Back Jack's Story... Let me tell you how becoming intrigued changed my life. My name is Jack, I am nothing special, you would pass me in the street and not give me a second glance. I was brought up in a Lancashire mill town with those dark satanic mills close by and the “Pennines” almost close enough to touch. My world consisted of the street/road where I lived and one or two streets/roads close by.  Weekdays I went to school and on Sunday I went to Sunday School in the afternoon, at first it was the same school I went to during the week. During 1942 when I was seven coming on eight years of age I started at the Sunday School with which my mother and her parents had been associated and continued there on through my teenage years until at the age of eighteen I joined the Royal Air Force for five years. During my service at RAF Fassberg in Germany I was pulled from the Station Swimming Pool by a seven year old boy, having to all intents and purposes drowned. I went away to my room and got down on my knees to say a prayer of thanks for the saving of my life. I couldn’t understand why my life had been spared, I was nothing special. I thought perhaps the reason might become clear later in my life. Perhaps through any family that I might have, should I one day get married. It was on my ‘demob’ late in 1957 that I returned to the same Sunday School where I was asked to be a teacher in the Sunday School but declined on the grounds that I really didn’t understand what the Bible was saying to me. Oh yes I had met people in the Air Force who were Christians and had attended one or two meetings for Christians, but somehow I didn’t get involved or didn’t want to get involved and yet if anyone had asked me if I was a Christian I would have said yes. Well I tried to treat people with respect and do what was considered right. One of the things my Mother used to say was “The Lord (Jesus) works in strange and wonderful ways his wonders to perform”. It was in the summer of 1963 that I went away to Switzerland where I met the girl who was later to become my wife although I didn’t know it at the time. In the hotel where we were staying was an American Baptist Choir on their way to Lebanon.The choir was going to sing in the hotel lounge that morning so I did something quite out of character and approached her and her friend (we had never met each other before) and invited them to hear the choir sing. They both accepted the invitation. It turned out that they were both committed Christians.   More…

“somehow I didn’t get involved or didn’t want to get involved”

Jack as a young man.

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