Beyond any reasonable measure Pam and I are well beyond our “best before” date. A lifelong teacher (me) and lifelong health care administrator (Pam) we were looking for nothing more when coming to England than a an extended holiday while we eased into retirement. Apparently the Lord had other plans for now we find ourselves with another Christian organization as volunteer teacher/administrators. We are more than a little surprised, and more than a little intimidated, frankly!

There are other organizations that provide a similar service to our own, and this organization is a relatively new player in a global enterprise. There is a degree of cooperation between these organizations so as to maximize global impact.

The Lord led us in a most organic way to this organization. In Germany where we served for a year in the mid-nineties, I worked under the director of the school who started this new organization. Clearly the Lord had been preparing us for these roles for some years before we arrived.

Now that we have arrived in Horsham, we are going to take some time to get settled. There are always transitional hiccups with moving to another country, even if it is the country of your birth. Most of the personal ones are either sorted or soon will be. Then there are the settling in issues with the mission itself. Most of those remain to be sorted. One of the most important took place as we spent the last weekend at a retreat with our staff in Shropshire.

Cloverly Hall, where the retreat was held, is a typically drafty old county estate with horse barns converted to conference rooms. These two old tropical plants found the damp air chilly with a notable lack of sunshine. However, there were spectacular views of the British countryside to compensate and jovial air of camaraderie to brighten the spirits. I drank gallons of tea to warm my insides and wore several layers of clothes wherever I went. On a spare afternoon a new friend Clive and I went to explore the canals and churches of the area and were not disappointed.

It was a longish drive to Shropshire of about four hours, but our new little Ford Fiesta had no trouble keeping up with the 70 mph traffic on the M6. It was nice to be able to see the British countryside, and the stop in Stratford was a lifelong dream. The retreat was a great introduction to the mission and its people, and we look forward to getting deeper into our roles and responsibilities with our new lives in England.