730528

MONDAY 28th MAY 1973

Baptismal Service at Appleby

12.56am. (Tuesday). We have had the most wonderful day. This afternoon at 1.00pm we held the Baptismal Service at Appleby Open-Air Swimming Pool. I suppose we shall talk about it for years to come; it was out of this world. We baptised sixteen people, Brian first and Norman last: he was late for his own funeral!

            After a late lunch we bade farewell to Sheila, John, Susan and Steven Battersby who were returning home. John and Sheila having to go to work tomorrow. Later on, Jimmy, one of Brian’s hands on the farm, came for help and prayer. I spent an hour with him, then rejoined Freda, Brian, Elizabeth, Arthur and Heather in the lounge. Arthur and Heather had to leave just before 7.00pm to return to Edinburgh. It was a tearful farewell.

            After this we went to Gillian Chilton’s (Gillian Miller as she is now) home in Appleby for a meeting at 7.30pm. We last saw Jill on her wedding day eleven years ago, and the time before that in Durham one day in 1959. Lynn, her husband, is a lay-reader in the Church of England and had invited a number of people to come to meet us, including three R.C.’s. One of them had been present in our Hull meetings in 1967 and had been greatly impressed. After reading about us in the local paper he had asked Lynn whether I was the same man who was coming to his house.

            What a meeting we had tonight! I confess to experiencing a certain satisfaction in being able to say in effect, “You see God has used us” to Jill, whose last contact with us was at the time of my detachment from the Methodist Church.

            Another thing, it was Susan’s birthday, she was 16. This morning we took her card and present, the summer dress Freda had made her, to the caravan, but only Steven and Kim were up. Later on they all joined us while we were having breakfast. Susan was wearing Freda’s dress but went and changed into a white trouser-suit her mother had given her. Brian, or was it Arthur? said, “Helen Athletics” which produced gales of laughter as this was the special word of xxx which Arthur had used to keep their friend who talked in his sleep from lascivious thoughts

TUESDAY 29th MAY

Barn Rally

2.15am. (Wednesday). We are late in bed again, having spent the last two hours talking about the unforgettable Barn Rally at which we spoke tonight at Dent Foot. We had a great time of blessing. I preached from a farm cart to a congregation of about 200 seated on bales of straw [slides xxx]. Border Television filmed the people arriving, and the last part of the service, but the light was so bad that I hardly think much of the film will be usable.

WEDNESDAY 30th MAY

1.41am (Thursday). Brian woke us this morning with the news that Princess Anne had got engaged to Lieut. Mark Phillips.

            After breakfast Brian went to visit two or three of the people who were healed in the meetings to enquire whether they had any objection to being interviewed by the newspaper reporter. He had ’phoned Brian to ask whether anyone had been healed. Later on we listened to part of the tape of the Baptismal service.

THURSDAY 31st MAY

12.20am. (Friday). We have had another extraordinary day and, as so often over the years, have felt like spectators looking on while the Lord has worked.

            We did not get up until 9.30am. Before breakfast I went to have a look at some of the cattle. We had bannocks for breakfast, freshly baked pastries with butter and treacle spread inside; we had them for the first time earlier in the week.

            After breakfast Brian ’phoned Border TV but was able only to speak to one of their secretaries. We went then in Brian’s Scimitar to see Mrs Kindlysides who was miraculously healed of rheumatoid arthritis during the 6.30pm. Sunday evening service. We had gone to ask her to appear on TV tonight. We were a bit in doubt whether she would as she declined to be photographed for the Cumberland & Westmorland Herald yesterday, but today she readily assented. Her reluctance yesterday was due to her hair having just been done and being still in pins!

            Mrs Kindlysides’ daughter was there. When we walked in she had a handbill in her hand and had been saying she wished she could have been present in the meetings to have been prayed for as she had a “frozen shoulder”. I suggested the Lord could “de-ice” it for her , and when I laid hands on her she felt such a sensation of heat that her glasses steamed up. She was instantly healed. [Unfinished. Brian drove us to Carlisle where I was interviewed on Border TV. in the evening.]            

