Author: camcarehome

  • Report on Face to Face Event – Saturday 18 April

    We enjoyed another stimulating, encouraging and happy morning. Several core team members and other regulars were unable to attend but we still had the largest gathering to date! We praise God for helping us resolve the issue of a key to get into the chapel! We were also so grateful to a new friend (Esther) who prepared the refreshments for us. Laurence Wood read Psalm 139 before he led us in sung worship.

    Below (and with his permission) is the short reflection on Psalm 92 given by Rev Dr Muthuraj Swamy, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide which started the proceedings. The two psalms were a perfect complement:

    This Psalm  (92) offers a beautiful picture of a life that continues to bear fruit, including in the later years of one’s life. Verses 14–15 offer a deeply reassuring promise: “They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, ‘The Lord is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.’” This is a powerful reminder that aging is not a diminishing of purpose, but a deepening of it.

    1. Your life still bears fruit

    Fruitfulness doesn’t fade with age; it only changes shape. In younger years, fruit may have looked like activity, building, striving. But as we grow, it often appears as wisdom, patience, encouragement, faithfulness, and love. Your presence, your stories, your prayers, and your quiet strength all nourish others. Even when it feels unseen, your life continues to make a difference.

    2. “Fresh and green” on the inside

    Verse 14 speaks of staying “fresh and green.” It is a striking image. While the body may slow, the spirit can remain vibrant. This freshness comes from staying rooted in God, just as verses 12–13 describe: “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree… planted in the house of the Lord.” Being “planted” suggests stability, belonging, and continual nourishment. This is a reminder that you are not forgotten or uprooted, but you are deeply planted, still growing in ways that matter most.

    3. A life that quietly proclaims truth

    Verse 15 reminds us that a faithful life itself becomes a testimony: “The Lord is upright… my Rock.” As we get older, we may not always feel like we are “doing” much, but our enduring faith speaks volumes. Our trust through hardships, perseverance through change, our continued hope — all these proclaim God’s goodness more clearly than words alone.

    4. A lifetime of seeing God’s works

    Verses 3–5 speak of praising God daily and reflecting on His works: “How great are your works, Lord, how profound your thoughts!” With age comes a unique gift: perspective. You have seen seasons come and go. You have witnessed answers to prayer, unexpected turns, and sustaining grace. This long view allows for a deeper kind of praise. One rooted in both lived experience and hope.

    Conclusion: You are like a well-rooted tree, still growing, still fruitful, still alive with purpose. Your life continues to tell a story of faithfulness, not just in what you do, but in who you are becoming. And perhaps most beautifully of all: you are still becoming a living witness that God is good, steady, and true — right to the very end.

    *************************************************************

    The speakers this time were Prof Cecilia Brassett (CCCT Chair) who spoke from her heart about her involvement in Campassion and her vision for a Christian Care Home. She expressed her confidence (and referencing her own experience) that the Lord will bring about the care home, in His perfect time.

    John Preece, a retired air pilot (including with MAF) spoke about the Book Club which he and others lead at Heathlands in Cherry Hinton. He said how important it was to make the meetings fun, personal and to be willing to accept that not everyone can engage.  Singing and poetry are also beginning to feature. 

    Thirdly Richard Todd, retired Head Gardener at Anglesey Abbey (National Trust) and recently published author of “Walking with God in the Garden” explained how he is using the film recordings he has made of beautiful gardens to share the joy of creation with care home residents. He shared some of the amusing and encouraging experiences which he and his wife, Chris, have had.

    There was a lively time of Q&A followed by a time of prayer before the final rousing hymn “Be Thou My Vision”.

    The aim of these face-to-face events is to see each other (we normally meet on Zoom) and to pray for the work.  We all find them hugely encouraging and thoroughly enjoy meeting new friends and supporters every time.  Look out for the next date in the Autum!

    Rachel Simonson, Project Worker

  • Upcoming event: Pray and Learn – Saturday 18 April 2026

    You are warmly invited to join us on Saturday 18th April at 10am for our next Pray and Learn event!

    This will be at the Queen Edith Chapel and all are welcome – please email camcarehome@gmail.com to confirm your attendance.

    Please feel free to forward to anybody you think might be interested!

  • Remembering Daniel Cozens

    David, one of our Trustees, recently had the privilege of attending the Thanksgiving Service in Huntingdon of this amazing evangelist.  He spoke to someone at the service who had a family member in the same care home as Daniel and testified to his incredible compassion and zeal for the Lord right to the end, winning hearts for Jesus at the very end of people’s lives.  This is the vision for our care home!

