Reunited at Bible by the Beach (after 61 years!)
James Stileman
Hazel Gordon and Linnet Smith left their Cheshire girls' school in 1965. They hadn’t seen each other for over 60 years until this year’s Bible by the Beach (BBTB) conference in Eastbourne over the Early May Bank Holiday.
They sat in a seafront hotel and talked for four hours without stopping. “It was a fitting conclusion to our first meeting,” said Hazel, “to attend the Sunday evening celebration service in the Congress Theatre. What a profound moment to stand together as we sang ‘From life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny’. We felt so blessed to have had this remarkable opportunity – and to discover that the adventure of life has not yet stopped.”
letter from Liberia
Building the church in West Africa
James Stileman
In an episode of Come Fly with Me, the BBC’s 2010 satirical fly-on-the-wall documentary set in a fictional UK airport, Ian Foot, the Chief Immigration Officer, challenges a passenger from Liberia for travelling under a forged passport. “The slight giveaway,” says Foot smugly, “is there is no such country as Liberia.”
The affronted passenger, appalled by the officer’s racism, points to Liberia on a map of West Africa and the humiliated Foot lets the visitor through.
letter from Democratic Republic of Congo
DRC: ‘Why is the world looking away?’
James Stileman
‘Those who live in Goma live in fear. They do not know what is next. They ask why the international community has looked the other way.’
Those are the words of someone I saw in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) just a few months ago – and who, with his family, is now out of his home, having being compelled to flee as rebel forces advanced.