Demonstrating sacrificial love in real life
In 1990 we were appointed to Shipley Corps in West Yorkshire. I was quite ill at the time and ended up having to go into hospital for a month, leaving my husband having to cope with a new appointment, visit me in hospital in another town and having to find child care for our two children, the youngest of whom was only two. Two corps folk, Margaret and Myra came to the rescue and brought us into their world.
They lived then in a ground floor council flat on a Bradford Housing Estate. Originally they had been neighbours. Margaret had been in a very depressed state and Myra invited her to the Army at Shipley. Margaret met Jesus there and her life was transformed. Eventually they decided to share accommodation in order to save money and to be company for one another. Margaret having had four children had the larger flat and Myra moved in with her.
By the time we met them the spare bedroom had become the Sunday Room, in which they squeezed about 20 children every week for Sunday School. Knowing that many of the families on the estate were not very well off, they collected clothing and held regular jumble sales on the wall outside the Post Office. This service did not stop there as during the week the Sunday room was a clothing store to which people came when they were in need. All the clothes had to be moved to various places in the flat when the Sunday School was on.
Then discovering just how lonely some of the women were on the estate they started a Home League in the living room. 15 women and the dog met every Friday for their meeting and timbrel practice. When the DC came he had to sit on the floor!
This was but the tip of the ice berg really. There are no records of the numbers of people who knocked on their door for help. From the mother, who arrived beside herself with panic because social services had arrested her husband for child abuse and taken her children into care, to the lad whose dad had beaten him up and he couldn't go home, to the man who wanted them to come quickly and pray over his dog who had that minute got knocked over by a car!
I haven't begun to tell you about the sales of Parkin pigs and monce pies to raise money for the kids to go on outings and for the Christmas parties. I haven't told you how they were a magnet for the corps youth, who could turn up any time for a bacon sandwich and a drink of cherryade. After we left they both began work in the local post office, which put them in touch with even more people in the community.
The first time I travelled up to the estate on the bus I got off at the wrong stop. I was in uniform and must have looked a bit lost but I needn't have worried. I didn't even have to ask for directions before someone said, "Going to Margaret and Myra's are you? It's just up there." To the people of Thorpe Edge Margaret and Myra were the Salvation Army.
These days the flats have been pulled down and they have moved to a new flat in Shipley. Ill health and advancing years mean that they no longer able to care
on quite the scale they did, except that they still have a timbrel group in the front room, have attracted the children living upstairs to Sunday School, child mind the children of the bandmaster, remain a meeting place for the the corps youth group and have the student daughter of officers serving overseas living with them at the moment.
All this is done as if this is the most normal thing in the world. There is no social work theory behind all this or even any great thought- through theology.
There is just overflowing love. They are my kind of Salvationists.
God bless
Carol
In 1990 we were appointed to Shipley Corps in West Yorkshire. I was quite ill at the time and ended up having to go into hospital for a month, leaving my husband having to cope with a new appointment, visit me in hospital in another town and having to find child care for our two children, the youngest of whom was only two. Two corps folk, Margaret and Myra came to the rescue and brought us into their world.
They lived then in a ground floor council flat on a Bradford Housing Estate. Originally they had been neighbours. Margaret had been in a very depressed state and Myra invited her to the Army at Shipley. Margaret met Jesus there and her life was transformed. Eventually they decided to share accommodation in order to save money and to be company for one another. Margaret having had four children had the larger flat and Myra moved in with her.
By the time we met them the spare bedroom had become the Sunday Room, in which they squeezed about 20 children every week for Sunday School. Knowing that many of the families on the estate were not very well off, they collected clothing and held regular jumble sales on the wall outside the Post Office. This service did not stop there as during the week the Sunday room was a clothing store to which people came when they were in need. All the clothes had to be moved to various places in the flat when the Sunday School was on.
Then discovering just how lonely some of the women were on the estate they started a Home League in the living room. 15 women and the dog met every Friday for their meeting and timbrel practice. When the DC came he had to sit on the floor!
This was but the tip of the ice berg really. There are no records of the numbers of people who knocked on their door for help. From the mother, who arrived beside herself with panic because social services had arrested her husband for child abuse and taken her children into care, to the lad whose dad had beaten him up and he couldn't go home, to the man who wanted them to come quickly and pray over his dog who had that minute got knocked over by a car!
I haven't begun to tell you about the sales of Parkin pigs and monce pies to raise money for the kids to go on outings and for the Christmas parties. I haven't told you how they were a magnet for the corps youth, who could turn up any time for a bacon sandwich and a drink of cherryade. After we left they both began work in the local post office, which put them in touch with even more people in the community.
The first time I travelled up to the estate on the bus I got off at the wrong stop. I was in uniform and must have looked a bit lost but I needn't have worried. I didn't even have to ask for directions before someone said, "Going to Margaret and Myra's are you? It's just up there." To the people of Thorpe Edge Margaret and Myra were the Salvation Army.
These days the flats have been pulled down and they have moved to a new flat in Shipley. Ill health and advancing years mean that they no longer able to care
on quite the scale they did, except that they still have a timbrel group in the front room, have attracted the children living upstairs to Sunday School, child mind the children of the bandmaster, remain a meeting place for the the corps youth group and have the student daughter of officers serving overseas living with them at the moment.
All this is done as if this is the most normal thing in the world. There is no social work theory behind all this or even any great thought- through theology.
There is just overflowing love. They are my kind of Salvationists.
God bless
Carol
posted by Rehoboth at
12:51 AM
1 Comments:
This is what we need more of - no strategy, no plan just doing what comes 'naturally'. In its own way the ministry you describe is comparable in power and motivation to railton's arrival in New York. God bless you and Alan as you continue to find and encourage people like this!
By
Andrew Bale, at 2:10 AM
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