Mr Bruce was born in the Greendale-Darfield district in April 1935 to a Christian farming family at Hororata.
He said he had a difficult relationship with his father, who was 55 when he was born.
"He would leave home early in the morning and would come home tired after a long day and was often too tired to play with his children.
"As I was growing up, there was nobody at home to show me how to do anything. Nobody to show me how to drive a nail. I was a bit of a no-hoper. It’s a long road learning with no coach.
"I had two years at Christchurch Boys’ High School, but for the last year of my schooling, I went to a newly opened Darfield High School."
He left school at 16 to work on the farm with his ageing father and continued do so with his wife Margaret and their four sons.
Eventually, he felt God wanted them in Timaru, he said.
"We prayed to God and said ‘if you really want us to go, you sell the farm for us’.
"I was thinking that after harvest I would put it on the market and just see what happens but then God sent a real estate man from a company I’d never done business with before, and he said he was ‘looking for listings in the district’.
"I told him the situation and within three months he’d sold the farm for higher than I asked.
"We sat around the dinner table with the boys and they just loved the farm. Every fence, tree, and building had been put there by our family.
"So with just three papers to sign, we just felt we couldn’t do it in the end but I had made a promise to God and I learnt to never make a promise to God if you’re not going to keep it."
Six weeks later, on August 2, 1975 a northwesterly gale hit Canterbury and much of his farm was destroyed.
"I just walked around like a sick old man, because I remembered my promise. God had arranged the sale, and I backed away.
"I asked for forgiveness and that if he ever helped me get the farm back into some sort of sellable order, we’d sell. Almost as soon as I made that confession, miracles began.
"The insurance assessor came and said there would be a check coming to pay for it all and a builder, who was out of work, worked like a machine to resurrect the buildings.
"Within six months, the farm was in better order than before the storm.
"We tested the market and realised the power of God."
In 1976 Mr Bruce and his wife followed God’s call and undertook what they believed would be a short mission to Timaru, to help a man running a large bible in schools programme.
David and Margaret took over the programme which had them travelling across all of South Canterbury teaching up to 20 bible school lessons each week as well as running youth groups, camps and a Sunday school.
In 1989 they began looking for a place where they could train young unemployed people in that work and happened upon North Haven, in North St.
It had been a children’s orphanage and no sooner had they moved in and began wondering how they could use the place, than they were approached by the Aoraki Polytechnic asking if they would take in overseas students.
They took in six as an initial trial and since then hundreds of overseas students have called North Haven their home.
Even after eventually selling the hostel in 1999 and the death of his wife in 2001, Mr Bruce continued to run the hostel well into his 80s.
Despite no formal or university training, he also worked as a farming tutor at the Polytechnic, after being asked to take on a group of 12 prospective students who were without a tutor.
"They told me I could make up my own timetable and I could go do bible in schools and come back and teach.
"They were prepared to pay me wages that I’d never seen in all my life.
"Every time funds seemed to be getting low, God provided miraculously and that’s just one example."
Mr Bruce said God had been very good to him and often wondered why he was chosen to serve him.
"One song I love to play goes, ‘Why me, Lord? What have I ever done to deserve even one of the pleasures I’ve known? Tell me, Lord, what did I ever do that was worth loving you for the kindness you’ve shown? Maybe, Lord, I could show someone else what I’ve been through myself on my way back to you’.
"I believe God has put me here, for how much longer I don’t know but He has been with me all the way."
He recently spoke at the Wilson St church lounge and to his surprise over 90 people attended.
"I started by saying to them, ‘Why are you all here? When the people went out to see John the Baptist in the wilderness, Jesus said, what did you go out to see? Did you see a reed shaking in the wind or something?’.
"I just marvelled. I’m just a little man, but I believe God has got me by the scruff of the neck and said, are you going to serve me or not?
"If anything has happened in my life, I have to say, I haven’t done it, God did it. I’m just little me."
