Bruce Wilcox is a well-known and respected part of the local community. Since the summer of 2013, he has served as a full-time lay missionary within the Cariboo Presbyterian Church’s house church ministry. Now, at the end of January, 2020, he will be slowing the pace a bit, as he steps into the world of retirement.
The Wilcox family has a long history in our area. His grandfather came to homestead near Bradley Creek in 1912, with his wife and their nine children. Growing up in Forest Grove and attending school locally, Bruce discovered and developed his musical talents in his late teen years. Self-taught on the guitar, jamming with other musicians and learning from them helped Bruce gain the skills he has shown ever since. He can be heard at the Lac La Hache Coffee House, and loves leading worship in the house churches, accompanying a wide variety of Christian songs and hymns.
After high school, he worked most jobs in most of the local mills of the 1970’s and ’80’s, rounding out his career by grading lumber for West Fraser. The ups and downs of the forest industry eventually took him and his family to Kamloops for some computer training, before eventually returning to 100 Mile House and then Lac La Hache. It was there that Bruce’s faith in God and trust in His love through Jesus Christ, His Son, was most deeply nourished as he worshipped within the house church ministry begun in 1989 by David Webber of the Presbyterian Church. (It was and remains the mandate of the mission to take God’s love and gospel to those in isolated areas of the Cariboo, where maintaining a distant and expensive building would be impractical and prohibitive.) He was ordained an elder in 1999, and started accompanying Dave and assisting him in his visits to the different house churches throughout the southern Cariboo, and north to and west of Quesnel. Locally, Bruce started regular services to the residents of Carefree Manor in 2004, then took on full-time work as Dave Webber transitioned to his own retirement in 2013-2014.
While Bruce will be stepping down from the chapel service in Lac La Hache, in the little red church, and the present house churches in Sheridan Lake, Forest Grove, and McLeese Lake, he looks forward to continuing to serve at Carefree Manor, and to host the Coffee Houses. As he has said, in Christian service there really is no retirement! Mark Carter, who grew up in the McLeese Lake house church, has been working with him and will be continuing Bruce’s ministry in February. Bruce and his wife, Jackie, look forward to continuing to live here among their friends and neighbours.
Lac La Hache folks will be hosting a Retirement Party for Bruce, to which all his friends and acquaintances are invited. It will be on Saturday, January 18, from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., at the O.A.P.O. Hall in Lac La Hache. It will be a ”pot-providence” luncheon with coffee, and a time to extend your good wishes to Bruce.
