An incomplete account of the miracles in my life
It’s been a while since I last wrote a letter to you and over these years I could say that nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. Nothing has changed because I still love you and I can’t begin to express how earnestly and deeply I would like you to really feel the love God has for you. How I long for each person in our family to be actively engaged in the Joy of regular revelation from God and the miracles that flow, and even overflow into our lives when we are so connected to God through Jesus Christ. Yet, I still love you enough to respect your decisions and beliefs. Still, whilst some things remain the same, in other ways everything has changed. Everything has changed because my faith which was so naïve has become something so beautiful and sure. I hope it will continue to grow and that I shan’t be shaken from the faith. I say this because I have come through bitter experience to know the reality of Satan, he is the perfect predator and I know now, in so many ways, that he is smarter than I am. He has had thousands of years…probably millennia to hone his skill and he has the added advantage of memory! But I’d rather not dwell on him. I know God is greater and I know this from the most blessed and sacred experiences of recent years. It is to Him I hold and I hope I will do so forever in spite of the many weaknesses that are so frustratingly present in me!
The gospel and doctrines of Jesus Christ bring me the most permeating joy and peace. (I say gospel and not church because church continues to be a challenge, but it is Christ's church and he loves it, I believe as he would love a child. Only it often feels, particularly in this stake, that the child is sick and in need of healing. So, I can’t be angry with this ‘child’ although it can be tiring and frustrating. But the case, I think, is only ‘sick’ not ‘terminal’).
You once spoke of miracles and how frustrating it is for us to listen to testimonies where somebody announces a miracle and then proceeds to tell something very ‘ordinary’. I have had this experience many times too, but I have also had many other experiences, usually in the quiet of one on one conversation where sacred things are more easily shared and I have learned of truly wonderful miracles in the lives of other people. So I would like to begin sharing my testimony with you about just this subject. Miracles. I would like to share some of my miracles from the last few years and some of the things I have learnt from them. I know they are divine intervention and that the Lord plays a very active role in parenting us day by day. It goes without saying that I don’t know why everything happens, but I experience enough revelation on a daily basis to know that He is there and that we are literally never ever alone. Obviously, this isn’t a full account of all our miracles, we have really seen the heavens open in the last few years and we are experiencing weekly, sometimes daily miracles, so that my testimony of the reality and divinity of Jesus Christ and his power in my life is a very recent expression of my faith in him. I know he is my advocate yesterday, I know he is my light the day before, I know that he is my physician last week, my deliverer last month and I know he is my strength today.
I’d first like to share the small miracle of an answered prayer and how it led to an even greater miracle.
1st December 2017, it was a Friday and Joseph had an inset day but Lucy and Sam were still in school. We had had a challenging couple of months and I could tell it was taking its toll on Joseph. A mummy-Son date was well overdue and I thought this would be a great way of giving Joseph a bit of a boost. I did have some unavoidable errands to run in the morning but I said to Joseph that if he would come with me and help me get everything done as quickly as possible we could go for a ‘date’ to Truro reptile centre and pick up the last bits he needs for his vivarium before we pick up a gecko for him. Joseph was over the moon, he had been waiting such a long time for this. We arrived in Truro at about 1:00, giving us about an hour. My usual car park was already so busy, I couldn’t believe how the Christmas traffic had started already. There was a queue of cars waiting outside the multi-storey and I could see it was running on a ‘one out, one in’ system. I didn’t have time for this so we went looking for another car park. We still had to drive around for 10 mins before a space became available and Joseph was starting to get anxious but we cheered when a space became available (all the better for being a space I could actually park in)! As I turned the engine off and reached for my handbag I realised I had taken my purse out and not put it back in! It didn’t take long to calculate that I didn’t have time to drive home and then drive back to Truro again either. The disappointment on Joseph's face was crushing. I said that if we could just find enough money for a ticket then we could at least visit the reptile centre and reserve the items we wanted and that I could pay by phone when we got home and pick up all the bits the following week whilst he was at school. So we emptied my handbag and went through the whole car. We found a £1 coin. Better than nothing, but still, this was Truro! Parking anywhere here was bound to be more than £1. I told Joseph to stay in the car and I was going over to the ticket machine to see how much a ticket was. I was praying as I went ‘please heavenly father, it's been really tough lately and Joseph really needs this, please let us be able to afford a ticket, maybe I could find some change on the floor or something. Please help us.’ I was scanning the floor as I went but found nothing. I was so thrilled though when I got to the ticket machine and saw that it would cost 70p for half an hour!! Well, half an hour isn’t much but I’ll take it! thank you !!! I put the money in and then realised that it was a machine where I needed to type in the car registration number….i didn’t know it, we had only had this car for a few weeks. So I pressed the change button and to my surprise and Joy £1.50 came out!!! This was amazing because a ticket for an hour would cost £1.40! I was so happy and just about skipped over to the car and told Joseph how the lord had answered our prayer! He was thrilled too and came with me this time. There was someone at the ticket machine I had been to previously so we went to a different one. We put in the money, entered the car reg, got the ticket and then I pressed the button for our 10p change. You should have seen the look on our faces when I pulled out £4.80 in change!!! The Lord had truly answered our prayer and exceeded our hopes We were so thrilled. We went to the reptile centre and then to the bakery for a treat. We stopped in a side street and gave thanks. So we had arrived with £1 and after all we did we left with £1.20 change! This is more than just a ‘coincidence’. This is the miracle we had prayed for. Andy and I returned to that car park a couple of weeks later (which is unusual because it’s not our preferred car park) but we couldn’t get any change for our tickets this time because these machines do not give change!! If there had been any doubt in our minds before that this little date was a gift from God, that doubt was gone.
We talked as a family about the blessings of paying tithing and also that God hears and answers our prayers.
This event helped me trust God when we acted on a spiritual prompting to go to America on a holiday. I was surprised that the lord would be prompting us to go on a holiday, it seemed random and a bit too luxurious, but we had had clear revelation three times and then as we followed the prompting we had several other witnesses that this is what the lord wanted us to do. I had checked ticket prices after the first two promptings and the cheapest were around the £450 mark. There was no way to afford this. Like the £1 offering we had in the car park I knew if I let the Lord know what we could give he would make up the rest. The children had £500 savings each, we had none because of buying a replacement car. I said to the Lord, if we could have tickets for under £300 each we could use these savings for the tickets (and pay the children back a few months down the road). If it really was God's will that we go, I knew he would help us along the way and provide witnesses for us that we are doing the right thing. I said this prayer in my mind as we opened our laptops to book a flight. Within moments of finishing that prayer in my heart Andy found a deal for £277 each! This is the flight we booked. There was nothing this cheap beforehand and nothing this cheap that we have seen since. We visited with a family from church the next day and they said they have been looking for flights to new York for a long time as they have family there but they have never seen flights this cheap. Like Nephi, I know the lord will prepare a way for us to accomplish the things he wants us to accomplish. (obviously we were excited about this particular thing the Lord wanted us to do, but he has given us something else to accomplish since then that is not so easy! I hope we can work as hard on this more recent thing as we did on the holiday).
The following miracle is a miracle of paying tithing.
