Malshanger

The first weekend of February, Eric, Brooks and I went away with our church Pastorate to Hampshire. It was a wonderful get-away to the English countryside on a gorgeous cold winter weekend. We stayed at Malshanger - a country house just a few miles from Jane Austen’s hometown of Steventon. The house and park land are owned by a family who is connected to our church, Holy Trinity Brompton, and that family provides half of the house for the use of the church’s pastorates every weekend. When I say half the house, don’t assume that they're stingy. The HTB side of the house sleeps 29 comfortably - in beds – with a dozen bathrooms, a large catering kitchen and dining room, and a great room filled with well-loved couches, views of the park land and a large, constantly roaring fireplace. The “front lawn” is over 150 acres alone. Does this give you an idea of the size of the place?! It was perfect for our group and since Eric and I brought the little guy along, we were graciously assigned the largest double room on the top floor.

One big highlight for me was a two-hour group hike on public footpaths on Saturday afternoon and evening – we never even had to leave the Malshanger estate, passing budding trees, flowers, greening fields and fence rows, little cottages and stands of trees. We kept startling birds I’d never seen before out of their hiding spots. A one point, three deer took off together across a rolling field and I felt like I was in a movie. I spent most of the walk visiting with Tara, Becky and Hannah, two Americans and a Welsh gal. We found that we had days worth of conversation to share and we all wanted to keep a quick pace, so we ended up well in front of the guys and got to be as girly as we wanted. It was such fun to hear stories about other seasons of their lives and just enjoy the beauty of God's creation in the cold afternoon and early twilight with new friends.

Eric had to leave early, so he missed the games and the late night socializing on Saturday night, but Brooks and I stayed around to enjoy the rest of the weekend. We had quiet times on Saturday morning, and had a few casual meetings with worship and sharing throughout the weekend. I got to lead the singing with our new friend Ross playing guitar. It was wonderful to choose songs and lead worship again, even for just a group of 20!

I left feeling like we had developed real *friendships* from the weekend, rather than just a few acquaintances. We began making plans to see some of these friends socially and have been so encouraged by the warm welcome we've received from this group. Apparently, this Pastorate is accustomed to heavy turn-over since many of the group members are ex-pats like us and are only in London for a few months or years. After only attending since late November, we're practically considered "old timers"! Here are a few of my and Becky's photos from the weekend...