Name: Reg Bertrand

Location: Ottawa, Ontario

Age: 31

Marital Status: Married

Children: 3 (2 boys, 1 princess)

Occupation: IT Professional, Security Related

Church: Calvary Church - http://www.ottawachurch.ca

Background:

Here is a little of my early background, born and raised in a military family. Moved across Canada a few times, couple of postings in British Columbia, and a couple in Ontario. Growing up in a military family has a couple of challenges. The main one I encountered, was that you never really got to close to people, as people were always moving away to new bases. So your friendships lasted short-term. My father never was in heavy conflicts, but did due a stint of peacekeeping over in Cyprus in the early eighties. Our upbringing was not like sitcom “Major Dad”, my Dad was not the military Sgt at home. We were a hockey family, other sports as well but hockey was the dominant one. We lived in community arenas. Either my brother or I had games, practices, or my sisters played Ringette. Our family life revolved around the rinks, tournaments, practices, and TV all related to hockey. Being in Canada, that is not really a unique situation.

Church was never a big thing in our house, raised Roman Catholic, we went on the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass and Easter Sunday morning. I did however, go through all the tradition ceremonies as a child in the RC church.

However, this led me to believe that everything I was defined as involved hockey. I studied the sport periodicals, and watched all the TSN highlights. My goal was to make the NHL. Anything less growing up I felt was to be deemed a failure. The highest level I made it to was Junior B. A couple of my ex-teammates made to the NHL, Andy Sutton of the Atlanta Thrashers, and Eric Cole of the Carolina Hurricanes. In fact I tied Eric for the team points lead my last year. I was 21, he was 15 I think. He also played half the number of games I did.

But it was through hockey that I begin to be led to Jesus Christ, and initially I did not know what is was. Oh yeah, it was not the sport itself, is was someone I meant at the rink, before a practice.

I met this beautiful girl that used to figure skate before my hockey practices, and there was something different about her that I just couldn’t let go of, and I had to meet her. I never knew what that was specifically until later on. But eventually to make a long story shorter, we met and then started dating. The girl’s name was Jackie. She was beautiful.

Her family was different then what I was used to, her father and brother were Christians, and attended a small church in Kingston, Ontario called the New Life Centre. Just before we started dating seriously she decided to leave the church. I was not used to the lifestyle her Dad and brother lived, always going to church. Then one day her brother asked me to a “friend Sunday”. I thought if this guy was brave enough to ask me, to be nice, Jackie and I would attend this service. It was the first time I was in a Pentecostal service. Quite different then what I was used to. We went and left, we did our part.

After dating for a couple of years we had a son. Shortly after that Jackie started attending Sunday morning services. I thought it was ok, as long as she did not go “all” the time like her father and brother. After all, Sunday evenings was when our home games were. She and my son needed to be at my games.

Then one evening, Jackie asked me a question. “Do you want your son to go to heaven?”

“What, of course,” I said, “if there is a heaven, then yes I want him to go there.”

So that opened up a huge discussion that was a pivotal moment in my life. This was the night before I had a major college exam, which I could not fail (as it was a rewrite). I needed to finish my 2nd year and be able to qualify for the 3rd year of my program. I had a son, and future wife to support. What a time to spring that discussion on me I thought as I went to sleep, tired and thinking a lot.

The next day on the way to my exam, I couldn’t remember a thing for the exam; I just kept focusing on our discussion the previous evening. I simply said, as I drove down the highway, “God if you are real, then you need to help me, direct me in the right path to go. I will follow it, but I need to know you are real.”

I wrote the exam, but I was real nervous during it, because my brian was scattered. So, I went to the little church in Kingston that next Sunday. This was really only to give it a try, because I was not entirely sold that this was the right place to be. But, I did tell God on the highway like I mentioned before that he was going to have to let me know that this was what I needed to do.

That service, I felt like the preacher read my life story to everyone present. It was like I was the only one there and he knew everything about me. He did not offend, he did not “preach” down to me. It was nothing that would “drive” me away. It was a message that at the end, I felt I just needed to go to the front of the church.

Never in my life had I done this, so it was a long walk to the front. I followed Jackie to the front, and stood right behind her, so I could hide from everyone, and maybe not get noticed. I really did not know what to do up there. Then the pastor’s wife, just explained to me to talk to Jesus like I would to Jackie. Close my eyes, and just talk to Him. So I did, never felt like that before.

After awhile, things started to progress, and I was definitely entering unchartered territory, so I shut it down. I stopped, because I did not understand what was happening, didn’t know what to do, and thought, better reel this in, before I get myself all confused and mixed up.

