Post by John on Feb 7, 2009 1:16:13 GMT -5
THE STORY OF MY LIFE 1938 - 2010
################################
I was born December 7th 1938, a snowy day, the second son of Sydney and Alice Maddams of 15 Pleasant Valley Saffron Walden in Essex brother to Roy who is nearly 7 years older than me.
My home was a good home but our parents established it from a state of poverty,
My parents had both lived in Saffron Walden. Mum, Alice born in 1904 was born 3 doors north from where I was born.
Dad had been born in Hampshire and had lived at Royston, Sewards End and Saffron Walden He began work at the Gardens of the Vineyards at the top of Windmill Hill for two shillings and sixpence ( 12½p in present money) a week at the age of 12. At 19 he was working at Englemann’s the Carnation Grower and then went to work in London in 1923.
They married at Walden in 1926 on another snowy day and went to live at Highgate in London.
My parents arrived back in Walden in 1930 homeless. Four years driving cabless buses in all
weather including pea-soup smog in London, had effected Dad’s health and changed his character and they had to move or he was expected to die within 6 months.
Mum and Dad lodged with her parents in one room but his bad temper made it necessary to rent privately and they got a cottage two up two down with a roof over their heads, for nine pence a week (about 4p today). It was very basic. They shared a communal well, and a dirt toilet in a shed on a neighbour’s garden 30 yards away. They cooked by an oven attached to a coal fire. They lit the place with candles. It was shelter and it was housing and for a homeless couple it was great.
There are millions of people of our age and without pensions living in worse accommodation in many parts of the world. We are very fortunate.
My parents got an oil lamp and Somerlite’s weekly visits provided paraffin. They acquired a radio and trudged halfway along Landscape View each week to get the batteries recharged. Before I arrived the outside standpipe from the new water main appeared, and was swathed in winter with rags and rope to try to stop it freezing but sometimes folk had to stand round it with candles to thaw it out. A flush toilet in a brick closet replaced the old shed and the rent rose to one shilling and nine pence.
My Dad was the first in our row of cottages to get hooked up to the new gas main. So 8 years on I was born into a home which had gas wall lamps and a gas fired copper to boil up the water for washing clothes then put through a mangle, and dried on a line. Friday’s was our weekly bath night in a tin bath from the outside wash house shared by four people after each other and then pulled outside and poured down a drain. My first shower was behind a shed up the garden late at night at the age of 12 using two watering cans by the light of the summer moon. In 1950 we got the water supply inside the kitchen, and a gas oven.
My brother as an apprentice passed his exam to become an electrical engineer by wiring us up for mains electricity but initially just a shaving lamp for Dad and 2 pin point plug sockets around the house. Dad also linked our cottage with his in-laws 3 doors away with a wire with a button at number 1 and a bell at number 4. So LIFELINE was born. Thereby my grandparents in their 80’s could summon help from my parents who in turn could summon us boys to go for help of other family members. .
I was educated at South Road Infants School, and East Street Boys British Elementary School built in 1838 the same year our house was built.
From that school I went to Newport Free Grammar School in 1950.
When I left school in 1955 with one “O” Level, English Language, followed in 1956 with English Literature and English History, I spent a year in an accountant’s office as a Junior Clerk which taught me book keeping, filing, and how to audit accounts, which was very useful over the years as a manager and in a series of Church and Charity Treasurerships.
Unable to secure Maths in repeated attempts I left that office and became a Provisions Assistant in a Grocery business where over 7 years I rose to be Assistant Manager. Then in 1964 another Company bought ours and closed many shops down including ours. I moved as a Provisions assistant to the local Co-operative Store where I rose to departmental manager, and then over a period of years managed 4 small Co-op village branches one after the other, and was promoted to Warehouse Manager and deputy store Manager of a Supermarket, with which I stayed until it was closed down in 1995 after 31 years with the Co-op and 39 in total in retailing.
I was unemployed for 14 months and applied unsuccessfully for 160 jobs. I became a member of a Job Club where we helped each other to find work.
From that i went onto a 6 month Government Training Scheme to do a 2 year National Vocational Qualification course in Information Technology within 6 months.
