Today Janet gave me the go-ahead: she said "If you want to go to Africa again to preach the gospel, if God shows you that is what he wants you to do I will back you".
"Do you really mean that" I asked. "Of course I really mean that" she replied. "If God makes it clear that it is what he wants you to do I'll back you to the hilt".
Tonight I lay awake thinking about it. When we returned from Africa in February 1995, we were brought home by 10 different reasons including having run out of money, God graciously gave us enough extra money to buy our present house and redo the wiring, plumbing and some re-decoration.
From experiences indelibly imprinted on my mind by our time in Africa I had considered putting razor wire round the garden only to discover it would be frowned upon by the law. It had taken many months to recover from the fear of dark nights and stories of hold-ups with AK47s with which we had lived in Malawi. Did I want to go through that again? I had forgotten how that felt.
Over the meal table we had discussed why I wanted to go. Statistics from World Outreach told us that in 1900 sub-saharan Africa was only 3% Christian, but is now 50% Christian with 25,000 new believers being added every day. Who is caring for them? Or are they being sidelined into cults and weird denominations rather than being liberated into the pure gospel of a loving God.
And how can we stay in the UK, growing old, knowing what gospel grace we know? when there could be opportunities to help in Africa.
Was our time in Malawi from January 1993 to February 1995 'unfinished business', or was it just an experience along the way?
Why did we both spent time most days reading the scriptures and asking the Lord to explain them to us if we weren't going to use all this knowledge somewhere?
"I didn't have a thyroid problem last time we were in Africa. Now my body can't control it's temperature properly and I can't handle hot weather, so God will need to do something if I am to cope" Janet commented.
"And I don't have any formal theological qualifications". It was Pippa who had reminded us the previous Sunday that the church group from which we came had regarded Bible school as superfluous once 'the Holy Ghost has come' and we 'have no need that any man teach us for when he is come he will lead us into all truth'.
And that is how it had been, except that graduation from a Bible School might (a) open doors and (b) provide confidence that we could accomplish what we had in our hearts to do.
But if God is putting into our hearts to return to Africa, surely he will open the way and take us where he wants us to go? "One thing is sure", I had said to Janet this afternoon, "If God does not open the way we are going nowhere. I don't have the energy any more to push doors open. By lunchtime every day I am exhausted and it's easy to get very little done in a day".
So I lay in my bed and thought about all this, and then got up to write it all down while it remained fresh in my mind.
"What timescale?" I had asked. Janet replied after some thought "August 2011 I should think. There is too much to do for it to happen any earlier, and that will give us time to get ready and put everything into place". I shall have been retired one year.
The days since I put down the work of the World Outreach office at the end of November 2009 have been thoroughly unsatisfactory. Motivating myself to do anything at all has been very difficult. Not that I have been sitting around doing nothing - far from it. But the jobs I have set myself: to clear the house of things we could manage without, and to redecorate very simply, were just not happening. It has been difficult to detach myself from the World Outreach work which I had eaten, drunk and slept since 2003 and even today I have been again adding entries to the Operations Guide in response to a request from the new Operations Director. The website is gradually dying although the design of the new one is still continuing to grow in my mind.
"Can I share our thoughts of returning to Africa with friends?" I had asked Janet. "Yes, with closer friends, but not everyone because it may cause them to become unsettled. You're going to have to begin to put out feelers and talk to people because things won't just happen by themselves. You will have to make them happen".
It was on Sunday morning that Graham and Lisa Stevenson had spoken at the morning church meeting we attend about the parable of the talents and I had felt strongly affected by his words not to bury what we had in the ground.
So after writing this, making a hot drink, and talking to the Lord about it, I returned to bed.
