MISSION PARTNERS’ FELLOWSHIP Tributes July 2019

Miss Jean Waddell died April 2019

John Clark writes:

Jean served the in the Middle East for just over twenty years – first as secretary to the last two English archbishops in Jerusalem and the first Palestinian bishop from 1965–77, when Bishop Hassan Dehqani-Tafti invited her to become his Secretary in Isfahan and bring her experience of the process of establishing the new Province of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East to support him as its first President Bishop. She went to Iran as a CMS missionary.

On May 1 1980 while staying in the diocesan flat in Tehran she was shot and severely wounded by two intruders. After a period of convalescence, she was given an exit visa in Tehran to leave Iran but it was blocked in Isfahan. On August 6 she went to offices in Isfahan with a British Embassy official to clarify issues and was arrested, blindfolded and moved around various prisons. She ended up in Tehran’s Evin prison, from which she was released on 14 February 1981, along with six other members of the diocese, into the care of Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy. She arrived back in Britain on 28 February to a serried rank of press and TV reporters. Her story is briefly told in the National Christian Education Council publication Faith Alive. (Thank you, Doris Sadeqhi, for sending me a photocopy of Jean’s story.)

When congratulated upon her endurance, she insists that she did nothing. She insists that God did everything. ‘When I felt particularly helpless and thought that I ought to be doing something’ she says, ‘I was always given the words, “Stand still and see the salvation of our God.” Such quiet and total reliance upon God worked miraculously; fear faded and an inner peace prevailed.’

Mrs Myra Chilvers died Jan 2018

Peter Chilvers writes:

Myra Chilvers was a pioneer and champion of the idea of mutual support between a church in the UK and one in Burundi, rather than a church supporting a specific missionary. The support should be prayer, ministry and practical, as each is able.

She died (she preferred this word rather than the usual “passed away”) unexpectedly but peacefully in January 2018.

1 Near to her 90th birthday in May 2013 we wrote the following memoir for the church magazine – The background to the Burundi Link with St Marks Woodthorpe – Myra Chilvers and her son Peter:

It has been suggested to me that I should explain how the interest in Burundi started.

When I was married we lived near to St Peter’s Church, Old Radford, where there was a board on the wall naming missionaries who had gone abroad from there, but nobody recently. This disappointed the vicar, Rev Freddy Ralf. When he moved to the Isle of Wight we visited him on a family holiday. He was thrilled to find that Lucy Turley from his new congregation was in training for going abroad.

Peter takes up the story: A few years later, I had to choose an African country for a project, and research was to be started during a holiday. Not being keen on Geography I looked for a small country and found Rwanda-Burundi. When I mentioned the country to mother, she found the first letters that Lucy had sent to her describing it. I used them as the basis of the project report.

Some years later when I was at university, I joined the Christian Union. Members were encouraged to take an interest in missionary work and to give support. I asked mum if she still had contact details for Lucy. I followed up, discovered that Lucy was married to Paul Bell and still in Burundi, and so my missionary support began.

Myra continues: My memory is no longer clear about it all, but somehow, I also got in touch. My idea was for a direct relationship to be made between the African church and my own, each supporting the other as each was able: something that would endure as missionaries came and went. I thought this would be helped by providing practical support in a form where all ages could contribute. I was introduced to Joan Nicholson (who was the CMS supervisor for schools in Burundi); she told of the need for simple items for the schools, even down to chalk. I listed the items and the vicar and curate gave full support, and so the first Burundi Sunday took place. Letters were exchanged, prayers given in each place for the other. Also, a tremendous amount was given and we spent ages making up parcels to send.

The direct link was helped by having a vicar (Rev David Bartlett) and congregation member (Elaine Bingham) fluent in French, so letters could be written and read directly. Visits each way were arranged. Also, as personnel changed at both ends, the link did indeed remain.

I must have started something, though I really can’t work it out any more!

In discussions with some of my older friends we have concluded it is good to try to start something and pray that it “takes off”.

Postscript

There are more details that could be told: of the changing nature of support, a church being named St Marks and money for its roof being raised, a baby being baptised with the name Peter, a group of friends paying for a wife to come to the UK to accompany her husband on a course, one of St Marks going to serve in Burundi, and many more.

After a number of years, frailty and difficulty getting to St Marks led to the link being left in the hands of others of the congregation, fitting the vision of the link being with the churches rather than individuals.

2 Myra moved first to St Peter’s Nottingham, and then to St James Porchester, where she had been a young member of the PCC on return from college, played a part in helping the foundation of their daughter church (St Marks), and became Guide Captain.

It gave great delight that St James also came to support Burundi, and that the arrival of Rev Paul Butler as Bishop led to the diocese formally making a link with Burundi too.