So the flights were paid for but we still needed to pay for the insurance, some accommodation, car hire etc. At the beginning of January when I did our finances we were £1000 short of being able to pay our bills. I worried about money all the time and prayed to know what we should do. I was then listening to a talk by Wendy Nelson called ‘Becoming the person you were born to be.’
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAt4Od0teNg)
She talked about George Q Cannon who was pulled up by his bishop for paying too much tithing. George commented that he wasn't paying tithing based on what he was earning but based on what he needed to be earning. The next year his income matched the tithing he had been paying. With this story in mind I asked Andy if he thought we should pay an extra £100 tithing, so the Lord could cover the £1000 short fall. He said he thought the lord would bless us but didn’t know if it was totally necessary. I’m the one who did the finances so I knew it was totally necessary, and since he didn’t say no, that was good enough for me . So I paid the extra £100 tithing. Now we needed £1100 to cover the costs of bills that would be coming out of the account! Well, I checked the account almost daily throughout January, making sure there would be enough money in there to pay off the bills the next day. We had so many money miracles! Each day we were able to pay off the bills. I have documented those miracles, (the ones I was able to recognise) and by the end of January we saved, received or didn’t have to pay yet £1194! God did bless us so abundantly. We had to do something similar each month for three months (though not with such a high figure) and each month the lord blessed us. I wondered the second month if he would bless us again, but He taught me that just like the children of Israel in the wilderness collecting manna day after day, if I rely on him and follow the spirits guidance he will provide for me day after day and month after month as well. It has been a blessing to have to rely so heavily upon him. I know that the lord keeps his promises.
I often…and I mean very often, receive miraculous answers to my prayers through the scriptures. Next is just one example:
I was once praying earnestly about what to do about our debts, I worry so much over it and I was really prayerful this particular morning. After praying and asking the Lord to speak to me and help me have understanding I opened at random the scriptures and immediately my eyes fell upon this verse…D&C 111:5 ‘Concern not yourselves about your debts, for I will give you power to pay them.’ What a straight up answer! Okay don’t worry is the lord's message to me. In the standard works there are about 22 passages that speak of debt out of a total of 41360 verses. The probability of this being a coincidence is somewhere in the region of 0.05%. Because of the feeling of the holy ghost that went with it the probability of it being a coincidence is 0%. God answers our prayers in ways we can understand. For me this is often through the scriptures.
We have experienced miracles around the temple too. I hesitate to share this particular one because it is very sacred to us and I would never want it to be mocked or taken lightly. On the day Andy's mum passed away we also moved house! We woke up early in the morning and Andy had the prompting that instead of moving house the next day we should do it on this very day! Even the fact that we accomplished it is probably a miracle! Andy picked up the van and I dropped the children to school. Because we moved the day before we had planned we had no help (although part way through moving an elderly neighbour came out to help ) but other than that we were on our own and yet we moved the whole house and delivered the van back, all before needing to pick up the children from school. Looking back on it now, I am sure we were strengthened by heaven's help. Around mid-morning of that day we had a phone call from one of Andy’s brothers to tell him that they didn’t think his mum was going to make it. So as soon as we picked the children up from school we headed off on the road toward Southampton (dropping the children off to Exeter with mum and dad). As we drove we mostly discussed the things we had done that day, other things we needed to do, things going on with the children or Andy's work.. Then at a certain point we both felt a peaceful calm come over us. We talked about Betty and the life she had led, the things she enjoyed and the good memories Andy had. Before this somber mood ended we had a phone call from Tim asking us to pull over as soon as we could. We did so and he let us know that Betty had passed away just minutes ago. I know that it was no coincidence that a different ‘mood’ fell upon us at just the same moment Betty slipped into the spirit world. This is the promised peace of the Holy Ghost and although it was a moment of bitter Sadness as well as release (as we recognised Betty was freed from her crippled body), the feeling that pervaded all else was a sweet and reassuring peace. We knew where Betty was, we knew she was free and we know we will see her again.
We had a holiday booked and this turned out to be just a few days after Bettys funeral. So we tacked a day at the temple onto our holiday instead of driving all the way back down to Cornwall only to drive all the way to Dover just a day or two later. We were glad to go to the temple, feeling we would find added peace by going there. Andy did an evening session and I put the kids to bed and then he would stay with the children in the morning whilst I did a session. When Andy returned the children were asleep and Andy said to me with full emotion: ‘Mum was in there’! I have to confess that my initial reaction was disbelief (although I didn’t show it). I only thought that if Andy thought this and it brought him comfort, I wouldn’t burst this bubble. I just didn’t think that a person who had lived a lifestyle like Bettys would be in the temple! I am glad to say that I have learnt not to judge! How wrong I was to think this way. The next morning the children were still sleeping soundly and I went into the temple. I felt welcomed by the spirit and I went quickly to get ready so that I could spend some time in the chapel area and pray and contemplate. We didn’t have any family cards on us at this time so I asked for a temple file name. I don’t know if I will ever be able to describe the powerful sensations I felt that morning when I was handed a temple card with the name ‘Betty’ on it. The feeling I had told me that this was no coincidence and then I felt her. Betty was there! I could never prove this to you but I can only bear my witness that I know Andy's mum sat with me that day in the Chapel of the London temple. The time came to ascend the stairs to the endowment room and I felt her come with me as far as the stairs but she didn’t come up. I was pondering this whilst I carried out the endowment and whilst I sat in the celestial room. I knew Betty wanted her work done at the soonest opportunity and I came to realise that she couldn’t come with me up the stairs until she had been baptised and was ready to go up those stairs, which I know she did a little over a year later when I took her through the temple for her own endowment. Because I am still developing my faith, I thought I would ask Andy where it was in the temple that he had felt his mum and I would ask him that before I said anything of my own experience that day. Andy Said that the only place he felt his mum was in the chapel area, no where else. This was a confirmation to me that he had felt her just as I had.
Feelings of the spirit are subtle and gentle. But I have felt them as others have. When uncle Malcolm went into hospital although I hoped for the best I didn’t feel that what I hoped for would be what happened. In contrast, before John was called for a transplant I thought it would not go well but as soon as I received the messages saying it was happening, I felt an assurance that it would be okay!
For me, I more often ‘feel’ the Holy Ghost. For others they are blessed with ‘sight’. Mum experienced this when she ‘saw’ in her mind's eye uncle Malc falling at the time he collapsed when pat and Malc still lived in Pembroke road. What she ‘saw’ was accompanied by a feeling and this was the holy ghost who prompted her to call Aunty pat, who just didn’t know how on earth mum knew! I know many others who have had similar experiences. Mum's vision at that time was a miracle. The only time I have had a similar experience was also involving uncle Malcolm. It was exactly one month after he passed away and as with everyone else I was grief stricken. I hadn’t slept well and on Sunday afternoon Andy said I should go and take a nap. I fell asleep praying and as I began to wake up I could see uncle Malcolm in my mind's eye, very clearly. It surprised me because he was not as I had been thinking of him. I had been thinking of him as he looked when I last saw him, old and fragile and wonderful. But in this moment of sight I could see him in his prime. It surprised me because I couldn’t remember ever seeing a photo of him looking quite like this. I’d seen wedding photos of him, but he looked a bit older to me in my minds eye, and fuller in the face than those photos. But he was younger than I had ever known him. As I ‘saw’ him I felt such peace and he was happy, I could feel that so clearly. It didn’t last long but I prayed afterward for a confirmation from the lord that this brief but powerful experience was teaching me that uncle Malcolm was happy and he was ‘in his prime’. I finished my prayer and came down stairs. I opened the laptop to facebook and the very first thing I saw was a picture of uncle Malcolm, posted by uncle gary.
