I have heard people say that they don’t like Shakespeare. I can’t imagine why. Shakespeare is funny and poignant, witty and pertinent, insightful and explosive, cunning and dangerous. To say you don’t like Shakespeare is to say you don’t like intelligent discourse, you don’t like people, you don’t like life. You don’t like Shakespeare? How tragic then is your own life!
I love Shakespeare, and had I time and money I would see live every play he ever wrote. But alas, that is not possible. I am but a poor player strutting and fretting my hour upon the stage of life, without the resources or the capacity in indulge in such a wondrous journey as that would be.
However, I did finally get to Stratford-upon-Avon and saw the places where Shakespeare was born, where he was educated and where he is laid to rest. It is a humble grave, not at all like the statues, obelisks, and ornate tombs where the late and great are buried. It is simple slab in the church floor, though it is at least at the front of the church near the altar.
But it is to this simple grave where millions from around the world come to pay homage every year. There is now a fabulous Royal Shakespearean Festival Hall and the nearby Swan Theatre where The Bard’s plays are staged. Cafes, pubs, and boutiques line Henley Street where Shakespeare lived, all celebrating his name and trading on his cachet.
It was lovely to be in the town that so resonates with his life and his unmatched literary brilliance. We have made a promise to return and stay the night and see one of his plays in the coming year. That will be a tale worth the telling!
We had no idea how difficult it would be to settle in England. How hard could it be? They all spoke English – admittedly some with an account so thick it was hard to recognize – and they were a first world country. Besides, we have had plenty of experience with relocating. We had done so in Bangladesh and Germany, Malaysia, and the Cayman Islands. So, when Pam declared that she had found us a place to stay for the first eight days of our arrival I was dismissive. Why would we need eight days to find a permanent place, I protested? I argued that we would need no more than five. Foolishly, it now appears. Fortunately, we went with her plan.
After our arrival we were busy in our rental flat completing our Covid tests, getting prepped for my first conference with our new organization, signing up for a bank account, and finding a place to stay. The tests and the conference went as planned. The bank was another story. The problem with finding a place to stay was that as it turns out, no one rents furnished flats in this part of the world. University towns, yes. London, certainly. But outside of that, most places are unfurnished, and we simply cannot afford to buy furniture for a flat on our limited budget.
This meant that there were virtually no places for us to rent. Letting agents were even reluctant to take our calls. We finally found a helpful agent and basically took the first place she showed us, a tiny one-bedroom unit close to the train station and across the street from a park. The problem was, it wouldn’t be available for another four weeks. There were no other units available at that time. So we signed the agreement and started scrambling for intermediate accommodation.
The obvious answer was to contact the mission and ask if they had some kind of emergency accommodation. Lots of missions do, and we have used such accommodation in the past in both Germany and Bangladesh. After numerous emails we did find out that there was such a place, a manse attached to a local Baptist church that was currently without a pastor. The missionaries who regularly used the manse were also absent, visiting family in Canada, and the place was empty. We secured a key, hired a cab, collected our bags, and moved in.
The place has been a blessing. It has given us a chance to deal with the dozens of calls and emails we have had to plow through in order to get over this transition hurdle, a warm place to sleep, and a place to relax and reflect in the evening. The office space gave us an opportunity to finish our book on our time in the Cayman Islands and get it sent off to the publisher, and the kitchen allowed us space to cook our own meals and avoid the expensive restaurant food that can rapidly destroy any budget.
The current residents, Len and Mary, get back today and that will mean we will be a little crowded for a few days. But our own place becomes available in just three days from now, so the timing has been just about perfect. Len and Mary call this place “Sanctuary.” It certainly has been for us. All our anxiety about where we would stay on our arrival had been looked after by our loving God long before we arrived. And as in many things while walking with God, we just had to trust and follow to see what He had already prepared for us.
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
It seems appropriate to start this, our final book, with the poem that inspired the name of our blog that led to these books. Robert Browning has long been a favourite, and his poem, “Home Thoughts From Abroad” captures the longing for the familiar places of home of all of us who have been overseas for extended periods of time. Our attempts to capture the joy and excitement we felt in travel with the sometime anguished desire just to be among family and friends is what led us to blogging in the first place. It was our effort at connection; our desire to make what we were doing and why we felt called to this life understandable to our children, our grandchildren, and the friends who have supported us with their prayers and their caring for these many years.
