Chapter One - The Beginning

Mom and Dad

I was prophetically birthed into this new and amazing world. Mom and dad already had three beautiful children and one day in mid October, before my dad left home for his winter stint in the one room school house some where deep inside northern British Columbia, he and mom made a special appointment. It went well. He had to make it quick because winter was fast approaching.

I can’t imagine how lonely that must have been, winter that is in the interior of British Columbia, living in the basement of the one room schoolhouse paid for by Canadian tax dollars to provide a grade school education for the Indian tribes children in that region. His job was to keep the fires burning and to pass on the fundamentals of arithmetic and spelling and science, a full and rounded out education.

My dad was the smartest man I knew. He knew every constellation in the night sky, every bird’s song in the forest and could name every tree. “This is the mighty Douglas Fir tree Lloyd” He’d say. Yeah, that’s how it happened. Me. I am the direct result of a very romantic father who believed God had told him to have one more child and to dedicate him to the Lord for the “ministry”. And so one early fall night dad obeyed.

When he came home in the spring, freshly shaven and gaunt with hunger, I was sitting there waiting for him. What a day of rejoicing that was. And his name shall be Lloyd, hmmm, Lloyd as in Lloyd’s of London, or just maybe my uncle Lloyd. His middle name will be Douglas, after the mighty fir. And here I am Lloyd Douglas Clark, an amazing miracle in all of my Glory.

My birth mother was even more amazing. She had been the first in her family to get the Holy Ghost. It was the early nineteen hundreds and the Holy Ghost was being poured out all over America and He had even made His way up to Canada as well. I was told it started in Azusa St California – the Holy Ghost Revival. Mums family had been solid up standing members of the now post revivalist, respected, local Methodist Church. When the Holy Ghost was poured out, people would do some very strange and wonderful things and the Methodists would have none of it. In fact they were the first to throw the tomatoes and to call the Pentecostals fanatics, and Holy Rollers. Fanatics and Holy Rollers they were and they began to wear the title with pride and boldness. As I said Ruby was the first of her family, but before long, her whole family became holy rollers.

Three of her brothers ended up as preachers and she would not be intimidated by those who tried to convince her that God did not approve of women preachers. Thankfully there were already role models for her to emulate, Aimee Semple McPherson being among the most recognized. So Ruby and a friend hit the road and were soon traveling the country of Canada preaching wherever God would open doors which was primarily on Indian reservations. She would grab her guitar and sing and dance until the Holy Ghost would fall and people would come running to the alter wanting the anointing that she was carrying. Grandma tells that when she would return home her shoes would be warn flat with cardboard for in soles and her clothing had to be burned in the pot belly stove to get rid of the lice and fleas.

My dad was turning forty, still single, working on a farm when one day he was invited to a revival on an Indian reservation where two young women were headlining. That was how they met and some how they got married and began to have babies. Mom settled down to a local pastorate in Fort St. John BC. And dad taught school to support the new and quickly growing family. Four in total. Ruth was first, then Byron and Bob and finally little Lloydy boy me.