It was him!! Exactly as I had ‘seen’ him. I felt a sense of awe and wonder! This was a picture I had never seen before, yet this is exactly his face, as I had just seen him. This was another personal miracle to me. Teaching me of God's love, life after life, Malcolms care over us from the other side and heavenly father's desire to bring us peace, comfort and knowledge.
As I’m thinking about all the miracles in my life I am realising that most of them have happened after prayer, or after prayer and fasting. This next miracle is your miracle! I don’t know for sure if I have the details correct so forgive me if I am wrong and I will share a second fasting miracle just in case the miracle over you isn’t correct
I have, it is no secret prayed for you more sincerely since your decision to not be involved in church/religion etc. I pray for your safety and happiness and success. At one point I thought about Gandhi and how he fasted and wouldn't stop fasting until a nation literally turned around. Others have described what he did as a ‘hunger strike’ but he was a spiritual man. I believe there was more of fasting in his actions than simply a hunger strike. So, I thought about this and I thought if Ghandi can change the course of a whole nation then maybe I could fast and bring some sort of miracle into Dan’s life’. So I began a long fast (two meals on two meals off) that repeated for a week. I fasted for you to need to pray, and then to receive an answer that you would know wasn’t a coincidence but that God had answered your prayer. I had thought carefully about this for a few weeks before doing it because I didn't want to bring any hardship into your life but a blessing instead. I would have fasted for longer but we ended up with a sickness bug in the family and it was with regret that I couldn't keep it up for longer. It was only a week or so after this fast that I was talking to mum and she shared with me, in confidence, a conversation she had had with you where you had told her of the hardships you were having with one of your employees. That this lady had more or less lost the plot and how you had been so concerned about the situation and had prayed that God would help somehow. That very soon after that prayer a solution to the trouble came about in a way that you felt couldnt be a coincidence. Maybe God had intervened in your life at this time! If this account is true then my fast was answered but if this account is inaccurate or false then I trust in God’s timescale and wait on him….or maybe I need to fast more :)
Another example that has strengthened my faith is from when we lived in Norfolk and I so desperately wanted to move ‘home’ to the southwest. I pined and cried a lot over the years wanting to return home. At a certain time, around christmas I fasted that we would move the following summer. I felt confident that if I could make an appropriate sacrifice or effort then the lord would bless us to be able to move that summer. (Looking back I realise that i wasn't specific and i just kept asking to move and that it would be a blessing to my family). During the fast I contemplated what would be a suitable act of faith and sacrifice. I felt that the lord wanted me to share the book of Mormon with a number of people I knew before we would be enabled to move. So I wrote a list of 11 people I thought the lord would like me to give a book of Mormon to. I prayed for confirmation and felt sure that this offer would be accepted and that if I gave these 11 books of mormon then we would be blessed to move that summer and it would be a blessing to my family. So I obtained the books of mormon and wrote letters to each of these friends telling them how much their friendship meant to me and that we would be moving this summer and before we moved i wanted to give them a book of mormon because it was so special to me and i wanted them to have a copy before left. I did this very prayerfully because at the time I gave these letters and books we had no plans in place for moving at all. By Easter there was still no plan to move until one morning we decided we needed to rent the house out to someone so that we could move to Hunstanton to be closer to Andy's work. We began ‘doing up’ the house and within a few weeks we were ready. By May we had moved!! IT wasn't to Devon but that year in Hunstanton was such a blessing to us in so many ways. It was a special blessing to Joseph in his new school. And it was a special blessing to Andy to be in the king's Lynn ward for a year, we loved living near the beach and spending more time together as a family as Andy no longer had a 45 minute commute to work each day. It wasn't quite the blessing we were expecting but it was more than we were expecting in many ways and the blessings we received there have carried us through challenges we faced in cornwall. The Lord knew this move would bless my family, just as I had asked in my fast. My effort was accepted and a year after that we did get to move again, as you know, this time it was to the southwest :)
I have learnt that acting on promptings can literally mean the difference between life and death. Dramatic as that may sound it was a gentle but persistent prompting that led to me being at the right place at the right time and saving Sam's life. This isn't a story I could use as evidence, only I know the truth of my sunday mornings. I had three young children at home and Andy was the bishop. I had, for months, been in the bad habit of leaving a lot of housework to do on Sunday afternoon. The house on a sunday morning was chaotic and i often couldn't find things, was running around the house like a crazy lady, late to church and for weeks i had been doing lucy hair once we arrived at church, I would often take the childrens shoes and put them on the kids in the car...it was usually pandamonium. On this particular weekend things were not looking any different. I remember collapsing into bed so tired on Saturday night and then thinking, ‘bother i haven't read my scriptures today’. I had a slight pang of guilt that i hadn't cleaned the house and that this would be yet another sabbath day that i didn't keep holy, but it was too late now, maybe next week i would get this sorted out. Well, I could at least grab my scriptures and read one verse. So I grabbed the scriptures from the floor next to my bed and I flipped the book open. I couldn't believe it when the verse was about keeping the sabbath day holy. I looked up to heaven and I said ‘really! Now’? The feeling was yes, now. I needed to get out of bed and clean the house before the sabbath day. I lay there for a moment considering my options. The prompting kept nudging me gently. I felt my aching muscles and my heavy eyelids. In the end i said to the lord, ‘okay, i will put my feet on the floor and start moving, please can you provide the energy i need.’ Well, I cleaned the house that night right up until midnight and then I crawled into bed. The next morning I woke with energy, happy with my achievements from the night before. We had breakfast and went back upstairs to dress. Sam was about two years old (maybe slightly less). I was in Lucy's room, she was dressed and I was enjoying the pleasurable experience of brushing her beautiful white blond hair as she and I sat on the edge of the bed facing away from the window. We had low victorian window ledges. In my peripheral vision I noted that Sam was standing on the windowsill as the children often did. Then he stepped off the ledge. It seemed to me that he didn't touch the floor, sensing something wasn't right. I turned to see him hanging by his neck in the beaded chain for the roller blinds. Around his throat as it was he couldn't make a sound. It was only a few seconds between it happening and me scooping him up out of harm's way but those bead marks dotted his throat for about three hours. I know full well that if I had not heeded that prompting the night before I would not have been calmly brushing Lucy's hair in that room at that time. I know many would brush this aside as a coincidence but i’ve had too many coincidences for them to actually be coincidences and I know how revelation feels and this experience was a miracle, for which i will always be deeply grateful.
I can’t speak of the miracles that have strengthened my faith without speaking of priesthood blessings. Late last year I was with Andy when he gave a priesthood blessing to a sister who was waiting for some test results back to see if she had cancer. She has had cancer before and so this was a time of terrible anxiety for her. In the blessing Andy told her that she would have a ‘couple of weeks’ of anxiety but that she would be okay. After the blessing she was confused because she was supposed to get her results back in just two days. When the two days came she received communication from the hospital to say that there had been a mix up and that her results wouldn’t be ready for another week and a half and they were very sorry for the anxiety this would cause. Almost two weeks from the time she received the blessing she finally got the results and thankfully she was cancer free. I remember her saying to me that it was ‘spooky’ that Andy knew that it would take two weeks. I said ‘it’s not spooky at all, it wasn't Andy that knew that, it was God and he knows everything’.
