LAKE FOREST, CA (ANS) -- Today (Wednesday, January 25, 2012) marks the birth date of my rather amazing mother, Anne Wooding, who was born on January 25, 1908, in Liverpool England, and died peacefully at the age of 93 in a nursing home in New Brighton, Cheshire, UK, on Sunday afternoon, December 2, 2001.

Dan Wooding looks at a copy of “Blind Faith” with his mother, Anne

So on this occasion, I wanted to introduce you my courageous mother, Anne Wooding, who was a pioneer missionary to the blind in the Muslim walled city of Kano, Nigeria, in the 1930s.

Anne Blake [her maiden name] was born in the busy sea port of city of Liverpool, UK. She was christened Anne, but soon became known as Nancy by all her family. She later discovered that her grandmother’s name was also Anne, and so she had been given the nickname of Nancy, so it was decided to do the same with her. [She later reverted to Anne.]

After becoming a committed Christian at Donaldson Street Gospel Hall, a stone’s throw from Anfield, Liverpool Football Club’s famous soccer stadium, she went to London to study at Redcliffe Missionary College and then at the Braille Institute in Liverpool.

After completing her studies, and waved off by her many friends from Liverpool’s Pier Head, she set sail for Lagos, Nigeria, and soon became a pioneer missionary with SIM [then called Sudan Interior Mission] amongst the blind of Kano, the famed Muslim walled city in the north of the country.

In fact, she was summoned by the Emir (King) of Kano, who didn’t believe that any blind person could actually read, so she took with her one of her blind students who read to him in Braille in the local Hausa language, and that convinced him.

He then invited her to start teaching the blind of Kano to read and she became the first white woman missionary ever allowed into the city, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, to help the sightless there to read Braille.

Alf and Anne Wooding pictured on their wedding day in Kano

It was while she was at the SIM language school in Minna, Nigeria, she met Alf Wooding, also a missionary from Liverpool, and they fell in love and were married in Kano in September, 1939.

It was the beginning of a life together in which they served the Lord both in Africa and later in England and produced two children - myself, born in Nigeria in 1940, and given the Hausa name of Dan Juma [son of Friday] by the local village chiefs. Ruth, who was later born in Liverpool and is now Ruth Ross and still lives in the birthplace of the Beatles, having married Allen Ross.

Sadly, my father became very sick and so our family made the hazardous journey in 1942 that took six weeks from Lagos to Liverpool, zigzagging across the Atlantic with a convoy of some 28 ships to evade the deadly German U-Boats, so he could receive urgent treatment at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Liverpool that saved his life. However, many of the other ships were torpedoed and thousands lost their lives during that hazardous journey to war-weary Liverpool.

Baby Dan with his mother Anne shortly after his birth in Nigeria

After making a recovery, my father then went back to Nigeria, and became sick again and had to return home and was told by doctors at the same hospital that he should never return to the tropics. This news broke the hearts of my parents, and was something they never completely recovered from as they loved the African people so much.

Alf and Anne then moved to Birmingham, a city that had been bombed incessantly during the Second World War. It was just after the war had ended and my father became a missionary to the city’s Jewish population, many of whom were survivors from Adolph Hitler’s “Final solution.”

He also became the pastor of the Sparkbrook Mission for thirty years. It was while at this little wooden mission hall, that he and my mother saw members, Dennis and Margaret Stevens, and Harry Poole, take their place on the mission field in Nigeria. This gave them so much joy.

Anne and Alf Wooding pictured close to their beloved in River Mersey

Also, along with my wife Norma and sister Ruth, we started The Messengers, an evangelistic team that reached out into the city with the Gospel. This eventually saw the birth of Hill Farm, a drug rehabilitation center in Worcestershire, which was initially run Norma and myself.
Alf and Anne finally retired to Essex for some years and then settled in Wallasey, Cheshire, close to their beloved River Mersey.

