David Peter is named in honour of my brother Peter David, whom the Lord took to be with Himself at birth. Kristi always wanted a David, and every generation on my mother’s side except my own has had a David for probably hundreds of years, so everything came together for this one.

This was the first birth I have witnessed. It was an amazing experience, and I am overwhelmed with delight, praise, wonder, and joy.

R.R. 1
Grande Prairie, AB
T8V 2Z8

My cell number (780-876-1102) remains the same. My business landline number (830-1125) will be cancelled as of the end of the month; Mom’s phone line has not been operational for some time, and I have no immediate plans to get a new “land line.” Mom does not hear well enough to talk on the phone, anyway, and when Kristi gets here, I anticipate she will primarily be using a cell phone. Given the cost of hooking up a conventional phone line to a new acreage, I just don’t see it happening for the foreseeable future.

May the Lord continue to bring comfort and hope to His people.

Tym informs me that there will likely be a memorial service Saturday in Debolt. I will try to post here when I get further word.

Please pray for the family, giving thanks for God’s faithfulness to one of His own children.

http://www.timandkristigallant.com/

Both Kristi and I have given accounts of how this whole thing came about.

Do remember to pray for us!

Please also pray for Kristi’s health, as she is quite sick right now.

That date has not yet been set, due to complications I would rather not post on a public site. Nonetheless, we are fully committed to the marriage, and continue to prepare, and pray that obstacles would be removed.

I want to add that through the complications, our relationship has only grown stronger, and the opportunity for Kristi to visit me in Grande Prairie last month caused our already-stable love to bloom into something even more wonderful. We look forward eagerly to our future together, and acknowledge that only God in His infinite wisdom and power could have brought us together.

We do not have a date set yet, as we have only begun to deal with logistical matters, some of which are pretty complex. You can certainly pray that we may find a way to make all of this happen before the year is out. I’m not a big believer in lengthy engagements, and even less so given the distance involved and the factor of children. (If you’re interested in learning how you can pray more specifically, feel free to contact me.)

I cannot express how grateful I am to God for bringing such a wonderful woman into my life. I am humbled by my own weaknesses, and elated by His grace. He truly gives us much better than we deserve.

While at a few points in his life, Dad had his own handyman business, his one recurring employer was Argyle Machine Shop in Port Alberni, BC. (I think that is where he was working when he met my mother.)

There were a lot of interesting things about his history with Argyle, but one basic one was that he never joined the union in what was ostensibly a closed shop. How he accomplished that, I’m not sure, but he was opposed to it philosophically. The union shop steward perhaps countenanced it because Dad would do tasks that his union members probably would not.

Dad was basically a go-boy. He did whatever was thrown at him – cleaning up garbage, sand blasting, spray painting, whatever. He worked hard and didn’t complain about his wages.

During a big negotiation process during which the union was threatening to strike in the mid-1960s, one day the foreman came up to my father and said simply: “We’re giving you a dollar an hour raise.” Perhaps that doesn’t compute for the younger generation, but a dollar an hour raise in the mid-1960s was almost unheard of. It was probably a 30% increase.

It should be kept in mind, though, that often when my Dad left, the machine shop hired two men to take his place. That was how he worked.

But his influence was not simply limited to his work ethic. He brought something else to the workplace. During coffee breaks, he would pull out his Bible and read.

He wasn’t preachy with the other men and didn’t even comment on their language. Yet interestingly enough, some of them began to apologize to him when they happened to utter obscenities in his presence. (He told them it wasn’t him to whom they needed to apologize.)

One of the most memorable incidents occurred on one of those days in which Dad had dropped a pile of garbage off at the dump. A while later, the foreman came up to him and told him that something had accidentally got thrown out. I’m not sure what it was, but it was very small – as in smaller than your finger. He asked Dad if he could go back to the dump to look for it.

What a hopeless task! What are the odds of actually finding something like that, even if you knew exactly where to look?

Dad drove out to the dump, sat in the truck and prayed that the Lord would help him find it, got out of the truck, walked to the pile, picked the item off the surface of the pile without so much as needing to search, and drove back to the shop.

Upon his return, he handed the item to the foreman and said, “I prayed.”

To which the simple response from the foreman was: “I knew you would.”

Whatever else one may say about those years, my father had a simple faith that forced people to take notice – take notice not merely of his faith, but of the God who really acted through it.

You don’t need to do “big things” in order for God to glorify His name in your life.

The last stint my Dad worked at Argyle Machine Shop, he gave his notice that he was leaving about a month beforehand. He was not merely quitting to go preaching and then come back; we were going to move from Port Alberni.

With a couple weeks to go, Dad was doing the lawn and experienced some pains. He also had someone working on his car getting it ready for the trip. In this particular house, the garage was in the basement. That day, Dad went up and down the stairs many times to check on the progress of the repairs. He worked like this all day, and the pains were not going away. He thought he may be fighting fumes. Finally, he got frustrated and started doing pushups.

Late that night, lying in bed, he started to describe to Mom the symptoms he was having, and she got scared: they sounded much like the symptoms her father experienced when he had a massive heart attack.

She called an ambulance at about 1:30 in the morning.

At the hospital, it took a couple of hours before Dad actually got anything done to him other than needing to answer questions.

But yes, it was a massive heart attack. The doctor told Mom that if he could make it through the first 24 hours, he was hopeful Dad could make it.

Make it he did, but he was in critical condition for 100 hours.

Yet as crazy as all this seems, we moved from Port Alberni on the day appointed. God had restored Dad in an amazing way.

I brought this story up at this particular juncture for two reasons.

First, this was the end of the “work for a while and then go preach” period. From here on out, Dad finally started taking up collections. He knew he was putting too much strain on himself.

The other thing is that here again was evidence of how God cared for us financially. Even though Dad had already given his notice, and surely would never be back, Argyle Machine Shop provided him with three months’ severance pay.

It would not be the last time over the next few years that we marvelled at how God provided.