How we got out of the city
We are a Seventh-day Adventist couple, who first met at an Adventists singles’ event in Leicester in 2009. We got married in April 2011 in Worcester (UK) SDA church. Until November 2021, we lived in Worcester. We were both working in healthcare. My wife was an accident and emergency nurse, and I was a support worker in a supported living setting. Life was good, however, since I have first visited the Philippines in 2011, I began to be drawn towards moving there. Inspired by the writings of Ellen G. White and moved by the small still voice, we began to slowly work to make this happen.
This desire did not come to fruition until several events have occurred:
- the UK government passed a law that required care home workers to be fully
vaccinated (both I and my wife were against the Covid-19 vaccination mandate) - my wife had an episode of stress-induced (work-related) Takotsubo cardiomyopathy or “Broken Heart Syndrome”, which happens when the heart muscle becomes suddenly stunned or weakened
- my sister-in-law expressed her need for help with caring for my mother-in-law, whose dementia has gotten worse
Taking the above into consideration, we have decided to sell most of our possessions and move to the Philippines. We have already had a house built there in 2019, so it was not a total ‘start from scratch’ story. In January 2022, we began to share my sister-in-law’s duty of caring also for my father-in-law, who is paralysed from the waist down. Since the social security system in the Philippines is nowhere near to the one in the UK, we had no choice but to use our time and means to care for my wife’s parents.
As a result, our time became divided between caring for my in-laws and growing our own food. Needless to say, this has prevented us from finding full-time jobs and consequently from having a stable income. At the moment, we live from our savings and ‘on the promises of God’. We write this blog when it is too hot to work outside, just to make good use of the time we have been given. We hope it will inspire and encourage those who are also being called out of the cities.
Przemysław and Wenna
Out of the city Blog 