EALING COMMUNITY SAYS FAREWELL TO DEVOTED CHRISTIAN, ANNE RAVEN

A DEVOTED Christian who spent her life helping others was remembered at a funeral service conducted by Lodge Brothers & Wickenden this week.

Anne Raven, of Loveday Road, West Ealing did ‘amazing things for other people’ despite battling chronic depression since her late teens.

Daughter Carol Barwick, 37, and son David Raven, 30, said her desire to help others was inspired by both her experience growing up in an area ravaged by the Second World War and the efforts of her father working as a draftsman to help rebuild Germany.
David said: “Mum always wanted to restore what was broken, focusing on people and communities.”

Anne’s work ranged from helping the homeless, to making flying visits with her then husband Martin to anyone in crisis, to organising a ‘prayer wall’ where she could mobilise her many Christian friends to pray for those in need.

She would often volunteer at the soup kitchen in St John’s Church, West Ealing, and even invite people in need to her house to give them support.

David added: “There where times when I would come home from school to find two or three complete strangers in the house. She always did what she could to help.”

Anne built a huge network of friends. She was always on the phone catching up with people, often for seven hours a day and got to know almost everyone she met.
Carol said her mother enjoyed a good joke, was always singing and always saw the best in people.
She added: “She used to paraphrase Philippians chapter four: verse eight of the bible saying ‘whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is beautiful, think on these things’. That was her motto.”

Anne was born in Cheam, Sutton, and came to London as a young adult to study catering. She met her husband Martin through the Quakers and was married to him for most of her life before they divorced in 2011.
She died of a heart attack aged 69 on August 21.
As well as her two children she leaves behind her brother Bernard Godding and a grandson.