Now we are reaching the end of this journey. We have told ourselves that this will be the last posting we accept; that after we have finished our two-year commitment to our present mission in Horsham, we will return to Canada for good. That doesn’t mean we will stop serving the Lord. But it does mean that we will stop doing so in foreign locations.
It is fitting that our last overseas venture be in England, where both our families are from. I was actually born in England, in Colchester, not far from where we are presently living. I have a sister in Lincolnshire and a cousin in Kent, and once we are properly settled with a car and a bank account, we will visit them both. My parents retired to England as well, and we have often visited them in Lincoln and are well familiar with that part of the country. My first overseas visit when I was 11 years old was to my grandmother, at that time still feisty and living by herself in Dollis Hill, not far from Wimbledon.
England has other resonances for me as well through literature, and not just Robert Browning. I grew up on the tales of Horatio Hornblower, E.M. Forster’s fictionalized stories about Lord Nelson. Throughout my teaching career I have saturated myself with the works of Dickens and Shakespeare, Tennyson and Blake. I have immersed myself in the paintings of Constable and Turner, and the music and clothing of the sixties when I grew up was all from England.
So living in England, while not a homecoming, does have a poignancy and significance that other places we have lived abroad have not. I shall enjoy its quiet country lanes and remote peaks and parks as much as I will the busy cities and streets that crowd this island. We hope to capture some of those experiences in this journal, and trust that many of you, either now on this site, or later when this is committed to a book, will find in these pages something that speaks to your heart as well.
We are all, in one way or another, travelers in this life; citizens of another country beyond sight, but visible through the eyes of faith. The two of us have served the Lord of that country as well as we are able throughout our marriage. If this be our last overseas posting for Him, we cannot think of a finer place.
There are a number of reasons we have come to England for the next two years. Being able to serve the Lord without pay and without having to spend an enormous amount of money on health insurance being one of them. I am a British citizen by birth, so getting on the National Health was not difficult. Nor was finding a place to stay. Flats are not cheap, and furnished flats are a rarity. However, we had an excellent estate agent in Hannah who showed us one that was most suitable.
Getting a bank account proved to be much more difficult, and in fact as of this writing we still don’t have one, despite having reams of identification and sufficient funds waiting for transfer. We have had to be most inventive in response, using colleagues’ bank cards for purchases and reimbursing them with cash, or transferring money from our ‘overseas’ accounts directly to pay for larger purchases.
It was through a combination of both of these things that we were able to buy and insure a car. It is not a new one. Neither of us have owned a new car since we started our new jobs with one nearly five decades ago. But it is a very nice 10-year-old Ford Fiesta with very low mileage. Thankfully it is also an automatic. These roads are difficult enough at our age without having to negotiate a stick shift lefthanded.
We look forward to being able to travel around now to see this beautiful country, and to spend some time with my family in England who we haven’t seen for ten years. Travel adventure, family connection, service to the God who calls us: these are the things that have brought us to England. A car will help facilitate all three.
Leaving Cayman was not difficult. The Lord had provided a lovely beach condo for our final three weeks, and left us with plenty of time to say goodbye to those we had come to know and love. Our church gave us a nice sendoff, and we splurged on a dinner or two. Leaving Canada was a little harder. We felt our time there had really been cut short by Covid, and there were lots of things that we were not able to do. But at least we had time to see our grandchildren and two of our own children in that time.
But coming to England has posed real challenges for these veteran travelers. Our temporary rental flat that Pam had secured did allow us to clear the Covid hurdles needed to avoid quarantine, thanks again to Pam’s excellent planning and paperwork. We needed a Covid test to fly from Cayman. We got two Covid tests in America to enter Canada, and another one at the border coming in. In order to leave Canada for England we needed to get another Covid test. This time we had to drive to Toronto airport as the test window fell on a Canadian holiday. On arrival in England, we were ushered through the border with no trouble at all, and the notification that our Covid test package had arrived was in the mail slot at our rental flat. We walked around to the post office to get it and completed a further three Covid tests that week, the last basically as we were walking out of the rental.
