10/04/2021
MEMORIAL FOR NANCY McELROY
INTRODUCTION
This is an unusual service and we are so sad not to be able to meet together and celebrate Nancy’s life in a fitting way. Covid has meant that many of the older folk who know Nancy in Pinelands would not be able to attend. This Memorial will reach the many friends who are all over the world. In order to make this on-line memorial a little more meaningful, we suggest that you find a place and a time that is convenient for you to read the various elements on this page so that you won’t be distracted as you do so.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, we thank you for Nancy’s life, for her wonderfully happy disposition, for her friends all over the world. We trust her into Your everlasting care. May she rest in Peace. Amen
BIBLE READINGS
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.” (John 11:25–26)
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in Me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am… Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:1–4, 27)
Nancy was born on 3rd April 1946 and she was called Home on 7th April 2021, just four days after her 75th birthday. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. This life was quite extraordinary as you will see below.
NANCY THE CHILD AND SISTER
She was born in Germiston where she lived until she was eighteen. She was the younger of two girls. I am her sister Babette. We both attended St Catherine’s Convent for all our school years and attended the Presbyterian Church Sunday School.
NANCY THE TEACHER
Nancy trained as a Junior Primary teacher and taught in a few posts before settling in Johannesburg at the YWCA where she gave herself to the Lord. In her late twenties she studied at the Kalk Bay Bible College for two years where she obtained her diploma in Theology. She often said that those were the two happiest years of her life.
From there Nancy went to Durban and taught at the Open-Air School in Durban. She first taught children with physical disabilities and then she studied through Unisa so that she could teach the deaf children. She was accomplished at sign language.
During this time, she worked voluntarily at the Christian Union camps on the Natal South Coast every school holiday. There she sang and played the guitar and she was great fun for the children who attended. Her parents had retired to Scottburgh, so she spent many weekends there with them. She also loved to camp and often went off to the Drakensburg with her Volksie and a tent.
Around this time, she became involved with AIM (African Inland Mission). In 1983 the Deaf Section of her school closed down and Nancy took this as a sign from God that she must become a missionary.
NANCY THE MISSIONARY
She applied to AIM and was sent to Kenya. She needed to learn to speak Masai, so she spent a couple of months with a Masai family in Nairobi before being sent to work in a home for children with polio. They were called the ‘Spider Children’ as they could only crawl. As she was not a nurse, they gave Nancy the accounts to do. She also drove children home to their villages when they had been fitted with callipers. She would use this opportunity to tell the grateful parents about the wonderful good news of the Gospel. She and Georgie, a Scottish nurse who ran the home, fostered a new-born baby whose mother had died. He was called Kutayo. They would take turns in feeding him at night and this was when Nancy felt the joys of motherhood.
By now she was fluent in Masai. A few years later there was an unfortunate incident of corruption in the home which Nancy uncovered while doing the books. It ended up in Nancy having to leave there. She had no idea where she could go and she was heartbroken because she would have to leave Kutayo with Georgie. Her prayers were then answered in an unusual way. One of the cleaners, N’goto Tino, came to Nancy and said that she knew that Nancy would never steal anything and she offered for Nancy to come to live in her home. Nancy took up this offer. Masai huts are very low and very smoky, so Nancy bought a tin rondavel for herself. The Masai also use the cattle kraal as their toilet but that was not on for Nancy. She had to find a Kikuyu tribesman to dig her a long drop as Masai do not do manual work.
As the years went by Nancy made herself very comfortable with solar power. She and N’goto Tino went out and planted churches under trees where they taught the local women beadwork and all about Jesus. The men would not listen to Nancy so she taught the herd boys. Each week she showed her Jesus films outside her hut and because they had never seen movies, the men would creep closer to look too. She pretended that she hadn’t seen them. She built a classroom next to her hut to teach the boys to read. Later she bought bicycles for these same herd boys, who were now men, so that they could go out to evangelise. They had become firm followers of Jesus!
She visited families in the area to help them and to spread the Word, so she had to drive on the most terrible roads. She often broke down but always trusted the Lord to help her.
Each evening she would walk away from the village to have her quiet time without all the people following her. She lived in a beautiful place with gazelle and snakes --- she often killed those.
Nancy would wear her full Masai outfit for ceremonial occasions.
Altogether Nancy was in Kenya for eighteen years. However, after each four-year stint, she would need to take a year’s furlough to go around churches in South Africa telling her stories. She would then collect funds for her next four years. On her last furlough she fainted a few times which was put down to exhaustion but eventually they found that she had four tropical diseases in her blood at the same time. She was hospitalised and then had to recuperate for several months before going back to Kenya.
