Bill Hall's Story

[00:00:07] Welcome back to another episode of The Vision Pod, where guests are handpicked to bring value to your everyday life. Enjoy

[00:00:29] Welcome back to another episode of The Vision Pod. Today I have my grandpa on. I'm actually named after him

[00:00:36] My mill name is William and his name is William. William Halls.

[00:00:42] So I'm super happy to have you on. Thanks for coming.

[00:00:47] I'm glad to be here. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, so yeah my grandpa always says taught me a lot in life

[00:00:54] So I kind of wanted to have him on so we could share his insight. He's quite the theologian and bookworm I guess.

[00:01:04] So I guess we can start with a story. Do you kind of want to tell how you became a Christian?

[00:01:09] Yeah, I'm really happy to tell that story. I went to university at a university's Saskatchewan.

[00:01:17] So the year was 1967. I graduated in the 66 didn't know what I was going to be or do.

[00:01:25] So it didn't go to university and didn't really think that that would be what I would do.

[00:01:31] But just said let me take you here off.

[00:01:34] Well, not a year off a year to work. That's right.

[00:01:39] And that was an okay year for me but not a not a great year.

[00:01:47] And I decided to go then to university in 1968.

[00:01:54] I was 20 years old.

[00:01:59] Okay, where are you going to university for? Actually, yeah the first year was 1967.

[00:02:04] What were you going to university for?

[00:02:08] Well, it was in arts because I didn't know what I wanted to be or do or I didn't really know who I really was.

[00:02:18] So the fact is that I had a lot of growing up to do. I think you reached that place for you think it's all kind of be there.

[00:02:27] You finish your graduate high school. You think I do know what I want but I didn't.

[00:02:32] I didn't know who I really was or what to do with this next step.

[00:02:39] I just knew that it was on my path to me to do.

[00:02:43] So so that year out didn't really advance that story very far.

[00:02:48] I still didn't know who I wasn't or what I wanted to do.

[00:02:57] Okay, yeah I got the letter from the Dean at Christmas of that year at university.

[00:03:04] That was the end of 67 and the Dean of arts has said, look if this is as hard as you're prepared to work.

[00:03:12] Maybe you should do something else.

[00:03:16] This is a general letter that most students that were just barely surviving would get.

[00:03:22] So that was my note that I was on notice said, I was going to have to do more than play bridge in order to get a degree.

[00:03:34] And so that didn't really change my scholastic attitude but was a reflection of the fact that things weren't really going great.

[00:03:42] That's great.

[00:03:45] So at the end of university, it came along at the end of that first year and going back for the second year in the fall.

[00:03:58] I was actually in 1968.

[00:04:01] Lots of things were happening in the world.

[00:04:04] It was a very intriguing time.

[00:04:07] I mean, before that year has done Martin Luther King will have been murdered.

[00:04:18] The assassination of, you know, just a number of significant things are going on.

[00:04:25] See, year when Detroit is burning riots, a lot of unrest via Nam War had caused lots of unrest on university campuses in the States.

[00:04:38] Some of that filtered up to where I was going to school at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

[00:04:45] And so that meant that this was a big changing moment in history.

[00:04:53] I mean, the beginning of the Jesus people movement was beginning to happen then.

[00:04:58] Not that I was aware of it at the time I wasn't.

[00:05:02] I guess I was because classrooms were dealing with the Berkeley California was kind of the head of a lot of changes in

[00:05:15] the way people were approaching and thinking about life.

[00:05:20] And so some of that was filtering up to us in Saskatchewan.

[00:05:27] So, as I entered this school by year, I knew I needed to be more involved.

[00:05:34] So one level in Baltimore was I decided to play university sports.

[00:05:37] So there was a soccer team I tried out for it and made the team.

[00:05:44] And the guy that I played soccer alongside Howard Dirk's was just a terrific man.

[00:05:55] I mean, he really, I just enjoyed being around him.

[00:05:59] He was always laughing, always full of life.

[00:06:04] And I was, I was my, the blue straight seldom stopped out of my mouth with words.

[00:06:13] So I wasn't, it was an unfulfilled person in some way, but he was somebody who was really happy with who he was and with life in general.

[00:06:24] Yeah. And at university campus, I ran into him at lunch one day in the cafeteria.

[00:06:33] And I went, he said, we can't sit with us and there are a number of people there that I liked them all.

[00:06:39] We had good conversations. This went on for a number of weeks.

