About

Life Interrupted

Well, I can’t say that our life has always been ordinary or that we have always done what was expected.  I mean, at first we did the usual: get married, buy a house, and have kids.  For most of 30 years Ed worked as an Engineer with various oil and gas companies and Diane as a stay-at-home Mom.

Now, as you know, a lot can happen in 30 years, and our lives were full.  We lived in a great neighborhood where we socialized often with our neighbors; we went camping with our children; developed friendships; attended the same church for all that time, but had a lot of spiritually impacting events through exposure to other ministries, and so on.

But we also did a lot of extraordinary things like:

• Homeschooling our children for a couple of years (a highlight of my parenting years)
• Backpacking with our teenage children through Western Europe for 8 months. That experience was one of the most impactful of our lives.  It was never easy, but always interesting. It “broke us out of the box”, as Ed likes to say.
• Gutting and renovating a house (even though we had very little prior experience). My dad generously gave his time to help and teach us.
• Leaving Canada again to live in England for 6 months while we attended Ellel International School of Healing and Discipleship. We learned so much and connected with people from all over the world.
• Came back to Canada and spent 2 years working as Deputy Directors in the Calgary branch of this ministry where we did a lot of teaching and ministry.
• In response to a long held dream we bought a ¼ section of land, built a cabin and then started building a house and retreat center. We believe that people need time and space to reflect and rest.

There is probably a lot more to say, but a lot of it is personal or too much to get into here, but we really see that life is an adventure and we believe that we have a Creator-Father-Saviour- God who has given us a destiny and a calling, and He equips us for this incredible journey that we are on.  How awesome! He also is with us when life doesn’t feel joyful, but rather painful.  We have had a lot of both.

Oops – one last big extraordinary thing, to bring you up to date… Last year, in the first half of 2013, in the midst of many family events and crisis (parents and children), a very involved church life of leadership, an ongoing building project of large scale, satisfying relationships, and no thought of leaving the country one more time to live anywhere else…

Australia!  What!?!

Ed had an opportunity to follow his Calgary boss to a company in Australia to work on a challenging project.  Ed said to me, “Diane, what do you think…”  Well, I thought a lot of things, but mostly I wanted to see what it would be like to live in Australia. I had never been there. And, because we are spiritual people, we prayed about it and felt peace on the inside that this was a doorway of opportunity that we could walk through – not should or must – just that we had the freedom to do this.

It all happened very quickly.  Ed and I went on a mystery trip, which was really a recruitment visit.  While we were gone, our house sold and we had 4 weeks upon our return to sell, give away, and pack up our belongings.  Some went to Australia and some to my parent’s house in BC, and some of it to our new temporary apartment.  We also had to clean, pack up and move my daughter’s stuff out of her apartment. Plus, there were masses of paperwork, and details – and people had to be told.  Probably a lot of shocked friends and family.  Us too!

Anyway, here we are.  Ed has been here since August 2013 and Diane has been here since November 2013.   This time will go so quickly, yet we will have wonderful memories.

Here goes…