Baptisms - January 2007

Dianna Gilder's story ....

When I was about 15 years old a friend of my Mom had died and my Mom asked me to accompany her to the funeral.

After the funeral everyone moved to the hall for tea and coffee and I remained in the church watching a lady put the hymn books away and while sitting there I felt a sense of wanting to belong or be part of something.

Maybe that feeling was that God was calling me to him or he knew one day I would enter his church of my own free will and not someone telling me that I must go to church.

That was a year after my parents got divorced after 7 years of separation. Both my parents remarried the same year they were divorced to their respective partners of today.

As children my Mom forced us to attend church, and I say forced because my Mother never explained to us the importance of going to church or who God really was and because I had to go I hated every minute of it. Sitting in the church that day I knew there was something more to this but did not know what it was.

When I finished school I went to college and occasionally went to church.

At the age of 21 my sister twin was killed in a car accident and that is when I stopped attending church all together. I never even went to church on Easter Sunday or Christmas Day.

I moved away from home at the age of 23 to live in the city and met a man who was 15 years older than me. We were with each other for 6 years and I ended it as I wanted to get married and he did not.

Not long after that I was in another relationship; none of family liked him so I distanced myself from my family.
The relationship was not good as he was still married at the time but was separated and he hid me from his children and I was only allowed around to his place when his children had gone to their mother.

After two years of this I broke off the relationship and moved up to Johannesburg with the company I was working for. In the 8 months I lived in Johannesburg he begged and pleaded for me to come back and then one day he phoned me and said that he was getting a divorce and everything will change. So as a fool I came back but I went from the frying pan into the fire.

I lived with him and ran his house; I become the lady of the manor. I thought this was great. I was running a house full of servants at my beck and call, organising parties for his clients and then one day I met the real person. He became abusive towards me and at one time it was violent.

In the time that I was dating him I was introduced to a lady friend and she was a Christian and I would go around visiting her but never wanted to hear about what God was doing in her life.

When the abusing started I would consult her about what was happening and she asked me if I would like to come to Alpha and I reluctantly agreed. I enjoyed the teachings and the group discussions but never felt anything until I attended the Holy Spirit weekend and on the last day of the weekend we were watching the last video and what Nick Gumbel said made me look at myself and ask that question, “DIANNA WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE AND WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

I realised then that I needed to change my life and end this relationship because it was not doing me any good. I moved out within the week and found my own place.

I started attending church and became a member and a year after joining I was asked to be the Editor of their church magazine. It was an exciting time in my life, getting to know God, enjoying the teachings, belonging to a home group and making lots of new friends.

In that time I met a man, whom you all know, at the church I belonged to and just before he was due to leave for the UK in August 2004 he asked me to marry him. I was so excited, what more could I ask for. God had blessed me with a wonderful man and I was happy for the first time since the death of my brother and had found somebody that wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.

We married in April 2005 and we moved to England in the May, not knowing what was to lie ahead, but because I believed and trusted in God things could never get worse but better.

We arrived in Ipswich in the middle of May and started to look for a church, we went to at least four in Ipswich and either my husband liked one and I did not or visa versa.

We eventually contacted a couple who live in Cardiff, whom we met in South Africa and they said that they had friends who live in Ipswich and who go to a very good church. Anyway we gave them our number and they in turn contacted Julie and Adrian Kite and invited us to Burlington in early September.

When we left the church that Sunday we both felt that this was where God wanted us to be. But things were not rosy, Stephen was battling with everything around him.

We were battling with our marriage and through a lot of counselling, my husband left me in the February and in October he divorced me. I was very angry with him and God. The pain that I went through was horrible. I thought that I had died and gone to hell.

Everyday I would get on my hands and knees and pray to God to change his mind and bring him back to me. I even asked God that it be his will and not my husband’s.

The most painful thing in that time was attending church and watching everyone who attended the membership course with us being accepted into the church or being baptised. I wanted to scream I felt that it was not fair.
I would go home and ask God what I had done to deserve this or where had I sinned and I would repent straight away.

Through the help of friends at Burlington, who only knew me for a short of period of time, I slowly got through the pain. This was the very first time since giving my life to Jesus that I really lent on him and he has been with me all the way.

