Moving from Germany to Trinity during a pandemic

Last February, as she attended an evangelistic outreach in France, Jael Veen felt God telling her to leave the college in Germany where she had begun to study the Bible and continue her studies elsewhere.

Then, at her parents’ home one evening, Jael found herself watching a video someone had lent them—Patterns of Evidence: Investigating Biblical Evidence. As she saw John Bimson and Trinity College appear in the video, she suddenly knew this was where she was meant to go.

‘If I was going to move to another country at this time, I really wanted a clear confirmation of this,’ she says. Jael prayed for a confirmation. A friend of hers unprompted gave her a book about George Müller going to Bristol. After spending time in prayer on Jael’s behalf, a second friend asked Jael if she would be moving to England, without knowing the situation. Jael began to read Trinity’s website and then met online with Principal Revd Dr Sean Doherty and Vice Principal Revd Dr Howard Worsley.

‘The website had said that faith and academic work are combined and not separated at Trinity, and that there’s a vibrant community, and I wanted to check if that was genuine,’
she says.

Trinity accepted her previously completed work and offered her a place on the MA programme. With ever-changing quarantine rules between countries at the end of the summer, Jael moved to Bristol earlier than planned to make sure she could avoid having to quarantine after arriving in the UK.

‘These early weeks have been exhausting, as I’m not using my native language, but it’s really felt like coming to the right place,’ she says. ‘This is going to be my place for the next two years. I’m enjoying the lectures, and I can see that faith is integrated here—there’s not a gap between academics and encountering Jesus.’

Posted November 2020 as part of the Autumn 2020 Trinity News.