[00:06:45] And it ended up that every Tuesday, I know it was just a bit of a rhythm. They'd get up and say we got to go.

[00:06:55] And so I said, we're going, they're going down to a Bible study. I said, oh, what?

[00:07:01] You do what? And they said, oh, we studied the Bible. Why would you do that?

[00:07:07] So it was a mystery to me that somebody, as intelligent as what I understood how it would be doing that.

[00:07:23] And so I'd say no, I don't want to do that. And so I was going out to the book tables at the university campus.

[00:07:32] And on the book table, we kind of represented of all these various philosophies, whether it was political or sociological philosophies that were part of the world.

[00:07:47] And I'm more interested in learning about, I don't know, Harry Krishnars and what?

[00:07:57] I think the last place in the world that I expected to find anything would have been in the church.

[00:08:05] So while I had grown up, we had maybe been sent to school, but when Mum found out that we were using that money to write the bus around instead of going to church

[00:08:18] And then she decided that was a poor investment too. So, yeah.

[00:08:24] So our home was not a, it wasn't, we weren't a Christian home if I was to speak of now what I would understand that to be.

[00:08:33] I think at the time I'd probably said, well, I guess we were as Christian as anybody else.

[00:08:38] I wouldn't have really put any stock in what the word meant outside of, well, culturally we were a Christian, right?

[00:08:48] Yeah, and I guess Christian is that Christ follower and someone who...

[00:09:06] So they kept disappearing on me every Tuesday at lunch.

[00:09:11] So one day I set them up, maybe I'll go down and see what you guys are doing.

[00:09:19] So we could down underneath, it was literally underground by 15 feet or so.

[00:09:26] Like a well underground, and you could travel these underground tunnels at the university campus.

[00:09:36] And down under this ground there was a place where the group met.

[00:09:43] And I found out the name of that group was the University of Christian Fellowship, the VCF group on campus in Césaritune.

[00:09:51] And it turned out that Howard was in fact the president of this, okay, club which is just a student led group.

[00:10:04] And then by people who are interested in knowing something about God to join with them.

[00:10:09] So I ended up at this Bible study.

[00:10:13] And I mean there in Roman chapter one, and it's... I am arguing with them the whole time.

[00:10:22] I mean, what do I know about it? Nothing.

[00:10:26] But I'm prepared to argue with all that I am that I find, oh, I think I'm offended. I'm gonna say it.

[00:10:36] And they welcomed me into this group and I kept going. We went through this Bible study, and I grew to really enjoy it.

[00:10:49] In fact I remember one day going, I decided to walk home from the University which was a good five miles I think from where I lived.

[00:11:00] Yeah. And I going down and walking home, I stopped at the United Church that we had failed to go to most of the time when my mother gave us somebody to go to church.

[00:11:16] But when we did go, I was sure that they had never told me anything like this. And I went up and I knocked on the door of the pastor's office which was outside of the church that church was locked.

[00:11:32] But there was this pastor's office entrance. So I knocked at that door and I was gonna ask him why didn't you tell me this?

[00:11:41] Well, I had been learning about Christ and I was finding it entirely intriguing. And I'm thinking, I didn't know any of this.

[00:11:52] And so it's somebody else's fault. Like Bill Hall is still not learned how to be honest about who he is. Really, I'm kind of sure if I don't know something, it's somebody else's fault.

[00:12:07] Yeah, not my own lack of paying attention. He wasn't there and I'm glad because okay, it probably wouldn't have been, yeah, I would have looked pretty stupid.

[00:12:22] But there was something else that happened that was really significant that fall.

[00:12:26] I got, I was invited. He was a black comedian from the States who had become he was a Christian but he was there to talk about the all that all that was going on in the States.

[00:12:45] He wanted to talk about Martin Luther King and the importance of what King was doing and trying to bring about a freedom for the black people, an acceptance of an understanding of who they were.

[00:13:03] And this was, I mean, there was a lot of stuff going on that fall but this guy was unbelievably funny and articulate.

[00:13:16] And with really suggesting to all of us university students that had gathered and these were, this was not Christians like this, this brought out it filled the auditorium that the guy was speaking in.

[00:13:31] People wanted to know about Martin Luther King. They wanted it to be involved in the discussions that were happening and Canadians felt strongly supportive and we didn't really understand how why they were not able to see black people other than through a servant.

[00:13:56] Right, that your role is to it is not to be accepted. You don't have a right to be in our schools you don't have a right and and of course so this is all very important and and it left me wanting to find out more about Martin Luther King Jr.