I completed it in 5 and spent the last month preparing a booklet ”CRACKING THE CODE” to help other students do the course, and then spent the rest of the time teaching other students what to do.
That Training Centre then gave me a job partly training IT students in the IT Room, helping students sort out their curriculum vitae and set up a Retail Business NVQ Training . Project . This only lasted 10 weeks because due to management failures grant funding by sponsors was withdrawn and a third of the staff were made redundant including me.
At this time I invested in my own Pentium computer with 8 RAM and a flat-bed scanner using Windows 95 Professional and a colour ink jet printer. Since then i have increased the hard disk, updated the printer, increase to 48 RAM and added a CD ROM copier and write to facility. The operating system has been increased to Windows 98. If If I was connected to a telephone link I could surf the Internet and handle E-Mail but I’m not so I cannot do so. I have a Sierra software programme similar to Desk Top Publishing which us very useful. I’ve had the whole thing tested and cleared as Y2K bug compliant.
In November 1996 I took a job at Card Centres (East Anglia) Ltd in my home town. It was advertised as Assistant Manager, but in fact he wanted a general dogsbody to serve customers, and do a hundred and one things including receiving, checking, pricing, displaying stock, , using cash register, duplicating, distributing, hoovering, carpet shampooing, banking. some maintenance, serving customers, phoning customers. During the first 18 months until a Company secretary was appointed I produced on my Computer at home illustrated posters, price lists, handbills, letter heads, business cards, adverts, and shelf barkers.
At the end of May 1999 I was again made redundant due to falling sales and now I have to seek a new job.
Over the years my hobbies have included visiting stately homes, slide photography ( I have 11,000) gardening, rambling, cycling, jogging, swimming, road running up to 10 milers, creating poetry several of which have been published, writing...newspaper reports, and articles, .historical articles, sermons, scripts, and thousands of letters. Also family history research, and other forms of local historical research. I am a member of the local Library which gives me free access to books 14 at a time.
I became a Christian at the age of 15 and renouncing sin, and receiving Jesus Christ as my own Saviour and God’s gift of the Companion, the Holy One, The Holy Spirit as my ever present friend. I was baptised as a believer by total immersion according to the rite of the Baptists and joined the local Baptist Church.
The Church has provided me a platform for service over the years and to God be all the credit. This has included , Sunday school teacher and leader, Youth Leader on various occasions, over the years including 18 as an officer of the Boys’ Brigade, 8 of them as Treasurer, 1 as acting-Captain to hold the line and fill a temporary gap and I camped with them for 24 of 28 camps up to 2007.
I served as a Lay Preacher continuously for 16 years, and then from time to time since. I was Press Secretary for 12 years, Deacon for 10, Church Treasurer for 6, Missionary Secretary, Bible Society Secretary/Treasurer , Secretary of the Arthritis & Rheumatism Council for Research, Church Membership Secretary,
Chairman and Treasurer of the Four Acres Community Residents Committee. For the past 39 years I have served as Church Archivist / Historian looking after 5700 pages of documents and photographs 2000 slides, several videos, 70 cassette recordings and of lots of other things about our history and putting on exhibitions, writing 4 history booklets,
Since 1991 I have been developing a project under the title Maddams Family Trees funding the planting of trees in various parts of England associated with my family, and in overseas countries and so far 7569 have been planted in total in 15 countries.
Then also I have been Secretary of the Ministry of Christian Literature Prayer Fellowship for 56 years and since AD 2000 called Lighthouse Prayer Ministry (MCCPF) . We are engaged in distributing a quarterly News Letter to people willing to pray during the next weeks for specific people. We have also provided financial grants for overseas people particularly for student training and provision of Bibles, , and Christian Communication. and providing Christian literature including Books, Booklets, Tracts, Papers. Cassettes, film strips and we have reached over 66,000 people across over 178 countries. We used to say 192 but have scaled back because the remainder were republics within the Russian Federation to which we sent material once at the time of their Independence but received no reply.
.