    An orbituary from the Church Times follows (reproduced here with permission):

    Obituary: The Revd Daniel Cozens

    16 January 2026

    ‘Daniel was also a gifted artist, painting in oils: often landscapes and still life. He was a countryman, taking delight in the beauty of nature’

    Paul Preston writes:

    THE Revd Daniel Cozens, the founder of Through Faith Missions, died suddenly on 6 December.

    He grew up in Dorset and was the youngest and shortest of three tall brothers, of whom Bill predeceased him and Ronald has succeeded him. He always spoke of a very happy and adventurous childhood.

    Daniel was ordained in 1971 and served in Orpington and Deptford, before accepting the post of Evangelist in Ely diocese, which was offered by the Rees family, after the death of the Revd Dick Rees.

    In 1989, Daniel founded Through Faith Missions (TFM), and the Revd Peter Adams was appointed as Minister of Missions to work with him in parish missions around the country.

    The Walk of 1000 Men was a vision given to Daniel for lay Christian men to “go beyond the camp”, in the simplicity of Matthew 10. The first walk took place in 1991, along the Pennine Way. Teams of men talked about their faith, in pubs, schools, and workplaces.

    The need for women to be involved in the ministry was recognised later, and other walk-style missions followed. Parish missions in many varied nationwide locations remained a core of TFM’s work, and many thousands of people have become involved and inspired in sharing their faith.

    Daniel leaves an active legacy in that TFM continues to be in demand today, as teams of women and men work with churches in their outreach to the community.

    In 1994, he was licensed as a Six Preacher of Canterbury Cathedral.

    Daniel was also a gifted artist, painting in oils: often landscapes and still life. He was a countryman, taking delight in the beauty of nature, colours and design, trees, flowers, birds, and animals. Many remember his talks “A Night of Colour”, in which he would show his canvases and weave in the sharing of his Christian faith.

    Daniel was larger than life and a colourful man in every sense. His audience would often find their sides aching from laughter with his many anecdotes. Those who met him soon knew that, besides his Lord, Daniel’s greatest love was for his family. He married Gillie in 1969, and they had four children: Kate, Beth, Ben, and Mary.

    He was diagnosed with dementia in 2018 and spent his last three years in a nursing home in Cambridgeshire, where he received considerate and loving care. Even through the cruel cloud of his illness, he regularly, without prompting, declared that “I have had the most beautiful, full life that I would give to anyone.” Daniel’s faith and love for his family were undiminished, and the tenderness of the love of the Cozens family for one another has left an impression on all who visited him there.

    Daniel’s ministry was profoundly life-changing, and that continued up until the day he died; even in the care home, his intercession with staff and residents and his visitors was astonishing and filled with the Holy Spirit.

    For most who knew him, the lasting memory will be of his preaching. Lazarus and Dives was a favourite passage. All who listened would suddenly feel a sense of God’s love and increasing certainty of heaven and God’s ultimate justice, reward, and judgement. Daniel’s palm would be resting on his open Bible, his earnest expression engaging all in the room, as he gently helped us to place our hands into the hands of Jesus and look to him, through his love and grace to prepare a place for us.

    The Revd Daniel Harry Cozens died on 6 December, aged 81. He leaves behind his wife and children, and his grandchildren: Noah, Gus, Ellen, Jonah, Archie, Arabella, Henrietta, and Gabriel.

  • Report on Face to Face Event – Saturday 11 October

    Report on Face to Face Event – Saturday 11 October

    Dear Lord

    We thank you for your Great Faithfulness to us and the many blessings and compassions we constantly receive. We ask that you will be with us this morning as we discuss and pray about care for the elderly in our community.

    Please be with our speakers and use them to open up your Word and prompt us in ways in which we can all serve you in helping elderly people who are sometimes lonely, isolated, neglected and downhearted. Reach out and touch them with your great love so that they may receive bright hope for today and also tomorrow.

    We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    After singing “Great is they Faithfulness”! David Farrer opened our latest face-to-face event on a bright Saturday morning in October at Queen Edith Chapel, with the above prayer.  These events were envisioned for the core team to meet in person (rather than on Zoom) and we open them up to anyone who would like to join us! There was an encouraging turnout (new friends and old) and the two hour session flew by.  We enjoyed praise and prayer together, a Bible thought from Bartow Wylie referencing Moses at age 80 (Exodus 7 v 7) and three updates:

    • Architect Nicky Kerr, Property Services Manager at Pilgrims’ Friend Society who lives quite locally, spoke enthusiastically about her role and the work they do in their nationwide family of Christian care homes. This was a further consolidation of our relationship with PFS.
    The new Pilgrims’ Friend Society logo
    • Anne Jarvis of CCT spoke about the idea of a “Holiday at Home” for the elderly in Cambridge next summer.  If you are reading this and think you would like to be involved please do contact us.  Anne has done a fair bit of research and has some great resources from Winchester Baptist Church (who have been involved in “Silver Service” for many years) amongst others. Anne has a great collection of literature and resources which were available (many of them free of charge).
    • Mary Burdett spoke movingly about her practical involvement with CCT. Now in her tenth decade, she helps to lead Christian services in two homes in the villages around Cambridge (with others) and it is such a blessing for her.

