The Reluctant Law Student...

That's me. Can't think of a much better way to sum my position up right now. Not that I can take any credit for that title...but let's start at the beginning and I'll get to that (and why the blog's been restarted and had a face lift)!

20 years and 14 days ago, on 8th December 1994...
Ok...let's not start right at the beginning! Fast forward 18 and a bit years to when I started this blog. I had just finished my A Levels and was preparing to go off on a gap year that would take me to Tanzania and Colombia. And rather disgustingly cheesily I would 'find myself' (or at least find out a lot more about myself). But more importantly I would find God in a totally new way.

Those of you who have known me a while or have heard my testimony will know I've been brought up a Christian, and would have called myself a Christian well before this gap year. I don't dispute that now. But belief in God isn't an end goal - it's a journey. We focus so much on the ends in our culture that it can be all to easy to forget the significance of the means by which we get there. What I learnt and experienced over my time away resulted in a real deepening of my faith and a much clearer understanding of God's unconditional love for me, and what the amazing consequences of Jesus' death and resurrection actually mean for me on a day to day basis, as well as an eternal level. Before you accuse me of over-glamourising cross cultural mission work, I'm not saying my time abroad was easy. In fact if you read some of my blog posts you'll realise it can be demoralising, hard, sweaty, dirty work. But at the same time I found it a lot easier to hear God in it all (and we did have some pretty amazing times too!). Without the comforts of a culture and language I knew, and out of my natural skill area, dependence on God was not an option. It was a necessity.

And then I had to come home and go to uni. It's a good job I applied for deferred entry - there's no way I would have actually applied during my gap year. When I came home from Colombia I spent the weeks counting down, saying 'Come on God, you've got 6 weeks to give me something else other than this uni place'. At Momentum I was eagle eyed for any possible opportunities. And in-keeping with God's beautiful sense of humour, everything I looked at or picked up said 'graduate degree required'. TYPICAL! So reluctantly I headed down to Cambridge to study law.

I expected a lot of work. I didn't expect quite so much work! But I've settled in well. I live with an amazing group of people. The other law students at Jesus College are really great too. As are the CU. And I've found a church home at Eden Baptist, which is full of friendly people. But all term I've been fighting God. I couldn't dispute the fact that he had called me there (although had he changed his mind and told me to fly off to the other side of the world, I'd have been there in a second!), but I was constantly questioning if I'd somehow ended up doing the wrong subject. It's a lot harder to find where God fits into law than it was to see God in my gap year projects. I was praying for confirmation all term and yet closing my mind to every time God answered that, because it wasn't what I wanted to hear. Had I really learnt nothing in my gap year?!

Claire, another law student at Jesus, and all round incredible woman of God, had a vision to create a group for other Christian law students. I caught the vision of this and subsequently we spent all term scheming and praying for how this would advance. We've had endless meetings and coffees with different people, several Skype calls, and lots of connections made for us. It's one of those instances where God just opens doors and things fall into place. Yet despite all of this, I was still adamant that law wasn't really what I should be doing. Two days before coming back home for the Christmas vacation (it's not a holiday - we've had that one clarified many a time!!) we met with Timothy Laurence, from the Lawyers Christian Fellowship in London, who wanted to reach out to law students as well. It turns we've each come to the same vision independently and God's now connected us up in the middle. When Timothy was telling us about his background, he introduced himself as a 'reluctant law student'. Claire looked at me and burst out laughing - it summed up me and all my complaining about having to study law in a nutshell! Timothy's explanation of how Law and God fit together made so much sense, and things began to fall into place. It's not a completed work, and I still fall under the title of a reluctant law student (especially when I'd rather be baking mince pies than reading R v Brown, and my Facebook feed is full of beach pictures from Santa Marta) but at least I'm now a reluctant law student confident in God's calling - even though I have absolutely no idea of the reason why yet.

I've really missed blogging, writing about all the random thoughts that go through my head. So at the request of a few people, I've decided to take it up again. In one of my procrastination sessions I have given it a make-over (complete with background photo from Bogotá - you can't escape Colombia just yet!). I'm planning on writing in 3 main categories: Crime (for anything law related), Corinthians (for anything faith related) and Cake (for all the food related goodness. Let's be honest this will probably be the biggest category...!). All my gap year posts are still on here, should you be sad enough to want to re-read them...And one day I will finish my blipfoto journal!

I hope you find some encouragement (or light relief...) through my blog. Please feel free to leave me comments, and if there's ever anything you'd love to know my thoughts about, send me a message and I'll write you a post (insert legal disclaimer here just in case I don't)!

