The road to WBC ... continued

photo credit:U02CDH

Last Tuesday (was it really over a week ago?!), we headed to The Salvation Army's East Scotland Divisional headquarters in Edinburgh for our latest Candidates Interview in our process to return to training for full time service (officership) in TSA. This interview was being chaired by the man what knows - the Territorial Candidates Officer(TCO) for the UK Salvation Army.

Its fair to say we were a bit apprehensive in the run up to the interview. The TCO was new in post since our last interview of this type, and we didn't know whether he would want to cover old ground again or take the word of the previous TCO that things could move on. Would we once again have to trawl through all the stuff that has been dealt with on human and Spiritual levels.

Well, fears were unfounded. Whilst the TCO did ask some background questions to put a few things in perspective, we mainly focused on moving forwards. There are still a few things to get through including another procedural change in the road to Training College and an assessment conference, but compared to what we have gone through so far, these do not pose a problem to us.

We were told that we have the support of the Candidates Unit. That was so good to hear. This goes on top of the Divisional support we have long experienced, and the support and friendship of our Corps and especially our Corps Officers. All this is a real blessing to us.

So what's next? Well we continue to work through a document called "Towards Officership" which involves various practical and essay work, and we continue to lead meetings around various Corps. Also, we wait to hear when our assessment conference is and what else we have to do in order to work towards the latest estimate of entering college in 2009.

We know there are people out there, possibly even reading this blog, who struggle with the fact we are reapplying for Officership. We also know that we cannot say anything that will change these peoples minds. But we just want to say one thing - please do not judge us on the past - judge us on the fruit of our ministry. Thank you.