I was very grateful to Dad one time when we lived in Norfolk and mum and dad came to visit.
The day they were due to arrive Lucy wasn't feeling very well. She was no older than three and couldn't communicate very well how she was feeling but about three hours before mum and dad arrived she began crying uncontrollably, I could do nothing to ease her pain, I just rocked her in my arms and prayed that mum and dad would arrive soon. As soon as Dad arrived I asked him to give Lucy a blessing, which he did. Lucy instantly stopped crying and didn't cry again that day. That evening we had a doctors appointment and discovered that she had a UTI that would have been very painful for her. I am grateful for that blessing that instantly calmed and helped my little girl.
One blessing that stands out to me more than most is a blessing that Joseph received when he was about five years old. From the Age of about 18 months Joseph had suffered with a kind of asthma. Everytime he had an attack it was very frightening and nothing would stop the attack other than a nebuliser. So everytime he had an attack we had to call an ambulance and we often ended up in hospital. Each time Joseph had an attack Andy would give Joseph a blessing. When Joseph was about 5 he had another attack and Andy gave him a blessing and announced that this would be the last time Joseph would have an attack. It was the last attack Joseph ever had.
When I was pregnant with Lucy Andy gave me a blessing and twice referred to Lucy as ‘she’. Remarkably Andy had felt that she was a girl but had made a decision not to say so in the blessing. I heard the word ‘she’ twice but Andy had no recollection of saying it. Of course, at the scan Lucy's gender was confirmed.
As you know Joseph has suffered with Edemas for the last few years. In one blessing he was told he would ‘grow out of this affliction’ three days later we were at the hospital awaiting results of some blood tests. The consultant spoke to us and said that they don’t know what causes this spontaneous autoimmune response but he should grow out of it in time. Identical wording to the blessing.
One blessing I didn't like was when Sam had a broken arm and we had gone to the hospital to have the cast and the pins removed. Sam was just a little older than two years old. He had fallen asleep in the car on the way to the hospital. When we got there Andy gave Sam a blessing and the blessing talked about how much this would hurt but that mummy would be there to comfort him and that it would last a short while. We took him into the hospital and of course i asked, even pleaded with them to give him pain relief but they just kept telling me that there was no need as this wasn't a painful procedure. They called other departments for me but no one was willing to give Sam any pain relief because that isn't apparently necessary in this situation. It was an awful experience to hold my baby on my lap crying and feel the sweat dripping off his head with the pain it caused when they pulled the pins out of his arm.
On the positive side we did learn through the broken arm experience and the blessings Sam had that Sam would have the best surgeon operating on him and that his arm would be stronger after this than it was before. This was confirmed to us by staff that Sam had one of the top surgeons in the country work on his arm and when we met with the consultant after the arm had healed for the final x-ray he told us that the arm had healed better than he could have imagined and that it would indeed be stronger now than it has been before!
I have also come to know that one of the ways the Lord can communicate with us is through our dreams. I have had quite a number of significant dreams over the years. Dreams where the meanings have been clearly revealed to me, usually straight away upon waking up. One of these was a simple and sweet missionary experience where the sisters had asked us to pray about a street for them to tract. I had a dream about a street, I had never seen this street before and didn't think it existed. It seemed to be a road behind mcDonalds in St Austell that led to two or three very nice homes. When we next drove by McDonalds I paid close attention to see if such a road existed. What i saw was a little path leading away between some houses and the mcDonalds car park...I had never noticed this before. I looked on google maps and sure enough there were two or three large homes down that path and a main road leading to it from farther away. I gave this street to the sisters who were thrilled because someone else in the ward had also given this street name. When they went there they met an elderly lady who was very emotional and needed some help. They were able to help her and we all felt that we had been instruments in the lord's hands that day.
There was one Sunday when I had been preparing a talk for sacrament. I thought i had it all figured out but then saturday night I had an incredible dream that was so full of symbolism. When I woke up on Sunday morning I knew clearly the meaning of the dream but I also felt that I should share it in my talk. I did so (at the risk of sounding crazy). After my talk sister Lucy Lawer came to me and told me she also receives messages in her dreams from time to time and that recently she had received a dream that her son Aaron would receive his mission call, in her dream she could see the destination of his mission written down but the writing was blurry as if she didn't have her glasses on. The destination was made up of two short words and the first word started with either a C or a G. We were all thrilled when Aaron did receive his mission call to Cape Town, South Africa.
Sometimes words are given to us through the spirit and we don't even know their importance. I had another small and sweet experience when I was meeting with a friend. Her husband was repeatedly unfaithful to her but she was trying to keep the marriage together and was waiting for the spirit to tell her to stay or leave. I remember in the conversation that the words of Matthew 10:16 came into my head and I just mentioned them. My friend froze at the words and then disclosed that the stake president had met with her the night before and shared the exact same scripture. To her it was a second witness and to me it was a witness that the Lord can guide and direct our thoughts.
There have been volumes of testimony building miracles in my life and these are just the tip of the iceberg and don't even cover any of our miracles in the last two years. I have tried to keep the miracles personal, about me and my family because as soon as I start thinking about my friends miracles I could literally write books...but their stories are not mine to tell. Having said that there is one story i would like to touch on because they are such close friends of ours and they have really blessed our lives. That story is about Pat and Ken parker. I love to hear the story of how Ken returned to the faith. He had not been to church for eight years and then suddenly he returned to church and this is why. Ian Jolliffee was the stake president in Cambridge. Pat and Ken were in the Sudbury ward in this stake. Pat had gone to church but Ken had not gone for a long time and now their two eldest sons had stopped going as well. Ian Jolliffe was away on a business trip. He had gone to bed and couldn't sleep. The hours ticked by. In the end he prayed…’lord, what do you want me to know about the stake’. He found a piece of paper in the hotel room and wrote the words that came into his head…’ken parker bishop of sudbury ward’. He then went soundly to sleep. This may not seem like a miracle but Ian Jolliffe had never heard the name ‘ken parker’ before. Ian asked the current bishop of sudbury if he knew a ‘ken parker’. The bishop explained that yes, he knew ken and ken didn't go to church. Ian then said to the bishop, I know this is not the way things are usually done but I would like you to call Ken as your counselor. Ken accepted, made all the necessary life changes. One year later Ken was called as the bishop of Sudbury ward. It was lovely to hear Pat and Ken talk about this time in their lives. Ken later worked on the bishopric with Andy in Dereham ward.
This letter was mostly composed between 2017 and 2018. I have thought often about finishing it and this morning I had a prompting to ‘get on with it’. As I say, these stories are just the tip of the iceberg. I have been amazed at how the hand of the lord has worked in my life over the years and more now than ever before. I will start compiling from my journals the stories and miracles from the last two years and perhaps you will indulge me by letting me send that document to you when I have finished.
