If my father were still alive he would have been fascinated by the description of the wonderful Nativity celebrations in Malawi, in his day known as Nyasaland [The Tablet, 27 December].
When he returned to Aberdeen to study medicine after three years of carrying stretchers in no-man's-land, he joined the student Christian Union. They must have been quite a serious lot, perhaps not surprisingly. In the many recent reports on World War One, I have seen little mention of the long hours, maybe sitting in a shell hole until the bombardment passed over, or the endless waiting behind the lines for orders, when there was nothing to do but think or talk. He said in between the grumbles and complaints and swearing and dirty jokes the subject of the eternal verities would come up - of suffering and death which might be just minutes away, and so to belief in God and the after life. Many of the survivors in the Christian Union felt impelled to promise, if at all possible, to go abroad to spread the Gospel. So straight after graduating he went to Nyasaland as a medical missionary of the Church of Scotland. We children loved his stories of crocodiles, and the songs the boatmen sang as they rowed on Lake Nyasa, and the story of how he mugged up the language for his first sermon, preached from the text: "Your word is a lamp to my feet", and was disappointed at the bewildered response from the congregation, only later discovering that instead of using the word for "lamp" he had used that for "hen".
At the time he was not aware that he knew any Catholics, but he read very widely (Chesterton was a great influence) and found himself increasingly interested in the Catholic Church. Most of the missionary work in Nyasaland at that period came from the Kirk (remember Dr Hastings Banda with his top hat and doctorate in Divinity from Edinburgh University?), but he contacted the one White Fathers' mission there, and said he thought he might want to become a Catholic, and what should he do?
The wise White Father, whoever he was, said: "You have undertaken to bring Christ to these people, and they are relying on you to baptise, marry and bury their people, and you must fulfil your contract. When you return home, if you still feel the same, contact a priest who will arrange for you to have instruction."
When his time there was up, he had to find a job to pay for his fare home (the mission was too poor to finance him) so he went down to Durban and got a job as doctor on a tramp steamer which was repatriating Indian workers. If my memory's right he took out an appendix and performed an amputation in the course of the voyage. He was paid according to the number of fit men he landed in Mumbai. But he made enough to book a berth on a cargo boat bound for home. I think the Holy Spirit must have been looking after him all the time: there was only one other passenger aboard, and he turned out to be a Catholic, so they spent the weeks at sea talking about the Church
I think my father would have been very proud to have, along with men like Fr Boucher, been part of the long line of people who have worked to bring Christ to Malawi.
Bridget Nuttgens, York
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