Mrs Betty Moore died May 2018

(The diocese offers its heartfelt condolences to Bishop Harry Moore, who was Bishop in Cyprus and the Gulf from 1983 to 1986, on the death of his wife Betty on Friday 18 May.)

Maureen and Terry Finney write:

We attended the funeral of Betty Moore, wife of Bishop Harry Moore, on Wednesday 30 May at Hopesay in Shropshire. We first met Betty and Harry in Baghdad in 1985 during their first visit around the diocese. Betty had five children who all attended the funeral with spouses, their children and grandchildren – a truly wonderful family gathering.

Betty was a very senior and experienced nurse during her working life and did a marvellous job juggling family pressures with work. She retired to travel with Bishop Harry as missionaries with CMS to Iran and India and then all around Cyprus and the Gulf when he became our Bishop. Harry and Betty were founder members of the spring reunions and attended regularly until travelling became too tiring. Betty was 92 years old and was married to Harry for 67 happy years. She will be greatly missed by all the family.

Bishop Harry will continue to live in Lytham St Anne’s, where it is rumoured he is still running his infamous Bible studies!

Miss Joyce Peel died September 2018

Bob and Isobel Burn (friends) write:

We were sad to hear of Joyce Peel’s death in The Call. Joyce had been in the women’s college in Palayamkottai, India, until just before we arrived in 1961, when she had been appointed drama adviser for Madras Diocese. We knew her in India, and she taught us an acted Lord’s Prayer which she sang to Malotte’s tune. We have used this in when the occasion seemed right. Joyce also had composed very jolly tunes to the Venite and the Jubilate.

When I became NSM priest in charge of Foxton she was able to join us for pre-confirmation weekends, and our youth club performed her dramatic setting of Job in church. Later, when our travels took us to Wantage we visited her from time to time. She was still on top of her music and was a wonder at living simply. She had a depth of joy which always remained a wonder for us.

3 Rev Richard Drown died November 2018

Jennifer Barton writes:

Rev Richard Drown was born in March 1919 in Scarborough, UK. He attended a prep school in Eastbourne. Richard became a Christian at a children’s camp in Southwold at the age of 11. He attended a senior school at Deal Close, Gloucester, where he was a victor laudarum Head of House and School. He was the captain of the cricket and hockey team. He also won an exhibition to Oxford.

He read Classics at Brasenose College and played cricket and hockey for the University while there. He was President of the Christian Union and also met his future wife Gwyneth at the University.

He went on to Wycliffe Hall to read theology and while there was seconded to the Dragon School, Oxford, to teach scripture and cricket. Following his training Richard was employed as a curate at St Helen’s, Lancashire. He married Gwyneth in 1945 and together they went to Language School in London before going to Uganda to take up the position of Chaplain at Kings College Budo. There he became a housemaster, taught both English and Scripture as well as being Chaplain. He took exams to be an MCC umpire also and went on to coach the Uganda cricket team.

While visiting his daughter in Kenya in 1963 Richard was offered the post of headmaster at St Andrew’s School, Turi, Kenya. He took the post and created a very good prep school. In 1973 he was headhunted to take over a failing school, Edinburgh House in New Milton, Hampshire, UK as headmaster. He was successful and school went on to amalgamate with the girl’s school close by and this school is now known as Ballard School.

Richard retired in 1984 and went back in to the church as an assistant priest in Brockenhurst, where he worked until 2017, when he went to Kenya to live with his daughter. He died peacefully at her home on November 9 2018.

Richard was a most humble man with friends around the world who he kept in touch with. He had an extremely strong and living faith in God and cared for all people. His hobbies were always cricket, gardening, music (he sang in the village choir) and visiting the sick and those with problems. He was very much a people’s person and will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

Miss Olive Hitchcock died December 2018

John Clark and Sarah Hutton write:

Olive Hitchcock, who died at the College of St Barnabas on Christmas Eve 2018 aged 97, was one of the first women to be appointed to a senior international mission role in the Church Mission Society. Following twenty years’ service on the staff of the prestigious Colombo Ladies College, she was appointed first assistant and then Asia regional secretary for CMS.

Born in 1921 she had to overcome severe childhood health conditions. Aged five she developed a TB Hip. Her leg was straightened by brute force and, after catching chickenpox at Great Ormond Street hospital, she was sent home immobilised in plaster and later transferred to Treloar’s Hospital for Crippled Children in Alton and Hayling Island.

4 She was there for four years; flat on her back, splintered and in traction. No personal possessions were allowed, everything had to be shared on the ward and letters home were censored to prevent any complaints. Her parents could visit for two hours on a Saturday or Sunday twice a month except in the winter. In bed she was taught to read, write, do maths and sew.

In her diaries she wrote of returning home joyfully at nine years old, on crutches. She went to a local school and then attended North London Collegiate in Camden Town, travelling by train each day. She had two further major operations on her hip which removed her splint although she says she was still disabled.

