Coming to England
In my post from last week titled, Provision, I briefly mentioned all the amazing things that happened to bring us to England. In recounting the story, I’ve even had many non-Christian friends tell me they don’t understand this God thing, but it sure seems like we were meant to be here. So here it goes…
In 2001, a team from Stuart Bell’s Ground Level Network, came to minister at our Grace Network leadership conference. An invitation was given for any that wanted to attend their leadership conference in Swanwick, England, in April 2002 were welcome. I didn’t know why, but felt I needed to come to the conference. I made arrangements to do so and in the process arranged to meet and stay with full time missionaries from our church in the USA who are directors of Betel of Britain in Birmingham, Kent & Mary Alice Martin.
The conference was good. I was amazed at the work of Betel. I also got to meet Elliot & Mary Tepper, the founders of Betel. I was awed by their lifestyle of faith. But there was something special about Great Britain as well.
I was so excited, I told my wife we need to all go and see! She was not so excited, and this was also during the difficult period of our marriage I mentioned in A Spider’s Web. Needless to say the whole family came to England 3 months later for 2 1/2 weeks. We spent a week at Betel where Ray & Connie Demerjian, also missionaries at Betel from our church, looked after us and Ray taught me how to drive on the correct side of the road and how to handle roundabouts from an American’s perspective, which was extremely helpful! We then went and stayed with 3 different families from Ground Level churches in different parts of England which was a huge blessing. I look back on it and think we were crazy, a family with 4 small children, looking for people to put them up in different parts of the country; but such is a lifestyle with God. Sometimes it seems crazy, but that’s when the miracles happen.
Everyone including the children thought Great Britain was an amazing place. But for now, I needed to let it lie as restoring our marriage took precedence. It was about six months later that my wife came to me and said she couldn’t get Great Britain out of her heart and mind. We had fallen in love with the country and the people.
We then went to our pastor and the missions board, just to let them know what was stirring inside. We felt we should take small steps to see where this goes and offered to support our missionaries already in the field there by organizing short term mission trips. I led our first team over in autumn 2003.
In August 2004, we arranged to come back as a family and enjoy the Ground Level GrapeVine festival. After landing at Heathrow and starting the drive up to Lincoln, we felt we were more at home than on holiday. During GrapeVine, we received several encouraging words from people. The first was to look out for the signposts during the conference. Several people came up to us and asked when we were moving to Great Britain. We were told we were bridge builders. On the last day, Jeff Lucas, Pioneer Network, started his message reading from Genesis 12:1, ‘God told Abram: “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you.’ My wife and I nearly hit the floor as the presence of God was so strong we felt God himself was speaking directly to us.
When we returned home, we met again with our pastor and the missions board. They agreed that God was in this and were excited for us to see what God would do. What we didn’t do, was sell everything and fly over to Great Britain. Instead, we waited on God, and while we waited, we made preparations. He didn’t say when we would move. Would it be 1 year or 20?
We did feel we were going to work while serving as missionaries, which is not the traditional way of going through a sending agency and the church paying for all your expenses. Then again, this ‘tradition’ is only a couple hundred years old and not the way it happened in the ancient manuscripts as it is often mentioned how the early apostles and other church leaders supported themselves so as not to be a burden on others.
Nearly a year later to the day, I received an email from another business unit in my company looking for a project manager for this pilot project which had now become a major corporate initiative. On the second interview, I heard they were looking for someone in Europe, preferably London, and the light bulbs went off in my head. But relocation was not part of the deal. I accepted the position on the condition if they couldn’t hire someone in Europe, they’d at least consider moving us there. They agreed and I officially transferred within the company in October 2005.
In January 2006, I came to London for a European Kick-Off meeting. My immediate supervisor, who was based in Montreal, Canada, was also there. They had not been able to hire anyone and agreed to try to get it in the budget for 2007, but no promises. Ok, but as we thought about it, my wife and I felt it would be 2006 rather than 2007. People shared words at the beginning of 2006 that it was a year of change. Dear friends and associate pastors, Dick & Nancy Heaney, the couple who helped us with counselling through our marriage crisis were retiring and moving away. (I consider Dick to be my spiritual dad.) Also a single mother whom my wife had been helping for years found a great Christian man and was getting married. Needless to say, in early March 2006, my supervisor came back and asked if we could possibly move this year instead of next!
