During 2004 I was privileged to play an important role in establishing the “International Gateway Academy” in Istanbul. You can read that story in the earlier post with the same heading: “International Gateway Academy”.
The headmaster at that time was Ms. Valerie Anderson and she continued to serve the school in that capacity until +-2015. We received regular newsletters from her and the school and it was heart-warming to see how the school grew and progressed.
Towards the second half of 2011 we received a newsletter from her, reporting that the school has reached its capacity in the number of learners it can accommodate and that the school are making plans to develop a new campus. They were looking for a Project Manager to oversee the development of a new campus in 2012.
When I read this, my heart skipped a beat. Can it be possible? It was seven years after I was involved in developing and establishing the original campus, and
here it happens all over again! After reading the newsletter a couple more times to be sure, I shared it with Magda and we immediately started dreaming about going back to Turkey. We were looking for such an assignment and going back to Turkey ticked all the right boxes. We already had knowledge of the country, the city, the school, the people, their culture and language and on top of it all, we could serve the school community like seven years before!
We decided to take the first step and to make our interest in this position known to Ms. Anderson. After a few days we received confirmation that the school will be very happy to receive my application for this position. I prepared my CV and applied formally for the position.
We knew that there was a number of hurdles on the way. If my application were to be successful we will need to obtain a work and residence permit before we relocate. We were very certain that this was the right thing to do and we set a number of processes in motion in anticipation of a positive outcome. Magda started working only half a day as a nursing sister at a pharmacy and we invited a few close friends to form a support group to help us think, pray and prepare for this new opportunity!