Posted: 02/05/2013 at 7:20am | IP Logged

BIRMINGHAM, UK (ANS) -- Alfred Wooding, my father looked gaunt, but managed to smile as I came into the lounge of our home in Birmingham, England. He was wearing a dressing gown and shakily got to his feet as I walked in. He seemed unsure as to whether he should hug me or just shake hands. He settled for a gentle handshake.

Baby Dan with his father in Nigeria

He had been a pioneer missionary in Nigeria and had met and married my mother, Anne, and I was born there in Vom Christian Hospital in December 1940. Sadly, because of ill-health, he eventually had to return to England and the years of tropical illness had caught up with him and he now had bowel cancer.

A year before this meeting, and being a teenage rebel, I had decided that I had had enough of attending his church, the Sparkbrook Mission in Birmingham, and being "forced" to listen to the Gospel Message, so I left home and "escaped" to Toronto, Canada, where I lived rather unhappily for a year.

That was until my mother wrote and begged me to "please come home as your father has been told that he has only three months to live."

So, I boarded a ship in Montreal for Liverpool and was met at the dockside by my mother and her sister Ethel, and then we traveled by train to Birmingham, to see my Dad.

"Welcome home, son," he said, his lips pale and quivering with emotion. "I've really missed you. You'll find your rock-and-roll records are a bit worn out, but otherwise your room is still the same."

I looked at him, a quizzical look on my face. "Do you mean to say you've been playing my records? But you hated them!"

He allowed a thin smile to pass over his face. "When you left, I missed you so much that I would go up to your room and play the records and imagine you were still here. I liked Pat Boone the best."

I couldn't hold back any longer. "Oh, Dad, I can't tell you how much I've missed you and Mum."

Alfred and Anne Wooding pictured by the River Mersey, many years after his cancer surgery

A week before Christmas, 1961, my father was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. It was life or death for him. The cancer would have to be cut away.

We visited him daily and, each time, before we left home, my mother and my sister Ruth implored God to help him. I sat quietly looking on, but not participating. One day, just before the operation, I broke down. "Mum," I sobbed, "I'm not worthy to ask God to heal Dad." I had reached the point of desperation."

At his bedside on the morning of the surgery, I felt like weeping again. The lines of strain around his mouth showed up more than ever. His cheeks had become hollow with the skin taut over his facial bones. He was thin enough for me to see the recoil of his heart after each beat. He looked so tired, so close to eternity. But as I gazed at his face, integrity was etched into every line. His faith was still strong. That was important to me.

"Dan," he said in a tremulous voice as his weak, white-knuckled hand gripped mine, "thank you for coming home." His voice was very low now, hardly audible. "I may not come out of this alive, but whatever happens, I hope we will meet again-in heaven." He tried to say more but his voice would not co-operate. I stood there for a few long moments. There were no words but the communication was total.

With that, he was wheeled into the operating theatre, not knowing if he would come out alive and I experienced the stabbing pain of guilt. With a feeling of helplessness, I watched my father's slight figure disappear down the corridor in an almost funereal way.

The ward nurse told us sympathetically that it would be a long operation, and we should go home and wait.

"Maybe," she said gently, "you could phone in about six hours. It should be over by then."

When we arrived home on that icy winter's day, I headed straight up the stairs to my bedroom. The barn-like room was freezing -- we had no central heating in the house -- and I inserted sixpence into the gas meter and then lit the fire. I felt unable to talk to Ruth and my mother. I needed solitude.

As I paced the room, tears began to tumble down my flushed cheeks. I had run away like the Prodigal Son in the Bible. I had caused much pain to my parents, and now my father was facing death and I knew I might never see him again.

"Lord, I don't want to say good-bye for ever to my Dad," I beseeched God as I prowled around like a caged tiger.

Suddenly the very air was crammed and vibrating with electric potential and my weak ankles almost buckled. Without thinking, I sank to my knees at my bedside and cried out my apologies to God for all the wrongs I had done in my twenty years of life that had taken me to three continents. My breath wrenched out of my lungs in painful sobs. In the stillness my heart was beating audibly in my ears.

"Lord, I believe, I really believe in you." I wiped away the tears with my gray woolly sweater before I could continue.

"I don't know if I will see my father again in this life but, please, I want to see him again in glory.

"Forgive me for my rotten, selfish past. My temper, my anger, my pride and rebellion. Please wash away my sins and, please.please, take over my life.

"Use me and, if it is your will, please spare the life of my Dad."

I must have been on my knees for half an hour. Finally, I rose to my feet and walked unsteadily into the bathroom and threw cold water on my face to wash away the tears. Then I slowly closed the door behind me and went downstairs where my mother and Ruth were deep in conversation. All at once I wanted to laugh and cry and to shout aloud.