He also said they need to add it to an existing budget which has never happened, so don’t count on it. About 3 weeks later, I was fasting and praying when I got the call. He said he’s never seen anything like it. Everything we asked for had been approved! He asked how quickly I could move, and I told him four months. I had been preparing for over a year and knew what we needed to do and how long it would take. All we needed was the open door and here it was!
Ideally, we wanted to move the end of July/early August simply because of the school schedule and making the adjustment easier for the kids. 4 months from the end of March is the end of July/early August!
We put our house on the market. Some people suggested we should rent it out rather than sell, but we felt that was hedging our bets. We believed this was God, and if we did come back, there was no guarantee we’d come back to where we were. But it was also the beginning of the housing crisis and homes were no longer selling.
I sent an email to Christian friend and realtor with a suggested price. She came back with a price $10,000 higher saying it was no problem. When I pointed out the mistake, she said she thought we could get the higher price. The house went on the market, and the next day we had 26 showings and 3 offers, all above asking price and 2 in cash! So much for houses not selling!
Where do we live and how much can we afford? I knew I was going to work in London, but with the transport system, you could live practically anyway in the greater London area. I met with an estate agent who helped me understand what I could afford and the fact that if I wanted something decent for my money and decent schools for the kids, we’d have to look outside the city. We aimed towards the south west of London to be closer to Heathrow and Gatwick airports for our connections with the USA, and zeroed in on Surrey, in the Epsom/Ewell/Leatherhead/Dorking area. I then met with some of the elders of the church and showed them the map. One man, particularly prophetic said, ‘Leatherhead! There is something about Leatherhead!’ We didn’t rule out the other locations, but did focus from then on in the Leatherhead area.
Now comes finding a house in the UK. The process in moving is somewhat circular. You can’t get a visa without a place to live. And you can’t get a place to live without a visa. We needed to come early enough to find a house, and give enough time for the visa to process, then confirm the house with the approved visa before you leave the country. But we wanted to rent a house and rentals generally are only on the market for about a month prior, and don’t wait if they get a better offer, while the only week we had for house hunting was six weeks prior to our move. Again, the facts seemed against us.
My wife and I came for our house hunting trip. Our goal was to find a house and enroll the kids in school in 1 week. ‘Impossible!’ people said, but nothing is impossible to God. We contacted the estate agents and had several homes lined up to see on the first day. None were in Leatherhead or in our price range. We were discouraged, but we didn’t want to rush and just take anything. We believe God ordains the place where you live to be a blessing to your neighbours. That night we prayed for a house and said if it doesn’t open, we’ll arrange for temporary housing and come back in August and wait for the right house, but we know God could open up something overnight. The next morning, Saturday, I went on the web and a 4 bedroom house was just listed for rent in Leatherhead in our price range and walking distance to the schools!
We immediately called the estate agent and asked to see it. The owner was shocked as he had just listed it, and concerned because they have small children and hadn’t fixed it up yet. We said we could see past it, and the house was exactly what we needed! We signed the papers Monday.
Onto the schools. We contacted Surrey County, gave them our new address, but they said both local schools (our boys would be going to a primary school and the girls to a secondary school) were over-subscribed. This was a foreign concept to me since in the USA the public schools have to take children in their catchment area. The county said we were welcome to talk to the schools anyway, but they’d look to see where else they could place them. So we met with the primary school first. The head teacher pointed out that they were over-subscribed in every year/grade but 2. It just so happen those were the 2 years/grades my boys would be going into! We enrolled them on the spot. Next was the meeting with the secondary school. Our oldest daughter was with us on the house hunting trip and we arranged to meet the head of year that she’d be going into. After an interview process, the head informed us just that week they hired a new teacher for that year and were now able to accept more students and was offering our daughter one of those slots. They also have a policy that once one child in a family is accepted, the rest are automatically accepted even if they are over-subscribed. Our 2 daughters were now enrolled in school as well, and the school is ranked in the top 50 public/state schools in the country. All our impossible goals for the house hunting trip were achieved!