Read more »

This time last year...

A year ago today was my first day in Musoma. So much has happened this year, I can't really believe it!

I've met some truly incredible people who have really challenged and inspired me. I feel so lucky to have had these opportunities and I really want to thank everyone who made that possible - everyone who supported me financially and in prayer, everyone at GoMad, Tearfund and Latin Link who organised the projects, my two wonderful teams and my family. And I am incredibly grateful to God for allowing me to partake in a tiny part of bringing his kingdom closer. It has been a real privilege. And the best thing is, it's just the start of a bigger adventure!

I have learnt a lot about God's love for me, and about my identity in him. It's been really freeing to realise my identity does not rest on my own performance, but who I am in Christ. If you want to hear more about what I've learnt this year, especially in Colombia, you can listen to the talk I gave at my church here: http://www.stjohnsmuxton.org.uk/awe-sermons/21st-september-2014-3/
In reflecting on my year, I was trying to pick my top 5 moments. Not easy! This is what I came up with (no specific order...that's just impossible!):

• Day 4 of Hadrian's wall - the awesome scenery combined with raucous singing, visiting the Roman Army Musuem, jumping over the wall to look round Housesteads and meeting two cool Canadians visitng the entire UK in 4 days, before ending up at the lovely Grindon hostel where the owner snored loudly on the sofa while we watched telly!
• Cooking for over 70 people out of our modest church kitchen (and the caravan parked outside for an extra stove!), with a fab team of waiters and co-chefs. It was a great challenge and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially all the testing of altered recipes beforehand - I think the family had eaten enough pesto variations to last them a lifetime, but somehow they never complained about the brownies...!
• Spiritual Reflection Day in Tanzania - This was SUCH a special day, and one I don't think I will ever forget. It was great to have a whole day set aside to spend with God. It started with an utterly incredible sunrise up eagle rock and we listened to a sermon which has really impacted my faith and my understanding of how I'm called to live my life. It was also nice to have some quality time together as a team, in the midst of the hectic life of Eagle Lodge.
• Street Party at Colegio Filadelfia para los Sordos - The street party we organised to say goodbye to the kids has to be on this list. Whilst it was really emotional having to say goodbye to the kids we had made really good friends with, it was also an immensely special time, reflecting over everything we'd done together through a photo slideshow, sharing the fruit of that week's cooking classes together and then presenting certificates to each pupil to congratulate them on something they had done particularly well during our 8 weeks there. Then to our surprise, the students had their own presentation for us, and really blessed us with their comments and beautiful gifts!
• Beach Trip with Santa Marta Vineyard - The beaches around Santa Marta are stunning. So where better to go for a church day out? The opportunity to spend a day off with the whole community was really precious, playing in the sea together (the concept of hot sea is still weird, a far cry from the beaches of Northumberland where you want your wellies!), brushing up my footie skills, then some great Spanish practice when I was asked to preach at the meeting straight after lunch! Crazy! Another day full of treasured memories.

There are so many more highlights from this year, if you want to hear about them then you're very welcome to take me out for a coffee or even a meal (I love anything Italian...) and I'll tell you more!!! This year has had its tough moments - as in, seriously tough moments, times when you want nothing more than to go home and you just feel like you can't cope with it anymore - but there have been so many more laughs and jokes, I couldn't even begin to tell you (especially as most of them are in-jokes I can't even remember why they're funny anymore...anyone for a game of duck-duck-llama, or would you prefer some carrot cake...?). And in many ways I think it's some of the tough moments that have developed my faith and my character, and brought me a lot closer to the people around me.

But now, the gap year is very definitely over. The car is packed and I head off down the A14 at 8am tomorrow morning, reading for the next adventure. People keep telling me anything will be easy after this year, but I'm not sure. This law degree seems a lot scarier right now...! Once again, thank you so much for sharing this journey with me, it's been such a joy writing this blog! (One day I might complete my Blipfoto...perhaps!)

If any of you are considering a gap-year or gap-week or anything of the sort, whether you're 16 or 60, I'd really encourage you to go for it! Please get in touch if there's any way you think I could help you with this, I'm so excited to see more people have experiences like I've had this year and have the chance to grow in a similar way!

Read more »

We Came. We Saw. We Conquered. And then we went on holiday!

Ok, there's so much to write about, but it's already gone midnight here and I don't know when I'll next get the opportunity to write, so it might be a bit of a brief blog post, but there's more detail on a lot of the things on my blipfoto.

