Craig RaynerFirst things first! I am sorry that I did not write a newsletter last month, and that this one is more than a little late. I have no excuse really; I just did not get around to finding the time to write one. Most of my time has been spent with Debbie meeting her friends. Debbie has a LOT of friends and this has been taking my time when I have not been working. Any other time has been spend in the beginning stages of planning a wedding, the occasional trip to the dentist and time with Debbie without any of her friends, if you take my meaning. Oh yes, I also travelled to Canada to attend Debbie’s mum’s wedding and be introduced to Debbie’s family in Montreal.
Weddings
Debbie and I checked out of Hong Kong and travelled to Montreal, Quebec, Canada for the last week of June, returning to Hong Kong on the 7th July. The main event within this visit to Canada was the wedding of Annette Kruse (Debbie’s mum) and Gary Hudson. The event was held in Debbie’s home clubhouse, a club that still supports Debbie in her work at Crossroads. We also touched base at the Montreal Jazz festival and spent a couple of days at the family cottage (ok, mansion) on Lake Barron (sorry, Quebec, so Lac Barron [it is a French thing.])
On the local front, we have begun to see some of the planning for our wedding becoming a reality, with churches booked and the all important
government registrations completed with approval. We would like to remind people of our difficulties in receiving gifts for our wedding. Our plans are to get married and to begin a short time in Kazakhstan. As a part of this preparation, Debbie and I will be reducing our load to the proportions allowed to be carried on an aircraft not flying to the U.S. (So, one 20kg check-in each and one 7kg carry on.) We 
do not wish to offend anyone, but gifts that do not suit this requirement may end up as a donation to charity that both Debbie and I know here in Hong Kong.
Silk Road and Onward
This is a long story. Some of you have been a part of the story and others of you have no idea why Debbie and I are off to Kazakhstan. Debbie is very excited about the idea of her club here in Hong Kong sending us out with the title that we will not be able to use in this newsletter, nor in any form in Kazakhstan. So here is a brief summary of the events that have pointed us into the Silk Road.
The beginnings of stirrings for the area began in 1985 with a job offer, with my employer at the time, Telecom Australia, looking for a team to fulfil a contract in Nepal. My family was young at the time, and this was not seriously considered. 
In 1986 I attended a conference (John Wimber) at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. During one of the elective sessions at this conference the speaker (Jack Deere) was chatting one on one with people and suggested that my future was on the Silk Road. It was an encounter that has never left me, and was affirmed the very next day with a direct touch of the MD.
The busyness of life in the suburbs interrupted that vision, as children grew and careers were pursued. All of this was seriously disrupted by the death of my wife in 1998. One of the beautiful things that you find in the depths of sorrow is a connection within to the depths of your own values and vision. I found myself exploring again this vision of the Silk Road, and took an opportunity to travel to Turkey (Sep-Oct 1999) where I visited all the cities that John wrote too. In Laodicea, I encountered a time which included holding up the three buses on the tour whilst the MD welcomed me to the Silk Road. At Philadelphia, I saw that the gate that cannot be moved was open towards the east for me. So east it was.
In 2000 I travelled to a conference in Colorado and in a chat time I again was reminded of the Silk Road
vision. This time I took the challenge much more seriously and ended up leaving work during the Sep 2000, to pursue formal training. In 2005 I grabbed an opportunity to travel into Central Asia, and met the Crossroads Central Asia team. I felt at the time that I would be very comfortable in this place. The Crossroads team in Central Asia suggested the Hong Kong office, and I quickly moved to join and learn that organisations methods, etc, in preparation for a move back into the Silk Road. The connection through Crossroads did not work out for me, and I left Crossroads in pursuit of other avenues into Central Asia.
More preparation followed as I completed even further training for another group and received an offer to work for an organisation in Almaty, Kazakhstan. I was all prepared to take this position in April 2008. I took a day out with the MD to check out the leading that I had been following. He surprised me by talking about Debbie Kruse, who I had befriended at Crossroads during my time in Hong Kong. That story has been covered in a little more detail previously. The match story of Debbie and I has a lot of detail in Kazakhstan. Debbie had travelled to Kazakhstan in 2005 (before I was there) with a goal of working out if that was what the MD had for her to do. She left Kazakhstan with the convict
ion that she could live there, but that the timing and situation were not yet right.
Debbie’s other clear message was that she would be called out of Crossroads by her husband’s vision, a big call for a woman who is not married. The match here is that the vision that she had for Kazakhstan is matched by my vision. I know that when we spoke of this on the phone in February we were both overwhelmed by the sense of the MD presence in our lives and depths of his planning for our lives. It was not the first time that this happened, but it was truly confirming to both of us the depth of what at that stage was beginning between us.
I am aware that I have left out one important aspect of the vision for Kazakhstan. In the next newsletter I will deal with what we will be doing in Kazakhstan, in both the short term and the long term.
Pictures
- Debbie, Gary, Annette and I at the wedding.
- Lake Barron, from the deck of the cottage.
- Montreal, from the top of Mt Royal.
- Kazak on a Camel, unusual as he was in a hurry to get to the shop.
- The leader (Paul) of a Drug and Alcohol rehabilitation centre in Pervomayekskaya
- An orphanage to which Crossroad Central Asia was delivering material.
