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Timothy Alford went home to glory on 6 December 2018.

I first met Timothy when I was a young pastor in the early 1990s and he was the General Secretary of Africa Inland Mission (AIM). Little was I to know then how much of an influence he would have upon me and the work I am now doing at Pastor Training International (PTI).

Keith Small was one of the foremost Qur’an scholars of our time. His work on early manuscripts was to provoke new questions among secular and Islamic scholars alike.

While at Dallas Theological Seminary, Keith read of Henry Martyn, and resolved to give his life to work among Muslims. He married Celeste Gardner in 1985, equally committed to the Muslim world, and they moved to the UK in 1989, settling in Dewsbury.

On Sunday 16 December at the end of a Christmas service, Megan Franklin, wife of the pastor of St Giles Christian Mission, Islington, eight-months pregnant, slipped on a step and cut her knee.

It seemed so minor that my husband, along with the others present, heard nothing of it. However, it soon turned everything upside down. After suffering headaches Megan visited hospital on Christmas Day and their intensity with resultant loss of sight soon caused alarm. On Friday 28 she phoned to cancel our family visit, yet the following day she permanently lost consciousness. She died as a result of a Strep-A bacterial infection on Sunday 6 January. Mercifully, the doctors were able to deliver the little boy successfully by Caesarean, to become the seventh child in the family.