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So who are we?
I am Stephen Whitmore, a Physics graduate, now retired after working for over 30 years in the Computer Industry in various guises. I began as a programmer writing in PL/1, then Assembler and Cobol. After a few years, I moved into Systems Analysis, and then into MVS and VTAM Systems Programming, including writing/maintaining VTAM application code, and Performance Analysis.
From there I moved to NCR, Dundee as a Network Analyst and then Solution Engineer. I can now see how the Lord has led in many ways over the years. In my first job, he was preparing me for my later job, in that I had almost every area of expertise in my time as a Network Analyst. The key to the question, "Who am I?" is that I am a Christian who can testify to many years of faithfulness on the part of my Lord. Even in a spell when it appeared that l might never work again, He supplied every need, and we can testify to the fact that every time we had a major expense, He arranged for someone to send the money to meet the expense. This is why we will do all that we can to make Him known to others they can enjoy the peace that comes from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So how did this come about? In the goodness of God, I was brought up in a Christian home where the Bible was read every day (and the whole Bible every year in my early days), but this never saved me. I knew the truth of the Bible, but I did not know Saviour as mine until August 1961. It came about like this: At the beginning of the month, I was staying with my uncle while my mother had an operation. He was preaching the Gospel in a Hall where a chart of future events was displayed on the wall behind the platform. I learned two things from that chart - THE LORD IS COMING and If I am not ready, I would have a place in the Lake of Fire. Later in the same week, as I came for dinner after playing with my cousin in the garden, I was washing my hands with plenty of soap, when he said to me words something like this: "However much you wash the outside you will never clean the inside". The Lord was working. I had at least two occasions in the month when He forcibly reminded me of these lessons, and at the end of the month, on my 7th birthday a children's talk on, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God", Rom.3.23. The jigsaw was now complete. As these words remained in my mind overnight, I realised that I was a sinner, I needed to be saved before the Lord came, and I knew by then that to be saved I had to confess my sin, and place my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. In the morning I gladly did that, and can testify to His faithfulness since that day, despite my unfaithfulness.
My wife is Jean She taught Home economics until we married, when she changed from teaching to practising Home Economics, maintaining the home as our two children grew up.
She was brought up in a home that had no thought of God, but did think that children should go to Sunday School. As the Gospel Hall was most convenient, and her mother had been there as a child, they went to the Sunday School there. At the age of 7 or 8, in some children's meetings, she heard that "the Lord had died on the cross for sinners", and realised very simply that she needed to be saved, and only the Lord could save her, so she asked the Lord to save her. From this time she has continued enjoying the Presence of the Lord in her daily life. She, too, can testify to the saving and keeping power of the Lord in every circumstance of life - in an ungodly home, through college, in employment in bringing and keeping us together, and in bringing up the children in the family home.
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