11c cloudy.
Busy day yesterday -  all day at the club. Set up the greens for the ladies. Then made salad and cooked lasagna for 42 ladies. Then in the pm drew the men's draw, mc'd and all that stuff that has to be done. M cooked our supper of spaghetti and meat balls. Only 26 men. The two events were the closing events for the year.

Chapter 8.

  Doctor Pearce caught the afternoon train back to Headlingly, when he arrived he went straight home.  Mrs. Pearce was in the kitchen preparing a late tea; she turned as he entered the room and immediately said, "What is it Henry, what is wrong?”

  He shook his head despondently, “May I have a cup of tea please, then come into the drawing room, we must talk.”

  A few moments later when they were both seated he relayed the events of his visit to London. At the conclusion of his narration he added, “I have no doubt that we are being forced to take one of the two positions and quite frankly Africa is probably better than Liverpool. However with John and Jean almost finished with grade school and ready to enter university perhaps we should look at Liverpool.”

  Mrs. Pearce was silent for a couple of minutes then said, “I do not want to take the children to Liverpool, and I agree that Africa er Somalia would be a much more rewarding calling. John and Jean shall be in university so if we went to Liverpool we would only see them occasionally. I am quite capable of teaching the two younger ones. I think we should choose Somalia.”

  Now it was the doctor’s turn to ponder; he agreed with his wife, he had already considered the different options but he wanted to think about it a bit longer.

  Finally he replied, “Yes, I agree but let us sleep on it overnight and talk about it again tomorrow.”

  During the evening meal the children seemed to sense that something was afoot and were unusually quiet. But nothing was said and later everyone carried out their usual evening activities.

  The next morning after a fitful night the two parents talked quietly in bed and made their decision. They would accept the mission in Somalia, the two older twins would reside for a short while with Mrs. Pearce’s sister in Manchester then enter university. Usually the church was able to help with some of the finances in similar situations and the doctor would petition the Bishop in that regard. He also decided that he would insist that the posting would be on a year’s trial basis and would have the option of returning to England after the year.

  Over breakfast they broke the news to the four children. Mary and Margaret seemed relatively unaffected and in short time became excited about the prospects of going to somewhere “exotic”.

  Jean, who was becoming quite mature overcame her surprise and accepted the idea stoically. John was perhaps the most bewildered. At first he appeared to be quite sad, then as the idea of youthful freedom dawned he changed to a degree of excitedness but tried to remain outwardly serious in order to avoid any lengthy lectures.

  As the day wore on questions started to erupt from all the children and at times the household atmosphere was chaotic.

  Doctor and Mrs. Pearce caught the morning train back to London and entered the Bishop’s office shortly before eleven.

  They were ushered straight to the Bishop who smiling affably as usual offered them tea. “Now here we are, what decision have you made?” He asked.

  “Before I give you our decision there are a couple of issues I would like to have resolved and agreed to.” Doctor Pearce said.