[00:14:19] So when I left there that day, I went immediately to the library to try to find a book written by Martin Luther King Jr.

[00:14:31] And the book that I picked up was, it was a set of sermons that were by Martin Luther King Jr.

[00:14:47] And the one I read a number of them but the one that just grabbed me was his story of what it meant for him to have become a Christian and like his black preacher, but it just, I mean I think it was the first time that I had really heard it articulated in a way that

[00:15:15] I felt a hunger desire in my soul and I put it together with the Bible study with what we were doing of course I did. And the person that Jesus was suddenly more real to me, more

[00:15:31] Maybe this has something to do with my life or maybe there's something that I haven't really understood some decision that maybe I need to think about it.

[00:15:42] I think it, it just advanced me from being in a discussion where I could be kind of standing off and talking about it and philosophizing but not really hearing it personal but both the speaker at that event and the book translated into me into becoming a real existential question.

[00:16:10] Who am I? Is there a God? Now my answer to that would have been no way. I wasn't ready yet to say I believe there's a God, but I was at least willing to acknowledge that people that I admire deeply were Christians like that I was beginning to see that.

[00:16:38] There's something here that I have ignored in my life. So that was really, those were important for steps as I look back for sure.

[00:16:50] And then Howard invited me to they were going to have a camp in the wintertime in January up at Christopher Lake which is about two and a half three hours north of Saskatoon.

[00:17:06] Okay. And they had rented the facility up there that Christopher Lake Bible camp and this was a gathering of the university students, whoever would want it.

[00:17:20] So when they had a special speaker named Neil Graham, who's father at one point had been the dean. Not just the dean. I think he was the president.

[00:17:34] I can't remember the title of the chancellor, whatever of the University of Saskatchewan. Neil Graham was going to be the speaker and he was now working for a university Christian fellowship as a as a professional person.

[00:17:54] And I mean it was like, it was an incredible moment. Neil spoke brilliantly talked about the incident in Mark chapter two where some friends had brought a paralytic to see Jesus and and the,

[00:18:16] they couldn't get in to such a big crowd of gathered to hear Jesus. They couldn't get in, they couldn't get him to the front. So the friends were very creative. They went up onto the roof and dug through the fence and lowered their friend on a mat down in front of Jesus.

[00:18:41] And Jesus healed the paralytic. And you know, Neil, when he was done said, maybe some of you have been helped to come to a place where you'd like to meet Jesus here.

[00:18:59] You ready for that. And I knew that if he wasn't speaking to me, that it was a real question.

[00:19:08] Right. Yeah. Am I ready to make a commitment to Christ? Because I knew that my friends had been bringing me, they had been helping me to be at this place where I was learning about Jesus.

[00:19:28] But I think the pressure was too much, Bill Hall was still too much of a runner, still too much. Not ready to give up his own right to think the way he wants and about everything. And so I didn't go forward.

[00:19:47] I didn't sort of accept that as a moment when I would accept Christ. And so I continued to be very involved with the university, continued to go to their day-goids,

[00:20:01] and I had other opportunities when people were trying to get me to maybe make a move because they could see that I was really interested. I mean, there was no hiding that.

[00:20:12] I found Jesus absolutely captivating. I found the Gospels captivating. I totally was on one level, very, in a sense, right?

[00:20:29] Like, I was really, but the question of is there a God? And if I pray, is it even remotely possible that God can hear me?

[00:20:48] And I said there are billions of people. There weren't as many then as now, but there are a lot. How can he hear us speaking?

[00:21:00] I cackafony of noise. How is it possible for me to conceive that God hears prayer? I could not get over this was a stumbling block to me. It kept me from, I just, I couldn't imagine.

[00:21:22] It's hard enough for me as an individual to believe that you're listening to me. Let all go. Or that people out in another never-landy who are listening can all hear at this time.

[00:21:42] Maybe, maybe, I should actually help me to realize that it is possible to hear a lot of voices. You got to my phone then.

[00:21:56] I didn't because I couldn't get past that. That was a stumbling block.

[00:22:01] And then I realized if I'm not ready to make a decision, it would become a bit of an agonizing thing. What do things that was interesting to you is I was asked that there was a, we were going to have a skating party.

[00:22:21] And with the university, when you would meet with a group, when you would meet, say to go skating then afterwards you go back to somebody's house and there'd be a gathering.

[00:22:33] And they'd usually be a devotional or some kind of thought. So they said, when we have nobody to give the devotional and I said, oh, I'll do it.