The last letter I wrote to you was at mum's 50th birthday at the temple. Those words stand. I love you so much, I pray for you tonnes and for Dona and the girls too. Because I love you, I respect your decisions. I just really wanted to share with you these things that have been such a huge part of my life. I wont say more on the subject of faith, other than sending you the second document of the last two years...when it is written (but once again, it will be an email that comes with a warning that it contains religious content and it is up to you if or when you read it).
I love you with all my heart Dan, you are awesome. Thank you for being you xxxxxx
Part 2....
It became obvious quite quickly whilst I was trying to finish this document that it would need to be written in at least two parts. So here is part two.
My initial thoughts in writing again was to cover miracles and revelation in the last two years but I have also been reminded of critical things that built my faith from years ago. The first time I independently had a witness that Heavenly Father was hearing and would answer my prayers came as a result of a very difficult time. I was 12 or 13 years old and mum and dad were looking like they were going to split up. I said a lot of things that I am ashamed of at that time. When my words didn't seem to make any difference, out of desperation I crept out of the house and began to run, at first it was just out of anger and upset and I didnt know where I was going. The angry thoughts soon slipped into prayer and I suddenly thought that I knew where I should go….obviously to the bishop. If anyone would help me it would be bishop so I picked up speed realising that if I was going to make it to saltash from plympton before it got dark then I would definitely need to go faster. I walked and prayed and considered that I would definitely need a miracle because although I had been to Bishop Brown's house before I didn't know the way (I always fell asleep in the car and even when I was awake I didn't pay much attention to the surroundings….nothing much has changed)!! So I walked and walked but as I began to consider the distance and the probability of me being successful I lost confidence. I prayed more and realised that Paul Hazel (bishops counsellor) lived closer and I could probably find his house more easily, although once again I was left with the same predicament of only knowing the general area and not knowing how to actually get there. I thought that from Pauls house I could call the bishop and that way he would know that we needed help. So I headed in a slightly different direction with the goal of finding Paul Hazel's house. I walked and prayed for a long time and took many wrong turns but I felt that I was heading in the right general direction. I got lost around several housing estates, it seemed to me that everything looked the same. I began to get worried as the sun was beginning to go down and I didnt know how close or far I was from Paul's house. I found myself walking past groups of ‘teenagers’ and generally feeling scared. I kept pushing myself on and on, I probably wouldn't be able to go back now even if I tried, I was really lost in a rabbit warren of houses. I sat down on steps or curbs several times and cried but each time I did this I realised that I was wasting time and daylight. I would get up and go on again. I walked down a narrow alley between rows of houses, there were a couple of steps in this alleyway and I sat down again and cried. I knew it was a dangerous idea but the thought had occurred to me that I could knock on a random door and ask to use their phone. I looked at the broken glass on the floor and realized that I was in a very vulnerable position. I prayed again and said to Heavenly Father that I was in trouble and that I was scared. I had tried and tried to find the Hazel's house but it was no good. I couldn't go on any more. Then, at this moment where I felt all hope leave me, a thought rang clear through my head ‘get up, just one more corner’. I said to the lord that I could get up and turn one more corner but that was it. I did so and as I rounded the corner I saw that old familiar blue door to the Hazel's house, that moment was significant for me. I felt that the prompting to turn one more corner, when I really felt I was done, was a quiet prompting from the lord. The Hazels helped me and the bishop visited and helped mum and dad. I also learnt from this experience that my family was important to God.
My testimony grew slowly after that. I remember wanting to know the difference between my own feelings and the Holy Ghost, they seemed so similar. I prayed for promptings. I remember one Sunday in my youth when we were preparing to go to church and I had the small and fleeting thought of taking a card with me. I ignored the thought and it wasn't long after arriving at church that we realised it was someone's birthday and we didn't have a card. Then I realised that it was indeed a prompting...unfortunately one that I had ignored. ~ Unfortunately it wasn't the last prompting I ignored. After we had moved to Cornwall and settled into the new pattern of life (busy)! I was rushing around one day running errands and crossing things off of my todo list. It was the morning and I had baked cookies to deliver to a few sisters that I wanted to reach out to. I was beginning to run out of time to do everything on the list before there was something with a concrete time that I needed to attend to. I looked at my list and knew something would need to wait until later. A super quiet thought in my mind said to take the cookies to Velma, but Velma's house was way out of the way, I wouldn't be able to do any of the other things on my list if I went to Velma now. However, if I left velma until later then I would be able to do everything else on my list and I could drop the cookies to velma in the evening (when we took Joseph to his swimming lesson because it was en route and made sense). Two more times I thought I should go to velma, the thought was so quiet it was easy to ignore and reason away. I didn't go straight to velma but carried on with my plan and dropped the cookies over to her home later in the afternoon on the way to swimming class. There was no answer at the door which was strange because Velma, being older, only went out on a sunday to church and a monday to do shopping, otherwise she was always home. I left the cookies on the porch and tried to phone her. No answer. I called one of the other sisters in the ward and asked her if she knew if Velma was okay. It was then that I learnt that at about 11:00 Velma had had a fall, this was almost exactly the time I would have been there if I had chosen to listen to that little thought. Velma had hit her head as she fell down and lay on the floor for two hours before her son had arrived for lunch. When he found her he thought she was dead. Iit took Velma months to heal from that accident. I couldn't help but wonder if it might not have happened if I had gone to her or if perhaps I would have been able to get her to the hospital quickly and saved her a lot of time and pain. All I know is that I was upset that I hadn't listened, but it had been so quiet, so fleeting a thought. I have experienced enough ‘coincidences’ to know that it wasn't a coincidence. What I needed to do was to make sure it didn't happen again. I began immediately to pray that the lord would help me be in tune enough to hear the next prompting because I recognise that the spirit won't speak louder but my ability to quiet myself and listen will be what makes the difference in hearing and recognising the spirit. I prayed for this in earnest. It was within a week that I had another opportunity to listen and respond to the spirit. I had been at an evening Relief Society meeting, it was getting to the end of the meeting and the daylight was failing. I had noticed that Sarah Jayne had not brought her car to the church and I made a note to notice if someone was going to take her home, if not I knew she would be walking and I had in mind that I could offer her a lift but I was hoping that someone else was taking her because I needed to get back home for something (that i can't remember now). The meeting ended and I couldn't see Sarah Jayne, I assumed she had started walking already so I sped out to my car and thought I would pick her up as I would drive past her. Whatever the other things were that I needed to do I remember they were running through my head (just had been the case with Velma and my ‘todo list’). I came to one junction and looked right just in time to see Sarah cross a gate that led through a park, I guessed it must have been a shortcut. Because I was in the car I couldn't go the same way Sarah had but I figured I could find my way around to her. Between that turn and the next junction there was a little conflict in my head about running my errands or going on a detour to find Sarah Jayne and take her home. Remembering what had happened with Velma I chose to go and find Sarah Jayne, I believed I knew where the short cut would take her and I drove down in that general direction to wait for her. In my rear view mirror I saw her come out of the back lane and back onto the road behind me, not far behind her was a man, she crossed the road and so did he. I noticed her speed up, she had not yet seen my car. As she came in line with me I called out the window to her, she crossed over to me and upon my offering a lift she hopped into the car. She thanked me and said the man behind her had scared her, she didn't know if it was her imagination or if he had been following her but she had felt scared and was so happy to see me waiting for her. I was grateful that I had listened to the prompting and been there for her at a time when she had felt afraid, I was also grateful that the lord was willing to give me another chance to hear and respond to a prompting.
