Charlie & active life after retirement

In the church everyone has a part to play - our active life does not end with retirement. For Charlie it ment trips to the slums of Brazil, to Africa, India and China.

My background

Missionary Enterprises came into being in 1988 on my retirement from pastoring one of our sister churches in Hove and returning to my earliest church roots in Shoreham, where, with the family, I arrived in 1933 from France, where I was born when my parents were serving there with the Salvation Army.

In the intervening years apart from serving in the RAF as a Spitfire pilot during the war, together with my wife, Enid, after Bible College training, we went to Africa as missionaries. We worked for nearly twenty years in, or on, the borders of Mozambique. Following this we served for nearly another twenty years in pastoral ministry, after which, on my retirement, a visit to Mozambique challenged me to return to my missionary roots.

Shoreham Baptist Church has always had a missionary outlook and it was, to a certain extent on account of this, that as a young man my focus on becoming a missionary began.

With having to learn Portuguese, I felt it right to make contact with missions in Portuguese speaking countries in Africa. One of these was the Worldwide evangelistic Crusade [WEC], founded by the famous english cricketer C.T.Studd [the Freddy Flintoff of his day]. Part of their work was the publishing of a journal called 'Soon' ['Cedo' in Portuguese] which was distributed in those countries. It offered bible correspondence courses, and I became a marker. As a result of which I now have several hundred students enrolled from both Mozambique and Angola where I visited over a number of years to hold seminars and lead conferences.

After retiring

Shoreham Baptist Church had links to several missions, amongst them 'Youth with a Mission' [YWAM]. So when Nick Lamb, the pastor at the time we arrived in 1989, asked for a representative, I offered. This has continued to this day in maintaining links and, via our church missionary tithe fund, in helping to support their street kids work in Mozambique. This is so necessary because of nearly 30 years of war and now their work with orphans of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. When visiting my students I have also been able to visit their bases and orphanages.

YWAM is worldwide in scope. I was therefore invited to make a journey with them up the Amazon river in Brazil [also Portuguese speaking], and offered to spend some weeks helping on the YWAM bases there working with street children [Meninos de Rua]. On meeting several of their hundreds of volunteers it opened up opportunities to visit others of their bases in Angola, India and in China, teaching in their training schools, and resulting in some support for full time YWAMers in both India and Brazil.

Over the last few years I have been less able to travel, so I invited my students to meet with me in Malawi where in 1951 we began our work while waiting for our permits to enter Mozambique. It is there that most of 'missionary enterprises' support is concentrated as through the visits there, several other Missions have networked , especially those with orphanages for the thousands of orphans of the HIV/AIDS victims.

Three years ago, on my penultimate visit to Malawi, when, as a result of terrible floods in the whole of southern Africa, the people were on the verge of starvation and both NGOs and missions raised funds and offered food to the poorest of the poor. The southern half of Malawi was particularly affected. Shoreham Baptist Church was celebrating Harvest on the day I was leaving, and gave the whole of the offering [£5000] to help with some of the gravest needs.

One of the agencies with whom we work is the 'Torch Trust for the Blind' , in Malawi and gifts were distributed to the scores of blind people unable to find food. We were able to give some resources to the Victory Christian Children's Homes with 150 orphans, and the Redemption Village bible teaching ministries who also run orphanages and care for the widows and destitute, as well as the blind.

After so many years of associations in Malawi, I made a visit to old friends in Salima on Lake Malawi where a village community orphanage [linked to 'Senders in Mission] also received help.

end of the line?

Although I can no longer visit myself, those links have been taken over by others. Shoreham Baptist Church has other links, especially with 'Living Hope Ministries' who held a conference in Malawi in 2004, as did Manna publications in 2005 [who provide bible commentaries in the tribal languages'. We laid foundations on which others are able to build.

In Mozambique, at the height of the civil war in 1988, I was given a T-shirt, on which was written 'THE BATTLE CONTINUES'. I continue with marking Bible correspondence courses, and encouraging the interest and support offered by Living Hope, Manna Publications, Torch Trust, Senders in Mission. Here at Shoreham Baptist, the main line of fighting is via financial help in the missionary tithe fund for those who coordinate the enterprises. THE BATTLE CONTINUES.