There is a running joke in our office that the nearby town of Guildford is the center of the universe, or at least of England. It seems that every time we get into a conversation about almost any subject, eventually there will be some connection to Guildford. So when Liz, a friend from our home church in Canada came to visit us, it was no surprise that she should want to go and see where she grew up, in of course Guildford.
Liz and Gary were good friends at our home church and we were delighted to have company from there. So after a little tour of Horsham, where Liz had gone to school at one time, we set off in our little Fiesta for Guildford, parking at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre down by the Wey River, still graced by the locks and watermills that made it one of the first navigable rivers in Britain.
From there we walked to the grounds of Guildford Castle, built by William the Conqueror and once used by Henry III as a royal residence. Only the castle keep remains, and the grounds became public property in 1888 to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The city does an excellent job with the lawns and gardens around the keep and it was a most pleasant walk through to the High Street.
Guildford High Street was most picturesque. The High Street itself predates the Norman Conquest and can be traced back to Saxon times. The prominent Guildhall Clock, with its gold leaf face, dates from the 1683. There was a newer mall downtown along with the older and more interesting shops and after a good look around we settled for lunch in a little cul-de-sac.
Wanting to check out the home of Lewis Caroll, we circled back through the castle grounds and made the hike up the hill to Caroll’s residence, “The Chestnuts.” Caroll, aka Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a professor of mathematics at Oxford and initially rented the property for his sisters. In later years Caroll retired to this residence and died there in 1898.
Long a fan of Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland tales, I was eager to see his residence and poke through his memorabilia. Unfortunately, the home was closed for upkeep and repairs, so we opted for a walk along the Wey River instead. Since it had begun to rain, we thought it best to head back to the theatre for cup of tea before we drove back to Horsham. Another lovely day in one of the charming towns and villages of England.
Pam has six brothers. Most of them live in Southwestern Ontario, and most of them have never left, except on vacation, and then usually someplace close by. But two of her brothers, Russ and Gregg, have been a little more adventurous and now live in British Columbia.
Gregg left Ontario years ago and for a long while worked as a chef in a high-profile restaurant in Vancouver. Getting tired of the stress and constant demands of that position, he took up driving a fork lift in a warehouse. Vancouver is Canada’s largest western port, and Gregg was never without work. The job had decent benefits, including a pension, that allows him to live pretty comfortably in one of Canada’s most expensive cities.
Along the way Gregg met and settled into a relationship that produced a boy, Tyler, that Gregg has raised more or less on his own. The two of them have had a close relationship over the years and Tyler often drops by to check on his dad and make sure he is alright.
Gregg also has an abiding love of motorcycles, especially his ’73 MotoGuzzi on which he spends hours and money getting custom machined parts for his hard to service bike. Steve and Gregg had some lengthy chats about all thing mechanical, including his dad’s Norton, that was UK government issue in WW2.
The three of us then took the ferry across the strait between the mainland and Vancouver Island, which remains for us one of the best ferry rides in the world even after all the sailings we have been on in our long wanderings. The ferry has to turn and weave through the Gulf Islands, offering new views at every turn. The day was gusty and cold, and we could still see some snow on the mountains on the American side of the strait, but it was a wonderfully smooth sailing with calm seas. Unfortunately, no dolphins or whales were sighted on this passage.
Russ now lives just outside Victoria and has had quite a few problems with his health of late. He was delighted to see us, as not many of Pam’s brothers are inclined to travel that far away from Ontario. Russ has had a very checkered employment career, ranging from restaurant management to working for the BC government promoting sports activities. He has always had a gift for building relationships and promoting new ideas. In later years, he studied Facilities Management and eventually established his own property management company.
Unfortunately, a couple of years ago he developed cancer. The surgery and chemotherapy at the height of the Covid pandemic took their toll on his health and led to his decision to retire. His life is pretty quiet now, but he has a lovely little place on the island and we all enjoyed many hours visiting over countless games of euchre.
As you can tell from her smile, Pam was delighted to see her brothers again after such a long absence. We are both hoping that our new positions in the UK will allow us to make this trip out west to see family more often. All of us are getting older and the time spent together this year, although long overdue, was particularly sweet and meaningful.
One of our first tasks in coming into this new position with Teach Beyond was to hire a new national director. The Lord’s choice was obvious to us, even if it wasn’t to others. Shankar Shikdar and his wife Lusia had served the Lord faithfully and well their entire lives. He had come to Christ through ABWE’s work in Malumghat and her father was a lifelong educator.
As National Director we are hoping that Shankar will be able to expand our mission’s vision beyond William Carey Academy to other projects. We had heard that there were a couple worth investigating both in Dhaka and outside the city, so we took a flight to Dhaka and booked into the ABWE Guesthouse there.