Much of my work has been centred around pen pal writing. I came across a register of a pen pal agency in Finland which I used and this led me to agencies in the Czech Republic and South Korea and . I made contacts with Croatia, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, and Japan, south America, the Middle East, etc for English in it’s various forms is spoken and written so widely.
Indeed I have recently been reading a book “Christian England - The first 1000 years” it is interesting to see how the Welsh and Celtic peoples hid themselves behind the mountains of the West and hated the Saxons and though Christian made no attempt to evangelize there oppressors, but once the Anglo-Saxons, the English, became Christian, they took their faith and the tongue throughout Germany and Scandinavia, and thence throughout the world. I lapsed out completely from pen pal writing when I became unemployed in 1995
After leaving the Card Centre I served 15 months as Carer to my mother and began a weekly newspaper round. Since my mother died aged 98 in 2003
I served three years as General Secretary of the Churches Together in Saffron Walden,
I got more involved as Co-ordinator of activities at Four Acres Community and on the District Council’s Tenants Forum. I obtained a telephone and an On-line computer and this my web board site. I have also suffered from thrombosis and phlebitis. I became a member of a Baptist Weekly Small Group.
Since early in 2011 I have been enabled to link up with other friends to supply a generator and 90 hymnals to a new poor Church in Ghana, over 2400 Bibles to 9 groups in Nigeria, provide education to 10 aids orphans in Zambia and provide freight and transport costs for a cargo of equipment to Nchelenge in Northern Zambia to set up a Vocational Training House Groups where local people volunteer to train young people, and money to put a roof on a home in Ethiopia and pay for a carpenter.
In 2013 we brought to 8 the number of clockwork cassette / CD players we have deplued to teams in Africa in 7 countries being used in remot places, whereg some cannot read or write, bring them the Gospel in their dialect or language, The latest 2 have gone to Senegal.
We have also funded Christian training in China for Nroth Koreans, in Zambia, and in South India, and supplied medicines to Syrian refugees in exile.
Another couple paid for 12 assorted translation Bibles to be sent to a prayer group of converted long term prisoners in a prison in Zambia,
I headed a team to lay on an exhibition MISSION CONTINUED to celebrate 300 years of Baptist Witness in Saffron Walden 1711 - 2011
9am - 9pm Sept 21-23 2011 at Walden Baptist Church
Then I helped to organise a celebration on June 3rd 2012 of 50 years of the Four Acres Communty when we are also celebrated the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. We had a hog roast and salad meal for about 68 people and music was provided by the Nightinghale Trio with cello, violin and keyboard organ, and we enjoyed much singing of songs, and cut and consumed 2 iced cakes, 32 of our 43 residences decorated up and we ran a best decorated front competition
During 2012 we are began to raise money for freightage and haulage of another container of equipment from Tools With A Mission in 2013 to equip a Club and Trainng scheme for disabled people, in a land where they are often marginalised and forgotten
that equipment left UK on or about April 13 2013
I also helped demolishing a shed at Four Acres so we can have a new patio with gazebo by the Common Room and layed out with tubs oif shrubs and pots of flowers.
In August 2012 I celebrated 40 years living here.
In about 2003 I joined the Salvation Army CAMEO CLUB and associated with their Sunday congregation twice a month. and joined the volunteer team drawn from 6 denominations who manned their twice weekly cafe THE WELL and now I have reached 74.
My visits there on Sundays have largely ceased as I need to be at the Baptist Church much of the time and where on Sunday evenings I chair a Prayer Meeting.
In 2013 we brought to 8 the number of clockwork cassette / CD players we have deployed to teams in Africa in 7 countries being used in remote places, where some cannot read or write, bring them the Gospel in their dialect or language, The latest 2 have gone to Senegal.
We have also funded Christian training in China for North Koreans, in Zambia, and in South India, and supplied medicines to Syrian refugees in exile
I had to give up being on the Well Team in 2012 because of acute pain over 10 months in my feet. although that left me during the Summer as quickly as it came, to be replaced by acute pain in the area of the collar bone,
I hope to be joining the Saffron Walden Street Pastors ministry in September as a Prayer Pastor, at the base. So far we havejhad 20 volunteers to be Street Pastors.
