Earl Soham Baptist Church - who are we?
Mely Owers
Have you ever been past a building many times which shows little sign of activity during the week and wondered what goes on inside, if anything at all, and what sort of people you would find in there? So your thoughts might run if you frequented The Victoria, for instance—as Malcolm and Mely do—until they were talking about churches and she said, “What about the church across the road? Why don’t we go and try it?” Which is what they did, and they are now regulars at the church too!
Mely Owers grew up in Baguio, a mountainous part of the Philippines north of Manila in a pagan, heavily superstitious household. In the 1950s a priest came to her village and she was baptised in an Anglican church at age four or five, but later went to a Pentecostal church with her brothers and sisters. She came with her previous partner to Britain in 1996 but after a split went back to the Philippines, then returned here in 2002. Last year she married Malcolm who has been farming in Pettaugh for many years.
She graduated after a four-year Bachelor of Science and Industrial Technology course in tailoring and dress-making and trained as a beautician, and hopes to find work in these fields in the future. Meanwhile learning to drive is more of a challenge for her. Let’s hope she passes her driving test at the end of June!
With Malcolm and her two children, Christopher (14) and Sarah (8) she found a friendly welcome at Earl Soham Baptist Church. “They are friendly and it’s cosy, not starchy,” she says.
It’s a big change from a culture which was known long ago for head-hunters, where decisions often demanded financially crippling offerings and sacrifices. The Good News of Jesus frees us from slavery to the planets (horoscopes), to the fates or the whims of pagan elders; Jesus bids us follow him instead.