b.1934, married, 3 children and 5 grandchildren, retired missionary.
The Lord will provide.
The Lord is here.
Michael joined the merchant navy at age 16 and worked on oil tankers, frequently sailing in the Far East. At age 20, during one of his periods back in England to upgrade his qualifications, a friend and colleague of his became a Christian. When he met this friend again after another tour of duty at sea, they attended an evangelical event, a "tent mission". Concluding his sermon, the preacher pointed towards where Michael was and said: "somebody over there needs to be saved tonight". Michael was convinced that the preacher meant him, because he knew that his life had been sinful; and came forward to accept Christ.
Michael took a leap forward on his spiritual journey when he was the second officer on a ship whose chief officer turned out to be a committed Christian. Throughout the year-long voyage, the two men met each morning to study the bible, their duties permitting. Michael's next ship brought him to Singapore and into contact with the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. He attended the meetings in its headquarters whenever ashore. One day, as he ascended the staircase in the OMF building, having just disembarked his ship, he was struck by the holy atmosphere that prevailed there. By this time, the thought that the Lord might be calling him to missionary work was by no means new to him. There were, however, opposing thoughts, too: his girlfriend back in England, whom he had met at a Quaker meeting, was church-going, but not a Christian. Michael now felt quite acutely the distinction between these two types of commitment.
The calls to missionary service did not stop. Local Chinese festivals occasioned some of them. Watching people burning imitation banknotes as offerings to ancestors, he wondered at the hopelessness of life without Christ. When he was taken by Chinese colleagues ashore to celebrate the New Year in an eatery serving delicious baked fish, and then saw the fish bones from their table given to beggars waiting outside, he could almost hear a voice: "Michael, you have more to give these people than fish bones".
During his next stay back in England, he went to a Keswick Convention and found himself unable to sing "my heart is free", because it was not. He resigned from the Society of Friends (Quakers), finished the relationship with his girlfriend, and became involved in the ministry of Cannon Street Congregational Church, Middlesbrough. Now his heart was free. On his next ship, he witnessed the Gospel and a number of his fellow seamen came to the Lord. Michael wrote to OMF about the Lord calling him to missionary work, resigned his post with Shell and went to do a two-year bible college course.
After graduation in 1962, he was accepted by OMF and sailed back to Singapore for further training, and on to Indonesia the following year, to minister in a Presbyterian Church in North Sumatra. The politics of the region were taking a violent turn at the time, but Michael seldom felt personally threatened. He remained in North Sumatra even when the Consul was the only other British person left there, all the rest having left for security reasons. Indonesia would be his mission field for the next 33 years.
When joining the OMF, he received a card on which two verses were printed: "the Lord will provide" and "the Lord is here". They sum up the connecting theme of the way he tells his life story. Once he gave himself fully to the service of the Lord, the Lord never failed to provide exactly that which was needed.
The way in which Michael found and married Diana is a case in point. He was 30 by then, and knew that if the Lord meant him to be married, he would have to find a wife in Indonesia because that's where he was. The Lord sent him to a mission field conference, where there were a number of women of his age in attendance. Michael made a point of talking to all of them. At the end of the conference, he prayed to the Lord for guidance and felt that He was leading him towards Diana. But he told her nothing, she went back to her hospital in East Java, where she was a medical doctor, and he went back to North Sumatra. He told the Lord that, if He meant him to marry Diana, He should arrange it.
The Lord did arrange it. A German missionary organisation was donating a ship to the Island of Nias and needed someone to sail her to her destination from Jakarta, after she was unloaded from a cargo ship. Michael was the man for the job and the job involved spare days in Jakarta, while the ship was getting ready. The mission superintendent suggested to Michael that he might try to use the time to visit a colleague involved in lay training in East Java. Against all odds, Michael managed to get a ticket for immediate travel, as the station master somehow decided to favour him, against the rest of the assembled crowd, with the one returned ticket he had at his disposal. Two hours after Michael arrived in the home of friends in Surabaya where he was to stay, Diana turned up for a language exam. He took his opportunity to escort her back to the hospital where she worked. They married in Indonesia, without the attendance of their families from England, because long distance travel was slow and prohibitively expensive in those days.
Their first trip back to England took place in 1967, when Diana was six months pregnant. They stayed for 12 months. The Lord found a house for them, which provided the base they needed for the birth of their first child. Before going back to Java, Michael took further studies at the London Bible College and then ministered at his home church in Middlesbrough. They first came to York during another of their breaks in England 11 years later, when Michael's church in Middlesbrough had a new minister and Michael felt that he should stay away to allow the minister to establish himself. They bought a house in York in 1987, into which they retired in 1995. Their last five years prior to retirement were spent in Singapore.
Michael and Diana's two daughters and a son were educated in boarding schools, in Malaysia from the age of 6 and in England from age 11. The lengthy periods of separation from their children were a difficult cost of their missionary service, but happily no lasting damage seems to have been done. All three children live in England. The daughters are married (to Christians) and have five children between them.
As regards the joyous highlights of missionary life in Indonesia, Michael recalls with warmth the openness of its people to spiritual realities and their high moral and ethical standards; and, the faces of individuals in the moments when the message of the Gospel reached their hearts. Dunnington is home to Michael and Diana now, they are settling down.
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