[speaker001:] [praying] We pray for the leaders of the government throughout the world... that they may have a desire and be unselfish. We ask and for the younger nations help to grow to maturity... Help us that wherever we may go we may amen [] [praying] Amen []...
[chair:] Thank you. The prayer this afternoon is for doctors and hospitals.
[Jean:] [praying] Most merciful father who has told us to love you with all our strength and glorify you in our bodies, we commend to you for your continual blessings the hospitals of our land and those who serve in them... prosper all that is being done in the healing of the sick, the conquest of disease and the training of doctors and nurses that your will may be done for the relief of suffering and the making of lives whole through Jesus Christ our Lord amen []
[speaker001:] [praying] Amen []...
[chair:] [praying] Oh Lord comfort and secure all those who are in trouble... in sorrow... or in need... all those who are sick, especially we ask today for Mary who is in hospital and I understand has had an operation. We also pray for Francis and Len who Fr er Len also is in hospital. And also... I hear Mrs isn't well so I can... need to pray for Mrs... and I think also today we should pray for Mrs who I know, at this very time as Remembrance Sunday is coming up, she will be very sad... so we particularly ask for prayers for her.... And that, by your blessing upon them and those who try to help them, they may find peace and encouragement through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [].
[speaker001:] [praying] Amen []
[chair:] Now could I ask for all the members to say the Mothers' Union prayer, the nineteen seventy four one which you will find on page three....
[speaker001:] [praying] Almighty God our heavenly father who made marriage to be a source of blessing to mankind... we thank you for the joys of family life... pour out of us your holy spirit that we may truly love and serve you. Bless all who are married and every parent and child. May we know your presence and peace in our homes. Fill them with your love and use them for your glory. Bless the members of the Mothers' Union throughout the world... unite us in prayer and worship, in love and service that, strengthened by your grace, we may seek to do your will through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen []...
[chair:] Now I think it just leaves me to give the notices out. Erm we've got our Bring and Buy later and I see everybody's remembered to bring something, thank you very much.... And erm also I have to tell you er our next meeting will be our Christmas party. So would you all please bring a plate of goodies?
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[chair:] Thank you. And now it is my duty to introduce Doctor... and erm I think you said you were talking to us about yourself... and erm also a little bit about your holidays?
[Kate:] That's right, yes.
[chair:] And
[Kate:] I'll stand up unless my legs start to ache and then I'll sit down again.... Well thank you very much for inviting me to come. I've come to Saint Mary's and I've been here er just over a year now and erm Rosie collared me into speaking to you
[chair:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] as I was speaking at erm a neighbours and friends group at my parents church and Rosie heard about it and she said will I come and speak to you.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] Can you all hear me?
[speaker001:] Yes thank you.
[Kate:] Right. First of all I thought I'd tell you who I was... I'm a G P in er in New Harlow, in Bush Fair, and I've been there for nearly three years now. I am, I was born in Essex, in... in hospital and my family all come from Essex, and I was brought up in Upminster and I was very fortunate in that I was born into a christian home and I had christian parents and christian grandparents... and christian aunts and uncles... and I went to church from the time I was about two or three weeks old. And this wasn't an Anglican church, erm it was a Baptist church, and when I was seven I understood that Jesus had died for me and then I asked him into my heart and when I was twelve I was baptized, which is the equivalent really of being confirmed.... I was a Sunday School teacher erm when I was in my secondary school and I wondered what God would want me to do with my life when I left school and I thought maybe he wants me to be a missionary and I thought it was only teachers and doctors that could be missionaries... I was wrong wasn't I? But that's what I thought, so I thought I'll try and be a doctor. So I did my O levels and my A levels and I then went to the London Hospital, which is in Whitechapel, from the age of eighteen until I was twenty three. And God was very good to me there, I wasn't the brightest in the year and I had to work very hard, but God always... was with me as I always passed my exams much to my surprise.... What you do for the first two years is you learn all the theory of being a doctor and you go and you have to... between eight of you, learn all about a body... you have one body between of you and you learn all about all the muscles and the nerves
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] over a year... and you also have to do lots of experiments, you have to learn to take blood pressure on each other, learn to take blood from each other
[speaker001:] Oh dear. [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] and erm I, I fainted when someone tried to take blood from me because they couldn't find where to do it and they were
[speaker001:] Oh!