So, this is what the building now looks like:

 

 It has a door and a roof and windows and everything! There are even tables and chairs! The terrace still needs to be done and the electricity hadn't been put in before we left, but work is continuing as we speak. Through the remaining project fund we had left and an additional donation from someone in the UK there was enough money for them to finish the building and hopefully to buy a projector afterwards. Josh and I had the amazing privilege of sharing this news with Adelmo and Nuris. They were so overwhelmed they were lost for words for a few minutes. Thank you so much to everyone who donated to support our work here, it will be a huge blessing to the church: you cannot even begin to imagine their joy and excitement at having this practially finished. They have been praying for years for something like this.

We were sent this picture of them using the building with the kids club for the first time on Saturday!

We have done far more than we could ever have imagined or hoped here (reminds me of Ephesians 3:20 -  Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us). We thought we might just get the platform ready for the building to be built on at some point in the future. But look what's there now! And on top of this, just living as part of the community for 2 months has had a bigger impact than we could ever have planned or hoped. Through the way we lived together as a team, the community told us they learnt various things, and we have also learnt so much from them too, about God and about life in general. I will write a separate blog post about all the things I have learnt here in Colombia, because there's just so much to write, I couldn't possibly fit it all in here! We have a huge sense of achievement, especially considering some of the difficulties we faced, including spiritual attack. Massive thanks to everyone who prayed over this, things got much easier and so many of the burdens were lifted which made the last week much more enjoyable. The power of prayer is huge!

We have become like family here, and Adelmo and Nuris are just like parents to us. Leaving was so, so hard. There were a lot of tears! But what I've come to learn over my gap year is that the goodbyes generate some of the most special moments. There are 2 particular times that will stay with me forever from our last week in Santa Marta:

• The surprise birthday party! There's loads about this on my Blipfoto (29th June), but in short, they decided for our last Sunday to host a surprise birthday party for us all because we won't be with them on our actual birthdays. It was a really precious time, and I will never forget the things that were said.
• Our final prayer meeting. Again, loads about this on my Blipfoto (1st July). For our final prayer meeting we decided we wanted to share food with everyone, so Josh and I cooked chili con carne. I spoke from the bible in Spanish at about 2 minutes notice and led my first worship song, which was scary but I'm so happy I was able to do it! Afterwards, everyone stayed to play twister, jungle speed, pass the pigs and uno, with never-before-seen levels of cheating! The fun and friendship shared that night mean I will never forget this.

So now we are in our final rest week, our final few days together as a team. They're like a brother and sisters to me, and it will be tough saying goodbye, but we already have plans for meetups basically every month between now and New Year! We spent the first 4 days of our rest week in coffee country on a beautiful coffee farm, just relaxing and enjoying the scenery and free coffee. We are now back in Bogotá and are looking forwards to seeing all our friends from the first 2 months. And I get to see my actual family in 4 days! Although I now feel like I have other family members out here (the guys in the team and in Santa Marta) it feels a long time since I've seen my proper family, and I really do miss them, and I can't truly replace them with Colombians!

I am now reaching frostbite levels of coldness, despite wearing so many clothes I look like Michelin Man, and it's 00:35 so I'm going to sign off here and go to bed. I hope this fills you in enough on what's been happening since the last update. You'll have plenty of opportunities to grill me in more detail when I'm back in the UK!

Prayer requests:

• Continued safety on the building site back in Santa Marta as people carry on work to complete the terrace of the new room
• Safe travelling for the guys back to England and for me and my fam in Peru
• A great 2 days in Bogotá
• Thanks for everything we've been able to do, learn and achieve. God is so good!

Read more »

Gol, Gol, Gol, Caracol!!! (Sorry...watching the match whilst writing this!!)

Once again, my apologies it's been so ridiculously long since the last blog post. The laptop charger completely gave up and trying to write a blog post on the family's laptop is near impossible as it translates everything you write to Spanish as you are typing, which is just the most frustrating thing ever. But today the parcel from 'Jane Preston, London, Telford' arrived with a new charger. So I now have no excuse for not posting!

So much has happened since the last post, so I'll try to fill you in without getting boring! 

