What a privilege it is for me to at last be able to thank you all publicly for your marvellous support over the last 11 years!

It was in 1997 that I paid my first visit to you, prior to going to Afghanistan early in 1998. Of course the Taliban were still in power then, and right through my first term of 3 years. After that term, during which I had done 6 months Dari language study in Herat, 2 years setting up a school and teaching in Kabul, and 6 months teaching in the North, in Mazar-i-Sharif, I returned to UK for my first Home Assignment tour for CMS. I had a fairly memorable visit to St Mary's on that occasion, falling and splitting my head open on the edge of the communion rail during a children's talk at a Family Service!

2001 .. On returning to Central Asia, I was assigned to the Christian School in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and just a couple of weeks after I arrived came 9/11, as it's called, and in the weeks that followed, the defeat of the Taliban.

When I returned to Mazar at the beginning of the following school year, September 2002, I found our beautiful school completely stripped of everything, right down to the light fittings and the ceiling fans. Everything had been looted, though over the months that followed, we managed to recover just some of the books, at least, from the Ministry of Health, who had looted them! After a year in Mazar, I went in 2003 with a pioneering family to Maimana, in order to teach 5 of their 6 children who were school age. They set up the very first Physiotherapy and Orthopaedic Centre in the province..it was an exciting project to be a part of, and it is still going extremely well today.

After a year in Maimana, I left my class in the capable hands of another teacher, and returned to Mazar, where I stayed for the rest of my time in Afghanistan, until July 2006.

I did, however, return to UK for leave in 2004, and had another encouraging and busy visit to Harefield, which included a lovely visit to the local primary school.

My time in Afghanistan had a number of highlights, and I guess what one would call

'low points' too. Life under the Taliban regime was always difficult, especially for women, and very especially for foreign women! At one point we had to finally leave the country, as a number of our staff had been arrested, but in my enforced stay in neighbouring Pakistan, I set up a school again, and we carried on lessons there for a couple of months until we could return.

The highlights were the wonderful friends I made amongst Afghan neighbours and colleagues, and in 2005, an amazing circular overland trip through the centre of the country, and then North from Herat back to Maimana and finally East to Mazar, my starting point. The beauty of the country in the Hazarajat, the Bamian Valley, and the glorious 12th Century Minaret of Djam in its amazingly isolated location were unforgett-able reminders of how lovely this suffering country can be. And of course, over my 8½ years in Afghanistan, there were constant reminders of the Lord's faithfulness in answering the prayers of people like yourselves, as we were kept safe, as our work flourished despite opposition, and as secretly, one by one, local people came to know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

After returning to UK in mid-2006, I was able to make a whistle stop tour of most of my Link churches before going to Sudan, in Africa, to a completely new job. This was my first time ever in Africa, and although life in Afghanistan had not been easy, nothing had really prepared me for the vicissitudes of life in Africa's largest country! Like Afghanistan, Sudan has suffered 30 years of war, and in the South of the country the infrastructure has been destroyed. This makes every aspect of life hard, and add to that the climate of unrelenting, inexorable heat... even in the North, where my house had ceiling fans, and (occasionally!) a 'desert cooler', on many many nights the temperature did not drop below 30º Centigrade. In the North I was drinking 5 or 6 litres of water a day.

In Sudan, as I had been in Afghanistan, I was supported and sent out by the Church Mission Society, a mission agency  of the Anglican Church. However, in Sudan, I was seconded to the Province of the Episc-opal Church of Sudan, so I was actually working for the equivalent of the Anglican Church there.

My job, as a member of the staff of the Provincial Education Department, was firstly to train trainers of teachers, and then to actually take part in training courses for teachers myself. In my 2 years in Sudan, I trained 13 trainers, 10 of whom are still involved in training teachers, and the courses in which I was involved trained 500+ primary and pre-school teachers, head teachers, special needs teachers and Christian RE teachers.

Although I was based in Khartoum, the capital of the country, I travelled all over the country to teach in short courses, from Yei in the far South by the Congo and Uganda borders, to the Nuba Mountains in the centre of the country.

'Lowlights' in Sudan were of course the enervating weather, the horrendous dust storms, and the ghastly bus journeys for days and days, travelling in converted trucks open to the heat, the dust and the rain....yes it DID sometimes rain in the North, and of course there was a Wet Season further south.

There were many highlights too: again it was my wonderful Sudanese Christian colleagues who stand out for me. What a joy it was to be able to worship openly, after so many years of the 'invisible church' in Central Asia. And to have muslim teachers come to us to ask for a Bible, and to ask for guidance in how to read and understand it. Again we saw the answers to the faithful prayers of many of you: thank you!

So, this is a kind of farewell, as well as a thankyou to you all. I am now taking a break from mission and Church service (after 31 years in all!), and hope to return to my native land, Australia, to 'accompany' my elderly mother as she continues to live in her own home. May I please challenge you NOT to stop praying for both Afghanistan and Sudan. When you hear about them on the News, do please remember your Christian brothers and sisters in both places, and pray that the Kingdom will continue to grow, to the praise and glory of Jesus.