[00:22:45] And they looked at me and they said, you will. I said, I'll think of something. But I went home and in order to do, I wanted to understand prayer. So where do you think I went?

[00:23:03] So the Bible is a big book. Where do you go if you want to know any of the book? Well, I went to probably the hardest portion in Scripture if you don't believe, if even if you do believe, but artists maybe can be the hardest to really grab a hold of them.

[00:23:21] That's the Jesus longest prayer in John 17 when he's praying that people might, he's praying for his disciples and for the people of the world.

[00:23:37] Yeah. That they might know you father and that they might understand you, right?

[00:23:42] Yeah. So I'm going to try to understand prayer and I'm going to try to leave them in this devotional, which I mean the agacity, the audacity, the people leave that they actually, I actually had anything to contribute to this.

[00:24:02] And when I was done, I had talked myself into a corner and when I left that night, I thought I'm not going back.

[00:24:15] I stepped away from it. Like, I realized that I don't really, I don't know how I can move forward or back or I feel like I'm stuck in this middle.

[00:24:28] Okay. And it was also getting close. We were within about three weeks from the end of the academic year and then finally exams would be happening.

[00:24:43] And I was in my second year. So it was important that I really focused on my exams.

[00:24:50] So I did step away and so for four weeks, five weeks I didn't have any conversations with any of them. I kind of avoided the topic.

[00:25:05] I avoided the topic and avoided the people. I just kind of, but I did find in my exams and that was all good. But at the end of, in the end of that time, it was around the 15th of April.

[00:25:22] My last exam was written and I noticed on the board at the in the arts building in University of Saskatchewan, that there was a notice that Howard had put up saying,

[00:25:35] a number of us are planning to go to Alberta to help a camp, pioneer camps, get ready for their summer programs. So it's a work camp and if any of you, if any of you are interested in coming.

[00:25:57] I would open it by and I formed Howard and he said, and if any of you have a car that would really be helpful.

[00:26:08] Okay, we have a few people who still need rights. And so I formed Howard and said, how did I be glad to go and I have a car and I'll take people.

[00:26:17] So we went off 500 miles away from Saskatchewan to Rocky Mountain House to do the work at the camp.

[00:26:29] And that was partly because Neil Graham was one of the leaders of pioneer camps in Alberta. So I'm sure that Neil had been talking to some of the kids and it encouraged them to think about coming out to camp for the summer or at least to come to work camp.

[00:26:50] So we go out there, there were actually 25 people, five car loads that went from U of West Saskatchewan to Rocky Mountain House.

[00:27:01] And on the first night, you were the one we gathered, the thing that really that I didn't expect.

[00:27:12] But I didn't realize I had been missing something during those four weeks.

[00:27:20] I thought I was just missing my friends. But the moment the man opened the Bible and began to talk, I said, that's what I'm missing.

[00:27:35] I'm missing the word of God. Like it had become precious to me.

[00:27:42] Yeah, precious to me when I would read it.

[00:27:48] I like it was, you know, I now say that the word was a living word.

[00:27:56] Yeah, and it was changing me.

[00:27:59] And my absence from the group was what was far more real.

[00:28:08] Was I missed that word?

[00:28:13] Okay. I was astonished by that, and I was just sitting there, we're studying the book of neumah, small book, hidden away in the Old Testament.

[00:28:26] But it was that that was speaking to my heart.

[00:28:30] Wow.

[00:28:31] And so, the two days later, I was the Sunday morning.

[00:28:37] We're having the first of our worship services.

[00:28:42] It was on the Sunday.

[00:28:44] We only had one time when we gathered in a worship service and it was at Sunday.

[00:28:54] And we sang a song.

[00:28:57] It's an old song written by...

[00:29:01] Okay, so guys, the name of the writer is keeping my mind.

[00:29:06] He was the first of the long-mine prison spirit lay,

[00:29:12] fast, bound in sin and nature's night.

[00:29:17] Then I diffused a quickening ray.

[00:29:21] I woke the dungeon flamed with light.

[00:29:26] My chain fell off, my heart was free.

[00:29:30] I rose when forth and followed thee.

[00:29:34] It's called amazing love.

[00:29:40] And it is John Wesley.

[00:29:42] What's her name?

[00:29:43] Okay.

[00:29:44] And it was a Charles.

[00:29:46] One of the Wesleyaners.

[00:29:49] And that it was...

[00:29:52] I was just weeping.