[Kate:] [LAUGHTER] digging all over my arm []
[speaker001:] Oh.
[Kate:] [LAUGHTER] and then we had to do experiments on each other like putting tubes through our noses down into our stomachs
[speaker001:] Ooh
[Kate:] and finding out what, what our er stomachs were like, whether the, the liquid in there is acidic, whether it's an acid... and do you know the girls were braver than the boys, the boys wouldn't let anyone do that to them.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] Women are brave, that's why
[Kate:] And erm we had to learn erm how to do heart tracings, ECGs, on each other and er all sorts of exciting things like that. And then, after two years, we were allowed on to the wards in our white coats and we had to erm find out about the patients and initially we were all very slow and we were given two hours to talk to a patient to find out all about them. Now I'm a G P we have ten minutes.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] And I can remember one of my first patients I had to take blood from, and it took me quite a few goes on that poor lady but she's still friends with me so she's forgiven me.... We get sent all over erm the country, southern England I, I was sent to different hospitals to learn about different things, to learn about erm psychiatry and obstetrics... and medicine... and then erm you also do some er training back in your own hospital, but it's not big enough for all the doctors to stay there all the time... well the baby doctors. And then, in the last year, in the fifth year, you have to do and pass all the exams. In the fourth year I was lucky enough to be able to go to Kenya and find out what life was like in a hospital there... and we had a missionary from my church that was a teacher in Kenya with the African Inland Mission and I went to, really I was nursing erm and helping out there. Their erm conditions were very basic, and I took two fluffy hot water bottles which were going to be used as incubators for the premature babies, that's all they had, and I took out lots of needles and the surgical gloves... and a special instrument for operations. So I went laden out, I'd never flown before, and I went to Kenya... and life is very very different from hospitals in this country. The wards were very very bare and the families look after the patients, they come in and give them food and erm do a lot more for them than er they do in this country and erm there were two wards out of eight for tuberculosis, for T B, cos that's a very big problem out in Kenya. Erm and on a Friday all the beds went out onto the grass outside the wards for the wards to be cleaned
[speaker001:] Oh!
[Kate:] so they were all emptied out of everybody. Fortunately it didn't rain, otherwise they would've all got very wet. Some of the erm people are in hospital there for problems that we don't have in this country. They have their local medicine and the witch doctors try and cure them of their diseases first... so they would even bore holes into people's skulls to let the spirits out for headaches and things like that. Also there were things called pangas which were knives erm and the we saw quite a few tribal incidents and people were injured from knife attacks. And sad things like children falling into fires and because in the mud huts you have the fire in the centre of the hut and it's quite easy for the children to fall in... and there was one little boy there who had been there for over a year and they kept trying to erm heal up all his skin wounds.... We also went down into the valley, into, we were on the edge of the Rift Valley, and there there were a different sort of people. Wher near our hospital they all liked to wear western clothes, they were a bit out of date but er the there, there were lots of T-shirts and s and dresses worn by the people, there was even a Blackpool T-shirt, I'm not sure how they got in the shops.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] Erm but down in the Rift Valley the Pocot people were a very different tribe, they wore leather, little tiny leather skirts and cowrie shells... and nothing here, and it was very very hot, and they were a nomadic people who erm moved about with their animals... but because, when I was there, there'd been a very bad drought, they'd had to erm just beg really for food. So that was a contrast from the people near the hospital where I was and, what happened was, we used to do a little service and then anybody that wanted to be seen used to come along and we needed an interpreter and it was a bit like a surgery really, and they would come with any problems, and anyone who was severely ill we would then take back in the Landrover back to the hospital. We used to have to use a generator for our electricity and that used to go off at ten o'clock at night so if there was an operation that needed doing, there were two car batteries that were turned on and you used to have to do it by those.
