Issue 2012 #2
Table of Contents:
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New Board Member -
Testimony of Lois Millsap
As a young girl, Lois insisted on being the first to greet her Dad when he came home. She was 8 when her Christian family moved to Fort St. John, B.C. Their new home was a two-room cabin with an outhouse. It was a huge disappointment. However they dug a basement, moved the cabin onto it, and added on extra rooms. It turned into a nice house.
Later Lois' father bought homestead land north of Fort St. John, hoping to turn it into a viable farm. He cleared trees when he could, and because Lois was a Daddy's girl, she was happy to go along to help him. She was there on July 17, 1968, when she was 13. Her Dad had set up his buzz saw to turn cut trees into rough lumber. Lois' job was to stack them. When a tree got stuck in the saw, her Dad reversed the saw, but she was intent on helpfully shoving the tree in towards it. She walked right into the saw. Her hand was nearly severed off at the wrist. She was in shock and felt nothing.
They had nothing for this emergency, so they drove to the nearest neighbours. Lois' mother's brother and his family lived there. They wrapped her arm and hand in a big white sheet, and they drove an hour's drive back to town.
Lois' mother, a nurse, was waiting at the hospital when they arrived. When they unwrapped her arm for x-rays the pain really hit Lois. She had lost four pints of blood. Later, when she came to, Lois found they had to take her hand off right at the wrist. She remained in hospital for two weeks.
That crisis took Lois from being a Daddy's girl to turning against him. She sat as far from him as possible. They never really talked. This wounded her father deeply. Over the course of the next five years she tried to love and treat her Dad as she knew she ought to, and sometimes succeeded for a couple of days.
Despite her bitter emotions, she thought she was a Christian.
After high school, Lois worked in a medical clinic. One doctor, a Christian, got her thinking about her relationship with the Lord. Resolved that she would find her answers in the Bible, Lois started at Genesis 1:1 and got up to 2 Corinthians 5:17; "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. . ." Lois stopped - and truly gave her life to the Lord.
She shocked her Mom, and then her pastor, with her decision, but somehow it took several days before she could tell her Dad. He answered that he'd noticed a change in her. What she had not been able to accomplish over five years, God did instantly. God placed His love in her heart for her Dad.
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