6. Graham River Farm

© 2017 Daniel Yordy

June 1977 - March 1978



The Graham River Property and Surroundings
This place is written forever in my memories.

Living with the Davison’s
I had returned to Graham River. I do not remember where I slept that first night, but for the first couple of weeks I stayed in a cabin by myself.  I grew pretty lonely; I was not a socializer. I did not easily start relationships with people, and I was left alone by the people there as far as visiting was concerned. This was not an intentional oversight of the community; it’s just the way it was. The communities have improved much in this regard. Of course I was with people all the time at meals, in services, and on the work details.

Graham River was beautiful any time of year. The fields stretching back from the cabins were sprouting green with new grain. The trees were in full leaf. The gardens were beginning to grow. I fitted into the work schedule in the same way I had done before, though there were different sets of tasks. The firewood season was over for a few months. The children were out of school, so they and their teachers were also on the work schedule now. There was a lot of activity on such a large community farm. One of my tasks was to work on the sawmill crew. The sawmill was a little distance from the rest of the community, at the far end of their small-plane landing strip. Warren Bowles, a young man my same age, was the saw operator. I helped roll the logs onto the carriage and helped take the fresh new lumber off on the other side. I loved watching the new boards being shaped by the saw.

After about two weeks, one of the women elders of the community, Ethelwyn Davison, approached me to say she would like to see me at her cabin that afternoon. Delighted at the chance to visit with someone, I went with anticipation.  

“Daniel,” she said as we sat in her small living room overlooking the gardens, “my husband, Dural, and I have been praying about having you come live with us. We asked for visions, before we said anything to you. They were positive, so we want to know if you would like to live with us.”

“Yes, I would!” I answered.

“Good, bring your things over tomorrow.”

So I was introduced to the practice in the communities of seeking for visions to confirm what someone feels God is speaking to them. I have obtained many sets of visions for directions I had from the Lord during my years in that fellowship. Almost every time, they were clearly for my situation and provided much comfort and assurance that the Lord was indeed working in my life.

Just then a young lady came into the Davison cabin wanting to talk to Sister Ethelwyn. She asked me if I wouldn’t mind leaving so they could talk privately. Unbeknownst to Sister Ethelwyn, this was a crushing blow to me. I was so lonely and had so wanted to visit. I went back to my cabin and wept. But the next day I moved in with the Davison’s.

The Davison’s had doubled the size of their cabin with an addition, making it around 25 feet by 35 feet.  I had my own room in the middle of the back wall. On one side of my room was a room shared by Mallory and David Smith, Ethelwyn’s two sons. Between their room and the living room was a room occupied by Meri Smith, Ethelwyn’s daughter. Mallory was just a year or so younger than me, Meri, a couple of years younger than him, and David was probably around 10 or 11. Dural and Ethelwyn shared a room on the opposite corner of the cabin. The living room and their bedroom were in the new addition. Dural was away for a couple of months on a ministry trip. He was a traveling ministry, going from group to group and community to community around North America, ministering to the various fellowships.  

Dural and Ethelwyn were as opposite as could be and yet they shared the same heart. Brother D (as he was called) was slow and methodical. Though he had good things to say, I fell asleep under his preaching many times. His gift was in prayer, and he had one of the closest faith-filled relationships with the Lord of anyone I have ever known. Sister Ethelwyn, on the other hand, was dynamic and creative. She was a trained musician and a music and drama teacher, and to her final day young people were out of breath to keep up with her creativity. I would live in their home for the first six months of my community experience.

Many Wonderful Experiences
I loved Christian community. Soon after my return one of the ladies, Janet Booth, told me with a smile, “I knew you would be back.” I loved the shared meals in the Tabernacle with all the hubbub of people visiting with one another. I loved the services, upon which was an anointing of the Holy Spirit I had not known before, or since I have left community. There was an earnestness and devotion in worship and in the word that these people had that most once-a-week Christians never know. At the age of twenty, I loved the “primitive” conditions. It was like camping out all the time. Our water came fresh from the spring in buckets. We had outhouses, each shared by two or three cabins. This was not new for me, since Henry Miller used only an outhouse. All the daily activities were involved with obtaining the basic necessities of life – food, warmth and shelter. Everything was real; there were none of the “cover-ups” produced by civilization to hide people from reality. I loved the simple hearty meals cooked on wood cook stoves. I loved working with the men on all the types of tasks I had read about in Farmer Boy by Laura Ingles Wilder when I was younger. And I loved seeing others whom I knew and cared for benefit personally from the work of my hands. I valued that reward far greater than any pay check.