Sadly, in March of 1994, at the age of 84, my father passed away. He had survived the trauma of his tropical diseases, cancer, and then Parkinson's disease, and had now gone to his great reward in heaven.

Meanwhile Norma and I, along with our two sons, had immigrated to Southern California in 1982 and founded ASSIST Ministries and the ASSIST News Service. Andrew now lives in Sheffield and is married to Alison and they have two daughters -- Jade and Katie -- and our first grandson, Edward. Peter lives in North Wales and is married to Sharon and they have three daughters - Sarah, Anna and Abigail.

It was while I was back in England for my father’s funeral, that I discovered that my mother had written a rough draft of her extraordinary life story, so I asked her if I could turn it into a book for her.

The result was her autobiography, “Blind Faith” (ASSIST Books), and I decided to send a copy to Queen Elizabeth and surprisingly my mother received the congratulations of the Queen who wrote from Buckingham Palace to say how much she “admired” the work that Mrs. Wooding and her husband had been involved in.

I also asked Chuck Smith, my pastor from Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, California, if he would write a foreword to it, which he readily agreed.

In it he wrote, “It wasn’t just the Beatles that came from Liverpool, England. So did a committed young Christian woman called Anne Wooding who decided she wanted to take the ‘Long and Winding Road’ in the 1930s from this bustling sea port on the River Mersey to teach the age-old message of love and salvation of faith in Jesus Christ to the physically and spiritually blind people of Nigeria, West Africa.

“In this inspiring and challenging autobiography, co-authored with her son, Dan Wooding, who has been attending the church I pastor, Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, since June 1982, when he immigrated to the United States, you will read the moving story of how Anne went from the mean streets of Liverpool, to a missionary training college in London, to sailing from Liverpool to Lagos in the first steps of a true-life missionary adventure.”

He went on to say that “after Anne met and married fellow missionary Alf Wooding, this dedicated couple began pioneering an effective and difficult work amongst the pagan people of Nigeria and saw many Africans surrender their lives over to Jesus Christ.”

Pastor Chuck added, “During their time in Nigeria, they faced many difficulties, including the burning down of their home, and Alf’s many tropical illnesses that eventually forced them to make a dangerous sea journey back to war-torn England that almost cost them their lives as the Germany U-boats attacked and sank and sank several of their ships in the Royal Navy convoy.”

In conclusion, he said, “Anne and Alf Wooding were always deeply conscious that they were following in the footsteps of other great British missionaries like David Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, and Gladys Aylward. Like them, ‘The Great Commission’ was not an optional extra in the life of a Christian; it was the most important command that He gave us before he ascended to be with The Father in heaven.

Dan, Andrew, Norma and Peter Wooding in Dec 2001 outside New Brighton Baptist Church after the funeral of Anne Wooding

“The message of ‘Blind Faith’ is that all of us, whatever our background, can follow Jesus to the ends of the earth with the message that can transform even the most intransigent sinner. For only He can take that ‘Blind Faith’ and make it work in a way that none of us can ever imagine.”

For my mother, life was meant to be lived to the full - and she did just that. Even up until the end of her life and, despite being legally blind and partly deaf, she continued to serve her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Anne Wooding wrote in her book, “I look back at our exiting journey with God and can see God's hand through it all. For me, it has been a wonderful journey with God -- a life of BLIND FAITH! Will you join me in this great adventure?”

What a great challenge for all of us.

Note: If you would like to purchase a copy of “Blind Faith,” just go to: http://www.assist-ministries.com/assist/MemorialPage.asp If you would like to send a check, just make it out to ASSIST and mail it to PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA 92609, USA.

Dan Wooding, 71, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 48 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. He now hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on KWVE in Southern California which is also carried throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on Calvary Chapel Radio UK and also in Belize and South Africa. Besides this, Wooding is a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 192 countries and also provides a regular commentary for Worship Life Radio on KWVE. You can follow Dan Wooding on Facebook under his name there or at ASSIST News Service. He is the author of some 44 books, one of which is 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 this link.