[speaker001:] Ooh
[Kate:] So that was different. And the, the water to bathe in came from the local river and er it was very very sandy and it just looked like mud that you were having to get in and do your bath.
[speaker001:] Ooh
[Kate:] The water for drinking they used to collect from the gutters and erm it used to go into big barrels and then they used to boil it for a long while. The meat used to have to be pressure cooked for four hours to make it tender enough to eat!
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] Erm there were lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and we had lemon trees and avocado trees in our garden. So that was quite an experience and quite a contrast from er life in good old England.... After I'd finished I went and did six months in Banbury in er Oxfordshire er doing surgery. I was just helping out and erm learning the basics and I erm came and, appeared in the Christmas pantomimes the fairy godmother of the bedpan
[speaker001:] Oh [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] and when they used to rub the bedpan out I would appear.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] That was good fun. We did that to all the staff, it was a sort of Cinderella story. And then I went to Hereford for six months and I did er six months of medicine, and that was a long way from home in Essex and er we all sort of er mucked in and er made our own entertainment and cooked for each other and that erm was quite a good time. And then I spent six months in Peterborough doing paediatrics, erm working in the special care unit with all the premature babies... with incubators and not fluffy hot water bottles
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] that time. And that was really amazing to see these little tiny scraps that were twenty three or twenty four weeks, so that they were twenty six weeks early... is that right? Sixteen weeks early, and er they er really didn't seem to stand a chance erm of living but a lot of them did and that was amazing. And then all the, all the little children, some of them with very serious illnesses, but seeing how brave they were on the wards, it was a very moving six months. And then I got on a G P scheme in Crawley in Sussex and I spent three years there. I did er geriatrics... obstetrics and gynaecology, psychiatry and casualty, and then I did a year as a G P trainee. I think erm casualty was the worst in that you had very very long hours to do... erm sometimes you were on call from five o'clock in the evening until nine o'clock the following morning, and you did that for a whole week... so by the end of the time you really did feel... inhuman, you were very very tired. But I think probably the most disturbing was some of the poor people in, in psychiatry... erm and er that was very hard work because you seemed to take the problems home with you and you kept thinking about some of the conditions that people had. And then I came here which was quite amazing... because I didn't want to come here... I wanted to be er like James Herriott and go somewhere really rural
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] and I wanted to erm... you know, just travel from village to village... but erm it was quite amazing how God said you're coming to Harlow. I wasn't looking for a job because I hadn't finished my training, but er a friend of mine has h her father is a G P in Loughton, and he erm was at a meeting with the senior partner of my practice, and they said do you know of anybody who's interested in a partnership? And they suggested me, but I said I didn't think it was a good idea because I hadn't finished
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] and they said we'll wait for you. And I said well you haven't even met me. Said no but you come from Essex so you can't be too [LAUGHTER] bad [].
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] And I came and, and I didn't think Harlow was for me because I, it was all very built up and lots of roundabouts... but the people, the partners were so lovely and er I saw some of the patients and I thought they were very lovely too, so this is where I've been. Our practice has got five doctors erm and Doctor erm Elaine, who comes here, she works for two evenings a week with us, and we have eight thousand patients on our list, and erm... sometimes we're very very busy, and sometimes like in the summer we're not so busy. Everybody seems to have flu at the moment
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] and they're coming in with the colds and the shivers and not feeling very well. Erm... but it's a, it's good. Erm like any job you have your ups and your downs, it's very nice when you see people getting better or you've followed somebody through their pregnancy and they've got a lovely bouncy baby at the end of it... and sometimes it's sad when you find out that somebody has got a serious illness or you're looking after people where somebody has died and it, it's very hard for the people left behind to cope and so... that's very difficult sometimes. Sometimes I get very cross with the patients, sometimes they, when you're on call, they ring you up at three in the morning and say they're constipated!
