The Tale Of Three Beards!

When the minister of a Welsh church decided to make a big sacrifice for his opposite numbers in India - the pastors there decided to get involved, too!

There was a remarkable coincidence in store when Nigel Douglas, the former church minister from Newport who was HHI's secretary, made the ultimate sacrifice of a bearded man -- he had offered to have a complete shave, if sponsors would put money to the Tentmakers, the group of poor pastors who work with Tom Sutherland in India.

There were over a hundred HHI supporters present to watch Nigel go through his ordeal, and to everyone's surprise, pictures were shown of Tom and his Indian pastors, who had prepared an amazing demonstration in support -- Tom, who has himself been a bearded man for many years, had decided to undergo a simultaneous beard-shave, over the other side of the world, as a gesture of thanks!

The results of Nigel's shave raised the wonderful sum of over £2,000.

There was another very strange twist to the story. Tom later sent a message from India saying that on exactly the same evening of the shave in Newport, he himself was in the big hospital in Trivandrum, where he was approached by a woman whose brother was dying. She asked Tom if he would shave the dying man and then take a picture of him, so that the woman would have something with which to remember her brother.

"A shaving and a photo at the same time as in Newport," wrote Tom later. "A coincidence? Or God saying that He was pleased that Nigel had decided to shave his beard for the poor?"