Edward Allen

Dear All,

It looks like I’m finally heading back to Laos this week, I’m booked to leave the UK on Thursday morning and arrive in to Vientiane on Friday lunchtime. I had a medical a few days ago, and the doctors have said to me that it is fine to go back on Thursday, there are a few outstanding questions but these look like they’ll be resolved in the next few days.

All my doctors are clear and agreed that my arthritis has not been caused by being in Laos, and it hasn’t been triggered by living up county either. I have not been made sick by being where I have been. But the flare ups are probably going to happen from time to time, whether I am in the UK or Laos, or anywhere else for that matter and we’ll manage them together as they come. Obviously I’m hoping and praying for a miraculous healing. It is realistically as good an outcome as I could have expected and reassuring that my Thai doctors have treated me identically to how I would have been treated in the UK.

It is great to be heading back to Laos, an enormous joy. It has been the best break I’ve ever had in the UK and one of the best holidays I’ve ever had, it has been a brilliant time but I need to get back to Laos, back to work, and back to the nation and people I so love. My health is now better than at any time since the middle of last September, cold days are still tough on my body but fortunately Laos will be beautifully warm when I get back.

Earlier this week I made it over the Duxford Imperial War Museum; perhaps the best air museum in Europe and a completely spectacular place to visit. I had to drop off some things at Fed Ex at Stansted, that I was sending back to Laos, and the museum is nearby. I love aviation, so going hangar after hangar of old aircraft is a dream day out for me, though for most people it would be their idea of torture. It has about 6 Spitfires, Hurricanes, a Concorde, a Lancaster, a B-29, and B-52, even a Eurofighter and a Victor and about 200 other great aircraft all housed on an old Battle of Britain airfield. By the way, Concorde is very very small inside, after walking through it I was so huched over I felt like I was one of the 7 Dwarfs.

I’ll be leaving the UK with massively gratitude for the wonderful time I’ve had over the past couple of months, I’ve had so much family time and a really empty schedule so I’ve been able to rest properly. At the start of next year I’m due for a home assignment and speaking tour, which will be a lot of fun and a nice change from Laos; it will mean being back in the UK for about the first 5 months of next year. I look forward to that time too as a chance to reconnect with and thank the enormous numbers of people who have been supporting and praying for me.

Together we’ll get there…

lots of love,

Ned