[speaker001:] Ooh [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] An and they ring up and they say they've had a cold all week and they can't put up with it a minute longer
[speaker001:] Ooh [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] and so sometimes the, the calls do seem unreasonable but you shouldn't get cross, and when you go and see them sometimes you realize why they're anxious because something that might seem quite trivial to you... they might know somebody who had similar symptoms and it actually turned out to be meningitis or something... so you're then able to put their minds at rest. But erm it's quite hard if you've been up a lot at night and then you have to go and do the whole of the next day of work, but fortunately our rotas aren't too bad so we're never on two nights in a row compared with the hospital which was quite a lot harder work.... Right, erm... er... then I, what did I think I'd say after that?... Erm I thought I'd tell you a bit about what I did apart from medicine. Erm I like doing water colour painting and I've been on two holidays down in Cornwall and I've done that... and that's very relaxing erm and it seems, you seem to forget about everything else, and that's quite good fun er but erm obviously if it rains all your, all your colours get washed away, but that's good fun. And I like erm... erm knitting and crocheting and I like cycling and I like running and erm I like walking... and erm I was very fortunate to be able to go to Nepal the other week. Erm I went er at the end of September and I did white water rafting, going down in a raft er seven to a boat, and going over the rapids wearing a
[speaker001:] Ooh
[Kate:] wearing a crash helmet and erm a buoyancy jacket, cos if you fell in you could hit your head on the rocks. And that was quite an experience. The wa the river water's very very polluted there, so a lot of people got tummy bugs... and we slept er on the side of the river in little tents and erm we didn't discover till afterwards, two things, one thing was that the little holes that we saw in the sand were actually scorpion holes
[speaker001:] Ooh [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] and another thing was, we went to a crocodile farm, later on, and they said that they release the crocodiles [LAUGHTER] into the river that we []
[speaker001:] Ooh [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] Fortunately we didn't see any.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] But that was good fun, there were eighteen of us, from eight different countries... er Americans and Canadians and Australians and New Zealanders and Dutch and Swiss... and English... and er we had a good time, and then we... and went and did mountain biking in Katmandu
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] and we went up and down erm the valley and we saw some of the Hindu temples
[speaker001:] Ooh
[Kate:] and we saw them burning bodies on the side of the river. And we saw the religious people, the religious men, who erm are the only people that are allowed to smoke drugs, you know, illegal drugs... er things like marijuana, they're actually allowed to because the people view them as half alive and half dead... and that was interesting to see. And we went to one temple... and it got dark whilst we were there, it was called the Monkey Temple, and it's just so many monkeys around, and they just are allowed to run wild, but by the time we got back to our bikes... it was dark and we had to cycle back in the dark without any lights on these unlit, unmade roads and that was quite frightening really.
[speaker001:] Mm
[Kate:] And you have to pay the little boys to guard your bikes otherwise they let down the tyres.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] And then after that erm I did er an eight day trek erm which was in the Anapurna region of the Himalayas... and that again was sleeping in tents... and we had sherpas, porters, to carry all our luggage apart from things like water that we carried in our day sacks... and they carried four bags each on their backs and my bag weighed about thirty pounds.
[speaker001:] Ooh.
[Kate:] And they had a strap and they used to carry all the weight on their foreheads and on, and through their necks, and they used to climb, we went up to seventeen and a half thousand feet, and they climbed up with all these bags and they cooked for us and they got river water for us and sometimes they had to walk a kilometre to the river... to go and get the water and then carry it back again er with the band around their heads... and so... initially it seemed quite difficult to accept them doing this for you, but for them it was a job... and erm it was probably the only sort of job that they could get. And they seemed very happy doing it, and they certainly were very muscly
[speaker001:] Ooh
[Kate:] from all the work they did.
[speaker001:] They'd have to be wouldn't they?
