A Glimpse Into My Life

This was my first speech deliverd at the Family Christian Club with United Church of God in Toronto Ontario on December 30, 2006. I had four minutes to introduce myself to the club.

by Jacques Gauvin, December 22, 2006

I believe that God started working with me when I was still in the womb. I survived prenatal trauma and was born hard as rock 53 years ago. My parents were Roman Catholic teachers and lived in Bathurst New Brunswick. I attended a Roman Catholic grade school and high school. Then went on to public University studying engineering for five years. I worked in land surveying all my adult life for various Land Surveyors in various provinces.

I was growing up during the time of the Vietnam war; the protests, the draught dodging and the drug culture. There was a clash of cultures between the squares and the hip. There was a pronounced generation gap. There was a fast transition from having very little to having much. My adolescence was marred with bad influences and bad choices.

In my teenage years I was class representative, on the basketball team, a member of the religion committee and Captain of the school cadet corp. I was also a weekend drunk, a smoker, a drug user and my favorite music was rock. When I turned eighteen I added sex into the mix. I failed my third fourth and fifth years of university after an emotional breakdown, some soul searching and withdrawal from drugs and friends.

I left New Brunswick on December 31, 1976 in an English Ford Cortina that I had bought for ten dollars and repaired.

In Calgary a fellow worker encouraged me to read the Bible. I read it through several times. I remembered hearing Herbert W. Armstrong on the radio when I was a teenager. And I remembered learning about the Sabbath, while reading my catechism in grade one. I knew that I wanted to find a group of Sabbath keepers but because I didn’t know where to look I thought I would try to find a group sensitive to Biblical facts.

When I was reaching a point of near despair or futility I came across a newsstand in my neighborhood that bore Plain Truth magazines. After reading most of the magazine’s advertised publications, I began attending church services with Worldwide Church of God.

By this time I was living in Hamilton Ontario after loosing my job and house in Calgary due to a recession. I was baptized in 1985 by Anthony Wasilkoff and was put out of the church latter that year by Gary King. I have been faithfully keeping the Sabbath and Holy Days since 1984.

I spent a few years with the Church of God International in the early 1990’s, then visited Simon Post in the hospital on the Sabbath for five years.

A little while after Simon died I began attending services with the United Church of God in Hamilton in the fall of 2002.

I have a Bible based website, www.jacquesgauvin.com. I have been writing articles for about twenty years.

I have never married and have no children that I am aware of. I have lived by myself since 1977, thirty years.

I’ve been on medication for schizophrenia for about ten years now and have been employed full time for most of the past eight years.

I am presently working for an Ontario Land Surveyor as a calculator, draftsmen and instrumentman. I’m about managing to hang onto my job, not about career building.

I hope to get to know you better through participation in the Family Christian Club. I also hope to become a more versatile member of the Church.

I would like to say that I am here by the grace of God.

Thank you for your attention.