During our time in Bangladesh, Dhaka was already 7 or 8 million people, and its infrastructure was groaning under the burden. Now at over 25 million it is in accelerating collapse with broken roadways and crumbling building. The roads were so congested that it took most of two hours to make the two-mile journey from the airport to the guesthouse. We walked to a local restaurant for a meal and returned to the guesthouse without exploring the dark streets nearby.
The following day we took a longish drive to see a school in the area that wished to partner with our mission. The son of the school’s director was an associate of our mission and had recommended the school to us, so we judged it to be worth a look. It was not. The school was poorly attended and managed and showed signs of more than financial neglect. As charming as the few children still attending were, there was something clearly amiss in the school.
A visit to a nearby campus of a local AoG work was equally disappointing. The campus had a vast complex of buildings that could easily teach and house hundreds of students, yet there was only a small scattering of local children in a few ESL classes. The situation seemed puzzling to us, but as Shankar explained, AoG has soiled its own reputation in the country through endemic corruption and sexual abuse of its staff and students and locals would no longer allow their children to attend. What a waste of millions of dollars of the Lord’s money!
A visit to a computer training center in Dhaka the following day was a little more encouraging. Crammed into a space down a little side alley, the Christian entrepreneur there had managed to leverage his own technological expertise into a Christian outreach to young people eager to improve their computer literacy. Here was a project that we definitively could and should help.
We also visited a coffee shop started by a Bangladeshi Christian that was a great example of the ‘business as missions’ model that can be used effectively in countries like this that restrict Christian evangelism. The coffee shop was located in the diplomatic part of Dhaka which was the only part of town that actually functioned well. It was nice to get a decent latte.
The following day we flew out of Dhaka back to England. Recognizing that the two hour trip to the airport could well take three or four, we had the driver drop us off at the Marriot Hotel, a mere half mile from the airport. For the cost of light lunch and a few coffees we spent a pleasant afternoon on the hotel terrace catching up our emails away from the bustle and noise below. It was a nice respite from an arduous trip.
Many years ago, when we served with ABWE in Bangladesh, I was drawn to the national school on the hospital compound run by Manik Roy, a devout and intelligent Christian, who had a vision for leading the sons and daughters of the hospital workers to Christ through education.
We developed a friendship, and I asked him one day if I might teach at the school to see how the students there learned. The experience was life-changing for me. I saw a form of education that I had no knowledge of except in textbooks. And I felt a response to my own teaching that was both gratifying and deeply humbling.
Here were students who had quite literally nothing but the shirts on their backs and the meager notebooks in their hands, overjoyed at the prospect of learning whatever it was I was willing to teach them. Did I say overjoyed? I meant desperate. As desperate as parched soil needs rain. Their desperation was driven by the understanding that it was only through education that they would ever escape the poverty in which they and their families were bound.
From that tiny seed of a day, I began to dream of returning to Bangladesh. Not for a year, but for a lifetime. I began to talk about it with others and think through its implications. When I had it all thought through, I approached the field council and asked for permission to present a proposal. If they would designate the national school as a legitimate area of missionary service, I would return to Bangladesh fulltime to lead that area of ministry.
I was sure that of course the field council would accept my proposal. It just made so much sense. Here was a mission field ripe for the harvest. Of course they would want me to come back and head that up. So when the chairman of the field council came over to our house to say that the field council had rejected my proposal, I could not process what he was saying. “We are not an educational mission,” he said. “We are a medical mission.” And that was that.
Except that it wasn’t, for I wasn’t the only one with that vision. Jim and Marilou Long, newly arrived on the field, had the same vision. And ten years later the two of them brought that vision to life. William Carey Academy has now stood for 25 years as a testimony to their perseverance and God’s good grace and today we had a chance to walks its halls and speak to its teachers as they prepared their classrooms for the coming school year.
And how is this for circumstance? The man that we hired as our National Director of the school and the other projects of our mission back in March of last year, is married to the daughter of my friend, Manik Roy, the director of the national school in Malumghat all those years ago. How wonderful is our God is to bring all of those pieces together! What a blessing it is to serve Him!
Our new principal of the school Dana, and her flat mate Natasha were gracious enough to invite us to stay with them during our time in Chittagong, and we gratefully accepted their kind offer. It gave us a chance to get to know them both a little better and for them to overcome their hesitancy concerning us as well. Both had been scarred by past associations with our mission, so we had a fair amount of bridge mending to do.
We were able to spend some time together with the members of our team and see their new classrooms in the building the Lord had provided. We also got to meet Peni, who heads up the Free School for the children of the slums who attend for a very minimal cost and get an education that keeps them off the streets and gives them hope for a brighter future themselves.