[Kate:] Yeah. People there are very very poor. We saw lots of people picking up stones erm from around, by the edges of the roads and making little piles and they would then get picked up by lorries and I should think they'd get a, a couple of pence through doing that. All the children know how to beg, they run up to you... and they say hello goodbye because normally when someone says hello and you're going you say goodbye so they think hello goodbye's the greeting
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] and they say... pen... and then they say one rupee, which is a tiny bit of currency, erm and they ask for pens for their school so that they can write at school. And erm there's lots and lots of erm poverty but yet the people do seem fairly content with their lot. There's a lot of rice that's grown so in some areas the people can actually make a good living for themselves. The roads are hairpins, up and down, and they're, they're not tarmacked... and so erm you often saw er buses that had fallen over the sides down into the river or that just were on their side, and that erm that obviously there'd been accidents. Apparently what the erm busmen do is they have to make sure that they get to where they're meant to be on time otherwise they get their pay docked... but they like to stop off and see their friends on the way, and stop and have cups of tea
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] so that, when they have to go, they go very very fast and we were advised if we ever went on a bus to sit on the roof
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] because, because there's a roofrack there and some people do, so that if the bus does turn over at least you've got a chance to jump out.
[speaker001:] To jump out mm.
[Kate:] And so that was all very interesting. And then, after that erm the trek, we went erm to a national park, the Chitwa National Park. Apparently that was on television last week, they were, did a programme about tigers... don't know whether anyone saw it. And erm we went on an elephant... on a safari... and we looked for erm wild animals and we saw some rhinos, and that was quite good fun. And then we did a jungle trek and erm the guide said if I do that you've come near, if I do that you have to go away, if I do that you've got to quickly [LAUGHTER] climb a tree []
[speaker001:] Ooh [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] if I do that you've all got to scatter... and we were really worried about what we might find. There are tigers there, and there's leopards and... things called sloth bears, a sort of bear, but they're actually quite rare so er we didn't see any of those, apart from the rhinos, we went very very quietly... crawled under the undergrowth and we saw them in a water hole and they were just bathing there. But they've got very very poor eyesight so although they could sense where we were, as we stayed really really still they couldn't see us... so we were quite safe but er we couldn't go any nearer than about ten yards from them... erm because there weren't any suitable trees to climb in case they started to [LAUGHTER] chase us [].
[speaker001:] Ooh [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] And then erm one afternoon we went in a dug out canoe erm to look for crocodiles and we did actually see them on the banks of the river as we were going down in our canoe, so that was quite exciting. And on our way to the crocodile farm erm we past some beautiful countryside, and on the way back one of the two jeeps broke down and after an hour they decided we would have to leave it. So we came back in the dark, there were fifteen of us in th this jeep bouncing up and down [LAUGHTER] so that was quite fun too []. Erm our last few days we were meant to see Everest and the beautiful Himalayas but the monsoon didn't er finish so weren't ab able to see that but we understood they were there somewhere. The other exciting thing was the leeches... er because the monsoon hadn't finished there were lots of leeches around, and I'd imagined these huge things that were going to suck me to death, but they're actually little, like, just very very tiny little worms, about erm an inch long and very thin and what they do is they sit on leaves and things and as you walk by they get flicked on to your boots or your socks and then they wiggle their way in... and they, you can't feel them there, but what they do is they suck your blood until they explode
[speaker001:] Ooh!
