"My big sister” as I called Lilian as a boy, was a no nonsense sort of person, but at the same time she went out of her way to care for others. As a teenage girl she would push her baby brother’s pram for miles through the parks and countryside of south Edinburgh. There may, I suspect, have been something about this experience that put her off the idea of having a family of her own! However, I am sure that having endured a not too happy home life as a young girl, she was doing all she could to ensure her wee brother’s experience of childhood was the best it could be. Lilian was seldom one to take any prisoners, as I first discovered as a young boy when she would deal with spiders in my bedroom when she was visiting home from university. I also recall a rogue bat that dared to enter the bathroom window of the Manse in St Boswells, which provoked in me a pitiful cry for help. Lilian effortlessly picked up the creature and returned it to the night sky, whilst giving me a lecture about the glorious diversity of creation. Most gruesomely of all, years later when she worked in Tanzania, a very large cockroach entered the kitchen in Dar-es-Salaam when I was there on a visit. Sadly it did not live to tell its pals about having the temerity to challenge a Scottish lady minister! Lilian was a product of a meritocratic educational system that enabled the children of post-war working class parents to realise opportunities that were unheard of previously. She had an incisive mind, which showed in business skills and research abilities, both of which she demonstrated to the full in Daviot, in her last years of active ministry. Lilian took a particular interest in my education, not only by tutoring me for entrance exams to secondary school but also by never allowing me to win at Scrabble and Chess. She certainly always had a competitive edge! I still have a treasured copy of the New English Bible which Lilian gave me as a boy not long after it was first published. Indelibly printed on my mind is a visit she and I made in her Ford Anglia to the Cistercian Monastery at Nunraw Abbey in East Lothian, where she proved a charming and popular conversationalist with the otherwise silent monks. This was one of many trips I would never have experienced had she not prioritised me whenever she could. Lilian was always generous to me. She provided furnishings and crockery for my student flats and my first home when I started work and more than once bailed me out when funds ran dry in those early years of trying to make my way in the world. When she had returned from Africa and was seeking a new charge, we enjoyed many trips together round her old haunts in St Andrews and Pittenweem. I became her lodger for a short while in Edinburgh, and, as I was working shifts, she ensured I was fed, no matter what time I came home. She was really pleased to be appointed to Daviot in ’85 which coincided with me moving to England for a promotion, and letter and telephone became the usual communication once again. Not once did Lilian pass judgement on my lifestyle as a youngster, but was undoubtedly overjoyed when I found faith again as an adult. When I married Sabine, Lilian officiated at our wedding in a Lutheran church in southern Germany. She was delighted about the arrival of our children and became a dedicated godmother to our eldest son. Although she never married, Lilian enjoyed a wide circle of friends from many parts of the world. Her interests included needlework and whilst at Daviot, two beloved Yorkshire terriers! I only had occasional insight into my sister’s professional life, but I am sure that a report from the Church World Mission Council on Lilian’s time in Tanzania sums up well Lilian’s ministry in the many contexts in which she worked. I quote: “…her pastoral skills enabled her to meet the varied needs of the congregation and to weld it into a warm and welcoming fellowship. Her steadfast proclamation of the Gospel encouraged her people in a situation where all faced problems of shortage and security. Her efforts to foster ecumenical contacts were widely appreciated.” It was an enduring feature of her ministry that over the years many people throughout the world benefitted from the generous care and support Lilian offered to them in times of distress or loss. Lilian’s fellow pastor David McMillan and his wife Elizabeth, who first met Lilian when she was a postgraduate student in America, became a life-long friends, visiting Scotland several times. Writing about a trip he and Elizabeth made to Scotland in the mid-80s, David said: "I will always remember a young woman on that day on the way to Iona, proud of her land and proud of her faith." Writing about Lilian’s ministry in Daviot, where he once spent four weeks as a summer pastor, David remarked: "Lilian told us of her tremendous appreciation for the celebration of her tenth anniversary among the five congregations. That gesture was a great gift to her." In many ways I said goodbye to the sister I knew ten years ago, when her stroke changed her life completely. The last years of her life were far from easy, nor was she very easy to care for. But in all this she never faltered in her abundant concern for the welfare of family, friends, former parishioners, and the staff who cared for her. I am proud of my sister and all she achieved in her life and grateful for all she did for me as her wee brother, and the care and love she showed to my wife and young family. And above all, I am grateful for her witness and lifelong love of the Lord in the good times and equally in the bad. She was his servant throughout her life and has returned to where, as we are reminded in scripture, mourning and crying and pain, will be no more.