She wrote: “It was during one of these stints in hospital, lonely and bitterly disappointed when the first operation was declared unsuccessful, that I turned to the love of God in Christ and put myself in his hands for life.”

The Second World War interrupted her education, but she took a secretarial course and became a temporary civil servant at the Ministry of Home Security in Whitehall.

In 1941 she went to St Andrew’s University to study geography, half expecting to become a teacher as this was acceptable war service. As a result of the influence of Crusader classes in London, and the InterVarsity Fellowship at St Andrew’s, she hoped to be a missionary teacher. But on graduation she was called up to the wartime civil service and joined the Economic Intelligence Unit attached to Lord Mountbatten’s South East Asia Command in Kandy, Ceylon, and later to Singapore on the Japanese surrender.

Her diaries of that time reveal a growing love for the land and its people, a developing faith and sense of God’s call. So, a lifelong love of Ceylon, later to become Sri Lanka, began. It was here she made her first links with Ladies College and on demobilisation she flew back to Colombo to join the College’s staff, teaching geography, scripture, Latin and French.

However, after a couple of terms she was seconded to a school in Gampola, Kandy, for a year to give a longstanding missionary a break. At 25 she was acting principal.

It was at the end of her second term here that she found herself caught in a flood. The river began rising rapidly in the middle of the night and water rushed into her bungalow with such force she could not get out. Somehow in the darkness she and four other staff hoisted three chairs onto a staff room table and the five of them climbed up onto the chairs.

With the water rising, every time the table shuddered they were nearly swept away. Eventually, after 15 hours, a police boat found them and hauled them out through the roof exhausted and soaked. Olive had severe sciatica, was unable to walk, had dysentery and was shaken to the core, having also lost all her possessions. She recalled that in the midst of the flood she told God that, in spite of general disillusionment, she would be willing to commit herself to missionary service – should she emerge alive!

CMS initially accepted her on “special agreement” because of her disability. In 1948 she was accepted as a full missionary. For 20 years she devoted herself to Ladies College, running it as administrative secretary and vice principal, with the principal, Australian Mabel Simon, and in 1964 becoming its principal. She clearly got a grip on the school administratively and educationally and

5 was always forward thinking. She navigated a path through difficult times due to a Buddhist revival. She was the only Anglican Non-Ceylonese in charge of a school

The girls regarded her as rather scary, but to the staff she was seen as lively, warm hearted and friendly. She was held in great respect by colleagues and church leadership. She maintained constant contact with Ladies College ever since and a Christmas card from the college was in her room when she died.

CMS files record that it was with very great reluctance that the Bishop of Colombo accepted the Society’s request for her transfer to the Headquarters Staff as Assistant Asia Secretary.

Sarah adds:

The word remarkable is vastly over used about people’s lives, but since Olive’s death, reading her diaries, papers, poetry, and reflections from others who knew her well, there simply isn’t another adjective. Perhaps all lives are remarkable and one-offs. Yet the circumstances and time of Olive’s life is certainly not one to be repeated.

In 1991, when I was preparing to get married, I asked her to do the father of the bride speech. She laughed and said she was well past her sell by date! I don’t think she ever came to that. Her bookshelves reveal a lively wide-ranging interest in theology, art and literature. She wrote poetry of immense depth, imaginative talks and reflections, she painted, sewed and continued to grapple with the “now and the not yet” of our lives.

Miss Elizabeth Batson Richards died March 2019

Glenys Williams writes:

I first met Elizabeth when I was a student at St Michael’s House, Oxford, where she was my New Testament tutor. We were both there as a result of God calling us to the work in South America, which turned out to be in Paraguay.

In my first year she kept me company in Makthlawaiya, where she found her calling among the people of the land; first in the Chaco and later in the northern town of Concepcion, where she lived with one of the local families.

Among many holidays together, there was one memorable furlough in 1970 which we used to travel round the United States by Greyhound, before returning to visit our supporting churches in the UK. We bought tickets for two months and then allowed ourselves 10 dollars a day. Elizabeth was keen to see what the Lord was doing there through the Holy Spirit, so we made stops at Houston to see the Church of the Redeemer and St Luke’s, Seattle, where we were greeted at the door with a hug by the vicar Dennis Bennett, now regarded as the father of the Charismatic movement in the Episcopal Church.

It was Elizabeth’s commitment to worldwide prayer and the time she gave to Bible study that marked her out. So often when we are tucked away in our small corner of the world, we can so easily get immersed in our local situation, but Elizabeth’s vision was truly worldwide.

6 John Ellison writes:

It would be hard to overestimate the godly, humble and discerning impact Elizabeth Richards had on me and on my ministry when I arrived in Paraguay as Diocesan Bishop.