[Kate:] so you er you take your shoe your socks off and you find you've got a, some blood in your socks, and that's where a leech had been. But erm I think I had lots of people praying for me back here because I didn't have any problem with them... and I was the only one who didn't. But there's two ways of getting them off if they do latch on to you, one is to burn them off with a cigarette or a match... and the other way is to use rock salt, and if you put rock salt on them they then just come off so that's a little bit erm more humane for the leeches but it depends what you feel about them really as to whether you want to give them another chance.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] When I came back to England I was very humbled really to erm because I arrived in Nepal three hours before that crash... and erm a lot of people had thought I'd died in that crash and erm... the patients had thought I'd died as well and they had to put a big notice outside to say that I'd been alright, they had lots of people ringing up. And it just made me realize how fragile life is and how God has got his hand on you... and erm how he protected me from erm being killed in that plane crash because it could easily have been my plane
[speaker001:] Mm
[Kate:] and erm it just makes you put everything into perspective. So that's one of my hobbies, I don't know whether I'll be going to Nepal or anywhere like that again, but it, I've certainly got er lots of happy memories of that experience and er I've brought erm a photo album erm with some of my pictures in if anyone would like to have a look
[speaker001:] Oh yes
[Kate:] and I've also got one album erm with a few pictures in from when I was in Kenya which was in nineteen eighty four... so, you know, if anyone wants to see what I looked like in there... I had longer hair [LAUGHTER] and I was wearing a white coat... so they're very welcome.... The last thing I thought I would [cough] talk about was... my christian beliefs... why I am here today... why I am a doctor... and what God means to me.... Being brought up in a christian home isn't enough to make you a christian. You can... you go to church every Sunday, sing the choruses or the hymns, listen to what the man has to say or the lady has to say at the front, and it can just go over your head and it can mean nothing to you apart from something that you believe might be true. But what you have to do is actually realize that Jesus died for you... you have to be sorry for all the things that you've done wrong... and you need to ask him to come into your life and to be your own saviour. And that means that from then on your life isn't your own, you don't do what you want to do, you do what you believe God is telling you to do and you try to live by what the bible says and you pray about any important decision you make... and then, when God has shown you what the right thing is to do, even when you're going through very hard times, you know that you're there because that's where God wants you to be and that gives you faith to carry on.... I thought er that God wanted me to be a doctor... and I didn't have a place to go to, I took my A levels... having had five chances [cough] of places to be a doctor and everybody saying no, we don't want you... and erm I had everybody praying for me at church and quite miraculously at the end of the August, when I should start in the September, I had a phone call at half past ten at night from a surgeon at the London Hospital asking me to go for an interview the next day. And I went and he offered me erm to start the next month and I just couldn't believe it. But I knew that that was where God wanted me to be because it was such a miracle. And when I arrived I wouldn't've been surprised if my name hadn't been on the list but it was there.... When I, when it came to exam time, I used to work until midnight, have three hours sleep and get up at three in the morning to carry on revising er because I wasn't brilliant and I couldn't remember everything... and it was hard work. But I tried always to have a quiet time with God before I started my revision that morning. And God was faithful and I passed my exams.... Then, showing me... erm his promises in the bible, when things are, are hard... then that's when you look to God and his word more, and that's when he's able to show you things from the bible because you're in a state of wanting to know. When everything's going well for you it's easy to forget that God's there with you, because life's so busy and so much fun. But when times are hard, when you're upset by things that er are wrong with patients or by things that have happened to you, then it's nice to know that God's always there for you.... When I was twelve, and I got baptized, erm a lady gave me a little text and it was from Joshua... chapter one and it was verse nine... and it says [reading] have I not commanded you be strong and courageous... do not be terrified, do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go [] and that's a verse that I've been able to... remember and to thank God for on so many different occasions... all through my training as a doctor and it's, all the promises in the bible are absolutely true and you can rely on them because it's not a book written by men but it's a book written by God. Another one was in Isaiah chapter forty... and er God says here [reading] do you not know, have you not heard the Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary and his understanding no-one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint []. And I knew what it was like to be tired and weary, but I knew that... if I trusted in God and spent time with him then he would renew my strength and I could carry on.... The people in Nepal are Hindus or Buddhists and they believe that they can get to God by... going and praying lots of times, chanting, putting special dye on their cheeks, on their erm foreheads and making sacrifices. They erm bring fruit and crops and things and lay them before a god that they can see before them. But in John chapter fourteen... it says, [reading] Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the light. No-one comes to the father except through me []. And that's something that christians believe they have... over all other faiths, that the only way to God is through Jesus Christ. Some people think that if you... lead a good life then you can get to Jesus and get to heaven but Jesus said that you have to come through him.... In erm Romans chapter three and verse twenty seven... it says... that er... Jesus died for our sins and... I'd just like to leave this thought with you, that n er just like me, when I could have died the other week in that plane crash, that none of us knows how long we've got on this life and, however long or short it is, there's no time like the present to get right with God if you, if you aren't... and the only way to do that is through Jesus. I did that when I was seven and different people can do it at any time. Jesus said now is the acceptable time. If you do want to ask me anything about this I've got some little booklets or I'm sure some other people here could talk to you about it. But that's the thought that I would really like you to take with you today. Thank you.
