7. An Exercise in Trust

If you ever want to know real trust, ship a car.

First you do a google search for shipping companies, phone a few at random, then contract the one with the nicest-sounding receptionist and/or the best price. Because they don't take credit cards, you transfer £900 quid from your bank account into theirs. In return for this you get an email of a scan of a photocopy of a shipping note, of which you must download and print out two copies.

Some time later you drive your car to a warehouse complex next to a harbour in Kent, where you follow a set of hand-written signs to 'export' past disused buildings, piles of rusting scrap, and burned-out cranes. When finally you go past the last sign you find yourself in a carpark next to a portacabin where a burly man in a ripped fluorescent coat waves you to the back of a disorderly queue of stationary vehicles. You hand him your illegible shipping note and he scribbles something equally illegible on the windscreen in dry-wipe marker.

You leave the keys in the ignition and go home. And that's it. If you remembered to take a spare copy of the shipping note/illegible smear then you can get one of them scribbled on by the man with the marker pen by way of a receipt.

You just have to pray that by some quirk of fate, your car accidentally finds itself on the right boat at the right time.

Then, once it is under way, you google for customs agents in the destination port, email a few at random, then pick one equally at random (because this time you can't even speak to the receptionist). You send them your bill of lading, which hopefully you have been emailed by now, followed by a transfer of £700 from your bank account because, naturally, they don't take credit cards.

So by this point you are down £1600 plus the cost of the car and the stuff in the boot. If it were a poker game you'd be throwing in your chips, finishing your drink, and going home with a worried expression. But you can't. You just have to hope for the best. This small part of your life is completely under the control of other people whose methods you don't understand and who aren't contactable in any meaningful way.

Now call me a control freak if you like but that is no where near my comfort zone. However it does make for a good metaphor.

Last week I did a presentation on the Africa project to thirty or so people at work; lots of people had asked why I was leaving so I thought it would be good to do a dinnertime PowerPoint. The presentation was ok, people asked good questions, I'm told I got the message across. Apparently two (non-Christian) colleagues were talking afterwards and one said "I had no idea they were self funding...I thought they were being paid. That takes real faith..."

I've been thinking about this a lot since. I never really considered that I had real faith, I've always just thought of my life as a bit like driving through fog: basically I see things when I hit them. Long term views are all very nice and so forth, but in my opinion you can't beat a bit of ignorance for improving your outlook. So I just haven't been worried about this stuff at all. What I have come to realise in the last few weeks is that I am faithful, in a very real and tangible sense.

I've heard faith described in terms of a devolution of self-reliance, of a weak and cowardly ceding of control and personal responsibility to a Higher Power. I don't recognise that definition of faith. For me faith is more like flying: I can't fly by myself, no matter how much resourceful self-belief and arm flapping I engage in. To fly I must step on to a plane, trusting in the engineers who designed it, the technicians who built it, the mechanics who service it, and the pilots who fly it. There comes a point in most things you do when you just have to accept that you can never be fully in control, and that you need to have faith in the people pulling the strings further up the tree. In no way is that cowardly: it's simply pragmatic.

For Christians, that higher power is, you won't be surprised to learn, God. We just accept that there are some things we can't do alone. I reckon with a following wind and a lot of free time I could have raised our budget in the six months, but I am absolutely sure that I couldn't do it alone, while working full time, and without directly asking people for money. Unless, that is, the wheels were being greased. You'll know from previous blog posts that we haven't asked anyone for sponsorship, yet we're now sitting at about 98% of budget.

There are generally quite valid naturalistic explanations for almost everything, but the confluence of things that have just happened perfectly in our preparations leave me feeling that we are being aided. There's no ceding of responsibility there, we've worked very hard: but, like flying, the pilot gets you to your destination but you get yourself to the airport.

It is that trust in the wingman that has enabled us to get where we are now.

Now the observant among you will note that it is six weeks since our last post. This tardiness is because in the last six weeks we've been unbelievably busy. In that time we have shipped a car, sold a car, wound up and left two jobs, organised two birthday parties, opened three bank accounts, redecorated the house, found tenants, chased and received our visas, packed stuff for storage, arranged medical insurance, got international driving licences, practiced for and sung in three choral concerts, closed down nine mobile phone contracts (long story), found fish-sitters (ten koi and eight tropical), and said goodbye to our friends in Poole, all the while maintaining perfect marital harmony (eh??? - ed.) and passable parenting. Christmas at the opposite end of the country alternating between two large families half an hour apart with thirty of our closest relatives was something of a welcome break.

For the first time in eleven years we're homeless and unemployed, and about to embark on a three year voyage of uncertainty.We fly in six days.

Apart from the odd twinge of recent anxiety, this all feels normal and right. Rationally, from a western capitalist viewpoint, it's an utterly bizarre thing to do, but we are so convinced about it that doubt doesn't feature. I guess you could call that faith.

Judaism has a concept of "places where the veil is thin": physical locations where the people felt they were closest to God. Personally I don't believe God is more in any particular physical location than in any other, but where we are, waiting for the next phase to start, the veil sure feels insubstantial.

All my adult life I believe I have been following God, but on a looping, chaotic trajectory; sometimes close, more often far. I feel that now, having taken the first steps, we're finally on the racing line. We're doing what we have been called to do. It feels indescribably like everything that has gone before has led up to this moment.

Just one more anecdote before I close. A few months ago we realised that our mortgage period was coming to the end. We searched around and found somewhere that offered great terms for people letting on a non-professional basis. The contract stipulated the mortgage should be held for six months before we could let out the house, and at the time that was fine. In the event the switch took longer to process than expected, leaving us with a month of no cover for our costs. To try and head things off, we went into a branch to talk to a mortgage advisor. He was great: sympathetic, personable, and helpful. He collated our evidence, submitted our application, and told us all would be well.

At the end of November we got an out-of-hand rejection. Not only were we not eligible to rent our house, we couldn't even APPLY for eligibility until we had been with them for six months. That would have killed the whole scheme for us, and remember that by this point we had both quit our jobs and were in the run down to finishing.

Claire phoned the company and talked to a call centre who reiterated the information in the letter ("I'm sorry, madam, that you have been given this misinformation and that it causes you a problem...", "PROBLEM, I have left my job on the basis of this INFORMATION..."). She phoned me at work in a panic. I grabbed a couple of guys to pray while Claire tried again.

Five minutes later she was through to a UK manager who was both sympathetic and apologetic, and moreover bypassed the whole system to give us permission to let from that moment. Just one more door opened for us.

And so here we are. Planning stage complete. The next post will be from Africa as the next phase of the adventure begins. Until then we're in limbo, but, standing here where the veil is thin, the view's awesome.