‘God has guided my journey’

“I AM not good enough” was the answer to my minister’s question “Why are you not applying to the church?”.

This was in 1989 when, after working in Shetland for vice years as a nurse, I was thinking about my future. It was the old cliché, I had met a person called Marion Conacher who visited our Sunday School when I was small. Her stories of nursing in India stayed with me and I saw my next career move as something similar. She persuaded me to apply to ‘Youthshare’, the volunteering arm of the Church of Scotland. Little did I know that would begin a journey which would continue for the next 36 years!

My volunteering took me to Pakistan and India, working as a Nurse Teacher in Sialkot at a Church of Pakistan Hospital and the former in deepest darkest Bihar at a village hospital with the Church of North India, working mainly with tribal people. There my eyes were opened to the pressing needs of people – the thirst for education and the desperate shortage of healthcare. There I saw my first person with diphtheria and I had to read the steps of the operation to the doctor in theatre as this also was new to her! I saw the effects of an outbreak of Japanese Encephalitis and the death of around 100 young boys and woman over the space of four days, and the persuasion taken to entice the villagers to come for vaccination which included all the staff rolling up their sleeves! Probably most importantly, I saw someone with AIDS – I did not realise it as at the time the Indian Government said India was AIDS free. At that point I did not realise how significant the HIV and AIDS pandemic would be to my future.

“I returned from India to announce to Church of Scotland that I wanted to go back overseas for a longer time as I had realised that the person who had benefited the most from the experience was me!

I returned from India to announce to the Church of Scotland that I wanted to go back overseas for a longer time as I had realised that the person who had benefited the most from the experience was me! Yes I had been able to use my teaching and nursing skills to great benefit but I knew that to leave my mark I needed to be somewhere for much longer. Despite telling me “everyone says they want to go back overseas again,” the Church actually had a job in Malawi which was perfect for me. Ekwendeni Hospital had a School of Midwifery for 50 years and were required to upgrade to a full training course and needed a General Nurse Tutor to take it forward. That was me!

A perfect job.

Over the next 10 years I worked with colleagues to develop the infrastructure of nursing school, build houses for tutors, teach the students…often one step ahead…learning things like the life cycle of the mosquito or how to build a pit latrine!

But that is enough about the day job. What do you do in rural Malawi in the very little spare time you have? For me it was to get involved in the HIV and AIDS Programme – living and working through the time before antiretroviral medication and where a diagnosis was a death sentence. Stigma brought shame and meant a positive diagnosis was hidden from even your own close family. The pandemic hit every part of life – national and local – community and family – work and leisure. Government was overwhelmed, healthcare structures were overwhelmed, families were overwhelmed. At Ekwendeni we set to work to provide a supportive structure, provision of homebased care, peer support and orphan care. The latter provided one of the highlights of my work – the day a village leader came to us with saying “What can we do about our orphans” – one of these ‘Hallelujah’ moments – and one we knew would happen at some point as families became overwhelmed with the number of orphans and communities needed to embrace them as their own. That began a communitybased orphan care project for over 10,000 orphans. I was able to present this to the World AIDS Conference in South Africa in 2000. But big moments such as this pale into insignificance when I think of the people who shared these ten years with me – colleagues and friends, my students and so many others I encountered sometimes only once, the people who invited me into their homes, who fed me of what little food they had and who loved me as their daughter or sister or mother! These were the precious moments. These are the lasting memories. There remain the friendships.

I also was a member of the congregation at Ekwendeni and took my part in their activities, services, funerals, weddings, baptism and all that an active church life held. Being part of that community of faith, grew my own faith and it was there I became an elder, ordained under a tree at Ekwaiweni prayer house. The small congregation there have hailed me as their own since then.

I returned to Edinburgh and my congregation at Carrick Knowe with my ‘lines’ which said that ‘Carol is an elder of the CCAP Synod of Livingstonia in good standing …on loan to the Church of Scotland!!’

Leaving Malawi behind me, I ventured back to Scotland – it was the right time. Nursing School safely in the hands of five Malawian Tutors and on to the next adventure – but what next? I started working in the National Office with the Board of World Mission for what I thought was for a couple of years… 24 years later and I am just about to leave. Over these years there have been lots of changes but the constant remains – the importance of relationship – with partners overseas, with colleagues in the office and in other organisations, and most importantly with members of congregations around Scotland. I have loved hearing the stories of encounter – congregations I have nurtured through a twinning process and seeing the partnership take off when they meet together here in Scotland or overseas.

General Assemblies have been a highlight of my year, a time to help partners around the world input into Assemblies with often momentous outcomes, Eco-congregation Programme was born from the words of a Bishop from Bangladesh and the ‘Let us Build a House’ project for earthquake reconstruction in Nepal from hearing directly from a Nepalese delegate are only two examples. However, my Assembly journey began as a mere Mission Partner, I was asked to speak by the Convener of the then Church and Nation committee – the then Rev Andrew McLellan. The topic – Structural Adjustment in Malawi – that gave me sleepless nights as I had been warned to get to the microphone (one of only two then) at the right time! I was terrified. However, all went well and I now make sure today’s delegates know where to stand and when to speak! But there were two more highlights at the Assembly – the first while still in Malawi and by then Andrew was Moderator. He asked me to read the lesson over the phone during the morning worship. He often has commented on his relief when he greeted me and I responded “‘Good Morning Moderator”. I did not realise until much later that I was the first person to speak ‘live’ from outwith the Assembly Hall. What an honour.

The second was when I was invited by the Moderator to have coffee in his dining room with the Assembly’s special guest – Archbishop Desmond Tutu! Another honour. We had a meaningful discussion about HIV and AIDS and he then kissed me on the cheek…swoon…I have not washed since! Such a sincere humble and brilliant man. I loved seeing photos of him later wearing the Church of Scotland HIV Programme Bead Badge on his lapel.

The HIV Programme which closed in December 2024 has been a particularly emotive part of my time in the office, seeing the changes over the years for people living with HIV and the fact that antiretroviral mediation has given life where there was once death. Knowing that I would see again people who I left behind in Malawi, 20 years ago, having said my goodbyes….

So, this is only a snippet of the last 36 years and now I wonder what lies ahead… who knows! God has guided my journey throughout, from having a laugh when I wanted to go overseas and He sent me to Shetland, to now…the end of the journey ….or rather is it just a fork in the road? ¤