[speaker001:] That's very nice.
[chair:] Lovely. Thank you very much. Oh it's really lovely wasn't it?
[speaker001:] Yes very interesting, yes.
[chair:] Is there any questions anybody like to ask er Kate anything?... Cynthia can you think of anything to ask?
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] You talked about pressure cooking the meat for four hours
[Kate:] Yes.
[speaker001:] did you ever find out what meat it was?
[Kate:] Oh yes we bought it ourselves. It was mainly goat meat. Yes.
[speaker001:] It's interesting because I was in Nottingham a few weeks ago and actually on Nottingham market they sell a lot of goat meat
[Kate:] Right.
[speaker001:] and it said [LAUGHTER] genuine goat []. [LAUGHTER] Did it pong? I didn't get close enough. [LAUGHTER] I thought she was very brave wasn't she? Yes very brave But like she said... erm the Lord was with her wasn't he? Mm And erm, we did pray for you, several of us prayed for you when we knew you were going to Nepal.
[Kate:] Thank you very much.
[speaker001:] Was there any christianity in Nepal or Kenya?
[Kate:] In, in Kenya there's a, a lot of erm... [tut] er missionaries. K Kenya has more missionaries than any other country in Africa. Erm the Africa Inland Mission has many many missionaries there, there are a lot of American missionaries there... erm and there are a lot of new churches being built and a lot of people are becoming christians in Kenya. Nepal is different, that's erm very very much erm influenced by the Hindu and the Buddhist ways, a lot of people believe in both
[speaker001:] Mm
[Kate:] and erm I don't believe that there are many christians there. Jo 's in teaching isn't she?
[speaker001:] Yes
[Kate:] I wasn't able to see her but erm I, I believe the work is very very hard erm in Nepal and I certainly didn't meet any christians whilst I was there....
[speaker001:] Do you know what the difference is between the Hindus and the Buddhists?
[Kate:] Erm... not at, not in detail. They do actually share some of the gods
[speaker001:] Yes.
[Kate:] some of the gods erm they believe in erm both... erm but certainly there were Hindu and Buddhist temples and erm people used to go to both.
[speaker001:] But they manage to live happily side by side? They don't
[Kate:] Yes, there's no animosity, a lot of people believe in both and go to both temples. Yeah.
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Kate:] So erm
[speaker001:] Well that's that's a good point in [LAUGHTER] You talked about being erm... you know, if God wanted you to be a missionary you'd got to be a, a sort of teacher or a doctor, do you see your, your role in Harlow as, as a missionary role... or as a doctor?
[Kate:] Erm I like to think that erm you can be a missionary anywhere.
[speaker001:] Mm. Mm.
[Kate:] Erm sometimes I do find being in Harlow very hard erm and there's a lot of unemployment, there's a lot of depression, there are a lot of one parent families and er the children ha er in one family they've all got different dads
[speaker001:] Mm mm
[Kate:] and erm sometimes that is very hard and I think you can be a missionary anywhere. Erm I do look for opportunities to talk to people about God but I, I certainly think that you have to wait for the right opportunity because, if people are ill or very down, then it often isn't the right time when they're vulnerable erm to try and erm... talk to them about something. But yes I'm sure you can be a missionary in Harlow... and I'd like to think that... maybe I could erm increase that work and maybe have an afternoon a week where I could talk to people about God, but I think there's not really time in a ten minute surgery slot.
