Trumpets of Heaven

In a weary and demoralized nation, truck horns sparked hope and joy.

Part 1: There Was Room at the Inn

Image generated by Grok (on X/Twitter)

For Melissa McKee at Bikers’ Church, there is now a sharp delineation: before Convoy and post Convoy. "I have been very, very disappointed," she says. "I don't have any of the same friends."

When people she's known for years told her, "You need to be listening to the government," she'd reply, "No, you need to be listening to God.'" She'd urge them to look around, pointing out that marriages were being rescued, that the six-year-old wasn't depressed anymore.

Like millions of other Canadians, Melissa was skeptical of the vaccines. "How can they have a vaccination for this thing that's just appeared?" she asked husband Rob early on. "We've put billions of dollars into cancer research for decades and decades and we still don't have a cure." Many of her relatives saw matters differently. Core relationships have been severely strained. Mourning living relationships is different, she says, than mourning a person's death, "It pinches constantly."

One of her most precious memories involves a woman in her seventies who "came up to me one day, at the back of the church, at the info booth. She said, 'You don't know me, but my daughter follows you on Facebook. I don't have Facebook, but my daughter, she watches you. I watch you.'"

She then gave Melissa "one of the greatest compliments I've ever received. She said, 'I am Jewish. And I know if this was 1930s Germany, I know you’d hide me.' I couldn't even lift my head up off the counter she made me cry so hard."

Whenever Melissa feels sorrow over how much has changed, she reminds herself: "This lady knows I would hide her. I wanna be that kind of person." New relationships have replaced old ones. In her words, "I have all these beautiful Convoy people that have filled my life," with a friendship that is rich and solid. Out-of-town visitors are now common. "All of the freedom people want to come here," she smiles,

It's a home for them. We actually just had a lady, her and her husband planned their holiday around coming here. They follow us from upstate New York.

We have a guy that travels five hours, almost every single Sunday, to come be here with us. One of the truckers. He leaves his house at five in the morning and he arrives at ten. Has a few cups of coffee. He might grab a little nap in the back.

We get messages all the time. 'I wish we had a Bikers' Church where we live. Can you start a campus here?'

Melissa remembers trucker Sheldon's first visit. When she asked him if he was a Christian, he said he was a leader in his church back home in Manitoba. They chatted, she gave him her phone number, "If you need anything, give me a call." Soon, she says, "he was bringing them all to church on Sundays, and then they started coming through the week."

Many Convoy moments are hard to forget. Early on, she says,

I was sitting over there, and this guy walked in. I try and greet everybody. You know, I feel like this is my home. You're in my home, and I want to host you well. So I excused myself from that table, and I went over and introduced myself to this guy. He was visibly distraught. Wringing his hands, his jaw was clenched. He was antsy, his legs were going. He just kept adjusting himself, he couldn't sit still.

'Where are you from?'

He's like, 'Oh, I'm from London, Ontario. I heard they needed fuel, so I filled up two gas cans and I drove here. I didn't know what else to do, and I'm probably gonna go home and just kill myself.' He's like, 'I was a jail guard. I was beaten up by one of the inmates, and I've got really bad PTSD. I'm drinking, I'm not seeing my kids, I don't want to live anymore.'

Oh my gosh. We were sitting at the corner table over there, against the wall. I grabbed his hands, and I said, 'Can I pray with you?' And I literally just felt him melt. He just melted. There was no more movement, and he had peace over him.

He's still alive. He was here last week, actually. I've kept in touch with him. There have been phone calls in the middle of the night. There have been texts, 'I've got the gun. I'm going to do it.' Talk him off the ledge, pray with him. Hope, hope, hope he doesn't do it.

Melissa's stories are endless. She talks about "a landscaper from out west" who told his seven-month-pregnant wife, "'I gotta go.' So she packed his duffle bag and off he went that afternoon." Catching up with the Convoy, he drove with the truckers for days. At the time, says Melissa, he wasn't "a Bible believing man whatsoever."

But something shifted inside of him. The truck horns sounded like the trumpets of heaven. In a weary, demoralized nation they were sparking hope and joy. Many things were shifting.

The night before the western Convoy rolled into Ottawa, this chap was amongst those who stayed in Renfrew at a theme park for young families that has a Noah's Ark. Afterward, a number of Convoy participants got rooms in the Arc Hotel. By then he was looking up things online.

"So this guy walks in the door," says Melissa. "I welcome him, he leans on the info booth there, on the counter, and he goes, 'You don't happen to have a shofar here?'"

He was searching for a biblical trumpet. In the first book of Samuel it says that "Saul blew the shofar throughout all the land, proclaiming liberty from the oppression of the Philistines."

Melissa continues her story,

I turned my head. Our shofar is usually up front, on the table, we always keep it there. But that day it was back in the info booth, I don't know why.

So I turned my head, I looked at it. There was a lady standing there and I said, 'Can you pass me the shofar?'

So he's looking at it. 'Oh, wow. This is a ram's horn. Could I have it?'

I'm like, 'No, you can't have it. It belongs to the church, it's expensive, we can't just give it away.' Anyways, I took his number. He came to church every single week that he was here. During the week, he called. We were able to lead him to Jesus. And now he's one of our very closest friends.

next installment: Sanctuary