In 1985 They celebrated their Silver Wedding Anniversary with a rousing service at Bethesda Chapel where we all had a good sing of lots of lovely hymns, worship songs, and choruses, such as

Love Divine All Loves excelling

Lord for the years thy love has kept and guided

Great is thy faithfulness

Here is the text of what dad had to say:

Ian (Delooze) is absolutely right.  25 years ago if I had looked forward to celebrating it in this way, I would probably have thought it would be spent in a different way than we are doing tonight.  What I’d like to do tonight is share some of the way in which the Lord has blessed and guided.


25 years ago it was a terrible day - well weatherise I hasten to add - in the morning the rain was coming down like a monsoon.  It really was a wet miserable November day.  At lunchtime just before we were due to get to church the rain stopped.  During the service when we came to the point where we made our vows, the sun shone through the window of this little methodist chapel at Alfreton and it cast its beam through the window and it fell on Sylvia and I as we took our vows.  

Afterwards although we weren’t Christians at that time, Sylvia said: I feel God is going to bless our marriage.  God truly has blessed our marriage in a wonderful way.  We had been married about 6 years when tragedy came into our lives.  Musical comedians make jokes about mothers in law don’t they?

I had a wonderful mother in law and Sylvia and I we loved her very much.  Just three weeks after Wendy was born we got a telephone call to go to Nottingham hospital.  Sylvia’s mother had been killed in a car crash and her father was very, very seriously ill.  That was a real tragedy in our  married life.  But you know the Lord so often brings something wonderful out of tragedy.  

That was the beginning of the Lord starting to speak to us.  Each week we had to go to Nottingham and visit Sylvia’s father in hospital.  We stayed at his house in  Alfreton and the lady next door was very kind to us.  In the evening we would sometimes go round and she would talk to Sylvia and her husband would come and talk to me as I was doing the garden during the morning

Not if I saw him coming first as he was the pastor of the pentecostal church and the things he had to say to me were things I really didn’t want to hear … I would rather get on with the gardening.

Sylvia listened to this dear lady who spoke to her of the Lord Jesus Christ.   On one occasion when I was being so rude to him this old gentleman said I would like to give you his book because I feel that in some future years it will be a great help to you.

It was book on homiletics. I didn’t even know what the word meant in those days. So he had great spiritual insight I believe this dear old gentleman but he’s now gone to be with the Lord and he doesn’t know how useful his little book was.

But his wife talked to Sylvia about the Lord .  Then came the day came when Sylvia’s father came out of hospital and we no longer needed to go to Alfreton.  Now this dear old lady, and we had a lovely card from her today, she continued to pray for Sylvia. She prayed: Lord now that I have lost that contact will you bring someone else into Sylvia’s life who will continue to speak to her of you.

By one of the Lord’s strange coincidences, one of his people moved into an empty house in our avenue.

Sylvia  one day was taking Susan for a walk.  Susan saw a little girl  at the gate of this house - Mummy do you think we could take that little girl for a walk with us.  Sylvia said well we really ought to ask her mummy.  Her mummy said yes you can take her for a walk.

So a friendship began between Susan and Joanne Marshall.  Lyn Marshall began to befriend Sylvia and she continued this conversation about the Lord.  She was instrumental in bringing Sylvia to that place where in our front room one day Sylvia knelt and asked the Lord into her life.  Now we subsequently heard from this dear old  lady at Alfreton that at that precise time the Lord put before her a picture of Sylvia: I know you want me to pray for Sylvia and right at that moment when Sylvia was asking the Lord into her life, that old lady was praying. It is wonderful how the Lord works through a chain of events to bring people to himself and to bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Sylvia became a Christian and started to come to church here in Bethesda.

I was some 3 or 4 years later than that before the Lord apprehended me,  I wanted to understand the business of creation.    Eventually the Lord brought me to that place where it didn’t really matter, I just asked Christ in as Lord and Saviour.  I was converted in February, baptised in the April - a few months of real sort of what I would call  lovely Christian life together when again tragedy came into our lives..  As a very young Christian my wife was taken into hospital with a brain tumour.  During that time, although her life hung in the balance, the Lord gave me a wonderful peace.  I didn’t know one moment’s anxiety.  I was very concerned but I was not anxious.  The Lord was able to give us that wonderful peace which is able to come in circumstances of  real tragedy.  …. I remember the night that Sylvia went into hospital for that operation and how we talked about the possibility that she might not come back.  Sylvia said to me, Well whatever happens will be the for the best - because if I die during the operation I shall wake up in the presence of the Lord and if I don’t die, I’ll wake up with in the presence of my family.  You can’t lose as a Christian.  You really can’t.

How I would have faced that, and how Sylvia would have faced this without knowing the Lord, I do not know.  What I do know  is that the Lord gave us a wonderful sense of peace.  We still had that 3 years later that wonderful sense of peace.

Don’t let anyone tell you that the Christian life is a bed of roses.  It very rarely is. The longer I go on the more I am convinced that suffering and glory go hand in hand.  They are too sides of the same coin because  in the suffering the Lord builds up Christian character.  He’s still working on Sylvia and I… We have learnt a lot together through suffering. 

We have learnt too a lot about the power of prayer.  Not only our prayer but other people’s prayer. Sometimes when Sylvia has been too ill to pray for herself she has felt the power of the Lord’s people praying for her.  If we had not been part of the Lord’s family we would not have known that.

Sylvia and I are both only children.  The Lord has blessed us with a lovely family-  two lovely daughters.  Well at least I think they are lovely daughters.  They are both following the Lord Jesus Christ.  We never cease to thank the Lord that he has led Susan and Wendy to himself.  We do really treasure that tremendously.  

If we hadn’t have become Christians, as Ian has reminded us tonight, we would not have had many brothers and sisters around us, because in the natural sense  we don’t have any.  Isn’t it lovely tonight to be surrounded by brothers and sisters far more numerous than we could have ever imagined 25 years ago.

We’ve had cards from so many people all over the place whom we have met and who have blessed us during our years together because we are members of this one huge family.  

Lovely to have Roger here all the way from Kent, and over the years we have met from time to time. The Lord brought our paths to cross some years ago. I am sure that Roger and his family have been a blessing to Sylvia and I and our family, and Roger tells us that ours has been to him.  This is so wonderful that the Lord’s people, it doesn’t matter how different we are temperamentally, or socially, it is one huge large family.

I am looking forward to that time when we get to heaven and we see the whole family complete.  I think it is going to be an  absolutely wonderful time.  I really do. I don’t think I want to share anything else with you tonight.