Hitherto has the LORD helped me and in all things he is my strength. If I have been any good or done any good, it is by the working of God’s Holy Spirit in me. To God be all the glory and credit.
As a Christian I believe that we are all created by one Almighty God, who is in ultimate charge of the Universe. He formed all the life forms on this planet even though humans are divided on how He did it, or who He is. In consequence of which world wide there are thousands of religions, cults, and sects.
He is worshipped by some anciently descended groups as the Great Spirit. Amongst the Hindus, He is represented by the supreme deity who keeps all the lesser deities together. Moslems call him Allah (which is the pre-Islam word for God in Arabic) although others tell me they really worship the ancient Moon God of pre-Moslem times, hence the crescent moon which is their symbol. Jews worship him as Jehovah or Yahweh according to which language they are using, and Christians generally call him THE LORD, or THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY. So he is worshipped under various names by at least 3 - 4 billion of earth’s 7 billion population.
I base my beliefs on the teaching of the Bible, particularly the New Testament and my personal experience of God in my life.
Therefore I am confident and certain that Jesus Christ was born of God by the power of His Spirit in fulfilment of centuries of prophecy through Old Testament prophets, and is known as God the Son, with god the Father and God the Holy Spirit three distinct people who together are one authority, one God , one family, and who move together in unison to control the universe, the kingdom of God of which Heaven is the capital centre and who oppose evil where ever and in what ever form it appears.
Recognising human weakness leading to sin, that is to selfishness and self centredness, the I in the centre of sin, God took steps to rescue humanity and reconcile us with himself.
This was accomplished by the self sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross outside Jerusalem about 1,970 years ago. That sacrifice as far as God is concerned made all further sacrifices, after the manner of the Jews and other religions unnecessary. By that action God offered to all human beings forgiveness of sins and life everlasting, which he proved by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. Jesus appeared to his followers on many occasions for about 40 days including on one occasion to over 500 of them before withdrawing back to Heaven .
Jesus had asked the God the Father to send another Companion to be with all His disciples until He returned to Earth himself.
This was the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who comes to every Christian at the moment they believe on Jesus Christ as Saviour, and renews his presence in and with us continually, and in increasing measure and effectiveness as we grow in faith and understanding.
The next great event Christians look forward to, is Christ’s promised return. He did not tell us when that would be except that it would be sudden and without further warning and would be experienced world wide. He did as recorded in Matthew’s account of the Good News of Jesus chapter 24 leave us with clues of events yet to take place indicating that it would be a long haul Other Old and New Testament passages tell us more of what to expect.
On the basis of those texts God’s programme is bang on target, with the rise and fall of empires, of natural development of the planet, the continuance of wars, and persecution of Christ’s followers, the growth and spread of knowledge the spread of the Good News, the growth of the Church, to now close on 2 billion, with the return of Israel to their homeland and the plans and preparations being made to rebuild and staff the Temple in Jerusalem, and the development of power blocks such as the United Nations and the European Union, and the powers North and East of Israel, and the development of what Jesus described as false prophets, false Messiahs, false teaching, which must include Islam which developed about 500 years later.
As things get worse on the planet, as is the case with two thirds of it’s population living in poverty,
We can expect to reach a point where Jesus Christ will fulfil what is recorded in Matthew 24.
About evacuating all Christians from the planet, suddenly in the twinkling of an eye, leaving a totally non-Christian world in a state of complete chaos, which will lead through 7 years of war and suffering, to Christ’s re appearance at the head of superior forces to take over government of the planet from the new Jerusalem, and reign here until the period of His reign has been completed which Christians generally suppose to be 1000 years although some earlier Church leaders reckoned to be 400 years, after which a final Satanic led rebellion will be put down and God will wind up Earth, and judge it’s inhabitants past and present, and take His final decisions concerning them and create a new Heaven and a new Earth.
We can each share in God’s great purpose if we trust, obey and serve the LORD. We cannot be reconciled to Him by any good we have done, but we can be reconciled with Him through the life, teaching, death, sacrifice , resurrection and intercession of His only son, Jesus Christ who and which God has offered us as a gift freely to receive.
