Tuesday, April 08, 2014

UK Schedule - Easter 2014

We're here! We made it! 

Life is slightly surreal now as we adjust to the time, catch up on sleep after a couple of days travel and also adjust to living back in a totally different culture! Out shopping today the fashions on the high street made us feel very out of touch, middle aged and frumpy!

There are so many things that have excited us already in our first 48 hours ... smooth non-pot-holed roads, drinking tap water, soft toilet paper, escalators (Abigail called them 'moving ladders'), the list goes on! It really is the little things that you take for granted in every day life that are the highlights right now!

We've also enjoyed some foods that we haven't been able to get for the last 14 months, since we were last in the UK! Croissants, Ikea meatballs, nice non-bullet-like peas, fish finger sandwiches, Skips, cherry tomatoes, Crunchy nut cornflakes and more. We have many other goodies on our wish list that we can't wait sample too!

If you think we're home for a holiday, think again!! For those of you who would like to see us our timetable is pretty full with appointments (dentists, Interhealth etc) and other such exciting things. We have also scheduled in time with various churches and prayer groups to update you on life in Dodoma and what the future now looks like for us. Not bad considering this time last month we didn't even know we were coming to the UK this soon!

For those of you who haven't heard we are in the process of applying for visas to work with MAF in Mareeba, Queensland. Described as an outback town of about 8,000 people to us by Australian friends who live there (with lots of cowboys and rodeo's!), where the tarmac on the road runs out if you head west, there is an MAF hangar that services approximately 30 planes. These aircraft fly for MAF in Timor-Leste, Arnham Land, Papua New Guinea and Bangladesh and get all their heavy maintenance done from a central base in Australia. While we don't know exactly when yet, we do know now that, visa permitting, that is where we will be headed hopefully in the latter part of this year.


For our UK friends who would like a chance to see us over the coming month, here is the schedule of our main engagements ...

11th April - Friday - Sharing and Lunch at Christ Church, Orpington - 11am
13th April - Sunday - Purley Baptist Church - 9:30am, 11:15am, 7:15pm
16th April - Wednesday - Visit to MAF Offices, Folkestone
20th April - Sunday - Whyteleafe Church - 10:30am
24th April - Thursday - PBC Home group evening
26th April - Saturday - YCC group afternoon tea - 3pm
27th April - Sunday - Emmanuel Church, Weymouth - 10am
1st May - Thursday - West Wickham & Shirley Baptist Church, Mission Evening - 7:45pm
3rd May - Saturday - Rickstones Church, Essex - 4pm
4th May - Sunday - Croham Road Baptist Church and Bring & Share lunch - 10:30am

We will be based between Mark's parents in Biggin Hill and Jenny's mum in Warligham for our time here. Our contact numbers are Mark - 07914 973264 and Jenny - 07774 286581 ... although signal-wise things seem to be a bit dodgy and we're still working out just how the UK phone networks work!!!!

We really look forward to catching up with many of you over the next few weeks!