Hello and welcome to the program. On October 7, 1955, as a 12-year-old boy, I received Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. That day I began an adventure in Christian living. The dictionary says an adventure is bold undertakings with risk or danger, new and exciting events, exciting experiences in the line of duty, and explorations requiring courage. In Deuteronomy 11 and 11, it says, the land whither thou goest to possess it is a land of hills and valleys. That is certainly the story of my life. Going back to 1942, the Second World War was raging. William Lyon Mackenzie King was Prime Minister of Canada. Franklin D. Roosevelt was President of the United States. Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. and a madman named Adolf Hitler was Chancellor of Germany. In January 1942, six countries were organizing the United Nations. During the month of May, German Jew boats were operating in the area of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. They had penetrated the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River. In 1942, 22 Canadian merchant vessels and warships were sunk and 249 lives were lost. In August of that year, Walt Disney was introducing his animated film called Bambi. In December, Bing Crosby was crooning about a white Christmas. On December 21, 1942, William Lyon Mackenzie King announced that butter was being rationed in Canada because of the war. On the same day, Ken and Mae Kirkland were announcing to their friends who visited them at the Grace Hospital in Ottawa that they had a little boy and they named him Robert Douglas Kirkland, and so that is where my story begins. If mom and dad wanted to buy a new car to take me home from the hospital, it would have cost them about $900. They didn't have a new car. They had a 13-year-old Model A Ford. They could purchase gas for their Ford for 15 cents a gallon. A new house would have cost them $3,500 or they could rent one for $35 a month. They were poor people, so they did not have a new house. They might have spent five cents for a bottle of Coke on the way home. By the time I was three years of age, my family had moved to Ajax, Ontario, where my dad was the foreman of a large sheep farm. I guess that makes me the son of a shepherd. I would spend the next ten years on that farm, and I have many fond memories. in that period of my life, but I will not bore you with those stories. However, one thing I do remember was learning how very stupid sheep are. The Lord did not do us a favor when he likened us to sheep. The headline news in 1955, the race for space was underway. The St. Lawrence Seaway was opened to ocean vessels from Montreal to the United States ports. and on the Great Lakes. Disneyland had opened in California. In God We Trust was added to U.S. currencies. My, that's changed. The first pocket transistor radio was introduced and the McDonald's fast food restaurant chain was underway. The first Guinness Book of World Records was published. The Mickey Mouse Club made its debut on television. And in 1955, the rock and roll craze was in full swing. Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The average yearly wage was around $4,000. The minimum wage was 75 cents an hour. A new house at this time would cost about $11,000 or one could rent one for about $90 a month. By now, new cars were selling for $2,000, and gasoline had soared to 33 cents a gallon. Our family moved to the country. By this time, our family had left the sheep farm and moved to a small village in the country that had a one-room country school with about 30 students, ranging from grade 1 to grade 8. There was a gas station, a post office that operated out of someone's house, a tiny grocery store that was also part of someone's house, and that was about it for the village. Dad had started a new job as a welder in a factory. With that job came new friends and much more money than he had ever had before. He started going to the hotel with his new friends. He was very popular among them, and they nicknamed him the Farmer because he had recently worked on a farm. At first he only drank with them on the weekends, but then every day after work he began going to the hotel with his friends. He would get drunk and come home and argue with my mother. Our home was in shambles. I remember Dad getting so upset with Mom one day that he threw his plate of food at her. I could still see that spaghetti sliding down the wall in the dining room. Well, my adventure in Christian living began on October the 7th, 1955, when I was 12 years old. I was very excited when I woke up that Friday morning in 55. My family was going on a bus trip to Toronto. I had never been on a bus before, nor had I been to any big city. A trip to Toronto was exciting to me. To add to the excitement, most of my school friends were going as well. However, the most exciting thing to me was the fact that my dad was going to go with us. Before leaving for school, I noticed my mother had placed his suit on their bed, and that's the suit that she was expecting him to wear on our special trip to Toronto. I was so happy. I could only recall one other time when we went out together as a family, and that was to a restaurant for supper. Before the meal came, Dad got into an argument with Mom and we left without eating. As I left for school that October morning, I removed the handlebar grips on my bike to be sure the two cigarettes that I had stolen from my dad's pack were safely hidden in the handlebars where they would not be found, and then I went on my way, hoping the day would pass quickly so we could go on our family trip together. At school, I anxiously waited for recess when I could hide behind the school and smoke those cigarettes with my friends. Some kids brought in beer to drink, however, I determined never to touch that stuff because of what it was doing to our family. To my disappointment, my dad purposely missed the bus, put on that suit, and went out to another drunken party. There was only one empty seat on that bus, and it was the one where my dad was supposed to be sitting. As a 12-year-old boy, I stared at that seat and came to the conclusion that dad would rather be drinking with his friends than spending time with me. While dad was getting drunk again, my brother and my mother and myself and most of my school friends were at the Coliseum at the Exhibition Place in Toronto listening to Dr. Billy Graham preach. I want to say here that Billy Graham went on to be one of the most influential apostates that ever lived. The fact that I mentioned that I was saved in one of his crusades should not be taken as an endorsement for the apostasy he promoted. We were sitting in the very back row, as far away from the speaker as one could possibly be. The Coliseum could seat over 9,000 people, so you can imagine a trip from the back to the front of the Coliseum was a long walk down the aisle. I do not remember anything the preacher said in his message. However, I do remember before the message George Beverly Shea and the choir singing a song about how great God was. I remember a man named Cliff Barrows directing us to sing number five in our little songbook, and together we sang Jesus Saves. There was a lady in our little village that had a plaque on her front door that said Jesus Saves. She also had Jesus Saves on the rear license plate of her car. Now we were singing about it. I wonder, could Jesus save our family? At the end of the message, the choir sang another hymn entitled, Just As I Am, and an invitation was given to receive Christ as my personal Savior. I remember how the conviction of the Holy Spirit gripped my soul. I wrestled with God through all of the verses of that hymn. I was not about to walk that long aisle with all my friends watching. What would they think? I remember just a week before, the kids at our school making fun of a girl in our class because she was a Christian. Finally, they were singing the last verse of the hymn, and I hoped when it was over, the pressure to respond would stop. For six long verses they sang, with each verse ending, O Lamb of God, I come. However, the preacher said, after the last verse, someone still hasn't come, we will sing one more verse. It was as if he said, we're going to sing another verse, because there's a 12-year-old boy back there, his name's Bob, and he needs to be saved. I remember thinking that God, the creator of the universe, was talking to me, and I was concerned about my school friends. How stupid is that? My brother whispered to me, do you want to go? And that was all I needed. I said yes. On Friday, October the 7th, 1955, at about 8.30 in the evening, I walked down that long aisle with my brother and my mother, and we received Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. The Crusade reports said that more than 7,000 men and women left the seat to stand for Christ. Only God knows how many men and women were sincere. However, both God and I know that at least one 12-year-old boy was. One thing that puzzled me as I walked that long aisle to the front was the amount of people who were coming out of the choir to trust Christ as their Savior. I was wondering what would they do in the choir singing if they weren't saved. I trusted Christ as my personal Savior and my adventure in Christian living was underway. Be sure to be with us for the next program.