The rental served other purposes as well. We got Pam’s hard drive upgraded to solid state so it now runs much faster. Unfortunately, the fellow who fixed it also broke both the screen connection and the camera/microphone that Pam needed for her ministry. He was able to fix the screen and we found an external camera/mic in our gear that will have to serve until a more permanent solution can be found. He offered to fix the noisy fan motor. We were polite, but gave him a hard pass on getting his hands on that computer again.
We were also able to track down an agent at a local real estate brokerage who showed us a furnished one-bedroom near the core which we took on sight. Apparently, the Brits don’t go in much for fully furnished rentals, so we had to grab what we could when we could. It is a tiny – 430 square feet – little place: one-bedroom, tiny bathroom, combined kitchen and living room, but it is right across the street from a lovely park and right beside the train station to London. The moving date of September 4 seemed impossibly far away, but our move to the manse made it doable. The signed agreement gave us a document to take to the bank to demonstrate residence.
We initiated the process of applying for a bank account almost as soon as we landed. This is far and away the most difficult to do of all the countries we have lived in. It has been three weeks since we landed, and though we made banking a priority upon landing, we still don’t have an account. Apparently, you need a utilities bill to establish proof of residence. Of course, you need a bank account to sign up for utilities. And round and round it goes. NatWest was our last attempt after five banks expressed no interest at all. There I was able to conduct the acceptance interview in the bank and a very helpful young lady scanned my documents and promised me a bank card in five days. That was nine days ago and I haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve got our fingers crossed.
Not to be deterred, we ventured out into the town and found it delightful. There were parks and town squares and lovely little laneways leading to little cloisters of houses. There is a lovely old church called St. Mary’s and a lovely park in the center of town filled with trees and flowers. And of course there are pubs everywhere. We had to go to one for the traditional Sunday carving, and were not disappointed by the mounds of vegetables, roast potatoes, and of course the Yorkshire pudding.
After a week in our rental flat, during which time I participated in our new mission’s professional development to a school in Central Asia through Zoom, we moved into the guest house that the mission maintains in a presently unoccupied manse. It was here that we were finally able to partially unpack and get ourselves somewhat sorted out until our new flat becomes available in September. We’ve being going out to the Baptist church next door, and were invited to a games night in nearby Southwater by our new colleagues at the mission.
In short, we are finding our feet. We keep telling each other that this will be the last overseas posting before we actually retire back to Canada. It is not easy to uproot at our ages, especially in the midst of a global pandemic. But we have felt the Lord’s presence throughout, and His people have been everywhere, helping us to make this move. We are certain too, that once the dust has settled, that we will find ourselves in a truly lovely part of the world, ready to serve the Lord once again with the gifts and talents He has so graciously given.
It has been two years since we last saw Liz’s family and nineteen months since we last saw Jon and Nic and their crew. Honestly, given that the Delta variant of Covid is ramping up around the world with many countries facing an imminent fourth wave, we really don’t know when we will be together again. We wanted to pack our days with kid times and to try to make up for some lost experiences.
Jon and Nic and their kids left early to try and squeeze in a road trip on their way home. We had rented a house in Hyde Park so that Liz and the kids could stay with us, which worked out very well. Liz was even able to rent a car and drive to Toronto for an overnight visit with her cousin whom she hadn’t seen for several years. While we babysat the kids we had great walks in the park mostly spent identifying trees, a movie night and plenty of time to enjoy Russ’s skills at Mario Maker. It seemed a little unfair in that he was was creating the games so simply built in endless things that would kill us.
For Russ’s fifth birthday, we had taken him to Build-a-Bear to create his own stuffy. Layla had been looking forward to her own bear building for her fifth birthday but of course that didn’t happen. So, better late than never, we took her to design her own special bear. It was all blue and sparkly with a frilly dress and headband and pink sparkling shoes. All the things that Layla loves. We will hold tight to these memories until we are together again, hopefully in a world that is not dictated by an out of control virus.
When our kids were young we spent many summer days on the beaches of southwestern Ontario and winter days and evenings skiing. Our kids were never happier than when they were surrounded by water and sand and would play contentedly for literally hours on end. Since we lived only about ten minutes from Lake Erie, picnics on the beach were almost a daily activity.
Port Stanley 2021
Since the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and we had all of our water baby grandkids with us in Ontario, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to spend a day at Port Stanley. Mackie’s fries and orangeade were the first order of the day, of course, and then we headed to the water, which after the warm Caribbean seemed a little chilly!