July was hay month. The men who took care of the horses hooked them onto the hay wagons, and we rode out to the fields. These horses were large, powerful Belgians, hooked two to a wagon. The hay was laid out in neat rows across the fields. It had been cut and winnowed by horse-drawn machinery. A contraption pulled along behind the wagon picked up the hay and brought it up over the end wall of the wagon. My job was to pitchfork the hay forward to the front of the wagon as it came up. The field was filled with crews of men and horses working together. When the wagon was piled high we rode back to the barns, lying on our backs on top of the pile seeing only the sky, rocking to the slow plod of the horses. It was a wonderful break before the hard work in the haymows.  

There were two big barns, the cow barn and the horse barn. They had large high haymows above them. The wagon pulled up in front of the barn, and we climbed up to the haymow. Beyond the wagon was an ox tied to a rope. Rohn Ritchie, around 15 at the time, was the ox man. A large tong was suspended from a pulley riding on a track running the length of the haymow ceiling and attached to the rope on the other end from the ox. The great tong dug into the pile of hay on the wagon, and then Rohn urged the ox in the opposite direction, swinging the tong filled with hay up and back into the interior of the mow. At a certain point it released and dropped its load onto the growing pile of hay. There, a crew of men, myself included, forked the hay back up into the corners, keeping the pile growing. We went back and forth from fields to barns until both mows were brim full of fresh, sweet hay.

I had milked a cow when I was younger, so I joined the milking crew.  We arose before breakfast, got the milking equipment and went out to the barn. Each of us took a cow, sat on a low wooden stool, buried our foreheads in the cow’s flank, and milked a pail full of warm milk. The milking crew included Mallory, his friend, Doug Witmer, two younger fellows, Danny Reeser and Bobby Cole, a young elder named Paul Petrocinni, and myself. We each milked one cow except Doug and Mallory who were faster and milked two. We carried the milk up to the Tabernacle in a cart, usually Doug and myself, and ran it through a hand-cranked cream separator. The other fellows cleaned the barn and drove the cows to pasture for the day. While we were separating the cream from the milk, the girls from the goat barn came in with several buckets of goat milk, which we ran through the separator as well. The goat milk was separate from the cow milk, but the cream was mixed together. We finished just in time to clean up for breakfast. I was ready to eat!

The food was simple but good. There were many great cooks at Graham River, and indeed in every community where I have lived. Our diet consisted mostly of root vegetables and grain. We ate lots of potatoes as well as carrots and beets. We had potatoes fixed in every possible way. Each morning for breakfast, we ate cracked grain, and we had good homemade bread at every meal.  Dinner, the big meal of the day, was our noon-meal, and supper was usually soup – leftovers plus water. We had a small amount of meat, four times a week. It takes a lot of meat to supply 150 people each with a portion. Most of our meat was moose and bear gotten in fall by hunting. Graham River did not raise beef cattle at that time. We also had pork, the occasional sheep, and rabbit once a month. Occasionally, we would even have horse, which is decent meat in spite of the thought, similar to moose. There was homemade cheese as well and peas, cabbage, and broccoli from the gardens. The greenhouses turned out tomatoes during the summer.

Sometimes I rode with Rohn Ritchie out to the sawmill to get a load of lumber for a building project. Those were always great days. It took half a day for the ox to lumber slowly out to the sawmill, for us to load up the wagon with rough-cut boards, and then for the ox to plod slowly back to the community. Only on the last stretch of the day, when it sensed that it was headed for the barn, did the ox pick up any speed, and even that was just a mild walk for us. We made two trips on such days, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

It was soon discovered that I was a builder. Builders are in high demand on community farms. I worked with Steve Herman, a woodworker from Pennsylvania. He was preparing to build a carpenter shop right next to the welding and mechanics shop, on the corner where the road came up from the river. He enlisted my help. I enjoyed working with Steve; we had good conversation together. I had only framed before, but now I began a journey of learning by doing into every aspect of the construction trade. We built the carpenter shop through the summer. It was 40 foot square. The farm had some tools to put in it, a radial arm saw and a table saw as well as Steve’s Shopsmith. The stove was right in the center. It became a great place in which to work as well as a gathering place for the men around the stove.

One morning as I was laying out the rafters on top of the wall, Ray Clark, the elder in charge of the work schedule came up to us. “We need all the men in the potato field to pull the weeds,” he said. Steve was a bit perturbed at losing my help at this point of the construction. “You don’t understand,” he said, “we’ve got a carpenter here who can really help us with the building.”  

“Nope,” said Brother Ray, “The potatoes are our food. We need every man weeding.”

So that day I went to the potato field to pull out the lambsquarters from between the fast-growing rows of potatoes. It was actually an enjoyable experience. There were 30 to 40 men and boys on their hands and knees moving through the rows of potatoes, pulling out the thickly growing lambsquarters. Of course, the lambsquarters contain more nutrition than any plant in the garden, but they aren’t the best tasting, so away they go. The sun was warm; the day was pleasant. The men laughed and talked together through the day. We weeded ten acres of potatoes in short order.

