If your are feeling blue, if you have sinned or if you are feeling heart broken. Just tell it to God almighty,

Because he says "I'll take it"!

Slideshow of images with very touching words. 

What are your role(s) at HT?

I host a fellowship group and am a member of Women’s Hour.  I’m on the Prayer Ministry team and on the rotas for reading the lesson and administering the chalice.

In the past I’ve been a member (and sometimes secretary) of the Worship and Fellowship Committee, on the Catering Committee and the crèche rota and was part of the team which made the banners for church.
    
Where were you brought up?

I was born in Aldershot and have spent my entire life here.  I went to a local primary school and then to Aldershot Girls’ Grammar School.

Jim and I were married in 1954.  We built and moved into our present home in 1957, together with Peter & Audrey Blake and shared an enduring friendship with them until their move to Germany earlier this year.

What’s the first news story you remember hearing?

I remember walking home from church with my parents on 3rd September 1939 (which was a hot day) and hearing through someone’s open window the announcement that war had been declared.

What jobs have you done?

I trained as a shorthand typist and worked at the SEB (Southern Electricity Board) until the family arrived.  After several years at home I did a few months as a shorthand typist in a sweet factory and then moved to Aldershot Football Club as secretary to the Club Secretary.  I was there for years and loved it.  I dealt with correspondence and subscriptions and so on.  Our two sons thought it was great, because they got in free to matches and they were able to get part time jobs at the club while they were still at school – selling programmes, for example, and doing maintenance work.

Have you always been a Christian?

Yes.  There have been times when I’ve questioned and had some doubts, but there’s never been a time when I haven’t believed in God and in Jesus.

I was brought up as a Roman Catholic and went to church with my parents every Sunday morning and to Sunday School in the afternoon – and it was a long walk for a little girl.  

The Catholic church was quite different in those days and when I became a teenager, there were some aspects I was unhappy with; I wanted more freedom of thought and also I didn’t like that fact that during the Nazi period the Pope had done nothing to help the Jews.  So I attended church less frequently.  I also had quite a lot of Anglican friends.

I still have warm feelings towards Roman Catholics (my side of the family are all Catholic) and I’d like to see more links between the churches.

What brought you to Holy Trinity?

Meeting Jim was decisive.  He was not a Catholic and would never have agreed to have our children brought up as Catholics.  We were married at Holy Trinity, where his parents had been married during the First World War and the Reverend Galpin was so lovely and so welcoming to me and to my family.

At first I found it quite tough being at HT.  It seemed strange not having Communion each week, as I’d been used to in the Catholic church.

Later, when our children were young, Mr Galpin introduced a half hour service for children once a month.  Without that we might not have continued going to church.  Our children went on to Sunday School when they were older and for at least two of them Holy Trinity played a very important part in their lives.

My Christian faith has been very central to my life and HT has played a massive part in this.   

During these years I’ve known four vicars and each one has been for me a stepping stone in my Christian life.  They’ve all been different, but all have been a blessing.

What was your childhood like?

I was one of four children – 2 boys and 2 girls – born into an army background, so as a family we moved around quite a lot, which for me meant attending seven different schools before I was 12!

What’s the first news story you remember hearing?

Mum was taking my younger brother and I to the cinema in Benghazi, and we arrived to find that the manager had just closed it, having heard that the King had died and Princess Elizabeth was our     
new Queen.  I was very sorry for the poor Princess who had just lost her Papa, but sorrier still to miss our special treat…though of course didn’t dare to say so.

What brought you to Aldershot (and when)?

I was born in Aldershot, as was my younger brother 14 months later.  My elder brother (now a Minister) was born in India, and our little sister in Dovercourt.  We joined my father in Cyrenaica when I was 5, then after he left the army having served for 32 years, we moved to Aldershot (via Cheshire and then Essex).

Ed and I returned here after the last of our offspring had flown the nest 18 years ago.  Aldershot was top of the ‘don’t want to live there list’….

What jobs have you done?

When I left school, I worked as a clerical assistant in the Civil Service, but left home at 18 to live in London, where I had much more fun working for the Rank Organisation head office in Victoria.  We used to get free tickets for all the latest movies, though as my then boyfriend insisted on taking me to all the horror films, I sat through a lot of shows with my eyes closed.

Apart from the occasional part time job to help the coffers when the children were growing up, I didn’t work again until they were all at work or college, when I got a job in the CSSD. department in Farnham Hospital until they closed it.

Have you always been a Christian?

We were strictly brought up within the Roman Catholic Church (my father’s faith, though Mum was Anglican) and I was confirmed in Benghazi Cathedral when I

was 6.  After the service, we had a lovely breakfast with party food, and like all the other little girls, I wore a pretty white dress and veil – which I ripped taking a short cut home under a barbed wire fence!

I first married at 18, and had two beautiful little girls, and when my second daughter was 6 weeks old my husband left us.  Two years later, Ed and I had met and married, had a son, and moved to Australia.  Two years after that and a third daughter richer, we returned to England.

