In depth: Jan Anderson
06 Jul 2009
Meet our new church operations administrator, Jan Anderson as she starts her new role at St.Matt's.
"Hi - this week I've started in the church office, in the operations/admin role taking over from Jennie who is moving on to pursue other areas. As I've not been part of St.Matt's for very long, I thought I'd tell you a bit about myself and where I've come from.
I grew up in a tiny village in Corwall and, because my parents worked in the tourist industry and had no spare time during the summer months, I was sent to the Scripture Union beach mission at Perranporth each year which acted as a child minding servive for myself and many other local children. It was because of the seeds sown by the beach mission team that I later came into a personal relationship with Jesus.
Fast forward a decade or so, and my whole family has moved from Cornwall to Essex in search of better job opportunities. I've met and married Graham and we have started up our own small picture framing business in Southend and have two small daughters. Over the next 20 years the business evolved into several shops and became more focused on gift and home accessories retail. The picture framing side of the business faded and Graham moved on to other work. During this period we moved from Southend to Brentwood in Essex and became active members of the New Harvest Community Church in the town.
Fast forward again to 2007 and I am forced to close the business due to the fiercely competitive economic climate in the town in which we have our main shop. At this time Graham saw an advert for Estates Manager at a place we'd never heard of - Burrswood in Tunbridge Wells - and we started exploring the possibility of a move. After much heart searching he applied for the job and got it and we moved into the area in the autumn of 2007 and started worshipping at St.Matt's the following January.
As a family we've had some serious ups and downs over the years but can testify to the amazing faithfulness of God even in the very dark times. Our two girls are both graduating from uni in the summer and settling in London. All four of us are still very much involved in the much revamped 360 beach mission in Cornwall that began my Christian walk all those years ago."