Contending with the Word
I ate my meals in the common dining room and worked with the men during the day, but in the evenings and on Sundays, I spent my time in my own room, steadfast at the most important task before me in those months. I spent hours searching the word, asking the Lord to show me if the strange things I was hearing were really true. My first question was concerning righteousness. Does God really expect us to walk in righteousness ourselves? I went through the New Testament from beginning to end and wrote out every verse on walking in the truth. I became astounded as I filled out page after page, copying nearly a third of the entire New Testament. By the time I was finished, I could only affirm that the New Testament did agree with the Apostle John, “Do not be deceived, my little children. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.”  

The community gathered in the Tabernacle once a week to listen to a message on tape. One such evening, we listened to a tape by Sam Fife on what he called “the mystery of a man and a maid.” I did not understand it much, but I thought it was the biggest bunch of baloney I had ever heard. This concept had two parts, one that the process of human reproduction was a picture created by God to show His plan for bringing forth His life in us. The other part of the concept is that Jesus plants His seed in the womb of His bride through the preaching of the ministry to the church.  

I was so flabbergasted by this teaching that I spent the next two weeks pouring over the word trying to refute it. Then, one day, my eyes opened wide, and I saw that the process of human reproduction is indeed used in the Bible as a picture of God birthing His life in us. Suddenly, I saw this truth from Genesis to Revelation; it was as if the whole Bible were built upon it. And indeed it is. I am convinced that without understanding the pattern of the reproduction of life, it is impossible to understand the Bible, since the whole purpose of God is built on that pattern and so many references are made to it that have no meaning without understanding the pattern. And the seed that is Christ does often come through the ministry of the word.   

Later in the summer, Dural Davison returned from his ministry trip. The farm had a long airstrip with one end between the community buildings and the barns. Brother D flew a small plane and used it to travel from place to place. One day he invited me to go with him to another community in the area, Headwaters, where he was going to minister. I eagerly went along. We climbed into his four-seater plane and headed down the airstrip. The moment the plane lifted off the ground, I was in love with flying. By plane it was only a few minutes to Headwaters. The airstrip there was several miles from the farm; we had to buzz the farm so they would come pick us up.  

Although Headwaters was a community farm like Graham, it was different in many ways. It had just gone through a major split during which a number of families had moved away, but it still had more people than Graham River. Headwaters did not have a river to keep the vehicles out, so they were everywhere in the camp, turning everything into mud. I instantly appreciated the Graham River with no bridge.  At least Graham was not muddy. Graham was also the only farm in the area that had a sandy soil. Everywhere else was clay, which meant that you could sink several inches into the mud with each step you took going back and forth to the Tabernacle for meals. At Graham, the cabins were all in neat rows, close to one another. At Headwaters, the closest cabin to the Tabernacle was as far as the furthest from it at Graham. There was a mile between the furthest cabin on one side and the furthest on the other side. In fact, the cow barn was closer to the Tabernacle than any but the one cabin. That cabin belonged to Danny Robertson and his family, and it was there we spent the night.  

I shared a room with the Robertson’s boy. Headwaters had a number of young people who did not like the farm and who were not seeking the Lord. The Robertson boy gave me an earful of complaint and intrigue, though it meant little to me. I was interested only in what the Lord was doing in my life.  

A Time of Pruning
Upon my arrival at Fort St. John in June of 1977, I entered a time of judgment during which God began to dissolve the hard shell that encased me. I went through difficult situation after difficult situation. It seemed that I hardly got over one before I was hit with another. Very little of this was caused by other people’s actions, most of it was caused by my own sensitivity or stupidity, whichever was convenient for God to use at the time. At least, that is what I thought. I had no idea then, nor did anyone else, that I was mildly autistic and lacked social abilities that most everyone else simply takes for granted.

Two incidents happened early on in my time at Graham that seemed “insulting” to me. A brother whom I became good friends with later, Bill Williams, came up to me one day in the Tabernacle with a vision God had given him for me. In the vision, he saw a chicken foot that gradually, over time, became the foot of an eagle. It seems silly now, but at the time, I took that as a personal insult from God. Me, a chicken foot? I was much more mature than that! The other incident was similar. I was reading Watchman Nee’s The Spiritual Man. As I read the chapter on the experience of a soulish believer, I was reading a description of myself. I was stunned. I had considered myself to be a mature believer, not a “fleshy” one. That blow burdened me for nearly two weeks.

As I said, it seemed that I hardly got over one such blow, before the Lord through circumstances hit me with another. The worst single incident happened in the fall of the year. I went with Brother Eli Miller and Bobby Cole to a neighboring rancher, several miles from Graham. We spent the day putting up a corral fence for him in return for access to firewood from property he was clearing. As a young man in the north country, I had an unceasing hunger, and the food was really good. I ate a lot. We went in for dinner, the men of the family joined us, and the wife and daughter served us. I had seconds and thirds. I cleaned out the last of the stew.  It was so good.

