A thanksgiving service for the life of Squadron Leader Michael Cole OBE, explorer and practical missionary, took place at Gorsley Baptist Chapel on Saturday, October 6th. He was born in London on April 10th, 1935 and died of cancer at his home on September 25th, 2012, aged 77.

Michael Cole adopted the words of Victorian missionary David Livingstone, 'Sympathy is no substitute for action,' as his personal motto. He passed them on to countless others, encouraging them to respond to the needs of marginalised people in the developing world. For more than 40 years Michael Cole pursued adventure with a purpose to help some of world's most remote communities. He led five major expeditions using hovercraft on previously un-navigable rivers to connect isolated people to medical services and community development. He mobilised thousands of others, especially young people from the UK, to stretch themselves in life-changing endeavour in East Asia and Latin America. Cole was motivated by his Christian faith. Many of his fellow adventurers shared his beliefs, but he welcomed all who had a heart for the world's poor.

Michael Edwin Cole was baptised as a teeenger and became a Youth Leader and committed member of the Youth Crusader movement. In the summer of 1963, he met Jackie Downing on a Scripture Union beach mission and they were married in February 1964. They became the devoted parents of Carolyn (1966) and Nicholas (1967).

Mike joined the Royal Air Force in 1962 and was promoted to Squadron Leader in 1971. Commanding the Physical Education Squadron and major sports and athletics facility at Cosford, West Midland, he led numerous expeditions including taking a revolutionary Hovercraft vehicle to Nepal to demonstrate lifesaving communications in remote areas of the world. Later these included China, where a child vaccination programme sponsored by UNICEF was carried out, and Peru, in the aftermath of the Falklands war. Exploring the headwaters of the Amazon and demonstrating effective medical services, helped restore goodwill between the UK and Peru. He was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II, in 1983, for services to humanity.

In 1985 the RAF assigned him to lead Operation Raleigh, the young peoples' adventure and community service programme in Peru.

In 1993, at the invitation of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of Nicaragua, Mike developed a Hovercraft Communications Project to connect isolated communities, of the Caribbean coast and along the Rio San Juan, to medical services and community development. For this compassionate work he received Nicaragua's highest award: the Medal of Honour. In 1996 he established the Peace and Hope Trust. Since then teams of volunteers have travelled annually to Nicaragua in January, July and November to undertake worthwhile tasks of practical and spiritual significance, including medical work, vocational training, farming and numerous enterprises from bakeries to barbers.

In recent years, brushing aside his own deteriorating health, he continued to visit Nicaragua several times a year with characteristic resilience to initiate new areas of service, including experimental farming, most notably the 'moringa' miracle plant. The Michael Cole eco-lodge training facility was opened by his son Nick in Matagalpa, central Nicaragua on 31 July 2012 as he watched on from the UK via a web cam. However his real legacy is the lives of thousands of young people in the UK and Latin America whom he inspired and guided into humanitarian service, resourceful leadership and to realise their potential.

His wife and their two children survive him.