🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 TREE 622: JG – starting over

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About six months into our marriage in late 1996, a ‘prophet’ who was speaking at our church told us that God would send us ‘back to the United Nations’. We took this to mean the United Kingdom, and the idea of going back one day grew on us pretty quickly.

There were a lot of travelling prophets in the charismatic subculture of my youth. They were guest speakers at churches and conferences. They usually preached a sermon, and then spent an hour or two giving individual people messages from God. I put inverted commas around this particular ‘prophet’ because he told Christine and I when we were driving him around Tucson that he understood why Diana left Charles after he saw Braveheart. He believed the princess who slept with William Wallace released a demon of adultery into the women of the British royal family. Never mind that the princess in real life was a young child at the time and never met Wallace (and about a dozen other things)!

On the eve of the new millennium Christine and I decided 2000 was the year for us to get ready to go. We were sad, broken and living on a half salary. We needed a fresh start.

In September 2000 I felt a strong urge to go down to my church and pray. I walked around the conference table for an hour listening to God. I ended up with a list of very specific instructions. A few years ago I lost the paper I wrote them on – this may be why Moses used stone tablets – but two important instructions stick in my mind. 1) Now was the time for us to move to Wales, and 2) I needed to switch from PC to Mac.

The next month was very busy.

On 31 October 2000 Christine, our two year-old old son and I, with six suitcases, boarded a plane for a one way trip to Wales and a fresh start.

A lot of people told us how brave we were to move to another country. First of all, it wasn’t ‘another’ country for Christine. She’s Welsh. Second, for us the choice was stay put, wither and die or go somewhere else and try again. Going was easier than staying. But still, go bravely.

I wrote yesterday that I will be taking next week off TREE. I was telling the truth. You won’t be completely bereft though. Skyler has a FIELD GUIDE for you next Friday.

Happy weekend!
Jeff