The building work: There is now a visible room! We have cut away loads more of the mountain and filled in most of the gap behind the wall at the bottom of the mountain. There is still a decent sized hole though which we will fill in sometime this week. Logic does not seem to apply to the order of things here. The walls went up before the floor, and for one of the walls we had to build up a thin strip of rocks because we hadn't finished filling in the hole behind the lower wall, so there wasn't any land on which to build the fourth wall, but this didn't seem to matter until the other three walls were already up. The floor went down yesterday, and the level inside the building is now correct, but there is still a massive drop to fill in the other side of the wall. It seems a bit random, but the Colombians seem to know what's going on even if we don't! The lower wall has also now been plastered ready for us to paint a mural this week. We've been working alongside a pair of builders for the past 2 weeks, Jose and Jorge. We're not entirely sure who they are or where they've come from, but they now seem to turn up everywhere all the time, shouting 'Josh, Josh!!' (everyone in the neighbourhood seems to have learnt Josh's name and now loves shouting it whenever one of us walks past! We don't always know who they are either...). But this is fairly characteristic of our time here - great fun and lots of lovely people but we don't really know what's going on most of the time! Just go with the flow... Our working patterns have changed. We now work in shifts, working in pairs one day and then resting the next. We get up at 5.30am on a work day and work till about 6pm, with an hour or so off for lunch. Long days but it's helping to get the work done and having a day to rest after is helpful.

There will be a small terrace to the right of the building for the kids to play outside on, which needs to be done, the roof needs to go on, the windows and doors fitted, and the electric cabling done. Although this won't all be finished in the time we are here, they are so fired up about this project that we are confident it will be finished shortly after.

Here are some photos of the progression of the building work because my descriptions probably don't make any sense if you can't see it:

The mountain before we started work

Having cut away a lot of earth and rock, we started building a retaining wall to enable us to build up to the top level. The full height of this wall is up to the top of the wood at the left side of the picture.

The wall now at full height and the right side filled in (the hole on the left is still there!)

The first wall going up,. You can see why we had problems building the wall perpendicular to this...

The walls up to the height of the concrete lintel

The retaining wall being plastered and the room taking shape up top.

The finished walls ready for the roof

The floor going down yesterday

Kids Clubs: We have continued to help out with the kids clubs, normally leading an activity as part of a session led by Gina or Breidys (two amazing girls, 17 & 19, who run the kids ministry here). However, on the 19th June they left for a youth camp in Medellin. Unfortunately they're not back until we have left, which meant we had to say our goodbyes. This was so sad as it felt very much like the beginning of the end. We only have one week left here and we just love this community. Don't want to leave! We had a great final evening with them before they left though, sharing something called pizza vomito (vomit pizza... so named because it's so big you feel sick after eating it!). But because they're not here we've been left in charge of the Saturday kids clubs. Last week we covered Noah and the ark, up to the point where the rain starts. We will then finish looking at the story next week. It was great fun: we taught them some Colombian sign language for different animals - it was really cool to be able to link our two projects somehow- and played parachute games for the first time. The parachute had only previously been used to provide shade over the building site during the middle of the day! But the look on the kids' faces was so precious, they just lit up! Definitely worth the effort of finding one and bringing it out here with me. Next week we are going to attempt tie-dye with them. This will be spectacular - either spectacularly good or a spectacular disaster. We shall see!

Visas: Well, no visa in my passport is without a story! First of all we couldn't find the migration office. When we eventually got there, it turned out the passport Mary needed was in Bogotá. We had thought that our visas were 3 months, so we thought we were going to get them sorted a few days ahead of time, but actually it was only 90 days and we had had 2 months of 31 days, so we actually only had 1 day to spare. The rest of us managed to get our visas eventually, after having visited a shopping centre to get photos printed and photocopies of the passports. We phoned up the school in Bogotá where we've left some of our stuff and had a long wait overnight to see if the passport would arrive. The passport did arrive from Bogotá but the migration system was down all morning. Fortunately God knew what he was doing and the visa was issued that afternoon! Thanks for your prayers.

World Cup: In case you hadn't noticed the world cup is happening. We made the decision to support Colombia, because they had a much better chance of actually getting somewhere. And we would be ripped endlessly if we chose to support England. Looks like we picked the better option - my condolences to all of you who have no legitimate reason for supporting a team who are still in the world cup! (You can all support Colombia now!) But yeah, the atmosphere is crazy here. Colombia match days are just incredible, wherever you go is just a sea of yellow shirts and the noise levels are utterly bonkers. Whenever Colombia score the whole neighbourhood reverberates! Building work normally slows a little during the matches as everyone is gathered round the tv and only going to mix concrete now and then. The only thing is, we don't really want Colombia to get to the final because it's 2 days after we leave and it'd be gutting not to be in the country for such an amazing day...
Oh and just to explain the title, Caracol are the channel that show most of the matches, and this is their slogan which they shout at regular intervals during the match!