I hope that you are within His purpose, one of his people, or will become one.
################################
I was born December 7th 1938, a snowy day, the second son of Sydney and Alice Maddams of 15 Pleasant Valley Saffron Walden in Essex brother to Roy who is nearly 7 years older than me.
My home was a good home but our parents established it from a state of poverty,
My parents had both lived in Saffron Walden. Mum, Alice born in 1904 was born 3 doors north from where I was born.
Dad had been born in Hampshire and had lived at Royston, Sewards End and Saffron Walden He began work at the Gardens of the Vineyards at the top of Windmill Hill for two shillings and sixpence ( 12½p in present money) a week at the age of 12. At 19 he was working at Englemann’s the Carnation Grower and then went to work in London in 1923.
They married at Walden in 1926 on another snowy day and went to live at Highgate in London.
My parents arrived back in Walden in 1930 homeless. Four years driving cabless buses in all
weather including pea-soup smog in London, had effected Dad’s health and changed his character and they had to move or he was expected to die within 6 months.
Mum and Dad lodged with her parents in one room but his bad temper made it necessary to rent privately and they got a cottage two up two down with a roof over their heads, for nine pence a week (about 4p today). It was very basic. They shared a communal well, and a dirt toilet in a shed on a neighbour’s garden 30 yards away. They cooked by an oven attached to a coal fire. They lit the place with candles. It was shelter and it was housing and for a homeless couple it was great.
There are millions of people of our age and without pensions living in worse accommodation in many parts of the world. We are very fortunate.
My parents got an oil lamp and Somerlite’s weekly visits provided paraffin. They acquired a radio and trudged halfway along Landscape View each week to get the batteries recharged. Before I arrived the outside standpipe from the new water main appeared, and was swathed in winter with rags and rope to try to stop it freezing but sometimes folk had to stand round it with candles to thaw it out. A flush toilet in a brick closet replaced the old shed and the rent rose to one shilling and nine pence.
My Dad was the first in our row of cottages to get hooked up to the new gas main. So 8 years on I was born into a home which had gas wall lamps and a gas fired copper to boil up the water for washing clothes then put through a mangle, and dried on a line. Friday’s was our weekly bath night in a tin bath from the outside wash house shared by four people after each other and then pulled outside and poured down a drain. My first shower was behind a shed up the garden late at night at the age of 12 using two watering cans by the light of the summer moon. In 1950 we got the water supply inside the kitchen, and a gas oven.
My brother as an apprentice passed his exam to become an electrical engineer by wiring us up for mains electricity but initially just a shaving lamp for Dad and 2 pin point plug sockets around the house. Dad also linked our cottage with his in-laws 3 doors away with a wire with a button at number 1 and a bell at number 4. So LIFELINE was born. Thereby my grandparents in their 80’s could summon help from my parents who in turn could summon us boys to go for help of other family members. .
I was educated at South Road Infants School, and East Street Boys British Elementary School built in 1838 the same year our house was built.
From that school I went to Newport Free Grammar School in 1950.
When I left school in 1955 with one “O” Level, English Language, followed in 1956 with English Literature and English History, I spent a year in an accountant’s office as a Junior Clerk which taught me book keeping, filing, and how to audit accounts, which was very useful over the years as a manager and in a series of Church and Charity Treasurerships.
Unable to secure Maths in repeated attempts I left that office and became a Provisions Assistant in a Grocery business where over 7 years I rose to be Assistant Manager. Then in 1964 another Company bought ours and closed many shops down including ours. I moved as a Provisions assistant to the local Co-operative Store where I rose to departmental manager, and then over a period of years managed 4 small Co-op village branches one after the other, and was promoted to Warehouse Manager and deputy store Manager of a Supermarket, with which I stayed until it was closed down in 1995 after 31 years with the Co-op and 39 in total in retailing.
I was unemployed for 14 months and applied unsuccessfully for 160 jobs. I became a member of a Job Club where we helped each other to find work.
From that i went onto a 6 month Government Training Scheme to do a 2 year National Vocational Qualification course in Information Technology within 6 months.
