Mum's family brought back together

The Wider family is brought together

Unknown to me at the time,  my two uncles on my mother’s side had become Christians at about the same time as us.   Derek the youngest of the two brothers, having joined the Regular Army was at the time in the Tank Regiment at Bulford Army barracks on Salisbury Plains.    The eldest  (Jim) and my mother’s older sister (Irene) still lived in Oldham,  where we had all been born.    All four,  in all the moving around,  had lost touch with each other and so when Derek became a Christian he decided he wanted to get in touch with everyone again.   He therefore contacted the Salvation Army Missing Person’s Tracing Service to see if they could trace his family.     None of them knew that 3 of the four of them had now become Christians,   Or that we were in the Salvation Army when he contacted their Missing People’s department.    It was therefore quite a surprise when their tracing service found first our family then the other brother to only discover we were now Christian howbeit in different denominations.    Jim in the Pentecostal church,   Derek in a local chapel and we in the Salvation Army.      The tracing service also found the other sister and put all four in touch with their mother.    The whole family was again united and one could not but see God’s hand in it all.

Although it was difficult to keep in close touch with my Uncle Derek due to the distance and lack of transport at the time,  we regularly exchange letters from then on and during the main school holidays I occasionally went to stay with them in Bulford,   getting a taste of Military Army life in the process.    Oldham was a lot easier to get to as it was only 30 or miles or so  away and there were regular bus and train services to and from Sheffield and Manchester.   Both Oldham and Worksop were only a hop skip and a jump from the city so I soon found myself regularly spending weekends at my gran’s and thus meeting up with my uncle Jim.   During those times together we talked of the new found excitement through our encounters with the living God and I occasionally went with him  to the local Pentecostal church.   Although these encounters fueled my seeking after the Holy Spirit and despite constantly being told both by the Salvation Army and now my uncle that if I wanted to be

baptised by the Holy Spirit I would have to leave the Salvation Army and join the Pentecostal church,    God was saying otherwise and I was to remain in the Salvation Army another 25 years,   even after 6 months from my search began I was baptised by the Holy Spirit.