Christian Retreat House

We joined the team at Quiet Waters in June 2024 and are currently learning the ‘rhythms’ of Quiet Waters Retreat House.

For the last four years we have lived on our narrow boat cruising the 2000+ miles of the rivers and canals of the UK working as Waterway Chaplains.

Before that we spent ten years in South Korea with the mission agency WEC; teaching, training and mentoring Korean missionaries and some time teaching MKs (missionary children) and working as dorm parents to Korean boys.

We returned to the UK in 2019 to spend more time with our grandchildren (we have four children and seven grandchildren) and to join the WEC UK HQ as Candidate Coordinators. It was a difficult year as covid had an impact on the training, but we learned a lot about Zoom and being creative on-line!

I started volunteering at Quiet Waters in September 2024 and soon felt athome with the people and in the peaceful surroundings. It didn’t take too long to move from volunteering to becoming a permanent member of the team. I’ve been getting stuck in cooking, cleaning and sitting down eating lots of delicious home-cooked meals with our wonderful guests.

I spent the last 12 years before this as a nurse, working with people with learning disabilities and mental health issues. This was an extremely rewarding job, albeit stressful at times. I have lots of fond and happy memories of the people I met whilst working as a nurse.

Now, I am looking forward to the new adventure of being part of the Quiet Waters Community.

Phil & Chris Edwards are Chaplains to the Quiet Waters team and have been since 2018. Both are retired, and Lay Ministers to a group of local Anglican churches.

Over the last decade since retiring, they’ve been volunteers to a number of Christian communities up and down the country, as well as Chris being a Day Chaplain at Norwich Cathedral & Phil an Official Prison Visitor at HMP Bure near Norwich.

Paul Dunning (Chair of Trustees), Janet Harris, Steve Harris, Janet Males, Janet Dean, Simon Ward