FIFTY PLUS YEARS AGO!!

ON MAY 24th 1942 I was baptised and christened in the Parish Church of St. John the Baptist, in Knaresborough. It was Whitsunday. I tried to revisit it in 2003 but found it locked. A church has stood there for at least a thousand years. My adoptive mother and father, aunt and uncle were all there and made the usual promises to bring me up in the knowledge and way of the Word of God. None of them were churchgoers, or having any personal conviction concerning Christ.
On the 5th December 1954 I was Confirmed by the then Suffragan Bishop of Sherbourne in the Parish Church of St. Michael and All Angels, in Melksham, Wiltshire. My family were not present. My adoptive mother had left her husband in 1950 and was now living with another man. This had caused us to temporarily change our family name from Green to that of 'Richards', and so I was confirmed as a Christian under an illegal name, and when I was still ignorant of Salvation.
My mother had insisted I was confirmed as she said 'It's the thing to do!' But I seemed to have understood nothing about it at the time. Not until I was 17 and on the verge of committing suicide did I come to know that Christ had died for me to rescue me from sin and sadness. I was then working in Melksham, a rather gangly, bespectacled youth, rather introspective, and serious. I had gone immediately to the Vicarage of St. Michael's Church to share what had happened to me, and I found him in the midst of his lunch, but very able to welcome me into God's family and to give me good and clear council. Council that I needed, and which set me SAFELY on my way to discovering God's purpose for my life.
In 1955 I also finished my Secondary Education - not too well. I managed a further year of education in the Melksham College of Further Education, and then went to work sweeping floors and humping boxes in a Wholesale Grocery Firm, generally learning the trade from the warehouse floor to the Office when I became an accounts clerk. I was not very good at making friends, but during that period of my life 1955-58 I did make one friend. He was quite mad on films and we often visited the cinema to watch one that he was especially interested to see. Eventually we even began a Film Society in Melksham, and I remember one of the very first films we hired and screened was one of the funniest I had ever seen. It was french and entitled 'Les Vacancies le Monsieur Hulet.' with Jacques Tati. We also went to the extent of making a replica of the Tichfield Thunderbolt and parading through the streets of Melksham during an Annual Town Parade. The name of my friend was David Stratton, and he was the son of the Managing Director of the firm in which I worked - Stratton Sons & Mead Ltd. He was also with me at Melksham College.
Idly looking up names on the Internet recently I found myself typing in his name - DAVID STRATTON, and immediately discovered him to now be a renowned film critic living in Australia! I almost fell off my chair with surprise. He had left England in 1963 for Australia. I had left Melksham by then, and we had never met after I had left in 1958. I had later changed back to my family name of Green. But I never had forgotten David, and the good times we had enjoyed briefly in our teenage. Both of us have had very different lives - his perhaps more glamorous than mine - but no less interesting and adventurous. There is nine months between us in age. An Eternity between us and faith. Might God have something in me catching sight of David once again. Who knows. But it IS one more strange connection between Australia and Testimony Faith Homes. Life is full of surprises.
TESTIMONY FAITH HOMES, and all that find shelter and life with us are still walking through the wilderness. It has begun to stretch before us seemingly without end. Last week I shared with you how Father spread our table in the wilderness, and so proved that there is indeed NOTHING too hard for Him to do or achieve. Since then of course the days have continued, and we have continued also walking on. Today is the 1st day of a NEW month, and we can rejoice to say that in coming to this day, we are able to look back on a month fully provided for, and a month in which we have seen all our workers also provided for. Some good news also for us in Kenya. We are told that petrol is to come down by almost 10/- per litre, and today the Daily Nation has announced that the cost of Electric Power is also to come down by 35 percent which will be a great help - (a saving of about £290 per month for us).
TODAY the Primary School is holding its Entrance Examination for Class 1. The compound full of Pre.School children and their parents hoping to find places for the coming year. The School year is soon to end. Already the Secondary School is in the midst of the Final Government Examination (The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education), and soon the Primary Certificate will commence. Then the long school holiday. The weather remains uncertain. RAIN is still with us, and cloudy skies. POLITICALLY too things remain in many ways uncertain, with continued tensions and confrontations amongst our politicians. Outwardly stable, the inner state remains very volatile. Much prayer continues to be needed if we are to see peace continue without constraint or threat. BUT we are not fighting uncertainly ourselves, and we feel as before without anxiety. Underfoot the going is a bit gritty, and the diet a little limited, but otherwise we are not prevented from going forth unhindered toward the Promised Land.

Our Love to you all

John and Esther