On our return to work, Brother Eli said, “Hey, fellows, take it easy on the food.” Why, I know not, I answered, “Brother Eli, swallow your pride and join in.” “Don’t you realize, the wife and daughter had not eaten?” he answered, “You finished off their dinner.”

Had Brother Eli swung a 2x4, it would not have hit me as hard. I was embarrassed, humiliated, mortified. I was so ashamed, I could hardly look at Brother Eli the rest of the afternoon or for several days after. I hardly wanted to leave my room; I was sure the whole community now viewed me as a pariah.

This incident was the most devastating of the several in which I felt like such a fool, but it certainly was not the only one. I was sensitive and withdrawn, on the one hand, but ready for adventure and new things on the other. 

Let me say a word in my defence. I was helplessly naive, quite ignorant of other people as well as myself. My personality ranges between a designer and an achiever. Asperger’s means I always feel threatened by others, and it includes a fear that makes confronting people or dealing with difficult relationships with people to be impossible. I had no one to help guide me through the emotional turmoil of adolescence. I had gone through some pretty black times emotionally. I was often ridiculed by others, especially Tim, Tim, and Andy, for saying something stupid. I had no idea why, so I closed my mouth and withdrew. I still liked to be around people, I just learned not to say anything.

Living with the Buerge’s
With these problems, I entered community. I liked being around people; I loved the meals together. I just did not know how to relate to people. Though I usually kept to my room studying the word, the Davison house was a gathering place for the young people of the community. They would sit in the living room and chat; I could hear the hubbub of their voices through the thin walls of the cabin. One day, after quite a number of them had visited for over an hour, I joined them. I got a chair and quietly sat on the outside of the circle. I said nothing, but just enjoyed the conversation. A minute or so later, Mallory announced that he had to do something, got up and left the room. In less than five minutes I was the only person left in the room, sitting numbly in my chair. This same scenario happened a second and a third time as well. I did not blame them, but I did not understand why.

After I had lived with the Davison’s for two months, Brother D and Sister Ethelwyn made plans to go on an extended ministry trip. In order not to leave us young people by ourselves in the cabin, they asked Del and Virginia Buerge to move into the cabin with their three children. Del and Virginia took D and Ethelwyn’s room and their three small children had a small room on the backside of the porch. Solomon said, “As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.” Del was that to me. Del had a very different personality and view of life than mine. I enjoyed working, but it was not my life. To Del, work was everything. Someone taking a few minutes extra before going to the work schedule was inexcusable. Del was very exacting, and the slightest variation from his exact standards drew his wrath. Incident after incident built bitterness in my heart toward him. 

One time when I went to town, Del asked me to pick up some coffee, the cheapest I could find. I spent several minutes laboring over the decision. Finally I picked what I thought was the cheapest coffee on the shelf. Upon arriving home, however, I was strongly informed that I had wasted his money irresponsibly. I had bought instant coffee, not regular. I had no idea at the time that without any means of making regular coffee, he would not want instant. Everyone else at the farm used instant. Another time he sat me down and took me to task for using too much jam on my crackers.  

Del was the oversight of the goat program. In the fall, we began a remodel of the interior of the goat barn as well as adding a large haymow on top. So there I was, working all day with Del, eating with him and his family at the same table in the Tabernacle, and then going home to the same house. I became bitter, and the bitterness blocked my relationship with the Lord. I finally had to choose, would I be bitter, or would I humble myself and ask forgiveness. When I lived with Andy, I had faced the same thing, but there I just moved back home. I could not do that this time. Finally, I went to Del and asked his forgiveness for the way I was feeling towards him. The difficulties did not end, but the bitterness was broken. I still had ill feelings at times, but for the first time, with the Lord’s help, I had overcome the emotional turmoil within.

This is one of the great advantages of Christian community. We can be so deceived about our own “spiritual maturity.” We can think we are making great strides in our relationship with the Lord. We go to church on Sunday and are greeted with warm smiles and friendly handshakes. But when thrust into the closeness of community with these same beautiful people, we discover that they are not quite as beautiful as we had imagined them to be. Then comes the proving. I don’t know how many people I watched over the years who imagined themselves to be spiritually mature, but who, in the crux of simply walking together with other like-minded believers, found that the press of bitterness and unforgiveness, not loving their brother as Christ loves the church, was more important to them than their relationship with the Lord, and away they went, bitter.

I must add this note, however. Although I did not see Del often in later years, yet I counted him as a friend, and Maureen and I spent a happy couple of days on our honeymoon enjoying Del and Virginia’s hospitality at their home in the Yukon. Del also came down to be part of the first Graham River Tabernacle raising in 1992. But those stories come later.

