Although I was born in England, I didn’t stay there long. At the age of seven months I made my first long-distance flight, with my Mum, back to our home in Ghana, West Africa, to join my Dad.
After living in various places in Ghana – Kumasi, Takoradi Tamele – to name a few, we ended up in Accra where I started my schooling. But at the age of seven, I headed off to Boarding School in England, first to St. Margarets, Folkestone for nine years. Unfortunately St. Mags, as it is affectionately known, then closed down – not entirely my fault – so I then crossed from East to West, to finish the last 2 1/2 yrs in Sherborne, Dorset. Although I was in my home country, and made some super friends, it felt very far from being home.
I then went up to Cambridge to do an Honours degree, as it was called then, in Spanish, French & Linguistics at Anglia University. That was where I got to know that Jesus wasn’t just someone in a holy book, but a real person whom I could in a spiritual sense meet & get to know. He stepped out of the pages of John’s Gospel (one of the biographies of Jesus) & I’ve been following Him, walking with him, ever since. After working 2 years in a department store, and doing a diploma in theology, I joined Wycliffe Bible Translators UK, & am still with Wycliffe today, albeit in Switzerland now- which makes over 35 years! When I started working with Wycliffe it was to translate the Bible into the Jula language of Côte d’Ivoire, & I have ended up working in communications & managing a web site. Go figure!
I met my Swiss husband while training for this work, & together we left for Côte d’Ivoire in January 1979. We spent 15 really happy years there, in spite of my experiencing depression, & it’s in Abidjan that each of our four children took their first steps in life!
From Africa to Switzerland, over twenty-seven years, I battled with depression & eventually the need to take antidepressants long term. to my great surprise, I found myself on a journey to joy. Our four grandchildren are of course part of that, whether they be thousands of miles away down under or just up the mountain from our little town in Switzerland.
I have been surfing online more than 4 hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours.
It’s pretty worth enough for me. In my opinion, if all webmasters and bloggers made good
content as you did, the net will be much more useful than ever before.
Thank you very much, Bernard. It’s really unusual for me to get a proper comment on my site, rather than unintelligible rubbish. All the best in your line of art too, Jane