    There was a time for Q&A and Rev Karin voth Harman from St Andrew’s Cherrry Hinton spoke about the work she (and others in the Ely diocese) have been doing on the Springstead Village development.

    All in all, so much to be thankful for.  Please watch out for the next date in the Spring!

    Some of the Core Team and friends. From left, David Farrer (trustee), Robin Agnes, Laurence Wood (pianist), Rachel Simonson (project officer), Hilary Bugden (trustee), Anne Jarvis, Rev Karin voth Harman and Nicky Kerr (PFS)

  • Upcoming event: Pray and Learn – Saturday 11 October 2025

    You are warmly invited to join us on Saturday 11th October at 10am for our next Pray and Learn event! Details of the speaker to follow shortly. This will be at the Queen Edith Chapel and all are welcome – please email camcarehome@gmail.com to confirm your attendance.

    Download the flyer. Please feel free to forward to anybody you think might be interested!

  • Seeing with the eyes of Christ

    Seeing with the eyes of Christ

    Dr Anna Gannon is a trustee of Campassion Care Trust and an Oblate of Glenstal Abbey and Fellow Emerita of St Edmund’s College at the University of Cambridge.

    Please note: The following post first appeared on the Glenstal Abbey website and is reproduced here with permission.

    The late Pope’s extended stays in hospital produced some inspiring reflections on the amazing things that take place in hospitals. Saint Benedict’s instruction to ‘Listen carefully and attend with the ear of your heart’ prompted me to reflect upon my own hospital experiences, as after retiring I decided to join the chaplaincy department of our local hospital.

    My training to be a lay chaplain began in the autumn of 2019, and I soon started a role which involved bringing Holy Communion to a ‘captive audience’ of appreciative Catholic patients, something which proved to be an easy yet very rewarding task.

    Not long after beginning my rounds, however, the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to all visits to the hospital. Nevertheless, I was one of the first volunteers to report back for duty in August 2021, though a major change had been introduced: we were each allocated to a ward, and only one, in order to contain the outbreak of any possible infections.

    I was assigned to the ward for Acute Medicine, but panic soon set in… how would I manage to connect and engage with people unknown, who were in pain, worried, facing stark choices, who perhaps had no religion or could even be quite hostile? I took a deep breath and ‘sought the eyes of Christ’, a sentence I had heard often enough at Glenstal Abbey. I have not looked back.

    My volunteering now takes place each Wednesday morning, and I wear a purple lanyard which reads CHAPLAINCY with a Saint Benedict’s Medal and pin with the Dove of the Holy Spirit attached. By now I am well-known to the staff on the ward, who count on me to help with difficult patients, and who sometimes need a good word and a hug themselves. My visits are a ‘light touch’ –  I simply try to be a witness to the love of Christ through my discreet presence and service. Although in reality not many people are religious, they do all appreciate being ‘seen’, and are receptive to a smile and a chat. Many patients don’t have visitors and are glad to tell me about themselves (or, more often than not, their dog…), while others truly welcome the chance to pray together, something I treasure, particularly with Muslim patients.

    There are people living with dementia who need patience and help. On occasion I have been told painful family secrets, a way to make peace with a troubled past.  Other times it has been sharing the pain with someone losing a limb to diabetes. Most people are frightened of what the diagnosis will mean for their future. Sometimes I have accompanied patients over many weeks, and seen them deteriorate and die: interacting with their grieving families adds another dimension. As the late Pope Francis is reported to have said: “a hospital is a place where human beings remove their masks and show themselves as they truly are, in their purest essence.”

    At the end of each shift, we write-up notes on each of the patients we have seen before chaplains and volunteers gather together in the hospital chapel. There is a brief service in which we pray for our patients, nurses and doctors – and for each other. Some days are so tiring and emotionally overwhelming, but I remember Who is helping me to carry the yoke of caring, the importance of mission and of bearing witness to our Faith as Christ’s apostles. All this work is a huge privilege and a blessing, and I’m so grateful to have this opportunity for service and witness at the hospital.