What I have learnt from this is that God is not interested in our comfort but our character and he continues to mould us.  I can compare myself to the Israelites going through the desert and every day God would perform a miracle and they would be WOWED by it, then the next day they would forget and do silly things. Well I am like them as well.
As persistence human beings we always want what we don’t have and are never satisfied with what God has to offer us.

I know now, going forward today, there will be many hurdles and I know that I will hit rock bottom and when it happens I will know for sure that I can always turn to our Father for that comfort because it is not God who brings unrest in our lives but ourselves.

Why do I want to be baptised, after giving my life to Jesus five years ago? I did not know the importance of being baptised. A number of friends felt that I should but I thought I did not need to as I had already been baptised as a baby.

When I was attending the membership course Simon explained the significance of being baptised and I felt then that I was ready to make that commitment.

Would you believe that God brought me 5631 miles to a place in England called Ipswich where he knew that I would depend on him the most.

Our Lord Jesus I thank you for being there for me and I thank you for what you are doing for me in life.

Christine Gale's story ....

I can’t remember a time I didn’t go the church. Mum and Dad were both Christians and church members. My brother has often said he can remember Mum pushing me in a pram through the snow to get to church.

So I was brought up to attend church – morning, evening and Sunday school in the afternoon. For me as a child it was just something we did. The church fellowship was my second family.
As I was growing up, I belonged to the youth organisations and when I was older I started to help in the Sunday school.

In my early 20’s I married my first husband. I think, looking back now, I knew it was wrong from the start, but felt I had made promises in church and I had to try to make it work. He became very anti-church which caused a lot of upset between us, and I started to attend church less and less.

After Kevin, my first son, was born I hoped my marriage would improve. Then four years later when I was 6 months pregnant with my youngest son, Gareth, my husband said he was going to leave us. I returned to my second family at church.

The next 2 years were terrible, but God had brought me back into the fold of the church again. The love I was shown at that time by the church family, my own family and my friends is something I will never forget.

I began to get involved with many church groups over the next 20 years, starting a Mum’s & Tots group and teaching in the Sunday school. I also became a Boys’ Brigade officer, helped at Lunch Club, sang with the worship group and served as a Deacon.

I don’t know when I became a Christian – no bright light for me. It seems to be something that happened very slowly until I felt very close to the Lord and I just knew that He loved me. I committed my life to Christ and became a church member in 1979.

In 1980 something happened I had not planned on – I fell in love with a fellow Boys’ Brigade officer. When we married I was sure God had put us together to do His work at my church and for 18 years this was so. But in January 2001, out of the blue, he said he had met someone else and was leaving. I felt very alone. But with help and prayers of family and friends somehow I got through the next few months.

Shortly after this I became more and more unsettled at that church. I was finding the teaching on Sunday seemed to be getting less and less until I felt, “Why am I going?”

At the time I was not sure if it was me being unsettled, but as the weeks and months went by I found several of the members felt the same. When this was expressed at Church Meeting it was treated with indifference by most of the members and the minister. I felt I could no longer support the minister. I had to get away to find God again and worship Him in a more meaningful way.

There were times I could not understand why God had let this happen. My faith seemed to be slipping away. I had prayed for an answer but it all seemed to be going wrong.

I began to attend another church but I didn’t feel at home there. However, I knew in my heart I would never return to worship at my previous church. I just felt lost.

All this took its toll, and last February I was diagnosed with depression; it seemed my world would never be the same again.

A friend brought me this small poster.

I have this poster on my kitchen wall. I think I felt like that penguin. This poster I have cried over, prayed over, shouted at and even thrown it across the room. Was God in control?

Then one evening Liz Finch called to see me and, after talking to her, she invited me to come along to Burlington Baptist Church, which I did – just before the start of 40 Days of Purpose. I was amazed how God was speaking to me through Simon. I had thought God had forgotten me.

I started to return to reading my Bible and prayertime, instead of shouting at God. I was going to say it was just as before, but it’s not! Over the past year my faith has grown so much – and it’s GREAT! It’s so good to feel part of a fellowship again. I would like to thank you for making me feel so much at home.

I would also like to thank old and new friends for being here today to witness my Baptism. And a special thank you to my brother, John, for all his help over the years. There have been times when I don’t know what I would have done without his help.

I am now pleased Mum pushed me in that pram to get to church, because that was the start of my road to the Lord – the road which has led me here today. I don’t know where the road will go from here, but I do know that I can relax because ‘God is in control’.