Billy Jackson was now thirteen. Still among the smaller boys in build, he didn’t go around looking for trouble. But something inside him didn’t allow him to give in easily. He wrestled with whoever challenged him. Sometimes, so-called fun wrestling led to real fights. Sometimes, students ganged up to teach one of the boys a lesson. That happened one day with Billy being the one they ganged up against. 

        “I knew the guys were going to jump me,” Bill recounted the story. “I had my jackknife under the pillow. Sure enough, they came at me and tied me to my bed with belts. I managed to get my knife out and was cutting the belts to get free. One of the boys saw what I was doing and jumped on me. He got his hand cut in the process.” 

        Billy was called to the principal’s office but no action was taken against him. The principal assessed the story and let the matter drop. It was a good decision. There had been no intent to maliciously injure the kid who actually made a dumb move when he jumped on a boy holding a knife. 

        But there was no doubt that anyone observing Billy would have noticed a growing stubbornness and lack of cooperation with school staff. This began to show up in his grades. He went from his usual 95—100% to grades somewhere between 75%-80%.

        One contributing factor may have been Billy’s discovery of girls. Along with the other boys in dorm three, Billy was begin­ning to experience the kinds of physical development that tells a boy he is on the way to manhood. The talk in the dorm was more and more about girls. Boys boasted of real or invented love exploits. Like adolescent boys all over the world, these stu­dents were uncomfortably moving from boyhood into young adulthood. The girls, who were sheltered in their own inaccessi­ble dormitory, became a very interesting species. 

        The school rules permitted boys freedom to wander around and off the school grounds. During their free time, boys could be found anywhere within a three mile radius of the school property. The girls, on the other hand, were carefully super­vised. They had a large fenced-off yard to walk in and they were allowed out only as groups in the care of a school staff member. About the best the boys could do was write notes to girls in class or flirt with them during class recess. Billy did his share of that. Like the other boys, he wrote a note to the girl he fancied. Other boys wrote outrageous notes to some girls and signed them with his name. It was all part of the social interaction that came with adolescence. 

        Then there were the school dances. Playing his fiddle there, Billy soon had opportunity to draw the attention of some girls he liked. One especially attracted him. For Billy, the warm glow of puppy love made school a bit more bearable, even if he could only love from a distance. 

        “We also got together at special events like the school Christ­mas dinner,” Billy reported. “None of us went home for Christ­mas. The school put on a dinner and program. They also gave each student a gift.” 

        One odd tradition related to the Christmas dinner has stuck in Billy’s memory. As the students filed into the dining room they had to pass a table on which stood a big pot of Christmas pudding batter. The cook insisted that each student stir the bat­ter once and make a wish. Billy and some other students who didn’t particularly like Christmas pudding never did have the heart to tell the cook that they wished they didn’t have to eat the stuff. 

        The school celebrated Christmas. The students were com­pelled to attend church every Sunday morning. The school was actually a church school and undoubtedly had some true Chris­tians on staff. Yet, Bill does not remember anybody personally speaking to him about his relationship with God. He does not recall ever hearing the Gospel preached, although he is quick to admit that perhaps it was preached but he didn’t have ears to hear.

        During that general period, however, something happened back on the reserve which didn’t mean a thing to Billy at the time but took on great significance later. He himself had no real awareness of God’s love for him personally or of personal re­sponsibility to obey God. Respect for God’s will never prevented Billy from doing what he wanted to do. Yet, while he lived a god­less (though not overtly wicked) life, his grandfather on the re­serve came under conviction of wrongdoing and destroyed some bad medicine which had been in his possession for years. Billy’s grandfather buried the offending objects deep in the bush. Later yet in life, he made a full confession of personal faith in the Lord Jesus. 

        So, God was at work, graciously intervening in the life of Bil­ly’s grandfather. If anybody had spoken of this to the young man who was wrapping up his Grade VIII, he would have shrugged it off as something he didn’t understand or care about. That was grandfather David’s business. It had nothing to do with him.