"What's up, Dan?" called my sister timidly, seeing my blotchy features. "You look as if you've been crying. That's not like you."

"Well, I've gone and done it. I have asked Jesus to forgive me and come into my life."

They both looked stunned.

"Cheer up, Mum," I added, a smile appearing on my tear-stained face, my eyes gleaming. "It could have been worse. I could have gone forward at one of those awful Youth for Christ rallies you used to drag me along to at the Town Hall." With that I pulled a mock, stern face.

Her tense face visibly relaxed as she got the joke! We all broke into unrestrained laughter and then threw our arms around each other. We were not an emotional family, but we all felt this was a time to let it all out! The pent-up emotion released itself at last. As I laughed out loud I realized how little joy there had been in my life over the past year.

Time seemed to fly as, at last, we had this bond of being a united Christian family. Ruth had made her commitment to Christ some years previously. Words of joy gushed out from all of us.

I suddenly glanced at my watch and said, "Come on, Mum, let's go to the phone box down the street and call the hospital. Surely, they'll have some news for us." (We didn't even have a phone in our home).

The three of us put on our coats and headed out into that Birmingham winter's night to the call box.

Ruth and I were standing in the icy wind, swinging our arms against the cold as my mother made the call and the nurse came on the line. I could see the slight color rise in my mother's cheeks as the conversation continued.

"He's survived the operation and is back in the ward," she said with tears brimming. "The nurse says he's very weak but, praise God, he's alive."

"Thank you, Jesus," I yelled. Somehow this type of language, which had once made me shudder, now seemed right. I felt intensely alive.

"Thank you, Lord!"

As we walked home, I said to Mum, "I saw your cheeks redden as you said something on the phone to the nurse. What was it?"

"Tell him," my mother answered, "our Prodigal has finally come home. He'll understand."

I felt a choking sensation in the base of my throat, and again the sharp sting of tears.

"You know," she said, turning to me, her face bright with excitement, "this is the best Christmas present we could ever have had. God has saved both of you."

Dan's parents with Peter and Andrew Wooding by the River Thames in Walton-on-Thames

The amazing part of this story is that, thanks to the expert surgeon and our prayers, my father went on to live for another 30 years, and he was able to see his "Prodigal Son" moved forward to serve the Lord through his writing and broadcasting. He was also there for my marriage to Norma in 1963 and was able to see our two sons, Andrew and Peter, grow up.

Now, all these years later, I have just heard the great news that the courageous 15-year-old Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban, and flown to Birmingham for expert treatment, is now "recovering well" in the very same Queen Elizabeth Hospital, though it has since been completely updated since my father's time there.

It is now a world-class medical facility which is also home to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, which has treated many of the injured servicemen and women returning from Afghanistan.

Malala, too, has received incredible treatment by the doctors of this great hospital and underwent a five-hour surgery on Saturday (February 2, 2013) to fit a titanium plate over her damaged skull.

Malala Yousafzai in her hospital bed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital

In a video, she is seen telling a consultant that her mission now is to "help people." Speaking clearly, but with noticeable damage to the right side of her face, said: "Today you can see that I'm alive. I can speak. I can see you, I can see everyone.

"And today I can speak. I am getting better day by day and it's just because of the prayers of people. Because all the people, men, women and children, all of them have prayed for me. And because of these prayers, God has given me this new life.

"And this is a new life; a second life. And I want to serve; I want to serve the people."

The teenager was shot on a school bus in October in Pakistan by the Taliban after campaigning for girls' rights to education.

A miraculous recovery for Malala

Following the shooting, the bullet was removed from her head by surgeons in Pakistan and she was flown to the UK for further treatment. Malala was then discharged as an inpatient from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital last month.

Earlier it had been announced that the first grant from the Malala fund, set up in her name, would go towards an organization in the teenager's home region of the Swat Valley in Pakistan to encourage girls to go to school instead of going straight into work.

The Taliban had previously said it attacked the campaigner for girls' education for "promoting secularism".

A recent picture of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital

The Birmingham hospital's medical director Dr. Dave Rosser said: "To be sitting up 24 hours after an operation, talking about helping other people instead of thinking about herself sums up what we have seen from Malala over the past few months."

Malala's family are currently living in the West Midlands. Her father has been appointed education attaché at the Consulate of Pakistan for the next three years.

The expert treatment of both my father and Malala received sums up the incredible dedication of the staff of this wonderful hospital in which the lives of two heroes - my dear father - and Malala - were saved.

My grateful thanks goes to all of the staff, past and present, there that have allowed two great people to serve others.

Source: Assist News Service