Nothing in England, where I had spent the previous five years, prepared me for the particular challenges I faced of seeking to follow in the footsteps of Bishop Doug and the team of “old-style missionaries” he had brought together to serve among the Paraguayan people.

Elizabeth helped me to both be myself and identify with the needs and aspirations of the Paraguayan Anglican Church. Through her example I learned something at least of what it means to be incarnational. She lived among Paraguayans and loved them.

Whether among the urban poor of Asunción or the northern city of Concepcion, she spoke their language and understood their culture as few of us mission partners did.

Humbly she would explain why things were as they were and she would go on explaining with great patience and understanding with mission partners and Paraguayans alike. We loved her and respected her.

Her understanding was deeply theological, Bible-based and totally gospel-centred. If I needed something written to share with others, Elizabeth was the person to ask.

God had given her an extraordinary mind which she exercised for his glory and the good of the people of Paraguay.

Of missionaries like Elizabeth we could say, “Of them the world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:38).

She leaves us with the challenge, here in the , in Paraguay or elsewhere in South America, to, “run with perseverance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

We shall miss Elizabeth and wholeheartedly we give thanks for her, but it is to Jesus we look as she did.

Canon Goodchild died December 2018

Colum Goodchild (son) writes:

Born in Northern Ireland, Canon John McKillip Goodchild spent his youth in Sussex, and was educated at Eastbourne College, from where he went to Clare College, Cambridge, to study maths. He wrote: “Since I was about 10, I had had a feeling that I should be a pastor, but I did not tell anyone. After my first year [at Clare], God said: ‘Continue maths and you will do well, but you will always know it was not what I really wanted for you.’ I switched to study theology, passed in the first class, and was accepted for ordination.”

John chose to widen his experience before ministerial training. He taught maths and organised the Scouts at the Dennis Memorial Grammar School in Onitsha, Nigeria. In 1967, schools were shut, owing to the Biafran war. He left through Cameroon, before federal troops closed that border.

7 At Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, he enjoyed tutorials with Maurice Wiles and Charlie Moule, and applied for ordination to the Bishop of , Stuart Blanch, whose preaching had impressed him. A curacy was arranged at St Andrew’s, . There being no houses for curates, he took rooms with an enrolling member of the Mothers’ Union. She spent her morning shopping and brought home news of anyone who was ill; John then planned his visiting accordingly.

In his third year, he was asked whether he knew of anyone who could teach at Trinity Theological College in Nigeria. His immediate reply was “me”, so he applied to the Church Missionary Society, who duly sent him out. The students were sitting the London Diploma in Theology, the set texts being from Athanasius and Augustine. John read them on the plane. The students all passed.

His work here progressed, with the development of a diploma related to the West African context. In 1974, he was appointed college principal.

It was in Nigeria that he met Ann Travis, CMS matron of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, a few miles away from the college. They were married in 1975 and became a team. She handed over her duties at the hospital and taught courses at Trinity on “How to be Healthy” and “Visiting the Sick”, and supervised groups taking services on the wards as part of their practical pastoralia. One day, John asked a student how the patients had responded to his talk: “One of them died.”

In 1982, John identified a successor as college principal and he and Ann returned to England with their son, Colum. Such was their life in Nigeria that Colum, who was then aged four, said in response to the news that they were to leave: “You go to England. I will stay here with my friends. They will feed me.”

John’s first parish was St John’s, Ainsdale, in Liverpool diocese. Parishioners remember his study being crammed with books, and his influence on the church’s spiritual development. He became Rector of St Andrew’s, Maghull, devoting himself and his pastoral care to his church family.

Ten years later, in 1998, John took up a post as principal of the Norwich Diocesan Ministerial Course and director of ordained local ministry training. A colleague, the Ven. Clifford Offer, remembers him as a “creative Christian thinker and teacher, always one for building people up, both personally and in the faith”.

He retired to St Michael-in-the-Hamlet, Liverpool, where his preaching continued. It was here that he celebrated his 40th anniversary of ordination. The collection at this service paid for a new lavatory and kitchen for the church. It was a reminder to John of a clergy conference that he had attended in Nigeria. When he asked, “What has your church done about evangelism?” the first reply was, “We have installed a two-seater latrine.” A latrine was a necessity for the three-hour- long services there.

The current principal of Trinity College has written of him: “John was a strong Christian soldier, teacher, leader, mentor, and administrator; a great evangelist. John touched many lives for God, and will always be remembered by the present great men of God he mentored and taught.”

From the 1980s onwards, John was a regular on the Church Times letters page; friends have commented that his contributions will be sorely missed.

NB Permission given to reproduce the above tribute, which appeared in the Church Times on 22 March 2019. www.churchtimes.co.uk

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