I completed it in 5 and spent the last month preparing a booklet ”CRACKING THE CODE” to help other students do the course, and then spent the rest of the time teaching other students what to do.
That Training Centre then gave me a job partly training IT students in the IT Room, helping students sort out their curriculum vitae and set up a Retail Business NVQ Training . Project . This only lasted 10 weeks because due to management failures grant funding by sponsors was withdrawn and a third of the staff were made redundant including me.
At this time I invested in my own Pentium computer with 8 RAM and a flat-bed scanner using Windows 95 Professional and a colour ink jet printer. Since then i have increased the hard disk, updated the printer, increase to 48 RAM and added a CD ROM copier and write to facility. The operating system has been increased to Windows 98. If If I was connected to a telephone link I could surf the Internet and handle E-Mail but I’m not so I cannot do so. I have a Sierra software programme similar to Desk Top Publishing which us very useful. I’ve had the whole thing tested and cleared as Y2K bug compliant.
In November 1996 I took a job at Card Centres (East Anglia) Ltd in my home town. It was advertised as Assistant Manager, but in fact he wanted a general dogsbody to serve customers, and do a hundred and one things including receiving, checking, pricing, displaying stock, , using cash register, duplicating, distributing, hoovering, carpet shampooing, banking. some maintenance, serving customers, phoning customers. During the first 18 months until a Company secretary was appointed I produced on my Computer at home illustrated posters, price lists, handbills, letter heads, business cards, adverts, and shelf barkers.
At the end of May 1999 I was again made redundant due to falling sales and now I have to seek a new job.
Over the years my hobbies have included visiting stately homes, slide photography ( I have 11,000) gardening, rambling, cycling, jogging, swimming, road running up to 10 milers, creating poetry several of which have been published, writing...newspaper reports, and articles, .historical articles, sermons, scripts, and thousands of letters. Also family history research, and other forms of local historical research. I am a member of the local Library which gives me free access to books 14 at a time.
I became a Christian at the age of 15 and renouncing sin, and receiving Jesus Christ as my own Saviour and God’s gift of the Companion, the Holy One, The Holy Spirit as my ever present friend. I was baptised as a believer by total immersion according to the rite of the Baptists and joined the local Baptist Church.
The Church has provided me a platform for service over the years and to God be all the credit. This has included , Sunday school teacher and leader, Youth Leader on various occasions, over the years including 18 as an officer of the Boys’ Brigade, 8 of them as Treasurer, 1 as acting-Captain to hold the line and fill a temporary gap and I camped with them for 24 of 28 camps up to 2007.
I served as a Lay Preacher continuously for 16 years, and then from time to time since. I was Press Secretary for 12 years, Deacon for 10, Church Treasurer for 6, Missionary Secretary, Bible Society Secretary/Treasurer , Secretary of the Arthritis & Rheumatism Council for Research, Church Membership Secretary,
Chairman and Treasurer of the Four Acres Community Residents Committee. For the past 39 years I have served as Church Archivist / Historian looking after 5700 pages of documents and photographs 2000 slides, several videos, 70 cassette recordings and of lots of other things about our history and putting on exhibitions, writing 4 history booklets,
Since 1991 I have been developing a project under the title Maddams Family Trees funding the planting of trees in various parts of England associated with my family, and in overseas countries and so far 7569 have been planted in total in 15 countries.
Then also I have been Secretary of the Ministry of Christian Literature Prayer Fellowship for 56 years and since AD 2000 called Lighthouse Prayer Ministry (MCCPF) . We are engaged in distributing a quarterly News Letter to people willing to pray during the next weeks for specific people. We have also provided financial grants for overseas people particularly for student training and provision of Bibles, , and Christian Communication. and providing Christian literature including Books, Booklets, Tracts, Papers. Cassettes, film strips and we have reached over 66,000 people across over 178 countries. We used to say 192 but have scaled back because the remainder were republics within the Russian Federation to which we sent material once at the time of their Independence but received no reply.
.
Much of my work has been centred around pen pal writing. I came across a register of a pen pal agency in Finland which I used and this led me to agencies in the Czech Republic and South Korea and . I made contacts with Croatia, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, and Japan, south America, the Middle East, etc for English in it’s various forms is spoken and written so widely.
