Preparation, preparation...

We will be leaving for our Home Assignment (used to be called "furlough") in a little over three weeks. We need to leave here with enough time to get down to Parakou and leave our car there, hopefully to be sold, and then get down to Cotonou in time to fly out on the evening of July 11th. We will then enjoy three weeks of holiday in the UK before we officially begin our Home Assignment on August 1st, based in France.

There is a lot to organise if you are leaving your house for over a year! No one will be living here while we are gone, but we want to get all our belongings organised and put away. We are definitely intending to come back, but if due to unforeseen circumstances we couldn't, we don't want to leave a jumble of stuff for someone else to sort out! Apart from that, the dust is horrendous, and everything needs to be packed well away to avoid a year's worth of it all over everything!

At work, I need to get my translators up to speed on using the internet, at least to be able to update their anti-viruses, exchange emails with me, and send and receive files from the Paratext (our Bible translation software package) central server. They're getting there, but it's good to make sure they get plenty of practice before I leave and won't be around to trouble-shoot any more.

It is weird to be leaving home for so long! This last hot season was (I use the past tense tentatively, as it is still pretty hot now!) a long, difficult one, and so I'm not finding it too hard to leave. I'm looking forward to holiday in the UK, and to seeing family and friends in both the UK and France. And I'm happy at the thought of spending some time living back in Nancy in the East of France, where I lived for eight years before. But it is so so strange to imagine being away from here for more than a year.

Home sweet home...