The Gathering of the Eagles
THE STORY OF MENNO PAULS
PART ONE  :  Chapter Seven 
CHANGE OF LIFE
January 1st, 1978, was like stepping off into space. I sold my business for six thousand dollars, then waited for the guidance to tell me what I was supposed to do.

It wasn't long in coming. Every night until the eighth, I had dreams that showed me people, faces like Japanese, Spanish, Black, and so on, many nationalities. I was shown destinations such as, Chicago, Winnipeg, and so on. Then, during the day, I spent my time getting ready to travel, cleaning up loose ends, buying suitcases, and the like.

January 8, 1978, the command came through. I was told, "Tomorrow morning, you go to the airport and get the flight that routes through Calgary and then to Chicago." So the next morning Sharon drove me to the airport and dropped me off. I told her I didn't know what was going to happen but that I'd phone her whenever I landed.

The clerk at the Air Canada counter told me that the flight I wanted had been booked since the previous Wednesday, with a waitlist. She said, "You're crazy. This is ‘the' connecting flight for people coming home from Hawaii, or wherever, and going on back east after the Christmas holiday.

Not only that, but it was the favorite for businessmen as well, because it was the morning plane to Calgary. Anyway, I said I'd go standby, put my luggage on and waited. Sure enough, after all the regular passengers had boarded, they call my name and on the plane I go. It seemed impossible, particularly to some I talked to who'd been waitlisted for a week. But it was supposed to be.... and it was.

I made the trip to Chicago as the dreams had shown and I made my connections with the very people I'd seen in those dreams.

From Chicago, I went to Ottawa where I visited my brother Jake and his wife Ellen, and told them the story. Then I met Ray Hudson and his wife Edna, and told them as well. Incidently, Edna and Ellen are sisters.

The next stop after Ottawa was to be Toronto and it was on the train trip there that I had one of the most remarkable connections occur. Before I left Ottawa, my brother and I tried to get me a roomettte because it's an overnight trip. Nothing doing. They told us that there were none available. So I ended up with a lower berth instead.

The next morning they got me up fairly early and the porter told me that he wanted to make the berth up into the normal seat for day use.  In order to do this, he took me along the car and put me into an empty roomette. He said he'd come and get me when he was finished.

Now, I'm not your most alert morning person, but it didn't take me too long to realize where I was. In a roomette... an empty roomette. And last night in Ottawa they'd told us that there were no roomettes available. Then I sort of had a hunch to check out the rest of the roomettes, and sure enough, most of them were empty as well.

How come? I'm figuring now that there must be a good reason for all this. But it wasn't apparent yet.

I was puzzled about it all when the porter came back and took me to my seat. Then within a few minutes he brought another fellow over to the empty seat across from me. He told him to wait there while his berth was being made up.

Then I started to add it all up. They tell me no roomettes on a train that's virtually empty. They put me in an empty one to make up my berth, but not so with the fellow across from me.

BANG! CONTACT! I realized, this fellow had been set up for me to make this connection. After all, if I'd had a roomette, it's not likely the porter would have knocked on the door of the roomette and asked to put someone else in with me while his berth was being made up. So, here it is. The connection.
I started to talk with the guy. I was just starting to open up to him when he interrupted me.  "I know," he said. "I know what you're doing. Now, Here's what you'll be doing in Toronto. You go to the Sheraton Center when you get to Toronto. Then move over to the Windsor Arms, and you'll meet your people."

Can you imagine my surprise when it dawned on me that he was contacting me. I wasn't contacting him. It was the other way around. Not only that, but in the process he told me that I would be going to London, England.

Now, up to this time, I wasn't even aware that I'd go overseas with this thing, but what he said was to the contrary. He said, "When you're in London, England, you will be contacting a certain writer named David...." I'll leave his last name off. But he named the writer and said I'd be seeing him. Then we shook hands and the contact left. He seemed to disappear from the train.

Now, I had an extra element to deal with. Obviously I was going to go overseas, but that was a few months away yet.

In all of my travelling, as unbelievable as it may seem, every detail was taken care of. Every one.

A month after I'd hit the road, February 1978, I got my orders to fly to Edmonton, on a day's notice. This time, though, the travel instructions included a dress code. Usually I travelled pretty casually, in denim, with a sheepskin jacket, very casually. But this time I was told, "You put on a suit; get 'X' Air Canada flight to Edmonton. But PUT ON A SUIT." Boy, was that emphasised.

