Years of coincidences

I have lived in and around Norwich in Norfolk for many years now, but was born and spent my early years, until my mother died, in Africa. My father then had to bring me and my brother back to England where we lived for several years in Cambridge with our aunts and uncle (Dad's siblings) and I went to school in Cambridge. It was only by 'chance' that I came to live in Norwich when a college course I wanted to do after I left school could not be held in the expected town due to lack of numbers but the course was available at Norwich City College. I say all this because the following coincidences centre around me being in Norwich. The most extraordinary coincidences, occurring over a period of years, involved my friend Anna from Utah. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ('Mormons') and keen on doing family history. In the mid-1970s Anna was sent from Utah to Norwich as a missionary for our church, and coincidentally several of her ancestors came from this area. While here she got to know me - in fact she was one of the missionaries who brought me into our church and as I had nowhere suitable to live, I moved in with Anna and her companion and we were flatmates and became firm friends. In the early 1990s Anna came to England on holiday and spent several days with me in Norwich. During that time we decided to search for evidence of some of her ancestors and soon found it in the church at Trowse, a village which is now part of Norwich. She knew that some of her forebears came from Saxlingham, but this was a bit complicated because there are several Saxlinghams in Norfolk and we didn't know which was the right one. One day we were driving through the countryside near Norwich and I saw a signpost to Saxlingham Nethergate. I immediately got the strongest feeling, as if a voice had told me, that this was was Anna's Saxlingham and we went there straight away. In Saxlingham Nethergate church we found a list of rectors which included ancestors of Anna's. After a few more years I became a self-employed massage therapist and foot health practitioner. One of my elderly lady clients had written a book about the history of Saxlingham Nethergate, and one of the chapters was devoted to Anna's ancestors, who turned out to have been the Lords of the Manor, which Anna had not known. One of them had emigrated to America, which is how Anna's line got there. I was able to send Anna a copy of the relevant chapter which included a detailed family tree and much interesting information about her ancestors. Then in around 2010, Anna's daughter Liz came to stay with me and my family on her holiday in England. I took Liz to Saxlingham Nethergate and she was thrilled to visit her 'family seat'. As we were looking around the church, a lady 'happened' to come in who was connected with the care of the place. Nobody else was there and I told the lady about Liz's ancestors, the Tuthills, having lived in Saxlingham. She told us of Tuthills buried near the altar in the church and very kindly, with some effort, moved away the heavy carpet which covered their gravestone set in the floor, showing coat of arms and all. If that particular lady had not happened along at that particular moment, we would never have seen or known about the gravestone of Liz's ancestors. To me it felt as though the long-dead Tuthills wanted us to know more about them and were somehow guiding all these happenings! There were a couple of other coincidences that arose through my work. One of my elderly clients in Norwich turned out to have worked as a nurse in Norwich many years ago with one of my aunts who had later helped bring me up in Cambridge. Another lady had been living in Dar es Salaam, East Africa, during the time when I lived there as a little girl, and this lady knew well the Governor of Tanganyika whose secretary was my mother, so no doubt my client had met my mother too. And these two clients who had connections with my loved ones all those years ago were close friends to each other and were friendly with the lady who wrote the book about Saxlingham Nethergate! All three of these clients of mine lived within a few yards of each other. Strange how diverse lives can become connected in such ways. Many so-called coincidences have happened in my lifetime and I no longer believe in 'coincidences' but tend to think of such happenings as being part of a plan as if we were 'steered' towards people and places. Rosanne