CANADA
London Free Press
PATRICK MALONEY, Free Press Reporter 2005-09-10 02:33:51
For two decades, Ambassador Baptist Church was like a home for Ed and Debora Connor, its congregation like an extended family.
The Connors were there from its early 1980s beginning in London, when Ed and Pastor Roy Wood established the independent church to reach out to the city's troubled homeless population.
The couple was married -- by Wood -- in October 1982 and eventually bought the home that originally housed the church.
Ed and Debora's world didn't just involve the Ambassador church. It revolved around it.
"It was the centre of our lives," Ed Connor, clutching his wife's right hand, said at a news conference yesterday. "We thought that was the direction for our lives."
Life, however, took a dramatic turn two years ago when the Connors and their 11 children left the church after a falling out with Wood.
The couple then launched a multimillion-dollar civil suit against their former friend and former church, which was hit Thursday by sex assault charges against Wood, another pastor, a deacon and another man.