Indeed I have recently been reading a book “Christian England - The first 1000 years” it is interesting to see how the Welsh and Celtic peoples hid themselves behind the mountains of the West and hated the Saxons and though Christian made no attempt to evangelize there oppressors, but once the Anglo-Saxons, the English, became Christian, they took their faith and the tongue throughout Germany and Scandinavia, and thence throughout the world. I lapsed out completely from pen pal writing when I became unemployed in 1995
After leaving the Card Centre I served 15 months as Carer to my mother and began a weekly newspaper round. Since my mother died aged 98 in 2003
I served three years as General Secretary of the Churches Together in Saffron Walden,
I got more involved as Co-ordinator of activities at Four Acres Community and on the District Council’s Tenants Forum. I obtained a telephone and an On-line computer and this my web board site. I have also suffered from thrombosis and phlebitis. I became a member of a Baptist Weekly Small Group.
Since early in 2011 I have been enabled to link up with other friends to supply a generator and 90 hymnals to a new poor Church in Ghana, over 2400 Bibles to 9 groups in Nigeria, provide education to 10 aids orphans in Zambia and provide freight and transport costs for a cargo of equipment to Nchelenge in Northern Zambia to set up a Vocational Training House Groups where local people volunteer to train young people, and money to put a roof on a home in Ethiopia and pay for a carpenter.
In 2013 we brought to 8 the number of clockwork cassette / CD players we have deplued to teams in Africa in 7 countries being used in remot places, whereg some cannot read or write, bring them the Gospel in their dialect or language, The latest 2 have gone to Senegal.
We have also funded Christian training in China for Nroth Koreans, in Zambia, and in South India, and supplied medicines to Syrian refugees in exile.
Another couple paid for 12 assorted translation Bibles to be sent to a prayer group of converted long term prisoners in a prison in Zambia,
I headed a team to lay on an exhibition MISSION CONTINUED to celebrate 300 years of Baptist Witness in Saffron Walden 1711 - 2011
9am - 9pm Sept 21-23 2011 at Walden Baptist Church
Then I helped to organise a celebration on June 3rd 2012 of 50 years of the Four Acres Communty when we are also celebrated the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. We had a hog roast and salad meal for about 68 people and music was provided by the Nightinghale Trio with cello, violin and keyboard organ, and we enjoyed much singing of songs, and cut and consumed 2 iced cakes, 32 of our 43 residences decorated up and we ran a best decorated front competition
During 2012 we are began to raise money for freightage and haulage of another container of equipment from Tools With A Mission in 2013 to equip a Club and Trainng scheme for disabled people, in a land where they are often marginalised and forgotten
that equipment left UK on or about April 13 2013
I also helped demolishing a shed at Four Acres so we can have a new patio with gazebo by the Common Room and layed out with tubs oif shrubs and pots of flowers.
In August 2012 I celebrated 40 years living here.
In about 2003 I joined the Salvation Army CAMEO CLUB and associated with their Sunday congregation twice a month. and joined the volunteer team drawn from 6 denominations who manned their twice weekly cafe THE WELL and now I have reached 74.
My visits there on Sundays have largely ceased as I need to be at the Baptist Church much of the time and where on Sunday evenings I chair a Prayer Meeting.
In 2013 we brought to 8 the number of clockwork cassette / CD players we have deployed to teams in Africa in 7 countries being used in remote places, where some cannot read or write, bring them the Gospel in their dialect or language, The latest 2 have gone to Senegal.
We have also funded Christian training in China for North Koreans, in Zambia, and in South India, and supplied medicines to Syrian refugees in exile
I had to give up being on the Well Team in 2012 because of acute pain over 10 months in my feet. although that left me during the Summer as quickly as it came, to be replaced by acute pain in the area of the collar bone,
I hope to be joining the Saffron Walden Street Pastors ministry in September as a Prayer Pastor, at the base. So far we havejhad 20 volunteers to be Street Pastors.
