Being away from home and family opens vistas! Whilst there, we worshiped at the local Vineyard church and I was on staff there for ten years with responsibility for prayer. This involved various initiatives; conferences, days or weeks of prayer in various guises and setting up and maintaining a way of ensuring that leaders received regular and relevant prayer support.

While in California, our two sons were born and I probably learned as much from being a mother as from many of the other experiences that have come my way!

We returned to the UK in 2000 and settled in Banbury. I rejoined the profession which I love and taught in a primary school part time. We started attending Banbury Community Church where I recently served as an elder for seven years. This included speaking on Sundays, overseeing pastoral care and leading a small group.

To foster my growing desire to nurture people who want to deepen their faith I completed an ‘Introduction to Counselling’ course and qualified as Spiritual Director with the Diocese of Oxford. I remain on their list of directors and am planning to complete a course in supervision.

While I believe that every experience is part of God’s shaping, it was while I was attending the Spiritual Direction course that I found words and expression for many of the practices that I was already engaging in. Silence and space with God had always been a priority but I learned that it has a long tradition and there are many ancient as well as more recent ways to facilitate this.

Using my teaching and leadership abilities I developed a short course entitled ‘Connecting with God’ as a gentle way of introducing others to these time honoured methods. This was followed, some 14 years ago, by the birth of regular quiet days where others are guided to deepen their connection with God.