I don't like wearing a suit and tie at the best of times, but I'm told to put on a suit, so okay, I'll put on a suit. That's all I was told, except that I would get the rest of the flight plan when I got to Edmonton.

Eleven o'clock at night, I was standing in front of the hotel board in Edmonton International Airport wondering where to spend the night. Just as I was making up my mind on one certain place, I heard a voice beside me.

"Are you thinking about trying (such in such) hotel?"

Just like he was reading my mind, because the one he named was the one I was thinking about. I looked at him, noticed he was wearing a beard, but otherwise dressed in a suit. When he asked me about the hotel, he just kept talking to answer his own question.

"Don't bother, they're full."

So I tried another. I picked up the receiver and pushed a button, but it wouldn't ring. Meanwhile he picked up another receiver beside mine, pushed a button, then handed it to me.

"Here," he said, "you're staying at the Edmonton Plaza."

They answered, and in a moment I was checked in. Then I turned to say something else to the fellow and he was gone. He didn't call a hotel for himself, just for me, after he's read my mind, and then poof, he was gone!

Now it's becoming clear as to why I was ordered to dress in a suit. The Plaza is a pretty posh place, a little conservative, and they wouldn't have been too fussy about me wandering in dressed as usual in jeans.

I spent the night there without further incident. But when I woke up in the morning I was feeling a little frustrated. I hadn't received anything as to what I should be doing, who I should see and so on.

As the morning wore on I became even more agitated, so I decided to go for a walk, clear my mind out a bit. I wandered over to the library, just trying to relax. Still nothing was coming.
I walked through the main floor and then the second floor, and then...... wait a minute. Over in the corner was a fellow who looked a bit like a hobo.

"Hey, that looks like one of those guys, one of those guides." I thought. And right at that second, he turned and looked right at me, and he winked!

"No... it can't be! It's too cliched, it's too obvious!" Here I am again ignoring a sign. I walked to the other side of the library where they had some lounge chairs, and I sat down there to think.

Just like a flash, this guy is beside me. There's just no way that I could see that he could come from the other side of the library that fast. But there he was just about ten feet from me, and he started thumbing through a magazine on a table.

"Is this Valentine's Day?" he asked the question without looking up, or without interrupting his thumbing through the book. All very James Bondish!

"Yes," I said, "it's February 14th."

"I have a valentine for a person in Calgary," he said, "there's a person in Calgary you're supposed to see."

He still hasn't looked up at me. Then he said, "Here, this is for you." And he gave me a piece of paper. It was a little poem titled, "Change of Life".

"There's so much good in the worst of us,
So much bad in the best of us,
Sometimes it's hard to say which one of us,
Ought to reform the rest of us."

When I looked up from reading it, he was gone. But my reaction was, "Wow!" The fog just started to lift right there.

It made me laugh actually because it solved the dilemma I had had since arriving. What I was being told in the note was that you can't look at people and judge who's in or who's out of this whole project. Just like he was saying to me, "It's not up to you to say, you're in, or you're out, or you're part of the future but you aren't."

Then I got a message that just said, "Relax, flow, we'll pick you up. Just pretend you're a tourist. Go back to the hotel, order up a hamburger or something. Act like a tourist!"

So I did just that, and it all started happening. 'Those people right there... that lady over there... this person.. now that person." And it was all flowing.

When I got to Calgary, I was guided to a young woman working as a waitress in the Calgary International Hotel. I wasn't staying there, but I got the feeling, "Go there", deliver the Valentine, so to speak.

After I told her the story, she comes back with the confirmation. She told me about a recurring dream that she is leading many people up into the mountains to safety. Far below, the cities are burning, and above, the sky is filled with lights that only she can see. She said that she was in communication with them and that they were helping her to help the people.

And here I was telling her that she would lead people in the future. That she would be a source for their safety and peace of mind.

You know, I've reflected on that note that I was given in Edmonton, quite a bit. And it sure fits the bill, "Change of Life". That's exactly what it's all about...... a big change!

Go to: PART ONE : Chapter Eight : IF IT'S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE HOLLAND
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