But It's Dark And It's Only 4.30pm!

Part 1 - Position Available
Part 2 - The Year was 1999
Part 3 - Red Dirt or Green Grass
Part 4 - Preparations and Going the UK

For those of you who aren't familiar with what Summer is like in Perth I'll explain. Think of the heat you would expect in parts of the middle east or Africa, the type thats dry and searing and you're pretty much there. The temperatures in a Perth Summer (December to February) are usually between 35C (95F) and 45C (113F) and above. It's ok because we're used to it and tend to gravitate to shopping centres, libraries, cinemas and anything with an air conditioner or just stick it out and enjoy the fact that it's summer. Considering this you can expect that our systems were in a bit of shock when we flew from a Perth summer to an English winter in January 2000.

We felt the Lord leading us there but at the time the only people we 'knew' were the staff at the SIM headquarters in Wetheringsett, Suffolk. We didn't actually know them at all but they were SIM so we aimed at starting our journey in Wetheringsett.

The day we arrived we had flown from Singapore to London via Paris and then stayed in a hotel in the city overnight before catching a bus and a train out to Suffolk. What a journey that was with all our luggage and a computer tower to boot.

The people at Wetheringsett Manor (above) where SIM UK/Northern Europe is situated were so welcoming. As soon as we walked (or rather shivered) through the door they greeted us and helped us to settle in.

That was the start of a very long, topsy turvy-full-of-lessons, wonderful six months in the UK. I just can't explain about our time in Niger without first sharing about the UK, the two are intrinsically linked.

Remember in my last post how I said we were prepared for Niger but asked whether we were ready for the UK? Well, I promise I will get there in explaining the answer to that but you probably can guess already that we weren't. The weather was a shock to they system as was the fact that it got dark at around 4.30pm in Suffolk during winter but that was just the beginning.