Hitherto has the LORD helped me and in all things he is my strength. If I have been any good or done any good, it is by the working of God’s Holy Spirit in me. To God be all the glory and credit.
As a Christian I believe that we are all created by one Almighty God, who is in ultimate charge of the Universe. He formed all the life forms on this planet even though humans are divided on how He did it, or who He is. In consequence of which world wide there are thousands of religions, cults, and sects.
He is worshipped by some anciently descended groups as the Great Spirit. Amongst the Hindus, He is represented by the supreme deity who keeps all the lesser deities together. Moslems call him Allah (which is the pre-Islam word for God in Arabic) although others tell me they really worship the ancient Moon God of pre-Moslem times, hence the crescent moon which is their symbol. Jews worship him as Jehovah or Yahweh according to which language they are using, and Christians generally call him THE LORD, or THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY. So he is worshipped under various names by at least 3 - 4 billion of earth’s 7 billion population.
I base my beliefs on the teaching of the Bible, particularly the New Testament and my personal experience of God in my life.
Therefore I am confident and certain that Jesus Christ was born of God by the power of His Spirit in fulfilment of centuries of prophecy through Old Testament prophets, and is known as God the Son, with god the Father and God the Holy Spirit three distinct people who together are one authority, one God , one family, and who move together in unison to control the universe, the kingdom of God of which Heaven is the capital centre and who oppose evil where ever and in what ever form it appears.
Recognising human weakness leading to sin, that is to selfishness and self centredness, the I in the centre of sin, God took steps to rescue humanity and reconcile us with himself.
This was accomplished by the self sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross outside Jerusalem about 1,970 years ago. That sacrifice as far as God is concerned made all further sacrifices, after the manner of the Jews and other religions unnecessary. By that action God offered to all human beings forgiveness of sins and life everlasting, which he proved by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. Jesus appeared to his followers on many occasions for about 40 days including on one occasion to over 500 of them before withdrawing back to Heaven .
Jesus had asked the God the Father to send another Companion to be with all His disciples until He returned to Earth himself.
This was the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who comes to every Christian at the moment they believe on Jesus Christ as Saviour, and renews his presence in and with us continually, and in increasing measure and effectiveness as we grow in faith and understanding.
The next great event Christians look forward to, is Christ’s promised return. He did not tell us when that would be except that it would be sudden and without further warning and would be experienced world wide. He did as recorded in Matthew’s account of the Good News of Jesus chapter 24 leave us with clues of events yet to take place indicating that it would be a long haul Other Old and New Testament passages tell us more of what to expect.
On the basis of those texts God’s programme is bang on target, with the rise and fall of empires, of natural development of the planet, the continuance of wars, and persecution of Christ’s followers, the growth and spread of knowledge the spread of the Good News, the growth of the Church, to now close on 2 billion, with the return of Israel to their homeland and the plans and preparations being made to rebuild and staff the Temple in Jerusalem, and the development of power blocks such as the United Nations and the European Union, and the powers North and East of Israel, and the development of what Jesus described as false prophets, false Messiahs, false teaching, which must include Islam which developed about 500 years later.
As things get worse on the planet, as is the case with two thirds of it’s population living in poverty,
We can expect to reach a point where Jesus Christ will fulfil what is recorded in Matthew 24.
About evacuating all Christians from the planet, suddenly in the twinkling of an eye, leaving a totally non-Christian world in a state of complete chaos, which will lead through 7 years of war and suffering, to Christ’s re appearance at the head of superior forces to take over government of the planet from the new Jerusalem, and reign here until the period of His reign has been completed which Christians generally suppose to be 1000 years although some earlier Church leaders reckoned to be 400 years, after which a final Satanic led rebellion will be put down and God will wind up Earth, and judge it’s inhabitants past and present, and take His final decisions concerning them and create a new Heaven and a new Earth.
We can each share in God’s great purpose if we trust, obey and serve the LORD. We cannot be reconciled to Him by any good we have done, but we can be reconciled with Him through the life, teaching, death, sacrifice , resurrection and intercession of His only son, Jesus Christ who and which God has offered us as a gift freely to receive.
I hope that you are within His purpose, one of his people, or will become one.