots?” And as David said, “It is God who has made us and not we ourselves.”

But now I had entered what would be a very strange three-year time-period in my life, in which different ones made very direct effort to alter my identity. I never understood any of this, and it made finding my way through the murkiness even more difficult. Nonetheless, I see now that it was through these experiences that God enabled me to understand human identity, the false and the true.

In the home fellowship, I was sharing the vision and dream of my heart with the younger Wilson, who was the leader of that fellowship. I did not understand it fully myself, of course, and so I said, “I want to start a Bible school for God’s people.” 

Before I had any chance to share what I meant by that, or why it was so important to me, he replied with all assertive correction. “God is NOT doing that anymore.” This is a practice of disrespect that I have never understood. The brother had left the move, but the worst practices of the move had not left him.

We had reason to attend one of the convention services at Shepherd’s Inn. We needed to connect with some who would be there, including Gary Rehmeier. (About what I don’t remember.) One of the sisters from Blueberry needed to talk with me. We sat down together, and she proceeded to counsel me with all concern that I had abandoned my family in order to pursue my interests (in going to school at Northern Lights.) There was no room in her heart for asking me or for hearing a different understanding. I was going to school so that I could eventually support my family. School, however, took much less of my time than full-time work would, and I was more “with my family” then most men. Her “ministry” to me resulted only in greater sorrow.

In fact, I had stopped at the Blueberry school during our move to Fort St. John in order to retrieve my books and filing cabinet with my school papers that I had left there, including my large Webster’s 1926 dictionary. Sister Charity had said to me, “I hope you find what you are looking for.” I did not respond to that; I was not looking for some sort of “zen” or other revelation nor any “place of recognition.” I just wanted to support my family. People like to read into other people’s lives without asking, just assuming they actually know.

AND – the truth is, although I have not found a long-term way in which I can support my family, I have found all that I ever wanted in knowing Father-with-me.

This “abuse of identity” against me will continue through the next two years, even after we moved to Texas. Here, however, I want to set against it the opposite. And that opposite was found in Rick Annett. 

The Lord Jesus Christ proved Himself to me through Rick Annett, that our bond of friendship together, he and Shirley with Maureen and me, had nothing to do with the move or anything outward, but was fully out from Jesus in our hearts. Very simply, Rick and Shirley continued their relationship with us, just the same as it had been at Blair Valley. And through Rick, I came to know the deepest meaning and value of friendship. I am not speaking of any large actions, rather, just the joy of sharing one another’s lives. In fact, the topic of “friendship” finds its place in my guide for Christian Community, Symmorphy V: Life, entirely out from the proving of Jesus to me through Rick Annett.

Now, as I said, Rick and Shirley had not “left the move,” and so Rick was unwilling to continue regular services with us as that would not be sanctioned by the move ministry. This is why we attended Christian gatherings elsewhere. Nonetheless, we visited with them in their apartment, and they in our townhouse often and regularly. Rick and Shirley, of course, knew Peter and Barbara well, having lived in the same community with them at Evergreen. 

Very simply, Rick accepted me and valued me as I was, with no shadow of any need for me to change in order to fit any prejudiced definitions of “Christ.” And here’s the wonderful thing. I can copy towards you what Rick was towards me and be more “like Jesus.” To learn of Christ does bring a change in us, entirely in the arena of how we regard and care for one another.

Rick, you gave me the most valuable gift any human can give another – friendship.
And it was Rick’s continued friendship towards me that enabled me to safely maneuver along the precipice of a mental breakdown until I was safe enough to leave it behind. Because of Rick and Shirley, Maureen and I did not know the awful breakage forced against most others who “left the move.”

The Spring Semester
In the Spring Semester, I continued with Physical Geography and Canadian History. Getting a Canadian view of Canadian history and interaction with the U.S. was especially important as it enabled me to know that Americans can be deluded about themselves and their view of the rest of the world. I also added a second course with Wim Kok, titled “Resource Geography.” This course was at the 400 level and thus came through the University of Northern British Columbia. I really loved learning from Wim Kok and wrote one of my more memorable papers in this course, a study of the Three Gorges Dam in China.

I also started a business course, but soon dropped it as impractical. I took an Anthropology course on the relationships between First Nations and the governments of Canada. I really liked this course as well. I wanted very much to learn more about these hurting people and hoped that I might teach in one of their reservation schools. It is with sorrow that I say that this was not God’s path for us.

The Annett’s and the Dickout’s
By January, I no longer had an interest in attending the fellowships in Fort St. John, for I was not finding anything I needed. Maureen did attend sometimes with the children. Instead, we began the bright part of our experience in Fort St. John. Dan and Ann Dickout, whom I had known in my early years at Graham River, before they were married, were now living just outside of Charlie Lake, a few miles from Fort St. John. They were attending Christian Life Center where they often led praise. Dan and Ann Dickout were wonderful praise leaders, deeply anointed of God. Dan made a living teaching piano and other musical instruments; he had a studio in town.

Anyhow, by January, we started going out to Dan and Ann’s home each Sunday afternoon with Rick and Shirley as well. We would have dinner together and then spend the afternoon fellowshipping together and often in singing and praise. These times with the Annett’s and the Dickout’s were of great value to Maureen and me. Dan and Ann’s children were a bit older than ours, but they played together in the downstairs. 

