BLIMEY! THE ADVENTURE WE DID NOT SEE COMING!

We didn't go looking for adventure, but it came looking for us!   

In order to understand how excited we were by what happened just yesterday, you need to know how Jim and I feel about all things British.  We have never actually BEEN to Britain (our daughter Becky is always bugging us about it!).  All we know about the British is what we have learned vicariously, through British mystery novels and PBS.  

We no longer have cable TV, so all we ever watch really, via Netflix, is old BBC mysteries and the occasional sitcom.  We love the customs, the language, and the fact that they actually use older characters for seasoned veteran detectives, not 20 somethings who couldn’t possibly have risen to such lofty ranks at that age, like we see in American mystery and cop shows.  

Since there is a British expat community here in central Florida, we also frequent the local take away food place called The Perfect Pie.  Consequently, our freezer is full of Cornish pasties and cottage pie.  We LOVE all things British! 

Yesterday Jim and I went to a lifestyle meet and greet meeting in our community clubhouse.  At the outset of the meeting our lifestyle director introduced a young woman from Britain visiting us from a production team which is considering filming a documentary about retirement in Florida.  This seemed cool, but it was quickly forgotten because we had another mission and were set on accomplishing it.

At the end of the meeting Jim and I headed right over to the coffee room intent on having our photo taken – finally – for our community directory.  When the photographer who was also at the meeting finally came, the young British woman came with him, for some reason anxious to video whatever little exchange we three would have before he took the photo.  Having learned that we are relative newcomers here, after our photo was taken, she asked if she might interview us.  That request began what was the highlight of our day.

If you've read any of my blogs about our move, then you know, one of the things I found difficult about moving so far from the state where we lived all our lives was not just not knowing anyone here.  It was also not BEING known by anyone here.  So to have someone ask us personal questions about what we did before retirement, why we came to Florida, why to this community. . . was wonderful.  She wasn’t just asking to be polite, for the sake of what she does and why she came, she really wanted to know.  And we were so excited to share it all with her.  We even invited her over to see our house!  At the end of our conversation she asked, if the project goes forward would we be willing to be part of it.  How could we say no? The prospect sounded so fun!  And she said she’d take us up on our invitation to see our home, and bring her producer along!

When she called us later in the evening, asking if they could stop and see us, we readily agreed.  We were beside ourselves with excitement to have two Brits right in our own home, and we told them so as soon as they walked in the door!  

The conversation we had with them gave us more detail on what they were planning.  Although they hadn’t yet decided whether to use our community, the plan was to use a Florida retirement community for a three-part documentary on retirement lifestyles.  Their project was to send a team of celebrities to a foreign country to spend a week living there as retired people might do.  They had already completed and aired the first, filmed in India, and Florida would be the second.  A third, based in Japan, would follow.  Once again we were asked to tell the story of how we came to be here and it was received with great interest and lots of questions.

Interestingly to us, they were also very curious about our church search because it was important to us and a critical decision we took a long time making.  Listening to their questions gave us some insight into life in Britain as well.  We were asked if it was okay to just “show up” on a Sunday to a church we had never been to before.  There was some curiosity about what churches here are like as well. 

They seemed intrigued that we deliberately chose a community with a community service club because serving others is so close to our hearts.  We had an opportunity to share with them all of the wonderful things our club does here to serve a particularly impoverished nearby school – contributing uniforms, warm coats, bags of groceries to carry families through the weekends, and classroom help.

We learned that in Britain, “pensioner”, which is what retirees are called, is not a welcome word.  There is nothing like what we have in our Florida retirement communities in Britain.  Retirement is thought of as the end of a useful life.  That is so unlike our experience here that we were even more eager to share our life and lifestyle with a British audience!

So when we were again asked whether we would be willing to welcome the British celebrities to our home and our lives, should this project go through, we were even more eager to say yes.

When I wrote about adventures in the blog I wrote last week, this one wasn’t even on our radar, not could we EVER have anticipated it!  

Adventures, however, come when we least expect them!  It’s always good to be ready!    

ADVENTURE AHEAD!

So when we decided back in early 2015 that we were going to move to Florida, we were both ready.  We knew there would be losses – moving far from Jim’s family and mine, absence of a change of seasons, leaving the neighborhood where we’d lived for 31 years, and leaving the church we loved – but we knew the timing was right and that the Lord had prepared our hearts.  So we made our move and we have been very glad we did.  We are loving life here.

The one thing we thought would be easy here in the Bible belt was finding a church.  We did a lot of research before we got here and a bit of visiting when we arrived.  In all, we narrowed down our search to two very different churches.  Equidistant from us in opposite directions, each had its strong and weak points.  We were about to settle on one of them when neighbors we had come to know in our community told us about a third that wasn’t even on our radar.  About the same distance from us as the other two, in yet a third direction, we decided to visit before finalizing our decision.  I’m glad we did.

We immediately liked a number of things about it.  The preaching was great, biblical, with lots of application for our lives today.  The music, while probably a bit more contemporary than we might have liked, was thoughtfully chosen and lifted Jesus up in praise and worship.  The congregation was generationally mixed with singles, families and older folks; and was also racially and ethnically mixed.

We’ve attended now for a few months and have decided to stay.  Once that decision was made we jumped right in.  I went through the process of preparing to teach kids on Sunday mornings and we both volunteered to help out with Vacation Bible School.  Jim has also been put in touch with one of the members of the finance committee to see if he can be plugged in to serve there.  

On Saturday afternoon, a couple from church stopped by to drop off some VBS supplies Jim and I will prepare ahead of time and they stayed to chat.  They were so excited that we had chosen their church and were anxious to become involved.  And then they said something I have been thinking about ever since.  They suggested the Lord had intentionally brought us there, to that church.

I always hesitate to go there in my thinking.  I can accept the Lord moving us on from one place to another, even when we are serving and He is prospering and it seems like an inopportune time to leave.  But it always seems presumptuous to me to think that the Lord might SEND us to a specific place for purposes of His own.  The Lord has His resources all over the place and could send anyone, so why us?  Who are we?

However, there is certainly precedent for this in the Bible.  I’m thinking especially of Philip in Acts 8.  Revival broke out in Samaria, of all places, and Philip was in the thick of it.  Verses 5-8 say this:

Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them.  And the multitudes with one accord heeded the things spoken by Philip. . . and there was great joy in that city.

Imagine.  All you have to do is preach Christ and multitudes listen and heed what you say!  Who wouldn’t want to be part of that kind of work of the Spirit?  And who would EVER want to leave?  Probably not Philip, and yet. . . . .

Acts 8:26 says:

Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.  This is desert.  So he arose and went.  And behold, a man from Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians. . . had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning.  And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet.  Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and overtake this chariot.”

Philip ran, heard the eunuch reading Isaiah the prophet and explained there and then how Isaiah was speaking of Jesus.  Almost immediately the eunuch believed and asked to be baptized.  

From his ministry to multitudes in Samaria Philip was sent to one man (but a significant man of great influence!) on a lonely desert road.  From “successes” in the thousands to one “success” in the desert.  What an exciting life of spiritual adventure Philip was called to live!

Jim and I left a church we loved where God was doing some great things, because it was time, and we were confident it was God’s time.  What He has for us here we don’t yet know.   

I don’t want to be presumptuous and say, “He led us here because we’re needed”, but I will say that what lies ahead WILL be exciting, and it WILL be an adventure.  And like Philip, we plan to just do what He asks of us and see what happens.