We also spent some time investigating other properties in the city as the school is badly in need of larger facilities to handle all the students who wish to attend. I was able to deliver a couple of workshops on classroom practice to the staff, and we got to spend some time with our national director Shankar, and his most gracious wife Lusia. Our time in Chittagong was such an encouraging visit, it did our hearts good.
August is now upon us, and as every teacher knows, that means September and the start of a new school year is just around the corner. We had been invited by William Carey Academy in Bangladesh to attend their preschool retreat in Malumghat and bring an inspirational message to the staff as they prepared for the start of the year.
I was also asked to prepare a series of lessons on teaching practice from my long years of experience, which I gladly agreed to. Both of these tasks occupied much of my time following our return to England, but there were few of us in the office and I had some peace and quiet to concentrate on the task.
So great was my focus that I had fail to adequately prepare myself for the emotional upheaval that going back to Bangladesh after so many years entailed. Although we had been involved in missions with Trans World Radio in southwestern Ontario since the early 80s, Bangladesh was our first overseas missionary adventure. We left in July of 1985 and arrived in the country with our three tiny children, aged 2, 4, and 5 with a great deal of trepidation
I was reminded of all the turmoil that this overseas service brought into our lives as we travelled down to Malumghat with a busload full of WCA teachers and arrived on the hospital compound where we had lived all those years ago. All those memories came flooding back lack in a tsunami of joy and regret, thrilling discovery and life-changing trials by fire.
Our old friend and missional colleague, Mary LeCouteur, still serving at the hospital since she herself arrived in the mid-80s, had arranged for us to stay in the same house that we had lived in all those years ago. While we both appreciated the gesture, we were both near the edge of tears as we wandered through the rooms again, each one seemingly still filled with the sights and sounds of our children and our family life there.
Here were the paths we had walked with our children and colleagues, the school where I taught, the pool where we swam, the national school where I had first dreamed of starting a Christian school in that land that had been so arbitrarily dismissed by the field council, crushing my hope of returning as a fulltime missionary. So many hopes; so many regrets.
There was the house where our friends George and Deb Collins lived where their three children that all became our closest friends for that year. There was the home of Dick and Carol Stagg who had been our mentors and emotional supporters through our own struggles. There was the ghat, now bolstered by the silt of a hundred floods, now able to support rice paddies where once only salt flats were farmed.
Here was Bob Archibald in whose parent’s house we had stayed during our year on the field sharing about how he and our Mru gardener Adi’s son had just completed a translation of the New Testament into the Mru language. Adi would have been so thrilled!. There was Kum Kum Kyang, daughter of Twillafru Kyang who had serve us so faithfully and so well, now serving as a teacher at William Carey Academy.
My message on the principles of leadership that Paul outlines in his letters to Titus were well received and appreciated, and I was grateful to have the chance to give something back to a land and a people that had given so much to us. That year in Bangladesh might well have been the hardest we had ever been through as a family, but it was also the most formative in shaping our missional drive to serve the disadvantaged that remains with us to this day.
Just down the road from us is the lovely little village of Arundel. Despite its relatively small size, Arundel has an outsized flow of tourists, drawn to the village by its charming little streets and shops, its magnificent cathedral and most especially by its still inhabited castle.
We have been on the castle grounds before and even took our grandchildren there back in June when they came to visit. We have also walked its streets and bought books and sweets from its many little stores. But we had never seen a medieval jousting tournament, which is one of several still competitive jousts in England.
Unlike the shows you might have seen that are no more than a sideshow to a banquet at an exorbitant cost, this joust is a competitive sport with contestants from all across Europe that have a regularly schedule of tournaments across the continent. This year saw two competitors each from England, France, Portugal and even far away Australia.
In addition to the jousting, there was also a falconry display, this year featuring a magnificent snowy owl, country faire booths offering food and medieval crafts, and of course a tour of the castle and the grounds. We missed going the first year we were in England but were determined to find the time this year.
So gathering those few colleagues that were here in the summer, we set off in three cars for the drive and enjoyed a spectacular day in the sunshine watching the competition and cheering on our champion. Much to the disappointment of the crowd, it was the French competitor who won this day, but it was a thrilling spectacle and well worth the effort and the cost to get there.
Last year on the way to England from the Cayman Islands we had an extended visit with family and friends. Covid played havoc with some of those visits, but we rented a place to stay so we could partially isolate and managed to get some good visits in before coming to this part of the world. This year, with only partial Covid protocols in place, we flew out again for Canada.
