Week 4
Marlowe Sharp
Profession: I was a police officer for over 28 years but my real love was beekeeping. I now run Glorybee Apiary where I breed queen honey bees to sell to other beekeepers along with starter colonies and of course….honey! I married my high school sweet heart, (who accepted Christ after I told her about my salvation at RRR) and have 3 sons.
Fondest memory at RRR: When I first started coming to the Ranch, and before the chapel was constructed, we met in the dining hall (which we fondly referred to as the “chuck house” – a term Bruce still dislikes! Hahaha!) We’d start Sunday morning with a ride out to the main road to greet visitors arriving for Sunday chapel and then after a trail ride made hot chocolate before chapel started. We’d sing hymns and choruses and then Bruce would bring the message – always clear, concise and relevant. This is where I heard the Gospel for the first time and where one November morning in 1977 sitting with Dave and Bruce by the fireplace in the dining hall, I asked Jesus to be my Saviour and guide. Talk about a “game changer”! For me it is where my life really began. I was 18 years old.
Camp and lessons: I came to RRR through hockey. Bruce brought me on as a player on the Jr B team he coached in Acton. Although I came from a loving and supportive family and even knew a bit about God and the Bible from my parent’s association to the Quaker faith, I had never heard the message of salvation. I was a young man with all the material things I needed or wanted but I had no direction or purpose, living for my own pleasure, day to day. I saw something different in Bruce and Dave, something about their character and confidence that drew me to learn more about this “Christian” life. After deciding to follow the Lord that November morning, I went on staff at the ranch, at first spending weekends there, helping in the barn and with the horses under the direction of Bill then later spending most of my time there for the spring and summer and a wrangler and ground maintenance hand. When my work brought me back to Fergus to live I’d sometimes take a week on my vacation time and bring my children to camp while I did grounds work.
Bruce always would say “It’s easy to be act like a Christian when you’re surrounded by other Christians at the Ranch. But what when you leave and go out into the world?”. I learned that spending time daily in the Bible and in prayer is the only way to stay on course – and even then it’s tough, especially in this age of relentless “cyber distractions”. It took a while for that to sink in but during some dark days resulting from my work, those lessons came back to sustain me and kick start my life again. God was faithful. I could never have completed my career without my faith in Christ, the world would have consumed me. Where I am now; doing work that I love, a great wife, learning to be a better husband, (I’m an ongoing project!) serving God at church, and still being shaped and molded by my Saviour has been a long journey – and it started at RRR!
One of my sustaining verses: Lam 3:22-23: “ Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”