SHE’S dabbled with the occult, worked alongside prostitutes and drug addicts, and looked after the health of convicted murderers and paedophiles.

Laura Cameron (second from right) training on her ordination course. Photo (c) Ash Mills

It’s not the sort of background you might expect a clergy person to have, but Laura Cameron is starting work as assistant curate in Shedfield and Wickham in Hampshire. She is one of six people who will be ordained as deacons at Portsmouth Cathedral on Saturday (June 29), after which nine others will be ordained as priests.

The 58-year-old mother-of-three has had a fascinating life, including a background in gypsy spirituality, a spell working in Winchester Prison and her current job helping addicts in Portsmouth.

Her great-grandfather was a Romany gypsy. Laura grew up in a normal family environment, but inherited some of his spirituality. As a teenager she experimented with ouija boards, levitation and automatic writing. But singing Away in a Manger at Christmas in school assemblies still made her cry each year.

She trained as a nurse at Winchester and enjoyed helping the hospital chaplain distribute Communion to patients. After qualifying, she moved to work in a hospital in Gloucester, and kept bumping into Christians who told her about Jesus.

Laura got married and had her first child, Rowan, in 1983. Rowan was born prematurely and Laura had to resuscitate her when she stopped breathing a few weeks afterwards. Ultimately Laura’s marriage broke down and her husband left when Rowan was two and her sister Megan was 16 months old.

After moving back to Bursledon, near Southampton, she joined a church pre-school group. A helper, who became a friend, gave her a tape about the gospel, which Laura kept in a cupboard for six months. Strange things then began happening in her house, including things being moved around, a gypsy cursing them and an uneasy atmosphere.

“It was like being haunted,” she said. “The more interested I became in Christianity, the worse it seemed to get. I remember sitting in the dark one night and saying ‘If there really is a God, and Jesus is really true, then reveal yourself to me and I will give my life to you.’

“Then on 26 November 1986, I couldn’t sleep and heard a voice saying ‘Go and listen to the tape’. I ignored it, but heard the voice three times. I eventually put the tape on and listened as it described what being a Christian was and how Jesus gave his life for us. I felt so convicted and ashamed of what I’d done, I began to cry.

“I felt Jesus was standing there in the room, but couldn’t lift my eyes. But I asked him to forgive me, to come into my life and be my Lord and Saviour. Then I felt as though I was being wrapped in a heated blanket. It was the most wonderful experience I’d ever had.”

Laura’s vicar and a diocesan deliverance adviser prayed in her house and the problems ended. She needed healing ministry, and almost immediately felt a call to become ordained. She dismissed it as ridiculous, as she didn’t even know the basics of the gospel, but others who prayed for her felt the same.

She spent time working in the red light district of Southampton, where she met prostitutes and drug addicts, and accompanied them to church.

Laura went to a Bishop’s Advisory Panel in 2000, but was turned down for ordination. It took her five years to recover from that rejection and threw herself into her career. She worked in Winchester Prison as acting head of healthcare, looking after the health of 700 inmates, but even there the chaplain asked her if she had considered ordination.

By this time she was worshipping at Holy Trinity Church, Newtown, in Portsmouth diocese, and told her then vicar, the Rev Stuart Holt, that the call to ordination was still there. She was accepted in 2010 and has been studying on the Southern Theological Education and Training Scheme (STETS) for the past three years.

She works in a 30-bed drug and alcohol addiction treatment centre in Farlington, Portsmouth, for two days a week. For the time being, she’ll continue to work there on Mondays and Tuesdays and will be working in her parishes for the rest of the week.

“The experience of God coming into my life completely changed me,” she said. “I do feel drawn to work with broken people, and to offer them God’s love.”

She’ll be ordained alongside Damon Draisey, who discovered during his three-year course at STETS that he was dyslexic. Damon was formerly one of the leadership team at Revelation Church, an evangelical free church in Portsmouth, and has also worked in Africa with his wife. He will become assistant curate at the parish of Warblington-with-Emsworth after hearing God’s call to be ordained.

Damon became involved with St Nicholas Church, North End, in Portsmouth, where he led an alternative worship event called Ethos.

“I remember while I was at Revelation Church, lying in bed one day and God spoke to me about putting together an alternative worship event in an Anglican church that blended old and new liturgies,” he said.

“I thought that was unlikely, as I had no contact with any Anglican churches, but a few days later my wife met the Rev Bev Robertson from St Nicholas, and she said she was trying to set up some alternative worship.

“While that was happening, five people in two months asked me when I was going to become a vicar, so I started to push the doors to see if God would open them. I kept saying: ‘Are you sure, God?’, but once I started it was totally right. The ordination training has been hard, as I’d never written an assignment and I found out during those three years that I was dyslexic.  

“It meant I was reading and writing a bit more slowly, but the course helped me. But I’m trusting God and excited about being ordained.”

The full list of those being ordained by the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Christopher Foster, this weekend is as follows:

To be ordained deacon at Portsmouth Cathedral, at 12noon on Saturday (June 29):
Dawn Banting (who will serve at our cathedral), Laura Cameron (Shedfield and Wickham), Lewis Connolly (St Alban’s, West Leigh), Damon Draisey (Warblington-with-Emsworth), Steven Marsh (St Edmund’s and Holy Rood, Stubbington), and Janet Trevithick (St Peter’s, Titchfield).


To be ordained priest at Portsmouth Cathedral, at 6pm on Saturday (June 29):
The Rev Veronica Brown (Newport Minister and St John’s, Newport), the Rev Thomas James (Petersfield and Buriton), the Rev Peter Lambert (Holy Trinity and Christ Church, Gosport), the Rev Anne McCabe (Christ Church, Portsdown), the Rev Dawn Oakley (St Blasius, Shanklin), the Rev Christine Prior-Jones (Steep and Froxfield with Privett), the Rev Mark Tariq (Liss), the Rev Keith Wickert (Holy Trinity with St Columba, Fareham) and the Rev Alice Wood (Farlington)