In the beginning...

Before I can continue with what is happening now, I need to go back to our beginning. God has been preparing us for what is happening today.

In the Beginning…

Pete and I met in Mallorca in 2006. At the time, we were both far from God. After I told him I would never get married or live in England, we ended up moving to England just four months later, bought a two-bedroom house, got married in 2007, and welcomed our first baby in 2008.

Before we got married, we traveled to South Africa so I could introduce Pete to my family. While we were there, we stayed with my cousin, who asked us to watch some DVDs about creation and took us to a church service that impacted us deeply. I returned to faith, and Pete began his own journey with God.

When we came back to Manaccan, we joined the Methodist Chapel, where we stayed for ten years, with a short period attending Light and Life in Helston, during which we were baptized. During this time, God gradually opened our hearts and minds to several important truths. One of these was that children are a blessing: “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them” (Psalm 127:5). I had initially planned to stop after our two daughters, but Pete felt unsure about taking any drastic measures, and so David came along.

When I was just pregnant with David, God gave me Psalm 128. I knew he was going to be a boy. At that time, I was still working, and about two months before David’s birth (December 2011), during a church service, God spoke directly into my soul: “What are you going to do?” It was a question about continuing to work. I cried a lot and eventually let it go.

A little before this, Pete had left employment to become self-employed. This proved to be a real blessing, as he was home more often and available to help when needed, including being there for lunch during the day—a small but meaningful gift.

"your children like olive plants all around your table." Psalm 128:3b

Benjamin came along in 2015. After he was born I had a real conviction/realisation of keeping the children close. I was going to homeschool anyway, but it was more of a calling to be a strong family unit and enjoy being together as a family.

Reuben was born in the Summer of 2016. We thought he was going to be a girl. Well, he turned out to be a boy, and his name means "behold a son"

Stuff

Over the years we spent a lot of time on boats. When we got to five children going out on boats was not particularly easy or pleasurable anymore. We were putting quite a bit of time and money into them. I lost the energy to go through all the rigmarole of preparing for a day on the water, so we almost stopped using the boats. Boats had been a really big part of Pete's life from a young age, but God was slowly helping him to let go.  It was the year of 2017 when Pete finally let go of the boats.  We took the RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) out and sold it. It is funny, the hold material things can have on you. What Pete had been struggling to get let go of actually brought him a sense of relief, like a burden lifted, once it had gone. Something we were to experience a bit later on also.

In 2017, I became pregnant again. By this time, our two-bedroom house was starting to feel a bit cramped. Up to that point, we had made everything work by being extremely inventive. Pete had become a master shelf builder after countless requests of “Honey, can you please build a shelf here… and there?”

We had experienced all sorts of sleeping arrangements over the years: downstairs on camping mattresses, the children sharing one bedroom while the other became a playroom, or a girl and boys sharing a room. At the time of Reuben’s birth, all the children were in bunk beds, Ben was in the cot, and Pete and I were on the floor in their bedroom.

When I became pregnant, I longed for a proper bed. We had made it work, but it was starting to feel increasingly cramped. We began praying and asking God for guidance about whether to move or extend our home. Extending had always been on our minds.

We went around in circles trying to decide on the best—or most affordable—option. We even tried very hard to find a local rental property. Eventually, after borrowing some extra money, Pete drew up plans for an extension, and we received planning permission. The ground was cleared, and the footings were about to be dug when… the neighbouring landowner suddenly claimed ownership of part of our garden.

At first, this was incredibly frustrating, and we could not afford to enter into a legal battle.

We are sure that this was God's doing, He had slammed the door shut on every attempt of ours to stay in that village! We had been spiritually restless, and felt that there must be more. Suddenly hope and expectation soared. God was going to move us. We dreamed of a big garden where the children could play, chickens and a veg garden. And a lively church where we could make friends with spend time with young families like ourselves.

I was excited. We began packing, knowing we had to be ready for whenever God moved. We were looking at houses, but every property seemed to be snapped up so quickly. Finding rental accommodation with five children—and another on the way—was also very difficult, as most landlords rejected us.

In December, we booked a Christmas holiday—the last one we would celebrate as a family before everything changed. We stayed in a lovely little cottage in Devon. About a week before we went, we visited a new church, which would become our new base. On the way, we looked at a property in Cusgarne, near Truro. We had seen this house at the beginning of our search, but at the time it was too expensive and too far away.

A couple of months later, the property came up again, and this time the price had dropped. It was a huge house—we weren’t sure we could afford it, but we decided to look anyway. Through a series of events that were clearly God’s doing, we knew this was the right place for us.

We phoned the agents to accept the property on the 22nd of December and moved in just three weeks later, on the 12th of January. It was an amazing time.

And so our new life began: a new house, a new church, and soon, new friends. We were thrilled at what God had done for us. We were certain that God had blessed us with this wonderful home and was blessing Pete’s work. But was this blessing—or a lesson?