Heart-Wrenching Desire
All of this, though, was only the smaller part of the circumstance the Lord was using to work on my hard shell. The larger part was my desire to be married. I had my eyes on a particular girl, about three years younger than me. Somehow, in my thinking, I came to believe that she was God’s choice for me. God never actually spoke that, but I interpreted circumstance after circumstance to indicate that it was God’s “will.” As an Asperger’s young man, once I thought I liked her, I could not possibly speak to her. Needless to say, I experienced innumerable disappointments. Another boy was also attracted to her. I did not know this, but I picked up on it after a while. I considered him to be less interested in the Lord than any other of the young people. 

My personality, my desire for a wife, and my inhibitions all conspired to create many deeply disappointing moments through my time at Graham River.

Through all of these emotionally devastating blows, the Lord was working to open me up, a process that would take many years. Another vision received for me during this time showed me as a large rock with gold deep on the inside. It took great hammering and much work, but slowly cracks appeared in this rock that was so effectively hiding the gold.

Sometime in the late summer I traveled to Dawson Creek at the start of the Alaska Highway to see Mr. Wenham, the immigration officer. My three months were up, so I needed to ask for an extension. I was apprehensive when I presented my request to Mr. Wenham; I did not need to be. In all the years I went to see Mr. Wenham, he never cracked a smile, but he always gave me an extension. Mr. Wenham was a tremendous help to the people in the communities over the years. When his office was finally closed and he retired years later, we invited him to the Blueberry community for a special evening to honor him.

More Contending with the Word
In September 1977, I went to my first convention at Hidden Valley, south of Dawson Creek. A majority of the people from Graham River as well as from all the communities in the area – several hundred people, attended the convention. Hidden Valley had its own unique flavor. Most of the cabins had basements with the stove in the basement. This is a wise practice in the north country, but most of the communities did not follow it. I took a sleeping bag and slept on the floor of one of the cabins. That was the last time I failed to take a foamy with me to convention.  Sleeping on a hard plywood floor with no cushion was not fun.

Many ministries from the local area, from Alaska, and across the states came to the convention. The move conventions were quite different from the charismatic conferences I had been to before. There was no program for the meetings. No one knew who would lead praise or who would preach in a given service. That is the way it is in all services throughout that fellowship. The Spirit of the Lord directs who will lead the praise and who will minister. Time and again I was awed at the clear thread that God wove through the songs chosen, the words that had been prepared, and the prophecies that were given. When the Lord is given room to direct the flow of the service, He does a much better job than we do. It was evident throughout that the anointing of the Lord was the focus and carrier of the meetings.

It was at this convention that I first saw Brother Sam Fife. He preached a word on endurance called “The Long Run.” By this time he had realized that this thing would not be over in five years and that it could well last much longer than that. His word was that those who endure to the end will be saved. I have never heard anyone preach the way Brother Sam preached. I have never known anyone before or since who was more committed to the Lord, to His voice, and to the vision the Lord has for His church. Brother Sam was small and wiry with gray hair. He was around fifty years old at the time. For the first time, I heard someone preach with authority. I did not understand all that he said, but I did witness to the presence of the Holy Spirit that attended his words. This little man, with his iron devotion to the revelation of Jesus Christ, would impact my life more than any other. I had lived in community for three months, but for the first time I began to believe that this was, indeed, the move of the Spirit of God.

The word flowed endlessly. At this time in the move conventions, a short word was an hour-and-a-half long. Usually two or three preachers ministered in each service. The convention started on Wednesday evening and went until Sunday afternoon with two services a day. I counted a total of forty-three hours of praise and word. I was drawn in my spirit to the word and the anointing, but my human person was torn at the same time. It was an excruciating time for me, glorious and terrible.  

I was not a blind believer, through all this my cry to the Lord was, “Lord Jesus, show me if this is of You or not.” I wanted to know the Lord Jesus Christ above anything in this world. I know there were many others throughout the world with the same cry whom the Lord led in different ways, but this is the way He led me. Even now, I have to say, “Lord, I trust You.” By this time, everything I had believed was Christianity had been ripped to shreds. Bit by bit my understanding of God and His word was being rebuilt.

Seeds Planted
Part of my purpose in this history is to recount the planting in me by God of the word that I share at the present time. Contending with what God says in the Bible had now become the overwhelming passion of my life. From 1977 until 2013, I have wrestled with God and with the Bible, that I might know the Salvation of God. If I heard anyone say something about the Bible or about “what God says,” or about Christian “belief,” that I did not know, I was in BIG trouble inside. I could not rest. I have a Bible; I MUST KNOW what God says.

The first time I heard Sam Fife preaching on a tape, my confidence that Christians know what the Bible teaches was shattered. I do not trust what anyone says about anything; I have to know, myself, from evidence. The only solid evidence we have concerning God’s intentions and workings is the Bible. My practice of writing out endless Bible verses began after my return to Graham River. All I had was a Strong’s Concordance and a King James Bible, but that was enough. 

