JACQUES GAUVIN, RELIGION
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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 news stand in my neighbourhood that bore Plain Truth magazines. After reading most of the magazines 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 1990s, 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, 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.