Christian Retreat House

We joined the team at QW in 2017, not sure of what our exact roles would be but inspired by God's presence at QW and amazed at the prospect of serving God in such a wonderful setting.  

We come from different backgrounds - Andy has been in estate agency for over 30 years and Debbie had been providing administrative support to the Adult Learning and Leisure Office and also working with GenR8, a Christian charity taking the Christian message into schools and supporting churches in their work with children.

We love working here, although we don't regard it as work - it's too rewarding, fulfilling, interesting and varied to be work! Our guests are such wonderful people, real people with real life experiences and looking after them is such a pleasure. Really! God does something amazing here and serving our guests somehow energises and enthuses us!

We were both active in our local Baptist church when we lived just north of Cambridge, serving on the Diaconate and heading other projects including outeach to men, Mums & Babies, holiday clubs, prayer days and church away weekends.

Whilst we love our role here at QW we also love our spare time, too, and believe in resting, relaxing and being creative. These take many forms - Andy's interests include beekeeping, photography, Munro-bagging and wood-turning whilst Debbie has a keen interest in family history and crafting, especially jewellery making and crochet. And she loves cooking, too - as our guests will testify!

Both of us were born in England, although we have spent most of our lives in South Wales. Prior to moving to work in Quiet Waters we had careers in the NHS serving over sixty years between us before taking NHS retirement. Pauline was a Specialist Nurse and Joe a Project Manager for clinical IT systems. As a child Pauline knew that she wanted to be a nurse working in a Christian care home before training as an SEN and then an SRN. Joe was an engineer prior to the working in the NHS for the Ambulance service and then qualifying in Nursing. We have four children who fully understand that God has been with us through our life journey and that we are in “re-firement”. This led us to move to a Christian conference centre and care home near Cardiff before being led to serve in Bungay.

We attended Kings Church in Newport for over 30 years where we were married prior to making the move to Suffolk. We have connections to other churches in Seattle USA, Torrevieja in Spain and Bradford UK. This allows us to travel knowing that we can always be blessed by God and visit Christian friends and family. Pauline had led an Israel prayer group for a season at our Newport Church which allowed us to visit Israel on a few occasions with pastoral leaders. Between us we have run a house group and supported Christians Against Poverty within the church. Pauline has also been a Gideon, taking bibles to schools and hospitals.

We know that God moved us across the UK to Quiet Waters as part of his plan so that we can use our life skills to bless and comfort others. We pray that we can add to the peace of the house with the gifts and skills God has given to us.