Please understand, however, that my purpose was never to become a “Bible scholar.” Such an idea would have been ludicrous to me. Two things were working inside of me. The first and most apparent was a desperate need to know what God actually says. I have always carried an unquenchable cry for SALVATION. The second deeper thing working in me was an intense calling of the deep inside of me to the deep inside of God. I did not want to know the Bible; I wanted to know God.

In the upcoming chapter, “Cutting the Covenant,” I specify the points that I now understand to be God entering into a covenant with me, to fulfill His word in my life. Here is where the deepest part of that covenant was found. I am referring to the months of the fall and early winter of 1977. 

~~~

Let me take you to a dark room in the back of a rough log cabin in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, to a 20-to-21-year-old boy on his knees beside his simple cot, in pain and agony of soul, in confusion, in shame, tears streaming down his face, in the loneliness of the night watches far from home, desiring to know the living God with all his heart. Allow me to draw back the veil, if you would, and show you a most holy thing.

There, inside this autistic, naïve, overly-sensitive boy, to whom most everything in life hurts, bringing confusion and endless misunderstanding, lives a daring, audacious, presumptuous HOPE. He cannot put it into words; he cannot explain it if you asked. But he knows it.

He bears inside his heart the incredible presumption that all this pain, all this confusion, all these tears possess a PURPOSE. That through them, Christ Jesus is reconciling the world to Himself. He bears in his heart the audacious belief that someday, somewhere, somehow, someone will break out of darkness and into light, someone will be spared the pain, someone will escape the confusion BECAUSE OF his tears and BECAUSE OF his hurt.

No, he does not see it, or how it could even be so. Yet he hopes, and HOPE is that which is not seen.

What he wants to know is that the Lord Jesus is IN his hurt and IN his affliction, that it is indeed holy and filled with great purpose. He wants it to be confirmed to him that Christ is indeed living as him in this world. He must know that the whisper inside, "You're difficulties are Me and I am in you, redeeming others to Myself," is truly founded in the gospel.

When he knows with all certainty the extent to which Christ Jesus reveals Himself in, as, and through his affliction, then, and only then, will healing be acceptable to him.

~~~

This was indeed the requirement I placed upon God (and Godly covenants are entirely one-sided – that which we require of a God who energeoes all inside of all), that my agony would result in blessing to others, that Father and I together would turn all my tears and confusion into hope arising inside of you that your Salvation is true and now and complete, that many would enter into the knowledge of God without hindrance as a result of my expectation of God in the midst of all my wrenching agony.

I will not explain here anything preached in the move fellowship that I now see as contrary to our knowledge of God and of Salvation. That contention must come later. You see, Jesus said that everyone finds exactly what they seek. Ideas that people have in their heads have no meaning. What counts is the desire of the heart. I sought God; therefore I found Him everywhere I looked and in every moment of my life. 

I read an account in recent years written by a woman who says that she lived for a brief time in these same communities in the Peace River country of British Columbia, during this same time. She recounts that she saw no love of God anywhere she looked. That accusation completely astounded me, for I found the love of God outpoured towards me through wonderful Christian people everywhere I looked. Jesus was right; we find what we seek.

People are people, no matter where you find them. But the people I knew through all my years in Christian community, were the kindest, most loving, most devoted to God, most anointed, and most giving, of all I have known in my life. I am most willing to acknowledge any hurt anyone experienced by wrongful things and to show them Christ through all of it. But when false accusation comes against these precious people whom I knew and loved, then, well – let us say no more. Even now, when I think about those who were the most difficult for me personally, I remember well the goodness and love of God upon them and their desire to know Him as much as any.

Three seeds of God came into my life through Sam Fife during this season, and two seeds from the ongoing sharing of word in the community and conventions. The first and primary seed of life was, as I shared, the understanding that the pattern of the reproduction of life, whether plant life or human life, is the largest and most important metaphor God uses. The entire Bible is written out from that pattern and none who read the Bible can understand God’s meaning apart from that pattern. I have taught you to practice that reality of God by responding to every word God speaks with “Let it be to me,” that whatever God means by any word He speaks might enter into your heart to be written there as Christ Jesus Himself.

The second thing I received from Sam Fife was the shattering of “going to” heaven as the goal of the believer. Any thought of a someday Salvation and a someday Christ will block in the believer any need to know Christ as all that God speaks here and now.

The third thing I received through Sam Fife was the understanding of the world as I share it. Sam Fife preached regarding a world “conspiracy” intent upon forming a one-world government over the earth. This understanding was taught by many in that fellowship during the years I was part of it, but by September of 2001, that understanding had vanished and belief in “America” had replaced it. I do not teach what I teach about this world because I heard it preached, however. I don’t teach anything because I heard it preached. I don’t “believe” anything about this world. I require evidence gathered over years for anything I might consider to be true. Yet when I know the evidence, then I am unmoved by the fact that most humans and most Christians willfully prefer to believe things that cannot be true.

You cannot love this world and know the love of the Father.