One of the greatest sources of direction to me in my life has been my patriarchal blessing and I feel it has witnessed of several miracles in my life. I received my blessing when I was 16 years old. I remember being anxious at that time in my life to know if the lord considered me a prideful person or if there was some humility about me. I prayed specifically about this immediately before I received my blessing and when the patriarch laid his hands on my head and said …’for you are humble’. It felt in that moment that time seemed to stand still for a few moments as the patriarch put emphasis on this as if in direct answer to my previous prayer that day. I felt the lord was saying to me, I know you and I hear your prayers and this blessing is indeed from me. I was in a way surprised at how well the lord knew me and knew how to speak to me to make that blessing very personal. That particular sentence continues….’you are humble, choice and able to influence people without speaking’. At the time I thought the lord was probably telling me not to talk so much! But now we are in Colombia I can see this sentence has a completely different meaning as I try to lead and help the sisters in the Relief Society here and I can't even speak to them properly.
I regularly get what is commonly called ‘deja vu’. My patriarchal blessing describes this: ‘you will sometimes think you have been in a certain place, or seen a thing before when you know you have not, but you will see this as part of the great plan opening out before you’. Everytime I have the ‘deja vu’ I feel comfort because I know that I am where I need to be or at least heading towards the right path.
At the time I received my patriarchal blessing I felt pretty fearless. I had already travelled to the USA on my own and I felt fairly confident in who I was and in chasing my dreams, so when my patriarchal blessing said ‘do not fear’ three times I basically ignored it because it really didn't apply. Once I had my babies I transformed into the queen of fear and it has been more than a decade long battle to be brave and rid myself of unreasonable anxiety and fear. Not only did the lord know me at the time the blessing was given, he also knew who I would become.
One more point about my patriarchal blessing is about meeting Andy. My blessing tells me that I would already know him and that we would come together, realising this is why we are both here. I knew Andy for years, then he went on his mission and I went to university. When our paths crossed again I did indeed already know him and in time it became clear that that was why we were both there at that time. What a blessing he has been to me.
There was a lot more to the story of how Andy and I met that involves miracles and revelation (too many coincidences to be a coincidence)! To outline a few I would like to start with a priesthood blessing I received from Paul Martin before I left for university. After the blessing I made a note of the things that were said and the date (I still have that record tucked inside an old journal). When I was 16 and received my patriarchal blessing it said ‘my eternal companion was even now being prepared for me’ When paul Martin gave me that blessing before heading off to Hawaii he said ‘your eternal companion is NOW prepared for you’. Later, after we got married we realised that the blessing coincided with the week Andy's mission was due to end (Andy extended his mission for another 6 weeks after that). When I got home from university I got a job at a high school to earn more money and to save to go on a mission (I had always wanted to go on a mission but I had also always really wanted to settle down and start my own family~I was torn between the two). This job would start after the summer holidays so I had a little time to play. For some reason I had another blessing at the beginning of those summer months, once again from Paul Martin. It said that I should not go looking for a husband, he would come and find me. Well I don't know why but I went ‘looking for a husband’ I spent all summer in Wales and Ireland at conventions and staying with friends, being a ‘fisher of men’. Meanwhile Andy had moved to Plymouth and was having some struggles but for some unknown reason he just kept thinking ‘it will be alright when Chrissy gets back’. I wish now that I had heeded the advice in that blessing because if I had stayed in Plymouth I am sure I would have been able to help Andy through a difficult time. Well, there is more to our story but that will do for now.
I have been grateful to the Lord for answering my prayers on behalf of my children.
On one occasion Joseph was struggling with feelings of loneliness and wanting to have a good friend. After staying up late one night discussing it we decided we would start a ‘prayer book’. We wrote down what we were asking Heavenly Father for so that we could recognise answers to that prayer. We prayed for Friends. About two weeks later Cody and Riley started coming to our house after school and the three boys together really formed a good friendship that lasted throughout the last months that they attended primary school.
I also remember a few years ago Joseph had been wondering if he had ever felt the spirit. We prayed that he would have an experience in feeling the spirit. It came shortly afterwards in a testimony meeting in St Austell (I recorded this in my journal so i can repeat the story with fairly good accuracy). After the meeting Joseph said he really felt the spirit. He said he especially felt it when Jean Dean spoke. She bore her testimony about how she joined the church. The missionaries had visited her and asked her to pray to see if the church was true. Earlier in that week Jean had received a letter from her mum telling her that her aunty was very ill and would probably die, but that jean shouldn't make the long journey to see her because by the time she received the letter her aunty would likely be dead already and not to worry as the family would sort out flowers etc. Jean wasn't too keen on the idea of joining the church (It seemed there were so many rules and she was too busy anyway) but she had told the missionaries she would pray. In her prayer she said ‘ Dear God, if this church is true let Aunty live’. After the prayer she felt certain that since aunty was probably already dead she wouldn't have to bother any further with this church. The next week she received a letter from her mum saying she wouldn't believe it but at 11 o'clock on ‘such and such a day’ Aunty had sat bolt upright in bed and said ‘what are you all doing here, i’m fine’! And from then on she was. Jean was stunned because that was the day and time she had said that prayer. I was so grateful that this testimony touched Joseph's heart in a way that he could recognise the feelings of the spirit as well as the miracle that took place for Jean and her family.
As I read this from my journal I noticed on the page preceding it that I had recorded a little story where I might have nearly killed us! But thankfully a prompting came and maybe saved us. In my journal I wrote…:
I had an interesting prompting yesterday that might have saved our lives. I have been trying to bake with seeds and nuts that are high in magnesium to help Andy with his heart arrhythmia. To be honest, none of the recipes so far have been that good. The last recipe I tried was from the internet and is called ‘old world poppy seed rolls’ They used 150g of poppy seeds that you turn into a black paste and roll inside the bread dough. As I was smoothing the funky smelling black paste onto the bread dough a thought flashed through my mind ‘I dont think Joseph smith would like this’! That was random. I put it in the oven and then went to read to the children. I returned and got the bread out of the oven to cool. It looked amazing. I considered again the thought ‘i dont think Joseph Smith would like this’. It looked so good and Andy wanted to try some straight away but I asked him to wait while I checked something. I did a little research online into poppy seed poisoning. It turns out that my bread contained a potentially fatal quantity. We threw the bread in the bin.
