FOUZI AYOUB KILLED

The little world of evangelical Christians in the British Isles is shocked today (Thursday 23rd March) to hear that Fouzi Ayoub of Arabic Evangelical Centre in Wolverhampton, was killed yesterday in a car crash in distant Mali where he had gone last week-end for a week of ministry.

Fouzi had come from the Middle East to the Bible College of Wales in Swansea almost forty years ago and in the Principality he had picked up that trace of a Welsh accent in his wonderful distinctive voice. For many years he was a school teacher in the Midlands but all the time his burden for fellow Arabs was growing. The work grew which he began - sending out to Muslims all over the world Arabic gospels, New Testaments and other literature. Eventually he had to go full time into this work, answering the hundreds of letters which were sent to him by people for whom the absence of a Saviour was the huge vacuum at the centre of Islam. He went to north Africa and visited the people who wrote to him. All of it was done quite secretly. Offices and a team of volunteers assisted him. Others accompanied him on his visits to the Middle East, his van loaded with Christian books. The offices also housed his own library of puritan and reformed books.

Fouzi's coming to address a meeting was an occasion not to be missed and to be remembered for the rest of your life. Hardly another man in our circles has that gift of lifting up a whole meeting, transforming the morale of a wilting congregation, sending the people home talking of the challenge of gospel outreach to the Islamic world newly enthused and revitalised. Fouzi was larger than life. How much that was due to his own dynamic personality and how much to the fullness of the Spirit of God no man is able to say, but under God he ministered to people with a vitality which brought the spirit of the early church into many quiet dejected companies. He had the same impact on young people when he spoke at camps of the Evangelical Movement of Wales. Fouzi loved his Lord and Saviour and that warm affection was contagious.

West Park Evangelical Church in Wolverhampton was his home church, and its pastor, Gareth Crossley, now has the awesome task of comforting that perplexed and grief-filled congregation. Surely God has given them the wine of astonishment to drink.

Fouzi's wife Wendy herself called me, astonishingly, this afternoon, to inform me of the grievous news (as if the Christian grape vine would not have told me already from half a dozen e mails and phone calls through the morning). "I had to tell you that he would not be speaking at the Grace Baptist Assembly in May." I was more than touched at this grace and she told me that she was finding strength. In Mali they usually bury the body the same day as that on which the death has occurredi. Today the temperature there was 102 degrees. But the Ambassador was seeking to bring Fouzi back to the UK for burial. She had committed that to God. "Fouzi would not have taken kindly to old age," she said. "He is all right. He has got there before us." He was in his sixtieth year.

To our sovereign and compassionate Saviour we commend Wendy, her son and the two grandchildren. May the Lord guide the trustees concerning the future of this work which was so closely identified with this giant of a man.

GEOFF THOMAS