[00:29:54] I mean tears were just falling down.

[00:29:58] And a guy sitting fairly close to me at the end of the service.

[00:30:03] He said, I wondered if you wanted to go for a walk.

[00:30:07] I mean, you were pretty touched by that.

[00:30:10] You wanted to go for a walk.

[00:30:11] Yeah.

[00:30:12] So Ed and I went out for a walk, and he said,

[00:30:16] Billy, he said, what was happening?

[00:30:21] And I said, well, that's a good question.

[00:30:24] I said, I think this absence that I had,

[00:30:29] and in my realization of how much I missed the structure.

[00:30:36] And I'm not sure how much I'm enjoying.

[00:30:38] I mean, maybe it's everything, but mostly I think it's...

[00:30:43] I think it's just that I realized that I really...

[00:30:47] There's something in Jesus and in this word that...

[00:30:54] Like, I know that's speaking to my heart.

[00:30:57] I know that.

[00:30:58] And he said, well, have you...

[00:31:03] Have you never made a commitment?

[00:31:06] And I said, no, he said, are you...

[00:31:09] Do you want to...

[00:31:11] Do I want to become a Christian now?

[00:31:14] Do you want to make a commitment?

[00:31:16] Can I lead you in prayer?

[00:31:19] And I said, no.

[00:31:22] No, I mean, this is just typically...

[00:31:24] I just wanted to step back.

[00:31:26] It was almost like...

[00:31:28] I don't know what I want to do with it,

[00:31:30] but I don't think I want to do this.

[00:31:32] And he said...

[00:31:37] So I said, when he said, well, okay...

[00:31:40] When I said, no, I rather you don't.

[00:31:43] He said, well, listen.

[00:31:45] He said, you don't need to say anything or pray,

[00:31:47] but I feel like I don't want to just walk away from this without praying.

[00:31:52] So would you mind if I just prayed?

[00:31:55] And so I said, you...

[00:31:56] Sure.

[00:31:58] So he prayed of...

[00:32:01] It's...

[00:32:01] Yeah, he just prayed...

[00:32:02] Let me pray for you.

[00:32:07] And...

[00:32:07] And I didn't intend to pray.

[00:32:10] In fact, he had asked me...

[00:32:12] You could always pray and I said, I'm not going to, right?

[00:32:16] He'd asked me and I said, no.

[00:32:18] This is before he prayed.

[00:32:20] I mean, I said, well, I'm going to pray anyway.

[00:32:21] And so he had prayed.

[00:32:24] Unbidden.

[00:32:24] And without my intention, I began to pray.

[00:32:29] And the moment that I began to pray,

[00:32:34] God did a thing in me.

[00:32:38] Like...

[00:32:38] I just began to weep.

[00:32:42] Wow.

[00:32:42] I don't control a bee.

[00:32:44] And then I began to laugh.

[00:32:48] I'll loud and just...

[00:32:51] Uporiously, because I felt both this great grief of sin and the great release.

[00:33:00] But it wasn't just a one thing.

[00:33:02] It was like a wash tub.

[00:33:04] It just went round and round.

[00:33:06] Wow.

[00:33:07] It was...

[00:33:07] I mean, I'm not trying to say that this is anybody else's experience is just my experience.

[00:33:14] But it was that moment in which God...

[00:33:17] You've been healed himself to me.

[00:33:22] Change me.

[00:33:23] Wow.

[00:33:24] Change me.

[00:33:25] And I never been the same, because...

[00:33:28] I told you, I wasn't...

[00:33:29] I hadn't really understood who I was.

[00:33:32] I had a lot of gaps in my understanding about life.

[00:33:38] And...

[00:33:39] But from the time that I made that commitment to Christ,

[00:33:45] life really began to make sense to me.

[00:33:49] I began to see who I was.

[00:33:51] I understood that I had a purpose in life.

[00:33:53] I understood that there was...

[00:33:55] That God and God's love was in the world.

[00:33:59] And that God intended for me to be part of something much bigger.

[00:34:04] It's like a whole part of me had never really been alive.

[00:34:11] And now it was.

[00:34:14] And...

[00:34:16] That...

[00:34:16] It just was a revolutionary.

[00:34:20] Yeah, big change for me.

[00:34:22] Well, thank you for listening.

[00:34:24] And I want to give a shout out to my wife, Sandra,

[00:34:27] to my children and grandchildren.

[00:34:29] And if you want to hear more of my story,

[00:34:32] just let you know, thanks, bye.