I saw that Ruth posted a picture and status on Facebook recently about completing the jigsaw that I bought her for Christmas, so I just liked it and scrolled on past it. It wasn't until I saw it again, this time on Instagram, that God suddenly gave me a revelation.
As many of you have followed our journey since we set up the website and started blogging, you'll be aware of the significance of camels to us. What you might not be aware of, is that 20th February marks the anniversary of when we visited the property that had the vase of red tulips and a small wooden camel - a direct answer to Ruth's request for a sign if we were on the right track (see Time2 Talk Camels).
"OK," I can hear you say, "but what's that to do with a jigsaw of New York?"
Ruth's been working on that jigsaw in her spare time for about 7 weeks, the foreground with the yellow cabs and people was easy, as was the iconic buildings, but the difficulty came with the grey sky. She ended up sorting all the pieces of sky, by their shape and then labouriously tried each piece in turn until she found where it fitted. What struck me as I saw her post was that a) the jigsaw isn't complete until every piece has been found and put in the right place; b) you can't rush it; c) the final joy is proceeded by a lot of hard work.
One of the pieces that we have missing from our jigsaw at the moment, is that we're not a charity and we know that will put off some people from giving to the project. It's something that we've wanted to do for quite a while but we found the charity commission website a little daunting, so we've kept putting it off. Over the last couple of months, we've had it on our monthly newsletter as a prayer request, that God would bring someone alongside us to help guide us through the process. In the last couple of weeks, God has highlighted this piece and shown us where it goes. We were invited out for coffee by a couple we know, who having asked all about the Time2 journey, they asked if we were a charity yet. We explained our current position and they said that we should get a solicitor to help with all the paperwork required to set a charity up and proceeded to recommend a person at a local firm. As we sat listening, I was thinking about how we definitely didn't have the money to pay for a solicitor, when they suddenly said that they would cover all the legal costs! So we've got a meeting with our solicitor this week to start the process of registering as a charity.
Some of you may remember that in September we wrote a blog (see Have We Made The Right Decision?) that mentioned a house that we'd viewed, that we had been blown away by it
and how we felt it could be the right one. What we didn't say at the time, was that prior to viewing it we had laid a fleece before God again. One of the things we've done as part of the preparation is to name the 5 guest bedrooms, so we have London (where we met and fell in love), the Lakes (the Lake District is our favourite place for rest and relaxation), Canada (our most amazing holiday ever - a place where God blessed us amazingly), the Post room (Kidderminster is the birth place of Sir Rowland Hill who devised the postal service we know today) and the Train room (we've always loved train journeys - we had an amazing one in Canada, plus living so close to the Severn Valley Railway and having a train mad grandson, it goes without saying). When we were going to view the house, we prayed that we would see 3 of these room names within the property if it was the right house. As we walked into a bedroom, there on the bed was a cushion with London printed on it in large letters. In the next bedroom was a cushion with a picture of an envelope on it with a large stamp in the corner! God had got our attention now, so we scoured each room of the main house for the third confirmation, but couldn't see it. The property comes with an annexe, so we again scoured that, but nothing. As we were coming out of the annexe, we were feeling slightly deflated, but the agent started pointing to the land that comes with the property and said that over there behind some trees and bushes was a small lake! We were shocked and excited at the same time! For the third confirmation, God didn't settle for a picture or a cushion, he actually gave us a real lake!
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