FEATURE I Candidates Sunday
Commissioner Harry Read
Willing to learn
As we approach Candidates Sunday (16 May) Salvationists explain what the theme Be Willing means to them Not for the last time I discovered that new strategies are always needed. Should those strategies not work, then others must be devised, the presumption being that there is always a satisfactory answer. This has to be true in our service for the Lord. While still on military service I was more than just willing to be a Christian soldier. I had to learn to identify needs and speak healingly. It was there that I led my first soul to the Lord. Providentially, he was not the last. During my military Commissioner Read was admitted to the Order of the Founder by the General in July 2019 ‘in service the Lord called me recognition of a life of outstanding Christian to officership. It was a call I witness in word, verse and deed’ accepted gladly and, on demobilisation in 1947, I became a cadet in the King’s Messengers session. After WAS born just a few years after the Commissioning I was retained at the First World War. It was hopefully, but college to be a cadet-sergeant, with erroneously, considered to be the war responsibility for the young people’s that would end all wars. Instead of work. It was there I met and fell in love returning to what the prime minister, with Cadet-Sergeant-Major Winifred David Lloyd George, called ‘a fit country Humphries. The love was reciprocated for heroes to live in’, its survivors and we married in 1950. returned to unemployment, the everAs corps officers in Chichester we present demands of poverty and the willingly learnt to serve our people, conviction that there would be another learning their needs and helping them war in the foreseeable future. grow in their faith. We also learnt how to I was just 15 when the Second World revive corps programmes that lacked War began in 1939, but when I was able effectiveness because they had become to enlist to become a wireless operator routine. What a wonderful gospel we in the Royal Signals we were informed have! My service for the Lord more than that a new airborne division was due to matches the excitements of military be launched and wireless operators service. would be needed. I volunteered and, on In subsequent appointments the completion of my training, joined the vitality of our calling amazed us. We newly launched 6th Airborne Division on learnt so much. To our surprise we were 25 May 1943 and began training to be a recalled to the International Training parachute soldier. College to help train cadets for their Within weeks I was a wireless future work. What a joy and what a operator in the 3rd Parachute Brigade.
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learning experience! We valued the teaching experiences and the opportunities afforded us to see the strategies required to fulfil the Army’s God-given role. It was there I learnt to write scripts and songs. This was followed by a further corps appointment, then a move to Scotland to become a divisional youth secretary. After that it was, surprisingly, back to the college for another seven years. Willingness brings joy, variety and rich fulfilment. The opportunities given by my various appointments, including being the Army’s press officer, a divisional commander and training principal, followed by transfers to Canada, Australia and back to the UK as British Commissioner, have all been immense. In retirement I was asked to write the Army’s daily devotional book, Words of Life. This I did for 10 years. Win and I established a weekday Bible study at the corps and also led that for 10 years. Opportunities to speak at officers councils and the occasional congress in other territories followed. O, the fulfilment that willingness gives! As a near 97-year-old officer, now living alone since my wonderful wife went to be with the Lord, I follow a full programme. I have inevitable health problems but still have a rewarding worldwide ministry – principally, though not exclusively, through Facebook. The Lord has led me to write books and another is scheduled. It is a far cry from the young ‘para’ who was willing to do whatever the Lord required of him. There are no limits to the vision and grace the Lord Jesus has for those who are willing.
COMMISSIONER READ, OF, LIVES IN RETIREMENT IN BOURNEMOUTH
Next week Major Lindy Rose
Salvationist 1 May 2021
SA p08, 09 1 May.indd 2
26/04/2021 15:29
