Pastor Les Ball

REST IN PEACE ‘Holding the Ladder’

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P1020030After a year and a half of ‘Holding the Ladder’, it’s time to give a new direction to this blog.

Retiring after 38 exhilarating years serving God in London’s multi-national All Nations Church, and having been involved in so many ‘goddy’ things around the world was hard. There was a real sense of bereavement; being wrenched apart from brothers and sisters that we had been bonded to in the Holy Spirit was painful. How glad we were to have so many ‘Holding the Ladder’ for us as we had to climb up a new wall in a new place when I was at rock bottom emotionally and physically, having just undergone six months of radical treatment for cancer. If you were one who brought us before the throne of grace, a huge thank you!

God has been good and we feel we are getting linked in again with Continue reading →

Going, going…

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Eagle flying above stormOur last Christmas in London was sad. Christmas Eve was spent having another hormone implant and wishing the doctors a Happy Christmas. Christmas Day was spent with the family, battling hot and cold flushes and feeling rough and fighting sad feelings that this would be the last time we’d spend Christmas round our lovely log fire. Then it was down to business putting our Victorian oak dining table , sideboard and other pieces of furniture on Ebay, taking down pictures and packing crockery to take up to our flat at Walton on the Naze. When the pictures went it seemed as if the heart had gone out of our home.

Six and a half weeks of daily radiotherapy awaits, and then our 38 year London adventure and love affair with All Nations Church will be over, as we have been given notice to leave the Manse at the end of March.  We never imagined it finishing like this – we had high hopes of continuing doing one of the things God seems to have gifted us in, that of  encouraging and helping release ordinary Christians into mission. Perhaps God wants us to do that somewhere else. We are willing.

The challenge now is to soar above the threatening storm clouds like the eagle and not let the approaching storm damage our spirit; it would be so easy to lose our joy in the Lord and become bitter. Can you please keep holding our ladder for us …our spirits are quite fragile at the moment? Pray we’ll know the lifting power of the Holy Spirit supernaturally raising us up, above all that’s going on down here. Thanks.xx

What’s up doc’ ?

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After four years being clear of cancer it was a great blow to discover that traces of prostate cancer had started growing again – even though my prostate had been removed in 2008.

These cells feed off the hormone testosterone and can start to grow anywhere in the body; finding where they are is the challenge. If they lodge in the bones then its very hard to treat them and the patient endures a very painful slow death. Continue reading →

WELCOME TO ‘HOLDING THE LADDER’

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Les & Ann picI don’t know about you but I feel very insecure going up a ladder unless I know there is someone holding it at the bottom for me!

We were feeling a bit insecure and disheartened when discovering my cancer had reappeared just as we were looking forward to retirement, so we asked a few friends if they’d help steady our ladder for us at as we started this climb. The response was amazing, Continue reading →