Our church, West London Alliance, had encouraged us to come earlier in the year so we could speak to the congregation about our change in ministry. While I did that in both morning services, Pam was able to go on her first Ladies’ Retreat in many years where she was encouraged by expressions and prayers of support. My message was well received and the church offering of over $5,000 far exceeded our expectations.
We also got in some nice visits with family and friends in Ontario, and with the help of a very generous loan of a car from longtime supporters Al and Shelley, were able to get up to the Lucan area to see Pam’s cousins for lunch. The car also enabled us to get down to the Aylmer area to see Jon and Nic and celebrate their birthdays and visit with their kids in Pat and Wendy’s yard.
Then it was off to Wheaton for a week of Orientation. We met folks going out for the first time and some that were just touching base with the mission because they had come onboard during Covid and had not been able to go to orientation in the past, such as ourselves. The beds in the dorm were hard, but we were much encouraged by the warmth of the fellowship and the numbers of those who were willing to go to Asia to serve in some very difficult fields of ministry.
Then it was off to Vancouver to see Greg, who was gracious enough to put us up for a couple of nights. His little flat in New Westminster isn’t much, but it is affordable and close to services and Greg is quite happy there. With Greg we took the ferry over to Vancouver Island to see Russ who is still recovering from cancer and very frail. He was cheered by our visit and the many rounds of Euchre the four of us played.
Then we flew off to Calgary to see our kids and grandkids out there. Dave and Sayda had just bought a house and they were happy to put us up in the basement. It was so wonderful to spend some time with them and to see how that relationship has developed over the years. We had been able to loan Dave $50 grand to contribute his share of the down payment, and their home is going to be a good investment in a very nice part of south Calgary.
Meanwhile, Liz and Greg had moved to Airdrie on the north side of Calgary and were enjoying the community life they are finding there. As a family they have undertaken to walk as often as they can, and we were happy to tag along. Their kids are doing much better in school these days, and since Liz has yet to return to work after Covid, she was able to spend some quality time with them over the summer.
Coming back to Canada is always bitter sweet for us. Through lengthy planning and taking advantage of flight deals, we were able to get all of the trip done at a pretty reasonable cost. Sayda was able to loan us her car, and with Greg and Al and Shelley’s help as well, we were able to the whole trip without renting a vehicle, which in the post-Covid years was truly exorbitant. We saw just about everyone we wanted to see and touching base with Russ and Greg after many years was particularly meaningful for Pam.
However, despite the fact that it was wonderful to see and do all that we could in that whirlwind four weeks, I must confess that at the end of it all we were physically and emotionally drained. We are not as young as went we went out 17 years ago. And while it was so encouraging to see how the Lord had blessed our family and friends, there is more that a touch of sadness at having missed spending all those years watching them grow up. Our service to the Lord has not been without cost.
After a long flight from Calgary back to England we arrived more than a little jet-lagged and travel weary. Fortunately, things were pretty quiet back at the office with many of our colleagues still away on their summer break so we were able to get back on our feet at our pace. We now know better than we did a year ago just how demanding this new ministry is going to be. But with renewed commitment and encouragement from home we are ready for the new year ahead. And we can also look forward to seeing our family again next summer.
We are constantly amazed at how easy it is to get around in this country. We are three stops on the train from Gatwick and less than an hour to Victoria Station, where we have been a number of times already. Today we decided it was time we went in the other direction and headed off from our little station in Horsham to the seaside city of Portsmouth.
Portsmouth is the most important naval port in England and still home to two thirds of England’s fleet. At the height of the British Empire it was the largest and most important port in the world. The city was extensively bombed during the Blitz of WWII, but survived multiple attacks to become the pivotal embarkation point for the D-Day landings.
Portsmouth’s active naval base also houses the National Museum of the Royal Navy which has a collection of historic warships, including the Mary Rose, the flagship of the navy of King Henry VIII, recently salvaged and restored, and the HMS Victory, Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, and the world’s oldest naval ship still in commission.
HMS Victory is a massive ship that in its day could hold 850 men on five decks along with over 100 canons of various bore including 68 pounders which Nelson would hold in abeyance until he had used smaller canon to come along broadside and then unleash a furious cannonade with these massive guns utterly destroying the French fleet at Trafalgar. The ship has been restored several times, but is due to undergo a massive ten year restoration starting in May of this year.
We also walked through town to Portsmouth Cathedral, a lovely old building with a wooden vault in honour of the city’s shipbuilding heritage. It was founded in 1180 and dedicated to St. Thomas a Beckett, archbishop of Canterbury, who had been martyred in 1170 following orders by King Henry II. There was some delay in the train going back to Horsham, but nevertheless it had a most enjoyable trip and it was great to see some of England’s naval heritage so close by.
Home Thoughts From Abroad 