[speaker001:] Do you find it difficult, I mean I, I, I talk to people who erm work with, you know, Relate, marriage guidance and they find it quite difficult not to be able to bring their christian faith in when they are sort of counselling people. Er presumably doctors also find this difficult do they?
[Kate:] It's very hard not to put your own views on to other people's lifestyles. Often there's a lot of, that people erm do or don't do that you, you can't erm go along with when people are wanting terminations of pregnancy or, or they're thinking of leaving their husbands and going off with somebody else... then you just have to listen to what they say and put the facts as you see them in front of them. Occasionally you can say you think they're being stupid or have they thought about other things... but at the end of the day people are answerable... erm for their own decisions I feel and, if I have an opportunity I'll tell them what I think, but er if people aren't wanting your opinion then you can't really give it
[speaker001:] No.
[Kate:] I think.
[speaker001:] You're working in one of the, of the less affluent parts of Harlow aren't you? Very
[Kate:] Yes.
[speaker005:] much so, yeah.
[Kate:] But they've all got videos [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Kate:] They may not, they may not have carpets on the floor, but they've all got videos. [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] It's sad isn't it? It's interesting isn't it, you know, I mean I, I come across a lot of people who are poor
[Kate:] Yes
[speaker001:] sort of well we can't pay this that and the other... and the thing that really gets me and, and, you know, I, I've tried to reason it through so many times... but top er top of these mums' sort of shopping list is these disposable nappies Ooh that gets my goat too and, and they really really get me [LAUGHTER] you sort of say well what do you spend your money on []? Ten pounds a week on disposable nappies.
[Kate:] And cigarettes.
[speaker001:] Yeah. Well of course you see when you, when you reason it through lots of these people, they haven't got washing machines, they haven't got drying facilities Mm. and I suppose, you know, they're perhaps better off buying these disposable nappies. Perhaps the babies don't get sore bottoms now. But they're causing a they're causing a problem aren't they? They are cos I've heard that on the television. Yeah, yeah they don't break down do they? disposable nappies no. No. They're causing problems everywhere. And we pulled in in a car park in Brandon the other week and there in the middle of a car park was this [LAUGHTER] 'orrible nappy []. It must, it must cause disease and, and, and trouble mustn't it? All them dirty nappies left about. in the bins don't they? Then the bin men But you can't burn anything these days can you? No. No. Nothing can be burnt.
[speaker005:] I mean fire cleanses everything but, but you can't burn anything, you're not allowed to.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] Mm, except on bonfire night. I don't know why they don't wash nappies, we used to do it, I can remember washing them [LAUGHTER] I mean I like to see the nappies flapping on the line. Yeah but you see lots of them haven't got lines you see. Some of them don't want them either thank you. [LAUGHTER] They'd rather sit there and...
[chair:] I think Mary was going, we'll just have our... shall we say the Lord's Prayer before we
[speaker005:] Yes.
[chair:] say the......
[speaker001:] You hot? Yeah it's very warm Shall I turn it down? turn it down? Is everyone else hot? Yes I'm hot, I'm always hot. I sat in church this morning and fairly boiled. [praying] Our father who art in heaven hallowed be thine name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever amen []....
[chair:] Well we'll have hymn number twenty two in the red book...
[speaker001:] Are you alright Catherine? It isn't it's Now Thank We All Our God. You know that. Have you all got it?
[chair:] Have you all got it?
[speaker001:] Yes thank you. [piano music] [singing] Now thank we all our God with hearts and hands and voices who wondrous things have done rejoices. Who from the and bless us on our way and still is ours today. through all our life be near us. With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us. And keep us in his grace and and free us from all ills in this world and the next. All praise supreme in highest heaven our eternal God who now and shall be ever more [].
[chair:] Thank you Mary.... explain to us.
[speaker001:] stop the tape... because it doesn't want me on it. [LAUGHTER]