Where did that expression come from? ‘The bets laid plans of mice and men…’? Comedian Eddie Izzard does a very sketch about it….

One of the things I’ve tried to learn over the years is to be ready when God suddenly seems to come up with a change of direction, and to be ready to move where he seems to be redirecting me. You don’t need me to tell you (if you’re a regular blog reader) how much I love Colombia! Originally, in 12 days from now, I’d  have been planning the final bits of the trip to one of my favourite places on earth. I’d got a nice ‘team’ pretty much ‘inked’ in for the trip: I love to travel with a team, or at least one other person, for a variety of reasons – including haring the preaching, the praying, and I love to ‘drop people in it’ to do things they’ve never done, to find that they can!

So, a few weeks ago, I ‘lost’ three people who were ‘certainties’ for Cali: three weeks isn’t enough time to replace them, for such a duration – work, university commitments, family commitments, etc – and my dear friend Simon was only going for a week. I recognise that I’m still recovering from the trauma of my pulmonary embolism, its apped so much strength and energy out of me, my doctors would ‘prefer’ that I didn’t take any long-haul flights until the new year…

So…Simon is going alone, as I last heard: he’s only going to be in Cali for a week, and I tried and tried to get people who have expressed a desire to come, but drew blanks. God seemed, er, reticent to provide the airfare (around £1200 for 7-8 days, plus accommodation, wasn’t an amount I could conjure up from nothing…so, I’ve pulled out of Colombia myself, for this particular trip, and my Simon will go one his own for that week.

But God already had it covered in that my ‘new’ door to Romania well and truly opened last month, and I’m going there instead, probably for 5-6 weeks, starting today! I head over to England this afternoon, and fly to Romania tomorrow. It was good, I know, to have a four-year break from going to that lovely country, and to go to a different city was like seeing the Romania I fell in love with almost 25 years ago. So, no ‘miracle’ blogs from Colombia, but hopefully, so lovely stories to tell from somewhere a bit closer to home – and  with no long flights to ‘disturb’ the healing process in my body – just a one-stop, approximately 4 hour (total) flight, which feels good to me and sounds good to the doctor!