Back in the USA, we moved out of our home and stayed with various family and friends for the remaining time. We weren’t planning on getting a car right away. It’s just something we felt we could wait on until things settled down. In fact, I was having lunch with a friend telling them this when I got back and had an email from the owner of the house were going to be renting asking if we were interested in buying his car. I knew they had 2 kids while we had 4 so it was probably too small for us, though we had been debating whether we buy a mini-van or a small car, then rent a bigger car for family trips just because fuel is so expensive. Also, my wife did not want to drive a manual transmission car, and most of the cars in Great Britain are manual instead of automatic. But we asked about the details anyway and here it was a 7 passenger Honda Stream, automatic, and got about 30 mpg. I asked a friend what he thought, and he said, ‘It sounds like a blessing from God to me!’ So we bought their car.
The shipping container with our belongings arrived in England, and we were asked what to do with it. We weren’t told there would be a storage fee if it couldn’t be delivered right away and we still had a couple weeks until our arrival. The owners of the house already had their belongings moved out, so they agreed to receive our goods for us and we wouldn’t have to pay the storage fees. When we arrived on 1 August 2006, our belongings were already in the house and our car out front!
What about church? There were no Ground Level churches in the London area. Our pastor recommended Hillsong. Hillsong just so happened to have a church plant in Leatherhead. We attended there for a few months. The people are very welcoming and warm. We knew God brought us to Great Britain, but didn’t know why. After a few months of settling in, we started to realize why we were here. Unfortunately God’s plans for us didn’t fit Hillsong’s mold, so we looked elsewhere. We found another charismatic church, Pioneer Engage, in Leatherhead and emailed the office for information. The pastors, Gerald & Anona Coates, invited us for coffee and to talk. I found out later, that that week they had been praying for help with their church plant in Leatherhead. We didn’t know who they were at the time, that they are national church leaders, regular speakers and both are authors. Nor did we realize they were the leaders of the Pioneer Network, of which Jeff Lucas is a member who gave the final word that sealed the deal in 2004 to prepare for coming to Great Britain. We’ve been a part of their church ever since, and privileged to be mentored by them and later joining the leadership team.
The journey wasn’t without challenges. The company helped with some of the moving expenses but not all. They said since I approached them first rather than the company asking me about the move, even though there was a good business reason for me to be based in London, they weren’t obligated to do all the things they normally do for someone being transferred. But the extra money we got in the sale of the house made up the difference. It was God, after all, who brought us here. The company was merely his vehicle for doing so.
One thing I thought was a mistake and turned out to be a blessing later was our work permit. I asked for a 5 year work permit, because we wanted to be able to apply for an ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’ visa and you needed to live in the country for minimum of 4 years. Human Resources assured me they would get me a 5 year work permit, but waited until the last minute and it only came through for 2 years. There wasn’t enough time to change it, so we just went with it. That meant I’d have to get another work permit and visa before being able to apply for the Indefinite Leave to Remain. As it turned out, after we arrived, the law changed moving the time to 5 years, so we would have had to apply for another visa anyway. As we approached the 2 year point, my company took care of getting the new work permit and visas for the whole family, this time for 5 years. Now we have an 18 month window beyond being in the country for 5 years to apply for our Indefinite Leave to Remain.
The importance of the Indefinite Leave to Remain is I’m no longer tied to my company or any specific job in order to stay in Great Britain. It just gives us a lot more options.
It’s also much different living in a different country than just visiting. Ways of doing things are different and that makes it more challenging. But I felt I’ve grown more as a person during that time, then the 10 years previous. My faith has never been so tested, nor have I ever seen so many miracles of provision in my life, and the provision continues to this day!
