By Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST News Service
LAKE FOREST, CA (ANS – March 27, 2018) — Dear Friends: I have been totally overwhelmed with all of your wonderful messages in response to the news that Norma and I are moving permanently back to the UK tomorrow — Wednesday, March 27, 2018 — so we can be close to our two sons, Andrew and Peter, and our six grandchildren, and I can be treated for my health problems.
Initially, we will be staying with our youngest son, Peter, and his family in Buckley, North Wales, while we look for a home we can rent in that lovely part of the UK. (Here’s a photo of Peter with us outside of our Lake Forest home, during a visit he made to see us).
Many of you have inquired about my current health situation, so you can pray about it and ask the Lord for a full healing for my body. It all began about three weeks ago, when I was rushed into the local ER after suffering tremendous pain in my abdomen, and there I had a battery of tests, and have had many more since.
I have seen several different specialists, and they say that I could be very ill, or just not well. One blood doctor says there is a possibility that I may have leukemia, while another said I may have pancreatic cancer. Neither is definite, and they want me to have more tests when I arrived in the UK.
Not knowing what is actually wrong with me, has been quite a roller coaster for Norma and myself, as we have also had to sell our house, clear it out, and hand over ASSIST to our dear friend, Jeff Thompson of Mercy Projects, all in a period of a few weeks. We are so thankful to Jeff and his ministry for taking the baton and running with it for the future of ASSIST.
So, dear friends, please keep on praying about our Big Move, and also my current health situation.
I am now 77 and Norma is 76, and we have so enjoyed our many years here in the United States, which began in June of 1982, and ends tomorrow, as we start the latest chapter in our lives in the country where we were both raised.
I was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents – Alfred and Anne Wooding — and moved to Britain in 1942 during World War II as part of a convoy of 28 ships that left from Lagos to Liverpool. Many of those ships were sunk by German U-Boats, and thousands were drowned in the Atlantic, but miraculously, we were spared and settled in the UK. We were so grateful to God for sparing out lives during that terrible time in the world.
In 1960, my father was diagnosed with bowel cancer, and given three months to live, but we all prayed as a family for his healing, and he lived for a further thirty years, during much of that time, he was a pastor in Birmingham. So that encourages me with my present situation. Prayer does change things and God still heals today!
When we first came over to Southern California from London, Norma and I agreed that we would stay for just three years, but then the Lord opened so many doors for us, that it has stretched out for these many years, where we have made so many friends like you, who have loyally supported us over that time — and we hope you will continue to do so – but now we know it is the right time to go back home.
I plan to continue much of my print, radio and TV ministry from Britain, so I won’t be losing touch with you.
Norma and I were married at Aston Parish Church in Birmingham, England, back in 1963 — see our wedding picture — and had so many adventures together since that great day, including running Europe’s first drug rehabilitation center; moving to London with our two wonderful sons, Andrew and Peter, where I worked for a year for Billy Graham’s British newspaper, The Christian. When the paper sadly closed, I went to work as a journalist for a local newspaper called The Middlesex County Times; and later for both the Sunday People and the Sunday Mirror, two of the UK’s largest circulation newspapers. Following that, I spent a couple of years traveling the world reporting on our persecuted brothers and sister and writing a series of books for Brother Andrew’s ministry, Open Doors, and then accepting an invitation to become the Media Director for Open Doors USA, which brought us over to America.
After some five years, ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) followed and, as they say, the rest is history. And you have all been a part of seeing that history evolve with the news service and our ministry to the Persecuted Church.
Please keep in touch with us, and I will let you all know all of our latest news once I have more to report. Thank you all for your love and friendship. It is deeply appreciated by Norma and myself.
Blessings,
Dan Wooding (www.assistnews.net)
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