The Peacock 142

 "Yes, that would have had it's complications", says Carl.  "How did your mother handle this?" 

"I think she figured out pretty fast that she was up against none other than the Living God Himself, so she just got out of my way and let me continue in my path towards Jesus. A lot of things were at play.  By the end of February we had revival meetings at Richmond High School, where a number of young people came to the Lord, and this formed a very new and very precious fellowship with me and kids I had never known in school before.  We had a late snow that weekend, and two girls in my grade at school both wanted to accept Jesus, following a talk we had together, so I ran to the coffee shop in the mall, I think in the Hudson's Bay, and got one of the brothers, Jacque, a Metis, to come and pray with us.  So we knelt outside the Richmond Art Gallery and Cultural Centre, in the snow, all of us in tears of joy as both girls accepted Christ.

"Jacques, by the way, and I, came into contact gain some twenty-five years later.  A gay man, he later came out and disappeared from the Christian radar.  When I last saw him he was dying from AIDS and I was helping care for him.  We had a very beautiful visit."

"What was going on in your life then?" asks Carl.

"We were still in community.  I had returned to doing home support work, part time, because there was some discussion in the community about working outside the ministry.  Harold had been against it, and because of his loud voice, Doreen and Dianne basically caved to him, and he was clearly against anyone getting a job.  But only because he lacked the confidence, himself, to work for a living, and would not suffer anyone to cause him to feel inferior.  But Harold left us in 1991, just following my mother's death.  Actually, he was kicked out.  And after I returned from Europe, a few months later, I took employment taking care of people, especially people living with, and dying, from AIDS..."