The beach was ridiculously packed and the waves were frisky but it was so much fun watching the next generation enjoy the beach as much as their parents did. It was such a joy to see our grandchildren have such easygoing fun with their cousins, despite all the months they haven’t been together. Russell thought his cousin Ben could do just anything, and Layla was inseparable from Abi.
Russell happened to celebrate his eighth birthday during this week of travel so he ended up with multiple small celebrations rather than a traditional big birthday party. We had to stop for ice cream at Shaw’s on the way back to town as that also was a regular part of our summer traditions. It seemed appropriate to place a candle on Russ’s ice cream sundae.
We sat on a nearby picnic table and when we were finished cleaning ice cream goop off our faces, we finally let Russell open his gift of Super Mario Maker 2, for which he has been longing for months.
After that it was off for the inevitable photo with Jumbo, St. Thomas’ iconic sculpture that for some obscure reason has to face the town instead of the incoming tourists who are greeted with a nice view of Jumbo’s enormous backside as they drive into town.
All together a happy day for Grandpa and Grandma who waited a long time to see their children and grandchildren and were not disappointed. Thanks to Liz and Jon who travelled many miles to be here and make this all possible.
After several false starts and multiple Covid-19 tests we have finally made it off Cayman. Two years is a very long time to be away from Ontario; separated from family and friends. The obstacles faced in orchestrating a gathering of three families from Cayman, Calgary and Ohio, in London, seemed insurmountable. We are so grateful for our son and daughter and their families who made it happen.
The restrictions of the day meant that we could not ship any of our belongings to Canada, so in May we mailed ten boxes to our son’s place in Ohio. Since direct flights to Canada where prohibitively expense, we flew to Ohio first where we reorganized our belongings and packed up Jon’s spare car to drive across the border into Canada. Thankfully, quarantine for fully vaccinated Canadians returning to Canada had been dropped two weeks earlier so we were free to move around.
We rented a house in London where we stayed with Liz and her kids while Jon and Nic stayed out in Aylmer with Nicole’s parents. Pat and Wendy have created a mini adventure land for kids at their home with a beautiful heated pool, tree house, zip line and multiple motorized vehicles for the kids to ride. They even got to experiment with an underwater camera. We spent two full days just hanging out together there. It was such a joy to see the five grandkids just enjoying each other and having fun together. We even got to celebrate both Jon and Nic’s birthdays which is a rare treat in our family. And that was just the first two days!
Riding the track through the bush and around the pond on the golf cart.Boys and their ToysA at 13E at 10Hours and hours spent in the PoolWith the encouragement of her older cousins, L’s swimming skills improved greatly.
It has been fourteen years since we left Ontario to move to Malaysia and six years since we moved to this beautiful, tropical island but now the time is upon us to take the next step. Trip planning is a nightmare in this time of COVID-19 and we have had to make multiple adjustments for our onward journey based on limited and ever-changing flights, quarantine requirements and health insurance stipulations. Our initial plan to leave on June 26th, right at the end of the school year and the end of our lease at GTV was scuttled, leaving us with an unplanned three weeks to spend on island.
Initially we were somewhat dismayed because we had hoped to attend Family Camp with our grandkids in Ohio. As with many things in life that frustrate us, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Our friends Jeff and Amy are home for the summer and very graciously allowed us to move to their beautiful condo on Seven Mile Beach. We wake up to an amazing view of the beach and every morning we are down before seven walking and swimming and just reveling in the beauty of God’s creation. The pool is wonderful and we took advantage of it to have friends over for final visits and to share a few more sunsets with us.
Graduating students and parents had blessed us with gift cards and restaurants coupons so many of our meals were special reminders of favourite people and places here. Dear friends gave us a gift certificate to Grand Old House which has a wonderful seaside location with an amazing sunset view. We treated ourselves to Chateaubriand for two; a fabulous meal prepared and flamed in front of us.
Even got in one more visit with our dear friend Ms Nimmi who treated us to an Indian meal, Masala Dhosa, which was our go-to meal in Malaysia. Spent a last sunset at GTV with our friends from there with whom we shared so much of life over the past few years. Our Director, Jim and Andie invited us, along with our friends Rob and Rita and Ainsley for a BBQ at their new new home in Lime Tree Bay.
