Day 274-275 Years of Childhood and The Dower House

11pm Am laying in the servant's quarter of a Dower House (www.thedower.com) in Hertfordshire in one of those deep window seal rooms one can see in period dramas. I set there just after I arrived and thought maybe for such a times of this was I meant to go through the preparation process, 6 years of striving on my own and 6 years of learning to strive in God. I bumped into John Hayes after leaving Master B's birthday party and he asked me how I got on with Mission Year. I pay the fees I said, so they are happy, I carry on doing the things in the church as I did before, but I have no contact with the Mission Year leaders. I talked to our pastoral carer at The Raven in Hexton this afternoon where our group stopped for lunch about how I could have handled the MY leaders with more love. It felt at times that there was a high, thick brick wall between us written money all over it and plastered with my disappointment of low incoming finances and disillusionment of lack of time to volunteer in the church. Despite all of the struggles this year has thought me more about God's faithfulness than any sermon serious in any churches. I've learnt the biggest lesson so far to receive. I read some old books in the Dower library, whilst the others watched football. One was about clans and tartans, some of them about great houses of England, diaries from World War I. and there was a small book that unexpectedly captured my attention: Years of Childhood by Sergey Aksakov. I read a few pages from the first chapter and was amazed by the mother’s care for that small sick child, whom she was advised to leave under the icons and lit candles to die. The mother tirelessly prayed and watched the slow recovery of her son into a friend of Gogol, Turgenev and Tolstoy. My love of reading I had to burry for so long here in England suddenly stirred up memories of a Christmas when I read the whole War and Peace many years ago. I remembered lying in bed and reading for days and days. I’ve never been so happy and satisfied in my life. It just felt so good to do nothing, but to read. I do have a special place in my heart for 19th century Russian literature. 9pm I wrote a few days ago, that I didn’t think I had a calling to church ministry at all. Well, something happened. I was asked if I wanted to be sent as a missionary from my church to my homeland. To be honest I have been thinking about it, but never dared to ask, especially after my ‘disastrous failure’ with Mission Year. Obviously, the church doesn’t think that way, which makes so happy. I am still processing the possibility to become a ‘missionary’, but every time I think about it I have this unbelievably peaceful feeling of electric shock going up and down in me. I think it suggests that I should carry on with the conversation about this possibility.