She was a little old lady from Sheffield with thoughts of retiring, but then life redirected her to Belfast where she found a passion for good news in a city more familiar with the bad…

Hope

Margaret Walker, now 83, was contemplating life after retirement when she felt God call her to west Belfast.  She was watching ‘Songs of Praise’ at the time.  It was a programme focussed on Belfast and as she heard a priest speak and saw images of the city she felt that the Belfast Hills were beckoning her.  She knew she had to come and work here…

That moment of epiphany was in 1986 and by the following year she was over in Belfast.  She remembers visiting Clonard Monastery and was struck by the numbers of people who showed up for services there: “I looked around at the thousands of people going to Clonard and it was like God showed me that there were so many people in Belfast who needed support.”

Margaret said she knew that God was drawing her to the city, but as she looked at Troubles scenes on TV and saw bricks and debris strewn over roads in the aftermath of riots she didn’t feel too much like complying.  And so she laid down a divine challenge: “I told God that I would come but that I would need somewhere to live and something to do.”

The double challenge was answered and Margaret found both a home and a ministry in Suffolk, west Belfast. She said it was an exciting time: “It was an amazing feeling…I packed everything I needed into my car and drove over…and I didn’t even get lost!”

Once here Margaret started to experience a sense of hope as she saw the positive community work that was happening.  And so she became the good news lady, scouring the papers every day for stories of hope, as well as writing her own:  “People back home didn’t believe that really good things were happening in Northern Ireland so I started to write little newsletters to show them.”

“I think I surprised myself when I got to know all the community groups and saw the wonderful work that was happening. I was amazed at the hope that was here.”

Margaret, who is part of a prayer ministry known as Maranatha, has had the chance to meet with and help people from all sections of society: “I love your sense of humour and I love how Northern Irish people have tremendous resilience, but maybe just need the encouragement to be positive.”

But it is a pair of widows and their story of hope carved from tragedy which has had the most impact on Margaret’s life: “I got the chance to pray with two widows, whose husbands were both shot during the Troubles.  They were just both such hopeful people.  They had come together to set up a prayer group in one of their homes and they had this amazing hope for the future of this land.”

And so the Good News Lady continues to seek out those stories of hope in a city slowly coming to terms with the fact that it is full of good…