I read two books that many had in the communities through this time. The first was None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen. I still have copies of this book and at the present time, my knowledge of the facts of history remains in full agreement with what Gary Allen wrote. The second book was Pawns in the Game by William Carr. 

From the time that I was five and understood a map of the world, my need to understand this world, what it is and how it works, has been great. Measured against other people’s passions, this need in me to know would probably be counted greater. But it did not measure against my need to know what God says in the Bible. And, indeed, these two arenas of understanding do intermingle. This world is the setting of the proving of Christ through us.

Then, from the broader teachings of that fellowship, I gained first an understanding of the task set before the sons of God to set all creation free. This idea was new and strange, yes, but not difficult, especially since God says it so clearly in the most important chapter of the Bible. Nonetheless, inside of that word of setting creation free, there was another word, a word that became personal to me. While I sat in the powerfully anointed services in both the community and the conventions a desire grew in me to be part of that provision for God’s church in her hour of deepest need. I longed to be a Joseph, one who stored up the word as grain during times of plenty so that God’s people would have the nourishment they would need to take them through the darkness and into the revelation of Jesus Christ. I was just a boy, and I had no idea how I could be part of such a thing. But I wanted to be, somehow, with all my heart.

More Wondrous Adventure
I continued to have a range of tremendous experiences at Graham River. Sometime in late summer a couple of the men, Harold Witmer and Ralph Vega, took the young people on a several-day camping trip. We climbed the hill to the south of the farm and descended to Kobe’s Creek. We crossed the creek and climbed to the top of Butler Ridge. From there we could see the peaks of the Rockies receding into the distance. To the south we could see the blue western arm of Williston Lake, though the huge Bennett Dam was hidden from view. The northern wilderness is beautiful and its wildness and remoteness exhilarating. Some of the young men talked about going on a different kind of wilderness trek the next summer. On this trip we carried our own food, but they were planning to go for several days without taking food, learning to live off what could be gathered from the land. I so wanted to participate in such an endeavor, though I never got the chance.

In the fall, also, I started working at two tasks quite new for me. The first was the butcher shop. I joined Harold Witmer and his sons, Steve and Doug, along with Mallory, and a brother named Al Rotundi. The butcher shop was a warm and inviting place to be. The men were kind and friendly. The work was different and interesting. Steve was in charge of the rabbit program that produced enough rabbits to feed the family a meal once a month. Butchering rabbits was kind of fun. The other young fellows could do one rabbit a minute. I never got that fast, but I did pretty well. We butchered bear, moose, pig, sheep, and even a horse. We ground meat, rendered fat into lard, and made cracklings. It is a fond memory.

The other task was herding sheep. I did that with two other younger fellows, Blake Cole and Paul van Dyke. The sheep were kept just beyond the farm property in a sheepfold up the river. We had license to graze them on crown land. We saddled up the horses in the morning and rode out to the sheepfold. We let the sheep out and then followed them with the horses as they grazed in the meadows along the river. It was fun just riding a horse all day through the fall of the year, watching the leaves turn yellow and gold. At first, I thought it was up to me to keep the sheep together. When they scattered through the trees, I panicked, trying to get them all back together again. I soon learned, however, that sheep with a shepherd stay together anyhow, and that the horse will always follow the sheep. So I lay back on the horse with my legs crossed on its neck and looked up at the sky and the leaves of the trees as the horse followed the sheep and the sheep stayed together. It was a great time. I learned a lot about sheep as well. The first thing I learned is that they are generally stupid. You can work and work to get them into an area of fresh grass that they have not trodden down, and they will run right through it, not taking a bite, heading back to familiar trodden pastures just as quickly as they can. They are also blind followers. If one leading ewe breaks through the fence into the grain fields, all the rest will certainly follow – where they would all die from eating too much if you didn’t chase them out.  

Then winter came. Winter is the main season in the north. For six months the temperature stays below freezing, and snow covers the ground. The first morning that the temperature hit 55 degrees F below zero was quite memorable. We hugged close to the cows as we milked them, not daring to touch the metal buckets. Lucky for us that the cow’s teats were warm, because you could not milk with mitts on. Once the temperature drops to minus 30, all outside work stops. Lungs can freeze at this temperature and machinery can crack. More than one person has tried to go jogging in this “free” time and was laid up for days as a result. On the other hand, the average temperature is around twenty below. In the north country, once it drops below zero, there is very little wind. Twenty below with the sun shining is actually comfortable. You dress for the weather, of course, but since the air is dry, if you dress properly and keep moving, you stay warm.

