This is It
Meeting at the Lamb's house Tallis said to John Le Cossec. “This is it! This is
the beginning.” David remembered a meeting with a French Gypsy, not a
Christian, in Ireland who had told him about the French and how, as he put it,“thousands of our people have gone, Hallelujah!” He meant they had turned to the
Lord Jesus Christ and their lives were turned to lives of praise. Now he found the
reality of what "going Hallelujah!" meant. “Swap your religion for Jesus Christ,” he
was told. And he did.
Shortly afterward, in a meeting in the trailer (caravan) belonging to a Billy
Welsh, in Honeypot Lane. Nora gave her heart to the Lord. At first she had been
skeptical but she now stepped out in a new life for the Lord Jesus. For a Gypsy lady
to give up what her mother grandmother and female ancestors since time
immemorial have done is a very big step. She took it, nearly thirty years ago,
and she has followed the Lord Jesus, together with her husband ever since.
Serving God
David and Nora now serve the Lord in the Gypsy Light and Life movement.
From that visit of Tallis Sabas with John Le Cossec, to interpret for him, has come,
over the last twenty-eight years or so, the setting up of Gypsy churches all over the
country. The Word was taken, in true Romani fashion, from small family group to
small family group. There were get togethers at the big horse fairs. Now they have
conventions where large marquees are set up and hundreds of trailers converge for
the families who live in them to hear the Word of the Lord.
Many also keep up their traveling life and the English Gypsies now travel to
help the Romanian Gypsies and they even go as far as India where their tribes
originated. People like David and his friend Jackie Boyd give all their free time in
serving the Lord. That does not mean they do not work, they do, but they give their
time freely and are not paid, they work for a living as do all Gypsy pastors and
evangelists in the Life and Light movement. They are an example to us all who are
in Christian work.
Gypsy family life is very strong and moral values are still close to those of the
Bible. When I meet Romani men and women at events I tell them that God has
raised up a witness to Himself among their people to rebuke the gaujas, the Anglo-
Saxons, for their rejection of Him and for their depraved moral standards. I really
believe this and do my best to support and to pray for the Gypsy Christians and for
all my friends among the Roma.
The Light and Life Gypsy Movement is related to a similar one in France,
the Vie et Lumiere. Hubert Clee is the Treasurer of the Movement and a trustee as
are Jackie Boyd, Henry Ward and Joey Mitchell. I am grateful to these and to David
Jones for their approval of this article. In particular I am grateful to Jackie Boyd,
Hubert Clee and David Jones for the corrections they made and for giving their
time in answering my questions.