There was a young couple that asked if Jackie and I wanted to come over to their house, and get to know one another. My wife knew them. It was the pastor’s daughter and son-in-law; Chris and Sherry Shaw. They said, we could talk about what I felt, and thought about, and the Bible in a causal setting. So I decided, yeah I want to know a little more about this, because I never had encountered this before.

When we went over to their apartment, we eventually got into the discussion on the Bible. Never reading it before, they had to help me find the areas of scripture. After reading some scriptures and telling them what I thought that meant, and they seemed to agree with me. I just got frustrated, not at them, but at how easy it seemed to understand simple things in the scripture, yet I never knew them, never was taught them correctly, but it seemed so clear. Right there in black, white and red.

So, I knew God was leading me in the right direction. I still had some questions, but I was starting to understand things in scripture and how I needed to respond. Oh, the exam, I passed it.

Then over the next little while, I started going to church, and it always seemed that the message applied to me; and me only. I went to the front a few more times, and finally I just allowed what God was wanting to do in my life to happen. I responded to the message went to the front of the church, and trusted in what the scripture said, and let the Spirit of God descend upon me and I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost for the very first time with the evidence of speaking in other tongues. This was so new to me, but I was really beginning to understand that God was really working in my life.

The church in Kingston was a smaller one, but really helped me in the beginning, because they were so kind to me. Really kind, I could not believe people were that nice and happy. But they were really patient with me, answered my questions and concerns, spent and invested the time to help someone. I am sure I frustrated them sometimes, but they were always there for me. They allowed me to find God, and experience God without pressing Him down my throat. We continued to have the Bible studies, and started talking about baptism. But wait, I was baptized when I was a baby.

Even though we started in the Bible Studies, and we talked about baptism. I still initially struggled with this decision. I read the scriptures, saw what it said; now I had to make the decision to step away from a traditional background, and follow the scripture. Really, because when I was baptized as a baby, it was a tradition that was done. It wasn’t anything that I decided to do; after all I was still in diapers.

So, the Senior Pastor at the time (who is the brother to my current Pastor), asked me to come over to the church one day, and talk. So Jackie and I went over to the church, and sat down and talked about baptism. We went over the scriptures, and talked about what was holding me back. Finally, I decided I needed to be baptized.

The day I was baptized, no one from my family came, which was a disappointed, but they were not all that in favor of my decision. The night arrived, and I got in the water, and the Associate Pastor dunked me in the water, and baptized me in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of my sins.

What an experience! Jackie was also baptized right after me that same night.

Now I knew that there was something else that needed to be taken care of. We had a son, we both had the Holy Ghost and were just baptized, but we were not married. However, we had a big wedding planned in a year with all the dresses and halls paid for. A decision had to be made.

Right away we knew that there were things that had to be made right in the sight of God. We had a son that was about to turn 1. We had a wedding planned for the following year when I would graduate from College. There were dresses bought and paid, for both my wife and her bride maids, her father had planted some money down for the rental hall and dinner. Yet, we knew that we had to be united in marriage, so we approached the pastor of the church, and asked him to marry us in a couple of weeks. We figured that some people may be upset that it was decided to be moved ahead in a short period of time; but it was the right thing to do. We would deal with all that later, we need to be married.

So on May 12, 1996 Jackie and I had a small wedding in Kingston, Ontario with the immediate families and her grandparents. Everyone was understanding in our decision, and knew we did the right thing.

We would be starting our marriage while I was still in college, we were living with my parents, getting our lives right with God, and wondering what would lie ahead for the future. One thing we knew that the decisions we were making even with external and spiritual pressures around us were the right ones.

Things were starting to work out in ways at the time I did not realize, but God was directing us. A full-time summer position with the Ministry of Health in a small projects IT Dept. The position was unrelated to things I was learning as a programmer in college, but would be the key later on.

This position enabled me to start my IT career in Saint John, NB. The church that we attended was a much larger church then the one in Kingston, and that helped me tremendously. This church in SJ would be extremely helpful in helping me get grounded in the things of God. Looking back, it was definitely God that lead my family and I to take a job in NB. Not only did I get a position that most could only dream about to start out of college; which was a result of having that position at the Ministry of Health, but the church was the reason we were to go to NB. It was definitely God’s will, even though we did not fully understand everything at the time.

After about 2 years in NB, we felt very strongly that we needed to return closer to home. We looked at positions all over in the US and Ontario, when a position in Ottawa came up. It was not everything that I needed in order to make the move initially. So we prayed about it each day for a week, and things started to develop in the position that had everything I needed in order to make the move. It was tremendous to see this unfold each day. So we took the position. The last week we were in SJ, I attended a teaching seminar that really opened things up for me in a new way.

Looking back at our time in SJ it was definitely God that wanted us there, there was lot of growth that we had to go through. From that time to now, we have been located in Ottawa, Ontario at Calvary Church.