FRIDAY 1st JUNE

Rosie the Sheepdog

12.50 am. (Saturday). We have had the Bible Study here at Kirkby Thore Hall tonight. In addition to Brian, Elizabeth, Freda and I, we had Lorna, Bob and Carol, Joyce Summers, Mr and Mrs Foster, Mrs Metcalf and Margaret. We spoke on Baptism in the Spirit and Baptism in Water, and Speaking in Tongues. Mr and Mrs Foster left at about 10.00pm, closely followed by Mrs Metcalf and Margaret, which then left us free to minister to the others who were all baptised on Monday.

            This morning I helped Brian and Jimmy to move six of the Charolais from the field on the right hand side of the drive (as one approaches the house) to the field on the opposite side, which involved taking the cows round the back of the farm. For this operation Brian enlisted the aid of Rosie the sheepdog, She is frightened of cows however, and having run towards them she then took fright, turned on her tail,, and fled back again. The cows were so bemused by this performance that they followed Rosie up the field. We almost collapsed with laughter.

            I spent the rest of the morning writing up two days’ accounts, then after lunch we went in the car to Penrith where Brian was trying to get a belt for his Stellaphone tape-recorder, and was collecting some potato money. Meanwhile, Freda and I had a look at the books in Smith’s. Brian eventually returned with two belts which he had been given free of charge, and Freda found 1p where we had parked the car.

            After this we drove in sunshine across the Eden Valley and into the Pennines near the Radar Station from where we had a marvellous view stretching for many miles. On the descent we stopped a second time to enjoy the sight and sound of a stream tumbling down the mountain side.

            On our return I helped Brian fit the belt to the tape-recorder, then Mr Cooper, the Methodist minister from Kirby Stephen, arrived with some handbills for a Crusade to be held in Appleby next week. Mr Cooper was present in our meetings both on Saturday and Sunday night, and this evening we had a most profitable discussion. He said he had completely misjudged me. Later, when the folk came for the Bible Study, someone brought tomorrow’s paper which carries a lengthy article about the meetings, and a photograph.

            I forgot to note that Brian took Freda and me to Appleby this morning in his truck. Freda did some shopping while Brian and I unloaded chairs borrowed from the Grammar School. Lynn Miller was there to help us.

= = =

TUESDAY 5th JUNE

11.13pm. Last Saturday we received from Brother Lawson in Accra nineteen postcard-sized photographs of our meetings there, and this morning a further selection showing blind, deaf and dumb people being healed.

            We had a quiet morning in the office and the girls were able to go before lunch. I labelled some Bible Study tapes.

            Freda met Mrs Norville in the street this morning. She said, “I know all about your husband healing people last week”, and told her how another neighbour Mrs Flower had read the report in the Cumberland & Westmorland Herald which she has sent to her every week. Mrs Flower has a granddaughter who is stone-deaf due to her mother having contracted German measles during pregnancy.

            I spent the afternoon at home again. It was sunny and warm and we had our lunch outside in the garden, and later on I sat in the deckchair reading

            At 5.0pm we went to town in the car, having arranged to meet Sheila and John Battersby and Susan and Steven outside the Odeon cinema at 6.15. I took us to Bangers in Bull Street for a meal,  after which we had a cup of tea at the Hasty Tasty before going to the Odeon to see Hitler: The Last Ten Days. Alec Guinness played the part of Hitler. It was a memorable film. Afterwards we stood discussing it in Corporation Street.

THURSDAY 7th JUNE

A Visitation from the Lord

7.28pm. Dad and I finished printing the newsletters before coffee this morning. Later the letters were knocked up, chopped and folded, and by 3.30pm they had all been done up. Dad was posting them at Solihull tonight.

            The newsletter bears tomorrow’s date and briefly describes the visitation of the Lord at Kirkby Thore. Len Slack wrote this morning enclosing a clipping from the Sunday Post headed “Cured! – Crippled Widow” and describing Mrs Kindle sides’ healing. Brian Bosomworth also wrote expressing appreciation of all that had been accomplished through our ministry. They had had a meeting on Sunday night in which astonishment had been expressed at the way in which the four unbaptised people had been seated all together in one row. Mrs Foster has since expressed the desire to be baptised next time. That makes six further candidates so far.

            It has again been hot and sunny. We had our lunch in the garden – Theresa Purdue next door was sunbathing – and I came home at 4.00pm to sit outside studying Landmarks of Church History (1894) by Henry Cowan D.D. We had tea outside as well.

            This evening I have been setting up the tape-recorders for the Bible Study here tomorrow evening.