I had many memorable experiences during the winter months. One day I was assigned to go with Al Rotundi and Warren Bowles on a daylong trip to get some firewood logs from a site on the other side of the river. The men had made an ice-bridge across the Graham River during the winter months. They laid slabs and pumped water onto the ice until there was a slab thick enough to carry big trucks across the still fast-moving water. We went on a sleigh pulled by two horses. They did not travel fast. It took us most of the morning to get there, going through the sunny, still woods, listening to the clip-clop of the horses and the soft slush of the sleighs sliding over the snow, and talking quietly together. When we arrived at the log site, we spent maybe an hour of hard work loading them onto the sleigh. Then we built a fire, warmed our frozen sandwiches, boiled some tea, and ate lunch. It took the rest of the afternoon to ride back to the farm. It was one of those rare memorable experiences one has in life.

Another time, all the men went to the river to get ice for the ice house. This was straight out of Farmer Boy, a book I had read as a child many times, but never dreamed I would get to experience. The only difference was we used chain saws to cut the ice instead of crosscut saws. We sawed the ice into large square blocks and used metal tongs to hoist them out of the river. We loaded them onto a wagon pulled by horses and took them to the ice house where we packed them in sawdust. These blocks of ice would last through most of the summer, giving us ice for drinks and ice cream, and to cool an ice refrigerator.

Living with the Kurtz’s
In the late fall, Dan Kurtz, one of the elders, came to me and asked me if I would remodel his cabin’s enclosed porch. He wanted me to install a ceiling and a closet so that someone could use it for a bedroom. Dan Kurtz had a poor reputation among the young people, so, having absorbed some of their thinking, I resented doing the job. I ran into some problems that made it difficult work, so I did not relish the task. One day, I had time to work on Brother Dan’s porch, but I did not want to. I chose to clean the cow barn out instead. As I walked past the Kurtz’ cabin towards the barn, I heard the Lord speak to me, “Jonah.” It was clear what He was insinuating. I was trying to find some other good deed to do to avoid the thing God had put before me. Reluctantly, I turned and went back to the porch job.

A few days after I completed that job, Brother Dan came to me and said “Daniel, we would like you to come live with us.” If God was finished with my time with the Buerge’s, so was I. I readily agreed. Here all those weeks I had been working on my own bedroom! I spent three months with the Kurtz’s. It was the best three months I had in eighteen years of living in Christian community. Within the first week I was there, Brother Dan said to me, “Daniel, I see that you help yourself to the things in the kitchen cupboard. I’m glad you feel at home with us; you’re welcome to whatever we have.” What a difference between that and my previous experience. I have never felt more welcome or part of those I lived with than the time I spent with the Kurtz’s. This is what I have always believed community should be; this is what my experience in community has not usually been for one reason or another. To be part of a community that has as its focus the intent of making any who comes feel utterly welcome is the desire of my heart and the reason why I am writing this story.

Dan and Joann had seven children, four girls and three boys. I do not remember all their names. The oldest, a girl, was maybe fifteen. They ranged from there down to a recently born little boy. There was also a single girl living with the Kurtz’s, Kitty Kiezebrink, who was walking out a year (that is, pre-engagement) with Harleigh Knapp. We all lived in a cabin 20’ by 25’. I had my own room, the porch, Kitty had her own room, Dan and Joann had their room, the four girls were in another room in two sets of bunks, and the three boys were in the last room. There was also a living area with a kitchen counter in one corner and a small bathroom. There was no shower; we took basin baths. The cramped quarters were not a problem. We had the Spirit of Christ and a Christian love for one another.

In February we all loaded into vehicles to ride to Headwaters Farm for another convention. This time, many of the men got into the back of our wood truck, a large yellow Ryder truck. This was the only way for us to get to convention, so we did it. We did not see a thing, of course. What had taken twenty minutes by plane the summer before, now took two hours. By the time we arrived at Headwaters I was feeling pretty poorly. Headwaters, 1978, was my second convention. I was once again overwhelmed with the intensity of the anointing of the Spirit of Christ, and the flow and depth of the word.

In this February convention, I also heard a word,  that I received as a missionary call to me, concerning the vision of being a provision for God’s people all over the earth in their hour of greatest need, a vision of being a Joseph, gathering up word as food for God’s Church during a time of great famine. I “raised my hand” inside me to God. I had no idea how I could possibly be part of such a thing, but I wanted to be, with all my heart, I wanted to be such a thing for God’s entire church during her great travail.

When we returned to Graham, I began to think that my time there was nearing an end. Mr. Wenham had given me a six-months extension, due to run out in March. At the same time, I owed taxes to the US government for my work the year before. I needed to earn the money to pay those taxes before April 15. So in early March I boarded a Greyhound bus in Fort St. John and headed south, back home to Oregon. As I left Fort St. John, I felt an overwhelming peace flow over me. Then, it seemed as if the heavens opened and the Lord revealed to me that I was His son. The trip back to Oregon was filled with a precious fellowship with the Lord. It seemed that the spirit of judgment through embarrassment that had covered my life for the last nine months was for that time only. On a regular basis, at Graham River, I had done or said the most stupid and embarrassing things. That particular type of embarrassment did not happen to me again.