Church hadn’t played much of a part in all these years – though we intermittently attended whichever church was nearest to where we were living, and all our babies were baptised.

How did you become a Christian?

In my thirties, after family trauma, and wanting to find meaning for life, I began to search for God.  I’d always loved the stories about Jesus, but owing to the early teaching of a fiery priest that had us all quaking in our little white sandals, hadn’t wanted to think about God too much.

I explored Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and pestered anyone who seemed to have that special inner ‘something’ I longed for…Then one morning, in desperation, I called out to God, challenging Him that if He was real, and cared about individuals (me…), to show me.  Then picking up a Bible and just opening it where it would, the following words were standing out bigger and blacker that those around them:

     ‘….if you cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding’
 if you seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God’     (Proverbs 2:3-5)

A few weeks later I surrendered to Christ, ( in the bath – the only place of peace and quiet in a house full of children…) and a few weeks after that, was prayed for by Jackie Pullinger and was wonderfully baptised in the Holy Spirit.

In the years since, I’ve been a prison visitor with Prison Fellowship, a Samaritan, led a prayer ministry team, and been involved in Pastoral care for 15 years, and for the last seven years have been part of the ministry team at Acorn Christian Healing Foundation.

Would you recommend Christianity to others?

My Christian journey has been exciting, frustrating, challenging, difficult, tedious, amazing, disappointing, and wonderful in equal measures – but it’s the only journey worth taking –ever.
 

She is a member of the 9.30 congregation, hosts a Fellowship Group, is Treasurer of Women’s Hour (also taking turns in doing the reading and prayers at meetings) and aims to cook for one meal in each Alpha Course.

What was your childhood like?

I was born in Aldershot, but spent much of my first few years in Egypt, as my father was an RSM in the Royal Horse Artillery.  We came back on the last troop ship which sailed from Egypt to England before the war.    

I was an only child; my parents decided not to have more children, so that they could help me as much as possible.  Money was tight, as at that time there was no NHS help for children with disabilities.

What’s the first news story you remember hearing?

Just before the onset of war, when I was nearly 5, I’d been in hospital in London for an operation and we were evacuated out.  We had to go home in a taxi in pitch darkness.  The nurses were putting mattresses against the windows in preparation for the Blitz.

What jobs have you done?

I trained as a typist, started work in the typing pool at IAM (the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine) and finished as effectively the PA to one of the psychologists.  It was very interesting work, because I was typing reports on the research work which was going on there.  The IAM was one of the first organisations in the UK to have a decompression chamber and a centrifuge for experiments on weightlessness – people were whirled round and round in it until they almost fainted.  They developed the first “heads up” displays for aircraft and also electrically heated suits, for which a team of ladies knitted the lining with fine wire.

IAM leased land from RAE (the Royal Aircraft Establishment, a forerunner of QinetiQ), but was never part of RAE.  It was privatised just six months before I retired and the atmosphere changed  completely; the bosses were more interested in making money than in research.

Was there anything in your background which paved the way for you to come to Christ?

My father was not a Christian and my mother was only a nominal Christian, but they took me to Sunday School and we attended the Red Church on Sundays.  Looking back, I can see that some of the people who had an important role in my life were Christians. even though I didn’t necessarily know it at the time.  When there was difficulty getting me a place at school, the teacher who accepted me was a Christian and later when I was at Treloars Hospital, one of my teachers was a Christian.  My maternal grandmother was a committed Christian and sent me a Bible and Bible Study notes when I was confirmed.

So how did you become a Christian?

After I left college, I couldn’t get a job for a long time and I became depressed.  A friend of my mother’s had a daughter who was in King’s Own [the Holy Trinity Youth Group at the time] and suggested that I should join for social reasons.  At first I only went to the social evenings; then I got to know Eileen (sister of Sylvia Easton), who persuaded me to go on a weekend away and I became a Christian there – everything suddenly clicked.

After that I went to the other KO activities, the Sunday afternoon meetings, followed by Evensong, and the Wednesday evening Bible Studies and I got all my teaching there.  We had some good speakers; before he was well known Festo Kivengere [later a bishop in Uganda] came and spoke at a meeting in the vicarage and Gladys Aylward preached at HT.

Was it all plain sailing after that?

Not entirely.  My parents never understood and I had lots of arguments, especially with my father, who just wouldn’t listen.

Other difficulties were mainly to do with illnesses.  My mother was ill all her life and then got arthritis, then cancer and died at the age of 62.  I lived with my Dad until he retired, but soon afterwards he had a stroke and died.  After that I lived on my own for a while, until I married Jack.  We had some good years together before he developed Parkinson’s.  

My Christian faith helped me to cope with all these difficulties.  I had some fits of depression and feelings of “why have You allowed this?”, but I never doubted and was never tempted to give up.