Rev. and Mrs. Watkins: Committed to Healing

MW: I had a conversion experience when I was thirteen. The occasion was the 6^th of August 1945, which is actually Hiroshima Day, which is also the feast of the transfiguration. A friend of ours once called it the feast of the dis-figuration. But for me, it was a transformation because I was born again.

I didn’t know Eileen at that time. It happened some 8 years before I met her.

EW: I was brought up as a Methodist and thought I was a Christian until I had an experience in a Mental Hospital where I was working in my vacation, when I was about nineteen. I knew then that Jesus was real for me

MW: I was sort of fast tracked in the end because I was made a Deacon in June and then six months later I was ordained priest. It was Advent. This was very funny because the first Communion service I took was midnight at Christmas. It was the old prayer book one (1662) and we sang it to the Merbeck setting. The choir promised they would help me with my solo bits that I was supposed to do – to give me the notes and so on – but they didn’t. So, I went wobbling away at midnight on my first Christmas (as an ordained priest).

I was a Curate in Hornchurch in Essex. It was a very large Church. When I was Curate six months there, I took charge of the daughter Church.

I had had experience in church leadership before I became ordained in the Anglican Church. For a few years I had been a Deacon in the Baptist Church and later an elder where I was involved in preaching and leading worship. I was brought up as an Anglican and then moved to the Baptist later. I was three years as a Curate at Hornchurch and Eileen had had to leave her medical practice in Buckinghamshire. We had been there in a medical practice together for a number of years when I left to go into the ministry. Eileen moved to a new practice near to Hornchurch for three years. It was amazing how an opening came for her to do that.

From there we went to a village church in Warwickshire, near Stratford-upon Avon. At that that time Eileen was worried that she wouldn’t find a medical practice but, in fact, the very next day after my institution in the parish, she had a phone call to go look at a medical practice in Warwick. That was rather strange because it was a practice just around the corner from where we spent the first night of our married life together in a Warwick hotel!

EW: I think it is imperative that we work as a couple. We couldn’t effectively work in differing and sometimes difficult situations without each other's support.

EW: Yes.

MW: And it worked out every time we moved. When the Lord called me, there was an opening for Eileen too. It fell into place marvellously.

I was there for eight years until 1992 then it seemed to be the right time to be moving on. In fact, I gave my notice in, not realising that before the notice expired, I would discover that I had a very serious medical condition that needed major surgery. This resulted in me not having any further paid employment after I was 61

.

As a result of that and some operations I had later on, I regained my fitness to a reasonable degree and started doing locums abroad. The first one was in Cyprus in 1997, where I was invited to go for a year. That was extended to two years. Since then we have done several shorter-term locums. Eileen and I have been together in these things since Eileen had retired from Medical practice in 1996.

We have been to Alexandria, Rotterdam, and Versailles and now the Falklands.

MW: I have often been asked that question and I suppose when you meet people, you can give them more time than you could in medical practice. Actually looking back, I very well remember the very first sermon I ever preached. When I was eighteen I was invited to give a sermon at a mission Church somewhere in Worcestershire. I was a medical student at the time and I remember saying that although I was a medical student, I considered that the healing of the soul was much more important than bodily healing – or words to that effect. I suppose I had always thought that. The thing was that when I went into medicine, I wasn’t actually ready to serve as a Minister. It was later on that I began to feel increasing frustration that I was not bringing the kind of healing that I felt I needed to, that I thought it was time to move out of medicine into something different. And, that was into full time Christian Ministry. Not, that I think healing the body is unimportant but relatively speaking and for me personally, the other was much more important.

MW: There was eager anticipation. I was aware of the existence of the Falklands, unlike some of my countrymen. As a child I was a keen stamp collector and knew where all the British Colonies were.

The Falklands had always intrigued me and then when the Falklands War came we learned a lot more about the Islands, again, from a distance. Our sympathies were very much with the people over here. From time to time I heard little bits about the Church here due to my involvement in other Intercontinental Church Society chaplaincies abroad. At the moment I try to make myself available when there is a gap in the pastoral oversight. Sometimes it is between ministers and last summer in Versailles it was taking charge of the church during the regular vicars study leave. I have done that in the United Kingdom as well.

I had always wanted to see what the Falklands are like and to experience the church life at first hand.

MW: It’s exceeded our expectations, really. We found the people very friendly and the Islands, I think, are beautiful. The weather is a bit more unpredictable than in England.

MW: They have been changed a bit. I think that there is a minority that attend the Churches here but at the same time, I feel that there is more support in the Churches here than perhaps in many places in the UK. That’s an encouragement. I am sure there is room for a lot more.

MW: We don’t know. I would dearly like to go back to some of the places I had been before so I have sent off a fax to the Bishop of Cypress asking if he’s got an opening. I don’t know whether that will come about or not. We shall see.