Jonathan's Moneybox

The entire site is simply but profoundly dedicated to the memory of a courageous young man called Jonathan Mosgrove, whose brief but eventful life touched so many others with the love of his wonderful Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ.

Jonathan Mosgrove

Every pupil and teacher at Lagan saw his determination and his sense of fun and realised that he was the same as them. I have absolutely no doubt that the lives of everyone he met at Lagan, those he knew well and those he knew simply to see, have been touched by his short life.




George Bates extended tribute to young Jonathan

I hope you don’t mind me relating to you a recent development in my ministry.

This past year has brought some amazing opportunities for serving Our Glorious Redeemer and Lord Jesus Christ and remarkable answers to prayer, as souls have been gloriously saved, and saints have been refreshed. But one thing stands out in my memory as a Divine intervention, that blesses my soul every time that I think of it.

It centres around a young fourteen year old boy called Jonathan.

I would think that I am bound to have seen Jonathan beforehand, inasmuch as I had known and loved and prayed for the whole family ever since the earliest days of my new found faith in Christ, way back at the beginning of 1968.

Jonathan’s great grandparents, Lily and Davy Stitt, had become two of my dearest friends and fellow prayer warriors, as we spent literally hundreds of hours in prayer and fellowship together. Nevertheless, my first clear recollection of him was as a little boy of about 5 or 6 years of age, out playing with a crowd of other children around him in the East Belfast Sydenham area, outside the window of the room where I was sitting with his mum


The thing I found remarkable was that he was continually dancing and skipping up and down, like a jumping jack in the middle of a crowd of kids. All the rest of them were just standing there talking amongst themselves, but not Jonathan. He alone was prancing about without ceasing even for a few minutes break, for the entire hour that I was in the house speaking to his mother, Jacqueline.

I had called in to see Jacqueline and to find out how the family were keeping. As I sat there chatting with her and watching the boy outside, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked

“Is Jonathan hyperactive or something Jacqueline? For he hasn’t stood still for one moment since I’ve been here, even though the others are simply standing discussing something”.

Jacqueline took a deep breath and began to enlighten me as to the fact that this was not the case, but that the doctors had broken the sad news to the child that because of his physical condition (Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy) he would eventually have to go into a wheelchair for the rest of his life, so he had purposely decided to do all his dancing and jumping now...from morning to night.

After a small operation on his tendons in the heels and hips to loosen them, the callipers were the next contraption to be mastered by this brave and good natured child, who never complained, but simply accepted the path that opened up before him, supported by the remarkable outpouring of love that Jonathan experienced from his close knit family.

Afterwards came the wheelchair and a major operation to insert a steel rod into his back to hold his head and body erect, which by the Grace of God he brought him through.

Throughout these seasons of suffering, the Assembly of believers at the Meeting House in Randalstown majored in prayer with heavy hearts, for God’s grace, and help, and strength, and comfort, for Jonathan and his sister Donna, with his broken hearted mother Jacqueline and father Tom, grandmother Olive, during those turbulent anxious days, and often sleepless nights.

We knew it was sure to have been a devastating time for them, and that the mental and nervous and emotional stress and strain, was bound to have exhausted them completely, but we were so impressed by the amazing loyalty and the faithful devotion that they displayed towards Jonathan at all times. The love bond deepened between the family and our little assembly.

Then one tragic day at 14 years of age, the van in which Jonathan was travelling as a passenger was involved in a road traffic accident, and the injuries that he received proved fatal. Everyone was devastated.

I was concluding a week of Gospel meetings in Scotland on Sunday 15th October 2000, where incidently there was a precious soul saved on every one of those 7 nights, each one with strong crying, spontaneously weeping their way to Christ. Liz rang to tell me that Jonathan had gone to be with his Lord earlier that day. Jacqueline asked me if I would conduct his funeral as soon as I would get home again to Northern Ireland, which I did on the 19th October 2000.

It was an amazing funeral at Roselawn Cemetery, on the very peak of the Castlereagh area hills a day that will forever remain indelibly etched in my memory. All his weeping school class lined both sides of the route that led to his grave, with all the school teachers lovingly standing by, obviously deeply affected in their love for their dearly cherished pupil. The sky was blue, the Lord was there and as the Spirit of God fell upon us, the sorrow of many hearts was revealed as those same teachers stood separately from one another, surrounded by weeping groups of their own school children, for so long afterwards.