Eleanor Baird

I was in my last year at school doing A-levels. On the 14th June our minister called to inform us that my Dad had been killed in a mid-air collision. It was the most devastating thing to have ever happened to me and my family. My mother was distraught and so I had to tell my younger brother and sister and my grandparents. My A-levels went haywire!

My father had been due to steward at a Billy Graham convention in London that July. My mother insisted we should still go. I can’t remember much about it. It was definitely emotional. When invited to put their trust in Jesus, many people chose to go forward, but I sat firmly in my seat. Going home, however, I asked God to help me cope with this enormous grief and despair. I felt a wonderful peace and that I was not alone with this huge burden. I sought help from our minister and was also amazed by my mother’s strength of faith at this time. I’d always known about God’s love for me shown most clearly in Jesus’ death on the cross but until then I’d not accepted it for myself. I decided to make a commitment as a Christian and was baptised in January 1967.

Following my baptism, I volunteered in Coventry under a ‘Time for God’ scheme and then worked for another year as a trainee Social Worker.

At 24 and fully-qualified, I think my work as a Social Worker in London rather took over my life. Although I didn’t lose my faith, my church attendance fell away.

In 1976 my husband Tom and I moved out of London and I worked at Stoke Mandeville hospital, where I met another Social Worker called Eirlys Barr. We later moved to Leighton Buzzard and attended Hockliffe Street Baptist Church where Eirlys’ husband Norman was minister. I became a member and really started to understand more fully what it meant to be a Christian. I saw how I’d fallen away; but God was a forgiving God and would take me back if I truly turned to him.

I remember a recent sermon about how important it is to be a part of a church; that not being so was like a lump of coal falling out of a fire and slowly going cold; however, being a part of a church family can keep that fire alive. I think I had been going cold for some time.

The Christian journey seems to be a continuous one. I don’t know if I get it right much of the time but God has been so faithful over the years.