The Preacher's Son - Juliette Duncan Page 0,37

so glad I did. I’ve learned that our gifts and skills are given to us by God, and that He has a higher purpose and plan for our lives. We simply have to ask Him to guide us towards it. We don’t have to know everything all the time.”

Pausing, she glanced at me, her eyes seeking my reassurance.

I smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. This was my wife, the woman I had pledged my life to, and whatever our future held, we were walking into it together.

Penny – One month later

After a long day at court defending a young man with mild autism on a burglary charge, I finally arrived at our home on the Sunshine Coast. Although I’d managed to keep him out of prison, frustration at the lack of essential services for troubled youth filled me.

Of course, that made me think, as I had every day since returning to Australia, of the kids I’d met in Brazil. Every night I prayed for Leon. I’d written to him, and to David and Julia, and Hayden was writing to Felipe and Maria and continuing his spiritual mentoring of Felipe. Before leaving Camp Bano to fly home, we’d discussed our future hopes and fears with David and Julia and decided on a long-term plan. We would spend the whole of the next summer at Camp Bano, taking the children with us this time, and in the meantime we would both study ministry and mission via a distance learning course. As the children got a little older, we could make more drastic decisions about uprooting the entire family to live as missionaries.

It was sensible and practical. A plan that addressed all my fears. Yet it didn’t feel like enough. There was a longing in me that just wouldn’t abate, and the day to day life I had taken so much for granted seemed to not fit any more. I missed Brazil. But more than that, the place had gotten under my skin and was calling to me. The vague restlessness that had started this whole thing had not been dampened by our time away. Instead, the flames had well and truly been stoked.

I kept praying for a sign, like when I’d seen the woman in the graveyard, but there was nothing. No clear answers. I got the impression that God was telling me that this time I had to find the answers within myself.

I didn’t know how Hayden was feeling, because weirdly, after agreeing on a plan, we had hardly discussed it further. Rather, we’d settled back into our daily routine and picked up where we’d left off, as though we’d never been anywhere and nothing had changed.

Yet everything had changed, and I knew I couldn’t be the only one to feel that way. In many ways, this whole thing had been started by Hayden, by his desire to explore his true calling, and so I knew he must be experiencing some emotional conflict around all this, too. So why were we not talking about it?

Entering the kitchen, I tossed my briefcase onto the floor. The kids were doing their homework at the table while Hayden was unloading the dishwasher.

He turned to me with a welcoming smile. “Sweetheart, you look exhausted. How was court?”

“Same as ever,” I responded. “How was your day?”

“Same as ever.” He shrugged.

We stared at each other and something unspoken passed between us.

Then Elijah put down his phonics book and piped up, “We have to move to Brazil. That’s why you’re both unhappy.”

Hayden and I stopped staring at each other and stared at Elijah instead. “We’re not unhappy,” I protested.

“You are deep down.” Rosie spoke now, putting aside her colouring. “God told us. So Elijah and I have decided that we should all move to Brazil. I bet the school is much more fun there than the one here.”

My mouth fell open as I looked to Hayden. His face was shining as he addressed the kids, but his gaze was on me as he did so. “Thank you both for sharing that. Your mum and I will talk later.”

I nodded, and in a daze with my heart pounding, went to get showered and changed. What had just happened?

Later, after dinner and putting the kids to bed, I sat with Hayden on our porch, staring out at our quiet suburban street. “You go first,” I said.

“Okay…ever since we got back, I’ve been feeling frustrated. Like God has given us an opportunity that we should be grasping wholeheartedly, but instead, we’ve