Two years ago when Joseph received the Aaronic priesthood Andy said in that blessing that Joseph would be able to extract meaning from the scriptures and be blessed with personal revelation in this way. I too have been blessed to be able to receive clear revelation through the scriptures and I do think this is a gift. During the Coronavirus lockdown Joseph has begun to understand what this means for him as well. We did one family scripture study session where we spent ten minutes in personal reading of the scriptures and then we each shared something we had learnt from that reading time. Joseph shared that he had prayed before reading and asked heavenly Father about a mission. Joseph said he would like to go on a mission but, as Joseph likes to plan things out, his question was whether he should consider going on the mission when he is 18 or 19 or later. Joseph then flipped the scriptures open randomly to Alma 42 vs 31 which reads…’o my son, ye are called to preach the word unto this people, and now my son go thy way and declare the word with truth and soberness, that thou mayest bring souls unto repentance, that the great plan of mercy may have claim upon them.’ He felt impressed that the verse he randomly turned to was a missionary verse. He then turned the page over to chapter 43 and his eyes were immediately drawn to verse 3 to the words ‘in the eighteenth year’ and again his eyes were drawn to verse 4 ‘in the commencement of the eighteenth year’. Joseph said he felt that this might be a revelation and then asked if we thought it was. I can confirm that when we pray with a question and turn to the scriptures with faith that the lord can and will answer us. We know that we have received an answer when the spirit is felt in our hearts as we read the words that answer our question. Sometimes, as in this case, the answer comes right away. Other times I have had to search for hours or days before the spiritual witness has attended the written words and a clear answer has been given. With one question (a doctrinal question I had and not something critical to my immediate circumstances) I had to wait 13 years for the answer….and it was a beautiful experience when that answer came.
Not everyone receives revelation in this way, but for me and Joseph, this is one of the ways God communicates with us. (but like any skill I do think it can be practiced and learnt by anyone).
After we had been in Cornwall for nearly two years I began to wonder about a line in my patriarchal blessing that simply states ‘having a home of your own’. Although we owned a house in Norfolk still, I began wondering if it would be good for us to also own a home in cornwall. It wasn't long after praying about this (but thinking it would be financially impossible for us) that I took the children to Toby carvery in Exeter to meet Dad and Grandad Hotine for a meal. It was a lovely meal (I forget the occasion) and then the conversation took an unexpected turn! Dad and grandad started talking about investing money by helping people with ‘bridging loans’ etc. Grandad then turned to me and said ‘have you seen any properties you like the look of in Cornwall?’ I said that I had been thinking about moving but didn't think it was a possibility because although we have a good income we don't have any savings for a deposit. Grandad asked me to look at properties and contact him. This was a really timely and inspired conversation and grandad helped us buy our next house. The whole process felt inspired, we felt guided in each step of the process and that house turned out to be such a huge blessing for the children. We had already moved Joseph to the school in that village and we were thinking of moving Lucy too, all before knowing we would live there. When searching for a house I had initially scrolled past the one we eventually bought. It didn't look at all like the sort of house I would be interested in by the way it looked from the front, but immediately after scrolling past it I felt that I should go back and look at it, which I did and immediately I fell in love with it. It's hard to explain why I felt this way because the house is nothing grand but it just spoke to me. This is one of the only times I can think of when all the pieces of the puzzle just came together really neatly, I feel the whole process was miraculous. The couple of months after we moved to this house were extremely difficult but there are always challenges and overall our time in that house was such an enormous blessing. I just felt that this experience involved a lot of divine intervention, what others would call ‘coincidences’.
If I felt the process of moving to our home in Riverside was miraculous (or at very least divinely guided) then it was nothing compared to our move to Colombia. The first prompting I got about this move came only six months before we moved. I knew it was a prompting about ‘change’ but i couldn't have imagined at that time in August 2018 that we would move house, let alone move country! (unfortunately i don't have my journals with me, so for accuracy I will need to go back and edit these accounts after we have visited England again and I have retrieved my journals).
Whenever we visit the temple we seek revelation for our family, this has been especially true of our summer holiday visits to the temple since Andy began working at Brannel. Brannel has always felt like more of a calling than a job so we always thought it was important to ask if it was still right to remain at Brannel. There had been good times but also many hard times and we needed to move forward into the new year with confidence that we were still where we should be. The summer of 2018 was a particularly good summer, the school was doing better than ever before, we had seen lots of blessings and been able to help a lot of people. I was happier then than I think I had ever been with the baptism of Kelsey and soon to follow was Phoebe, Claire, Emmy and freya. It was a golden time in many ways, we were all so happy.
So I was curious about the meaning of some scriptures when I was in the temple that summer and I read two verses that had a similar impact on me as Joseph Smith describes, how it enters your heart with great feeling. I think one of the verses was Genesis 12:1 which says ‘Now the lord said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country…’ I can't find the second verse that I read but I remember it was something to do with leaving the land or being destroyed. I wondered why these seemingly random scriptures,that didn't seem to have any bearing on my life, should feel so powerful in my heart. I knew they had meaning for me but I couldn't figure out what that meaning possibly was. When we got in the car to make the journey back to Cornwall I asked Andy how he felt and if he had received any revelation or guidance for our family. He said he had a curious feeling in the temple that ‘this year would be a year of change’ but he didn't know what that meant. I thought that that would probably fit quite nicely with the scriptures I had read. I decided those scriptures couldn't have meant actually moving, they must be symbolic of change. We went home and started the new academic year and got back into a normal routine, however the feeling was growing in me that I needed to prepare for this ‘big change’. I prayed a lot because I didn't know how I could prepare for a big change if i didn't know what it was? I prayed that the lord would prepare me and the children and teach us what we needed to do. I thought more and more about moving and thought maybe the scriptures meant that we should move house? I looked on rightmove at other houses in the village and in the surrounding villages. I talked to Andy about moving, he didn't seem to think it was a good idea. I felt more and more that I needed to prepare to move house, so I started to clean out the loft with a greater sense of urgency. I prayed a lot and felt more and more that the change would be a move, although I still wasn't 100% sure, also I didn't want to move, we were so happy and this was my favourite place that I have ever lived in (with the exception of Furzeacre). In late september/early october I had a very vivid dream about moving to Gloucestershire. In the dream I could see our house really clearly, it had lots of bedrooms and was really quite large, it didn't look like any houses around Cornwall and when I woke I wondered if there really were houses like that in Gloucestershire. I had a look on rightmove and found a house so much like the one in my dream it was uncanny. So I wondered if it was a spiritual prompting. I investigated it further and found a job advert in the TES for a lovely secondary school that seemed rather similar to Brannel, I sent the advert to Andy. I continued searching the area and looked at the local primary school, it looked excellent! The school looked so much better than the school Sam was in and since Sam's school experience was so mediocre (and I had been sad about that), when I saw this school a strong feeling came to me that for Sam I would leave this house that I love so much. If it would bless Sam's life and if it was what the lord wanted then I would move. That was really a significant moment for me, it was the moment my heart let go of that home and that area that we had loved so much (sometimes the greatest miracles happen within ourselves).
The job advert I sent to Andy was an odd thing because when we clicked on the link to the job advert...it linked to a school in scotland. It seems there was never an actual job in that school in Gloucestershire, it was very strange that we should see the advert but the job didn't exist at all. I think now that the whole scenario was a set up (divine intervention), a miracle that helped me make the mental jump that was necessary to open my heart to the idea of moving. Sam has since said to me…’why did you have a dream about Gloucestershire and not Bogota?’ I think the lord knew that if I had a dream about Bogota I would have paid no attention to it as it was something so far out of my mental schema of possibilities. The Lord used things that would lead us step by step. It was at this point that I met mum for lunch and told her about my promptings. If something was going to change and it might be a move then mum would also need to be prepared too.