NANCY IN HER ‘HAPPY BUBBLE’
She had only been back in Kenya for about six months when she was fetching water from a pump station, as there was a severe drought. She was filling water bottles on top of her 4X4 vehicle when the pressure of the water increased and she lost her balance. She landed on her head on a rock and was unconscious. The pump attendant managed to drive her in her truck to the polio home which was quite nearby. They then took her by Kombi taxi to hospital in Nairobi. She was operated on to remove clots from her brain but damage had already been done. She was in a coma and had to be airlifted to Cape Town where she only regained consciousness after three months. Then followed lots of therapy to get her walking and talking again. She regained her speech but not all her mobility and she was left with frontal lobe damage which meant poor short-term memory and a very weak left side.
That all happened twenty years ago and during this time she lived at Helen Keller home in Pinelands. There she was an inspiration to the nurses as she never complained. She would teach them Masai songs and they would sing as they showered her. She also loved to sing all the camp songs she still knew from long ago. I call that her ‘Happy Bubble’. She lived in the ‘Now’, always praising the Lord and being cheerful. Her favourite saying was “God is Good!”
A committee of friends was formed to look after Nancy’s needs. Some of these are pictured here during a birthday party for her in 2018.
Over four years ago she was diagnosed with a very slow-growing malignant tumour in her stomach. This didn’t bother her much until mid-2020 when she started to have severe pain. She was on morphine after that.
On the Monday before Easter, she was taken to hospital as she had lapsed into a semi-conscious state. We were told that she was unlikely to live a day. We were not allowed to visit as she was in isolation whilst awaiting the result of a Covid test. That came through late on the Wednesday as negative, so I visited her on Thursday morning. This was the first time I had been physically close to her in over a year, as the few visits during lock-down had been through a fence. Now I could see that she had lost a lot of weight and her eyes seemed so much bigger. She had surprised the doctors by recovering somewhat. I was not allowed to stay more than about ten minutes. Then the following Wednesday the hospital called us to come immediately as she was slipping away. The drive was an hour long and when we got there, I could see how bad she was. I sat with her for about two hours during which time she knew I was there. We prayed and spoke about her leaving soon to go to Heaven where she would see Jesus and our parents. She nodded as I spoke but was too weak to speak. We then went home and received the call at 8:30 that evening that she had gone. Her amazing 75 years on Earth were at an end. That day became her first birthday in Heaven where she is now able to dance free of pain.
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. – 2 Timothy 4:7-8
THANK YOU
This word does not say what I really mean when I say how grateful I am.
There are many, many people who touched Nancy’s life so I can only mention some.
Those who donated money while Nancy was a missionary continued to support her for the twenty years that she was an invalid. That is incredible and a real miracle! I have no idea what we would have done without you.
The prayer supporters who faithfully lifted Nancy up to the Lord, were an inspiration to Nancy. She remembered you whenever I read out the list of names to her.
The ‘Nancy committee’ consisted of Lorna Eglin and Betty Alcock, who looked after Nancy in the early years of her accident. Eileen Alison and Elizabeth Chudley helped with her clothing and in visiting her. Eileen also chaired the committee, wrote thank you letters and the regular Newsletters. (I took over this later). Barbara and Ian McDonald (Nancy’s previous boss from AIM) were wonderful friends. Beryl Vink took Nancy on adventurous outings, even to the theatre and once to see the snow. Miriam Butcher helped so much too. The AIM staff, especially Abie and Frances Joseph, saw to her medical and practical needs. There were also people who took Nancy to Church when she was still able to go. Verity Hagerman looked after Nancy’s finances and her flat in Durban until it was sold a few years ago. I also need to thank the staff of Helen Keller Society who looked after Nancy for so many years. They were wonderful as well as Nancy’s GP during the past year, Dr. Jenny Crombie. I must also mention the compassionate staff of Louis Leipold Hospital where Nancy was well cared for till she died. Thanks too to her Baptist Minister, the Reverend Andrew Parker who allowed us to use his website for this.
Many of these good people went ahead of Nancy to the next life so she is with them now. Others are no longer in good health. I wish them blessings for their future.
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Rest in Peace, Nancy, my precious sister. You will be sadly missed by me, my husband, Geoff and my two sons, Trevor and Steven. Nancy adored all these men in her life. Candice my step-daughter is at the back.
LINK TO THE HYMNS: https://www.funeralbasics.org/top-10-hymns-funeral-ceremony/
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