This was 1999, and many were getting ready for “Y2K.” I don’t remember my reasoning, but I had determined for myself that nothing would actually happen. The Dickout’s and many others were getting prepared, however. This was also a few years after Riverdance had wowed the world with a new style of Irish dancing, and two of the Dickout children were learning Irish dancing and were willing to show their steps for us. 

By the middle of March, we knew that Maureen was carrying our fourth child, James.

No Options 
The primary concern for us was how I could support us with a decent-paying career. 

Sometime in February, some ladies from the British Columbia teacher oversight visited Northern Lights College concerning the teacher preparation program. I visited with one of them concerning my desire to become a teacher as well as my previous education and teaching experience. When I asked about proving out some of my Covenant Life College credits through portfolio development, her entire demeanor towards me changed. Her face turned red with deep hostility; in fact, it was clear to me that a demon had filled her call against me in that moment. “NO credits from any Christian college will ever be accepted,” she hissed. 

I realized in that moment that, even if I did go through an entire program of five years of school at the undergraduate level, I still might not be accepted by these virulent Marxists. In their possessed minds, Christians are “people of hate” out to destroy children’s lives. 

I was interested at the time in linguistics and the idea of getting a master’s degree in Linguistics from a Christian university and becoming a Bible translator with Wycliffe translators appealed to me. I looked in that direction for a while but found no real peace. That direction would never have supported us, nor fulfilled God’s intention for my life.

And so, by March and April, it became clear to me, not that God was closing doors for us in Fort St. John, but that He was not opening any. 

Leaving Canada
Meanwhile, my sister, Frieda, along with Tim, Ryan, and April, were all still living at the Christian community on the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas. Maureen’s sister, Jessica and Matthew Sanchez also lived there. Maureen’s other sister, Lois, had a little house in town.

Since I had the world on the Internet, I began researching Christian graduate schools in Texas. I discovered two things. First, that every school in Texas, Christian and non-Christian, offered teaching certificate programs, easily accessed. And second, that a master’s degree program just might accept my entire bachelor’s degree from Covenant Life College. This would allow me to obtain a teaching certificate AND a master’s degree at the same time, AND in one-and-one-half years, not five.

I did not want to go to Texas. All my time in the move, it was Texas this and Texas that. The last thing I wanted was a “Texas driver’s license.” 

Even more than that, we had gone through so much to be immigrated to Canada. I did not want to leave Canada. At that time, Canada was much freer than the states. In Canada, the Canadian government had demonstrated fear of both the people and the provinces. In fact, the provinces often made decisions together without inviting the Federal government. One did not fear the Canadian government. The U.S. government, on the other hand, is overwhelming in its power and tyranny over the people and over the states. The idea that we live in a “free country” is simply absurd. 

But by April of 1999, there just seemed to be no other path. At the same time, some of the brethren in the move fellowship in Lubbock had connected with a natural health practitioner named Dr. Hall who was doing great things for people.  This connection presented me with the possibility of treatment and cleansing that might help me regain the energy I needed to support my family.

We decided on a “temporary” trip to Lubbock, being able to stay with Maureen’s sisters or mine for a short time, in order to take advantage of this health program. At the same time, Lubbock Christian University had a master’s degree program that also provided teacher certification. Our thought was that we would go to Lubbock for the summer and then see if God opened that door for us or not.

This was definitely a clear path forward. In fact, it was the only path forward visible to us. 

And so, with definite sorrow, Maureen and I prepared to leave Fort St. John and Canada and to return to the states. In fact, a large part of my thinking was that Maureen had followed my lead faithfully through all these years, and now, maybe it was time for me to make a choice for her, so that she could be part of her sister’s lives as well. For Maureen and the children’s sake, I was even willing to don the “sad title” of being a “Texan.”

We were in a monthly rental position with our home, and so we could leave just after school was out, at the end of April’s rent. When we had moved to Fort St. John, I had sold our solar power setup to an individual who had property just north of FSJ. He had allowed me to park the blue van on his property, since we were allowed only one vehicle at the townhouse. I was very relieved to retrieve the blue van, which I loved deeply. It started right away, even after months buried in snow. 

We divided all our belongings into two parts, the larger part would go into the blue van, which I would leave parked again at Shepherd’s Inn. The smaller part would be fitted into and on top of our Ford Station Wagon, along with places for all five of us to tuck into. I fitted a lot of stuff into the station wagon. When it was half full, I took it to a shop to be worked on. The mechanic rebuked me severely for weighting the car down too much. Except I was only half done. You see, I needed that vehicle to serve us, not the other way around. And it did serve us well.

We did not need to go straight to Lubbock, however; so we turned our direction towards Meadowlands, Minnesota where we hoped to spend a couple of weeks with mom and with Glenn and Kim and their family. 

I parked the blue van at Shepherd’s Inn, with their permission. We said our goodbyes to the Bells, the Annett’s, and the Dickout’s, which was more sorrowful to Maureen and me than leaving Canada. We headed east towards Winnipeg.

In Winnipeg, we spent a night or two with Elizabeth (Roes) Croker and her children. Her husband was out on a job. It was great to connect with Elizabeth again. She was as filled with cheer and laughter as always.

Soon after we left Winnipeg, we crossed the border into Minnesota. We had left Canada behind us, a loss we have borne with sadness from then until now.