Well nothing came of Gloucestershire and nearly a month moved on. The next prompting came at the St Austell primary presentation in late october. We were sitting watching the children sing when Andy literally jumped in his seat. I looked at him and whispered ‘are you alright?’ He looked a little shocked and said ‘yeah, I’m fine, I will tell you later’. When we got home Andy said he had the clearest revelation that that would be our last primary presentation in St Austell congregation! I love St Austell but I was so happy that now Andy and I were on the same page! I was also happy for the confirmation that ‘the change’ would indeed be a house move, but more than that, it would also be a job move. From that night we started looking at jobs around the country, we would need to act fast because Andy would need to hand in his notice at work in January. We searched and searched and nothing felt right. Within the week we began talking about working abroad. We had talked about this before and had thought that it would be fun to work in Holland or the USA for a couple of years. So we looked. We applied for one job in Copenhagen but by the time we had made the application the position had already been filled. That was a learning curve, in international schools they don't have to wait for the application deadline to be met before appointing someone to the job. Whilst we were waiting to hear back from the Copenhagen job, or in that region of time, I remembered an experience Phil Pearce had shared with me about his conversion to the gospel. He said that he was having trouble and was low and a friend said to him ‘have you tried praying’, Phil didn't think that was his thing, but later when he was very low he prayed and said ‘God if you are there i will throw this dart at the map of england and wherever it lands I will go there’. He said that the dart seemed to shift off course in mid air and then land in bournemouth. So he hopped on his bike and went to Bournemouth. Phil met the missionaries in Bournemouth and joined the church. As I remembered Phils experience I said a little prayer and asked the lord if he could do the same for me (I didn’t mind if the lord chose not to answer my prayer in this way but it would be cool if he did). So I pulled up google maps, asked the lord where he wanted us to go, shut my eyes and moved my finger around randomly on the screen. When I opened my eyes my finger was on Kazakhstan! I said out loud but to myself, ‘well i guess today isn't a day for revelation’! (especially since Kazakhstan is so huge...I reasoned that it takes up alot of space on the map and the probability of my finger hitting it was quite high). I thought nothing more of that experience for a couple of weeks.
In our Job searching Andy and I began looking further and further afield until we threw all caution to the wind and in the spirit of the song ‘i’ll go where you want me to go dear lord’ we began looking across the entire world. I remember we were sitting together scrolling through different jobs advertised in Indian, Shanghai, Singapore, Malaysia...then Andy said Kazakhstan, he scrolled right past and moved on to other places, but my heart had stopped. ‘Oh no, I thought, it can't be’! I stopped Andy and he scrolled back, we looked at the Job there and it seemed quite good. Andy applied for that job. Whilst he was in his first interview with that agency (during the month of December) the Lady from the agency said that she thought Andy would be good at that school but it might be a bit small and slow paced for him. Maybe he should consider this school in Colombia! Up until that point we had completely ruled out schools in South America because they all seemed to require fluency in Spanish. Well, of course now we know that the Kazakhstan prompting was inspiration, a case of needing to go from A to B via point C. Without applying to the Kazakhstan school we would never have found the Anglo in Colombia and this is exactly where the Lord wanted us to be. As things progressed we narrowed down the schools that we considered viable options to just three. Uzbekistan, Colombia and Qatar. We went to London in January to have meetings and interviews with each of these schools but before we left for the interviews we asked Bishop Weston to come to our home and give each of us a blessing. Bishop and his family came and had dinner with us and then gave Andy and I a blessing each. The spirit in the room was incredibly strong. There have only been a few times I have felt the spirit with such strength (one of those times was at your wedding). I wish I had my journal so i could share the exact things said but I do remember some of the things, the blessings told us that we were doing the right thing, That one of the schools was the correct schools and as Andy shared his beliefs with the interviewers it would become clear from their reactions which school would be the right one to go to. (The beliefs that Andy shared were more about family than faith and this really did bring different reactions in the interviews that did make it clear to us which school was right). The blessings said many more things, some of which were so incredible but I won't be able to share them accurately until I am in possession of those journals again.
We were in London for a couple of days for the interviews. Whilst we were there everything seemed to point to Colombia, finding Colombian street food, a Colombian peso exchange sign, the Colombia hotel etc, things just kept happening that pointed to Colombia.
We were invited to interview in Colombia at the end of January. It was a very nervous experience for us because by this time, crazy as it was, we both felt that this was the correct place for us to be but we still needed to put in all the effort and work to secure the place. For days there was an inner battle between doubt and faith. I noticed that the doubts always began with ‘what if…’. At the time I was reading a book by C S Lewis and he bolstered my faith with the quote ‘we walk forward in faith, trusting in God, knowing that with time we will receive more spiritual clarity from our heavenly father.’ and ‘the surrender of our will to God's will is, in fact, not surrender at all but the beginning of a glorious victory.’
On the first day in Bogota we had another miracle. When we first landed in Bogota the only person we had previously met from Colombia was sister Bareno, who was a missionary in our ward at the time Joseph was baptised (four years earlier). We loved Sister Bareno and have always stayed in contact with her. On our first day in Bogota the schedule changed and we ended up with a free afternoon. We were originally planning a trip to the temple on the last day of our trip but since we had time we decided we would go to the temple on that first day instead. Whilst in the endowment room I sat next to a girl who I just kept thinking looked so much like Sister Bareno that maybe they were sisters. I thought how impossible this would be since Bogota is a huge city and the church population here in Colombia is really big and Sister Bareno came from a city more than a 12 hour drive from here. But all throughout the session this was going through my mind. Later in the changing room I bumped into this girl again, she was one of only 2 people in the temple that day that spoke any english. She was very excited to practise her english. I wanted to ask her if she knew Sister Bareno but I thought that was as stupid as asking a member of the church from Idaho if they knew Liz and Brent, so I held my tongue. She told me all about her mission to San Diego and that that was how she knew English. When she learned that I was from England and not the United States she got very excited and said ‘oh I know someone who went on their mission to London’. I just knew at that moment that it was Sister Bareno that she knew. I said her name and this girl in the temple got so excited, she said, ‘yes, Angie Bareno! My mum and her mum are best friends. We grew up together in cucuta.’ It turned out that Nancy, the girl in the temple, had only been in Bogota for a few weeks and had also not planned on going to the temple that day, but woke up with the feeling that she should go and so she went. Now, I have had so many of these ‘chance meetings’ to know that it is not a coincidence, what are the chances of us meeting on our first day in Colombia someone who knew the only other colombian we have ever met? This country is twice the size of France with two temples, five missions and a membership of over 200,000. In my mind, that is divine design, not chance. Later Nancy would live with us for three months.
We faced a nervous few days as Andy interviewed against a candidate who had a lot more experience than he had. We returned home nervous because we had become convinced by all the miracles and revelations we had had that this was the right job. After all the fasting, praying, blessings and revelations we felt this should be it, but as time passed and we still hadn’t heard from the Anglo, hope was fading. My mantra became alma 37:16 ‘...God is powerful to the fulfilling of all his words.’ I just kept repeating it over and over to defend against the attack of doubts. Thankfully Andy got the job and we would be able to ‘go where He wanted us to go’.
Wow, I can’t believe I have come to page 10 again already. There is so much more to write. I will leave it here for now and I guess I will have to write a ‘part 3’!
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