Seriously we should have ordered one and split it!
We had often sat on Barker’s Beach, one the the most peaceful places to read and picnic and watch the kite surfers ride the wind and waves. Often horse back riders would wander by before heading off into the water for a swim. My friend Kristi really wanted to experience this so she talked me into joining her for a ride and it was amazing, even if a bit terrifying. The ride lasted for about a half hour until the guide stopped to remove the saddle and have the horses wade into the water to a depth that they had to swim. It took some muscles that I did not know I had to stay on the horse but was an absolutely amazing way to enjoy the warm, crystal clear waters of the Caribbean Sea.
2015 saw a large group of about twenty five new teachers and staff join the faculty at CIS. Cherilyn came as a single, young lady but we had the joy of attending her wedding to Taylor two year later and have enjoyed they friendship through our Community Group as well as school. Joe, a young man man joined CIS as the Band teacher and we have been delighted as we watched him develop the music program at the school. Happily, he met the love of his life in another music teacher and our delay in leaving the island allowed us to be here to share in their beautiful seaside wedding. and reception at Grand Old House. Now our bags are packed and we are on to the next adventure.
I was given the honour of being the keynote speaker at this year’s graduation. To put this in perspective, this had been the first time I had spoken at any graduation since my own from Grade 8 as Valedictorian in 1963, so in sum just shy of sixty years. So when my principal Doug revealed to me that I had been the overwhelming choice of speaker by the students themselves, I didn’t waste any time putting thoughts to paper. I knew that the problem would not be what to say, but how to limit what I would say to ten minutes, and that would take several edits.
Writing has never been the issue for me that it has been for so many others. I just go with the thoughts on my heart and let them run for as long as there is something to say. Then I will leave it alone for a time until I think of something else to say and without looking at the original simply add it to the draft. Depending on the deadline, I will do this for several days until I have exhausted all that I want to say on the subject.
Then begins an entirely different task: that of editing what you have written into a cohesive whole. Often when I do this, reading what I have written will stimulate new thoughts on the subject, and I add them to the draft as I think of them. This is where Google Docs is so brilliant. It will preserve every draft and even time stamp and colour code those edits so nothing you ever write is ever lost. If you wish to restore a previous edit, simply choose the draft from that date. Google, you have my respect.
When you edit a draft, you have to be conscious of two things: one is the audience to whom you are writing and speaking, the other is the unity and coherence of the text. Every piece of writing is aimed at someone, and you must keep their needs and their interests paramount in your writing. It must reach their hearts as well as their minds or you have simply been fooling or flattering yourself and your writing will spark no interest. At the same time, the text itself must have a unity of purpose and a goal to which it is aimed or it will have no meaning. These two things determine the effectiveness of writing. Though vocabulary and style may give a text a superficial gloss, if it sparks no interest and contains no unity of purpose it will ultimately be ineffective.
Then whether you release the text in print or in speech it is a good idea to say the text out loud, preferably into a recording device of some kind. This will help you spot grammatical inconsistencies as well as help you to adjust your phraseology, and in speeches, your cadence and emphasis. This will prompt further edits to the text that will help improve it further. I will do this several times when I am giving a lesson and I always like to give myself a day between edits to get some critical distance. On a speech as important as this one was to me, I went through 30 edits.
Then before I speak, I want to get a feel for the space where I will be speaking. I want to practice sotto voce what I will say and see how it feels. I want to practice to what part of the room I will say certain things, and even the gestures I will use to get over my natural hesitancy in public places. I do this in order that I may be comfortable in that space as I know from experience that if I am uncomfortable, my audience will be as well and then they will have difficulty attending to what I have to say.
Then comes the moment of truth: the delivery itself. Preparation will certainly help to overcome the nervousness most of us feel with speaking in public. But every event is different, and a keynote address is not a classroom lecture. This event resonated with emotion for me, and only my persistent preparation got me through it as I had to choke back the tears on several occasions. I have put the best part of my life into this profession, and this would be the final words I would have to say to the students, parents and colleagues I worked with in my last teaching position. I wanted so much to get it right. You can judge for yourself if I did by viewing it here, starting at one hour, fifteen minutes.
Home Thoughts From Abroad 