ST. HELIER, JERSEY (ANS) -- The last time I saw Bill Latham was back in 1993 in Essen, Germany, when he and Cliff Richard (now Sir Cliff), for whom he was handling the singer’s religious affairs, had flown in so that the Cliff could perform on the opening night of Billy Graham’s crusade.

Bill Latham and Jean Le Maistre at the opening event in Government House, St. Helier, Jersey

I was in Essen as part of Billy Graham’s media team and I sat in the lobby of the hotel where the Graham team where staying and, as they arrived, I stood up and went over to Bill and said, “I have some great news for you.”

Latham looked puzzled, so I went on to say, “I want you to know that this hotel has Sky News on your room’s television for 24 hours a day.”

Always, quick with his dry sense of humor, Latham replied, “Wow. I won’t leave my room for the whole time we are here.” Of course, he did, to attend the first night which brought in record crowds to hear Cliff perform and Billy Graham preach.

Shortly afterwards, Cliff joined myself and A. Larry Ross, Mr. Graham’s media man, for a cup of coffee at the hotel which lasted for an hour and during that time I was able to update him on my new life in America and about the recent start of ASSIST.

We reminisced about the time in the 1970’s when Cliff went to Bangladesh for Tearfund and when he returned, he gave me an interview saying that he had been so moved with the poverty that he had seen, he was considering giving up his singing career to become a full-time missionary. My newspaper carried a huge spread which included a powerful photograph taken by my old friend, Cliff Shirley, with Cliff, tears in his eyes, gazing at a dying baby lying on the floor.

It wasn’t long before his many friends counseled Cliff to stay on in show business and use his fame to help raise funds for the charity, which, of course he did with many tours and performances, including a sell-out show for Tearfund at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England.

While he was in Jersey last Saturday (August 28, 2010) I asked Bill Latham, just before he spoke at the kick-off event at Government House in St. Helier, to tell me about the beginnings of Tearfund [then called the Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund] and its early links with Jersey Overseas Aid.

“It all began way back in the mid-sixties when the Reverend George Hoffman [the then the honorary curate at St. John’s Church in West Ealing, where I attended] had a vision to ensure that the Evangelical church was doing more than just preaching gospel,” said Latham. “He felt that preaching the Gospel also entailed aid for the whole person. George [who was born in Liverpool] also felt that if we could ensure that Christians realize that we ought to be concerned about people's bodies as well as their souls, then that was the whole Gospel to be preached and demonstrated.

“At that time the church needed a little bit of a kick to remind them this was the teaching of the gospel and in those early days it raised nationally something like about 20,000 UK pounds. Today, all these years later, I think its budget now is something like sixty-million pounds per year. So the growth has been phenomenal.”
 

First Jersey team at Nazareth hospital with Jean Le Maistre on the far right

The main reason that Latham had flown to Jersey was because he had been instrumental in persuading Jean Le Maistre, a Christian politician on the island who was just launching Jersey Overseas Aid, to take a team for his first project to a hospital in Nazareth. That was back in 1972 when Latham was Deputy Director of Tearfund.

“I remember asking Jean Le Maistre if he would head up this first work camp in the Nazareth hospital in Israel, and he was very clever because he said, ‘Yes, I'll do it but only on condition that I have fifty percent of the work team from Jersey.’ Of course I agreed, and the work camp happened and they did a great job. They put a roof on the nurse’s home at the hospital and that turned out to be the forerunner of a further 99 projects and they're still going strong today.

“I had suggested the Nazareth hospital after their people had communicated to Tearfund a need for some help and we thought the best plan was really to send people rather than money because they needed expertise, such as building skills and so on. So that was our very first venture into a work camp and it was done in very close association with the people of Jersey.”

I asked Bill Latham if that this was part of Tearfund’s thinking in those days – to send people rather than money -- so they can experience life in another country.

“Yes,” he replied, “for as well as having an influence on the area where they are working -- and often they've done an enormous amount of lifesaving work and brought encouragement to the local people -- but we have found that there's also a colossal impact on the lives of the people who go.
 

On the road: Cliff Richard beside Bill Latham, as he plays the guitar during the eight-hour bus ride in Brazil during a visit for Tearfund

“You can’t be exposed to a Third World situation and not be deeply affected yourself. It causes you to reevaluate; to change your priorities and perspectives. I remember when I was with Tearfund I, perhaps unrealistically, went around saying that if only we could gather up all our young people and insist that they spend six months or a year in a Third World situation, maybe at a hospital or at a school or by a muddy water hole, and see how people live, that would guarantee that it would affect each person for the rest of their life.”

I then asked Latham how being with Tearfund had personally affected him.

“I went on a number of visits to Africa in particular and it was hugely challenging to me,” he said. “The thing that probably impressed me most was to mix with Christians who were working there fulltime. I went over for a week, two or sometimes three weeks at the most, and I would stay with Christian missionaries or personnel who were there for two, three, four years or more.

“To see those people give sacrificially of their time, energy and skills, was tremendously impressive. People often asked me if I wasn’t depressed to be visiting these places and I would tell them that I wasn’t. I came back really humbled and infused by the love of God that was in action in those places and through these people.”

I then concluded the interview by asking Bill Latham if he was amazed about the way that Tearfund had grown over the years.

“I am astounded,” he said. “I remember the chairman of the Tearfund committee at one time saying, ‘Brethren, we may have reached our peak.’ That was when we had raised 30,000 pounds. Now, as I said earlier, it's around sixty-million pounds of income which is given by and large from the Evangelical wing of the church in Britain and that is sacrificial giving.”

With that, Bill Latham was off to speak at the opening event of a wonderful reunion weekend which brought together hundreds of volunteers from the island, and also from various parts of the world, to celebrate the many teams that have made such an impact in various parts of the world, including the Middle East, Easter Europe, Asia and South America. (I participated in one of these projects back in 1976 to Kenya and met some of my colleagues who were also on that trip.)

By the way, Sir Cliff Richard is still working with Tearfund after 40 years of raising both awareness and funds.

The singer and entertainer has visited Tearfund projects all over the world, including those in Uganda, Bangladesh, Sudan and Brazil.

“I’m proud to have been associated with Tearfund for so many years,” he says. “Playing a part in relieving poverty is, as I see it, the responsibility of us all.”

For more information on Tearfund, go to www.tearfund.org

Note: I would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

Dan Wooding, 69, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 46 years. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS). He was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC., and now hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on KWVE in Southern California and which is also carried on the Calvary Radio Network throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on Calvary Chapel Radio UK. Wooding is also a regular contributor to The Weekend Stand on the Crawford Broadcasting Network, and a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 192 countries. He is the author of some 44 books. Two of the latest include his autobiography, “From Tabloid to Truth”, which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, press this link. Wooding, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, has also recently released his first novel “Red Dagger” which is available here