Two Years Later: Growing where I'm (trans)planted :)

Dear World, including and especially friends and family,
I am now in the UK!

This comes as no surprise to some of you, I know, yet it may for others.  Wasn’t I supposed to be in Atlanta for three years?  And yet only two years have passed.  Well, two and a bit.  As you may have noticed, I have a tendency to fall off the face of the earth in terms of communication, but I’ve been trying to develop the habit of blogging when doing so less figuratively.  So there’s balance!

Thus, as I’ve travelled to another culture, I am here blogging again.  Travel logging, if you will.  And yes, there is culture shock, and yes, the weather is strange.  Again I’m in a country whose official language is English- again I occasionally have trouble understanding what’s being said.  Less so this time, though  :)  I’ve even met a Ghanaian person here!  I understand her words better than some others.

So how did I get here?  For the previous two academic years, I was in seminary at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.  I lived there on my own in an apartment, and all went well: I am indeed still on track to become an elder in the United Methodist Church!  I still feel called to hospital chaplaincy, too.  I loved my time in Atlanta, from the classes at Candler and the company of good friends to the great swing dancing and wonderful cultural events.  The traffic really is as bad as they say, but luckily I could take a free shuttle or walk to campus.  By design the church where I worked for a year wasn’t too far away.

That church was the wonderful, hospitable Northwoods UMC of Doraville, GA.  I met many great people there and had excellent experiences in ministry.  I am praying for their well-being always.  I also worked as a hospital chaplain in Atlanta part time during my first year in seminary (a mere 4 hours per week), and then had full-time chaplaincy training for the summer of 2008 in Evansville, Indiana.  It was challenging, and I loved it.  I’m looking forward to doing more.  I saw solid and interesting connections between all those work experiences and the things I was learning at Candler, and while some classes will always feel tedious, my time there felt extremely worthwhile.  I think my favorite part, in fact, were my Old Testament and New Testament courses.  They really opened up my reading of the scriptures, giving me a lot more confidence about finding responsible interpretations.  It was a wonderful thing to learn, as a Christian.  I’m very grateful to all my previous sources of learning (my friends and family, my church, NCSSM, CCC, and Guilford) for preparing me  sufficiently to grasp all these other opportunities.

Now, at this point I’ve brought up Atlanta, classes, church, chaplaincy, dancing, and even traffic, but there’s another significant factor of my life’s last couple of years that I have not yet mentioned.  In fact, Martin and I met just over a year and a half ago while swing dancing in Atlanta.  He’s a lanky, long-haired computer programmer from the UK (you’ll see where this is going) and the year prior, while I was in Ghana, his company had flown him over for a three month stint in their Atlanta (Norcross) office.  He and they liked the experience so much that they brought him back for another three months, this time in the Spring of my first year of seminary.  That was when we met.

He’s lovely, and we’re very much in love.  Most of the course of our relationship, of course, we’ve been in different countries (kept in everyday contact by Skype and Facebook).  This has been hard, but we’ve persevered and been happy for it.  I made one trip to the UK in November of 2008 over Thanksgiving, and Martin and I were even able to see my British family (aunt, uncle, and cousins :)).  Martin was also able to come to the US in May, and met my parents and one sister for the first time.  And now I’m in the UK for a year!  Thus far I’ve met one of Martin’s sisters, plus some of his mother’s side of the family, and there’s more to come.  I’ve had a great time, too, getting to know his friends in Worcester, which is where he lives.

So, about 5 months into this relationship, when we became more sure that we were staying together, the brainstorming process on “how to live in the same country” began...  Martin was willing to come to Atlanta again, but with the economy growing worse last year, it was looking like a tricky option.  Fortunately, there was one route that allowed me to stay in seminary and see the UK  :)  Candler has an exchange program with Wesley House, a Methodist theological college that’s part of a federation of other such institutions, which is affiliated with the University of Cambridge, UK.  I applied, Candler and Wesley House accepted me, and now I’m studying at Cambridge!  Crazy  :)  The visa process was frustrating over the summer, but thankfully that’s over for now, and at the moment the largest concerns involve what I should take to class.

At Wesley House, I’ve got a bedroom and a study situated on a hall where I share a bathroom and kitchen with other people.  Every weekday morning there’s group prayer, and I’ve already started a Greek course and a UK Methodist Life & Service course.  A worship course and one titled “Gospel and Western Culture” will begin soon.  There are also a lot of group social activities, and practically everyone lives on-site.  Some seminarians have decent-sized families, so we have about 10 children of various ages running around, being cute and getting into mischief.

And practically every weekend I get to see Martin.  It’s a comfort and a joy.  Worcester is about 4 hours from Cambridge by train, 5 hours by bus, but I’ve figured out how to do it relatively cheaply, and we’ll be visiting each other in equal amounts.  Everyone here, from Martin’s family to the folks at Wesley House, have been marvelously kind and welcoming, and I’m having a wonderful time.  It’s fun to be in a new place, have confusion over silly things, enjoy new food and think in different ways.  (You’ll be happy to know, I’m learning to look the right way when crossing the street).

There will be another post soon with some of the adventures I’ve had with Martin, plus some of the beautiful parts of Wesley House and Cambridge.  And I have pictures!  I got a camera for my birthday, so anticipate more pictures in the future.  For now, I’ll leave you with pictures of me and Martin as he picked me up from the airport, and then walking on the Malvern Hills, close to Worcester. 

 

 

 

Love and peace to you all,
(in greek, ‘agape humin’ and ‘irenei humin’),
and thanks for caring!

Yours again,
Rachel Rose


PS-  If you want to say ‘love to you’ to a single person, you say ‘agape soi’, and the same for ‘irenei soi’  :)