    Anna Gannon

  • Book Review “What Dementia Teaches Us About Love” Nicci Gerrard (Penguin 2019)

    I came across this book in the library as I was navigating a personal pool of grief after the death of my lovely mother-in-law recently. According to her death certificate, she died of “mixed dementia” after 7 years in a care home. Thankfully we didn’t have massive personality change or anger or even deep frustration to contend with but it was a significant journey for the family and now it was over, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened and whether or not there was more we could have done.

    Nicci (a journalist and one half of crime writer Nicci French) had a different (more terrible) experience which led her to pursue more answers and more change. Together with her friend Julia Jones, after the death of her father in 2014, she successfully founded “John’s Campaign” which insists that the carers of people with dementia have the same right as parents of sick children, to accompany them when in hospital. This was borne out of the loneliness she saw her own father suffer but also from the dozens of interviews she conducted as part of her investigation.

    We meet a large number of fascinating people and their fascinating carers in the book and I personally learned such a lot about the disease, the way it manifests and the way people deal with it and cope. Those with dementia feel all sorts of emotions, particularly shame perhaps, and by association, so do their family. “… of being seen naked. Naked in our body and in our soul: that soft and quivering part of us that we try all our lives to protect from the judging world – and, crucially, from ourselves”. “… the inside comes out in unwanted ways when the boundaries that have been policed for so long and with such rigour collapse. …”But a body is never just a body. A body is where we live and how we live”.

    And then, there is often no option but to now live in a home. “Home is where you live and are in control of your life. A home is usually the place you go before you die”.

    Although Nicci does not share my Christian faith, the book was a great encouragement and her love and compassion for her family and beyond shine through. Her understanding of the people who live and work in care homes is first rate although the sad reality is “All over the world, in poor countries and rich ones, hundreds and thousands of old and vulnerable people live the last part of their life in fear and distress, in loneliness and in sorrow”.

    This book is a cultured, poetic piece of writing. In a brutally honest way, she wonderfully articulates for me lots of ideas and memories, things in my own life experience I haven’t been able to put pin down and put my finger on. I am the richer and more helped from reading it and as such, I recommend it to you.

    Rachel Simonson April 2025

  • Report on Face to Face Event – Saturday 15 March 2025

    A lovely bright sunny morning dawned for our first ‘in person’ event for a while and it was so good for the core team to be together with some additional friends.  The venue was Queen Edith Chapel, which has worked so well for us in the past and did so again.  We enjoyed 2 hours of great fellowship with worship led by Laurence Wood and refreshments from the team.

    David Farrer set the scene by describing the two charitable objectives of CCT.  Rachel Simonson (Project Worker) thanked those who made it possible for her to do this work, and spoke to the first one: The setting up of a Christian care home in Cambridge.

    She described two current possibilities which in time could deliver this goal and asked for prayer along the following lines:

    • For our relationship with Pilgrim Friends’ Society, for their continued growth and their excellent work
    • For a potential Christian Care home and school in Cherry Hinton (Parish of St Andrew’s)
    • And of course anything else the Lord might choose to do…

    Thanks extended to Josh Hawkes for his amazing help with publicity in recent weeks!

    Next Carmel McDonnell (Care Home Liaison Officer) spoke about the complementary objective: the resourcing of churches to provide spiritual support to those in care homes in Cambridgeshire. Carmel gave examples of the benefits the work of leading services in care homes is having and the reasons why it is vital. She presented a possible outline of a simple service with well known hymns, simple prayers and a Bible passage with comments and she demonstrated using a CD player with recorded hymns.

    Hilary Bugden, Mary Burdett and Anne Jarvis added additional input.  A clear voice, not too fast, song words in a large font (maybe with a picture on each page to identify) were helpful tips.  We can capitalise for just a few more years on care home residents being familiar with the Lord’s prayer, hymn words etc.  One care home has a grand piano but the importance of music (however it is delivered) was stressed, it has the power to calm agitation and bring a real peace. The intergenerational possibilities were mentioned and all testified to what a blessing it was to be involved in this ministry.

    Anna Gannon spoke of her role as a volunteer chaplain at Addenbrooke’s and also the one-to-one visits she makes to people in care homes.

    Anne spoke about the ministry of the printed word and how literature produced by Good News For Everyone (formerly the Gideons) amongst others is so useful in care homes and almshouses.  Ann had laid out a wonderful literature table with free resources.

    Joan Russell shared her own (40 yr+) journey with PFS and how comforting it is to know that the decision has been taken – for whenever the time is right.

    Robin Agnes shared movingly from Isaiah 61 and other Bible passages to exhort all of us to keep praying about this work, to keep doing it and to keep encouraging those we know…

    We hope to repeat a morning like this every 4-5 months so please watch our for details.