Clifford writes his own personal message.
My very dear Friends,
I want to thank all of you who came to Bedford on Friday to Monica’s Thanksgiving Service and all those who watched it on YouTube. Some of you, including two of our speakers, Bob Hunt and Jock Stein, travelled a long way to be with us and I and all our family are extremely grateful for the love and support that you have given to us. It was a great comfort to us that so many of you wanted to show your love for Monica and your appreciation of the many years of service to the Lord that she gave. A recording of the service is still available on YouTube through this link.
I also want to thank all of you who sent gracious notes to me following Monica’s sudden death on Christmas Eve. It has certainly been very hard for all the family and me as it was so unexpected. Monica was quite well with no health problems and she was happily working at her computer when the aneurysm occurred in her brain. She called out to me saying she had a terrible headache. Then she simply laid her head on her laptop and 10 minutes later she was gone. It was, of course, a wonderful way to die – straight into the arms of Jesus with no suffering. But the shock for me has been shattering after 68 years together.
Amazingly she left no unfinished ends and it is almost as though she was ready. She finished three books in the last month of her life. One was something she had been planning to write for many years and she only completed it in November. The book is an account of her own ministry in the East End of London in the 1970s. It is now published on our website under the title ‘East Enders Restoration – The Harold Road Story’. Please do read it. It is a fascinating story.
The second book was my study of ‘Amos, Hosea and Micah’ which Monica thoroughly revised and edited. The third book we wrote jointly over quite a period of time. ‘Seeing the Hand of God’ is a book of stories of our ministry around the world. Monica spent a lot of time working on it and wrote a final chapter in her last month. She sent the script off to the publishers three days before she died.
Monica had also intended to publish a history of the British Church Growth Association and had written a large number of notes. We have three museums interested in our records and we will make Monica’s notes available to anyone wishing to write a history of the church in Britain from the 1970s to 2005. In regard to all her immediate objectives, her work was completed. She was ready to go.
Cliff