In the summer of 1983, I participated in a ministerial exchange program sponsored by my denomination. My assignment was to a circuit of churches on the Isle of Man, a tiny island located in the Irish Sea. The months preceding the exchange included considerable correspondence with the minister on the island with whom I would exchange pastoral duties for six weeks. Additionally, there were all kinds of other preparations to be seen after: passports, financial arrangements, reading everything available about the Isle of Man, and trying to anticipate everything which could go wrong (on both sides of the ocean) and allow for it. Despite all that, the Isle of Man was still pretty much just a place on the map to me and, for some reason, the whole business of the exchange simply had not come alive…