Weekend mini-break: As the team were all absolutely exhausted, we had a weekend mini-break to a chalet village 10 minutes down the road about 2 weeks ago. The place we were staying was really peaceful, we had air con in the rooms (which actually meant I was too cold to sleep the first night!) and a swimming pool. We found the Santa Marta Crepes & Waffles in true step team fashion. The weekend was spoilt somewhat when Mary had her bag snatched by a passing motorbike, and we spent 4 hours that evening in a police station filing a crime report so she can claim for the money taken on the insurance. However it could have been a lot worse, she wasn't hurt and she wasn't threatened either. I know we will look back on that night and laugh as we had such a bizarre time in the police station (more detail on this on my Blipfoto if you want!), it just shook us all up a bit. Everyone is fine now though :)

Water: We've had a couple more days of rain, but we also had a scary moment, when half the mountain side just went up in flames because it's so dry. It's getting harder and harder to find water tanks to buy, so the price of these is going up as well. Please keep praying for this.

Ok I'll stop waffling now. I will try to update some of my blipfoto tonight so there'll be some more stuff on there for you if you want more!

Prayer requests:

• Water/rain
• Spiritual protection - we would really appreciate your prayers for spiritual protection over us for this final week
• Tiredness - that we wouldn't get so tired we cannot fully enjoy the end of our time here
• For good progress on the building work
• For strength when it comes to saying goodbyes - that the sentiment would be deep but not too upsetting

Read more »

My video update from Bogota

Also, for those of you who didn't get to see this, here is my video update on youtube:

Read more »

An update at last!

Hello! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get round to writing an update. Our team laptop charger is currently broken and I couldn't face the prospect of writing this on my phone, so I finally asked if I could borrow someone's laptop tonight to write this! (This computer is also translating everything I type to Spanish, which is slightly bizzarre!) I will update my blipfoto at some point, but it takes much longer to do, so it may have to wait till we have the laptop working again.

So, we arrived at our new project in Santa Marta just over 3 weeks ago - scary thought that we're almost half way through! We are living next door to the church where we are working, in a basic but lovely house. It really feels like home now, and even though it is very different to where we were in Bogota we are just as happy here. The pastor's family live next door, and we spend most of our time either working or spending time with them which is really nice. It just feels like we are extra children in the family, which I think is one of the reasons we love it so much here.

The first couple of weeks here were difficult, adjusting to the heat and another totally different culture (we were often told in Bogota that Santa Marta is like another country, which I would definitely agree with now!) and also living much closer together as a group. However, the life of a missionary is never advertised as being easy, and it made us rely much more closely on God, and has also drawn us even closer as a team. It's so weird to think that there will be a time when I'm not living with these guys!

So, on to what we're actually doing here. This neighbourhood is built around a canyon, so everything is built up on quite steep banks. The church here is like a terrace built onto the pastor's house, and at the end of the terrace is some empty space. They want to build a room for their children's work here, but before that can go ahead, they need to build the bank up to a level platform. So up to now we have been cutting away at the bottom of the bank, building up a wall which will hold back the earth we use to bring it all up to the same level, and started to fill this in. Because of the temperature here (registering somewhere in the region of 'flipping hot' on our thermometer!) we work from about 6.30am till about 10.00am and then work again from 4.00pm till about 7.00. This was quite a weird structure of the day for us to get used to at the start, because it meant we had a lot of the day free, but now we are getting used to the way of life here, resting in the middle of the day, using the time for domestic tasks, doing the shopping, having devotionals, devoting time to studying Spanish and just spending time with the family.

They also have a great children's ministry here, with about 40 kids meeting at the church every Saturday, and 3 other kids groups meeting fortnightly in other neighbourhoods. We've had the privilege of helping out with these, leading some sessions and taking some activities in others.

The people here are really amazing, they are so caring and love spending time with us, which makes us really feel part of the community. When we are on the building site there are usually other people around helping out, which is so nice. The pastor's eldest son and his wife have taken us out to see a variety of places, from a beautiful beach to an arcade. On the Sunday just gone, we had a church outing to another beautiful beach (Santa Marta has loads of them!). It was such a lovely day, playing football together, messing around in the sea which was just like a warm bath (I still can't get used to the concept of the sea being warm!) and then spending some time praying together and worshipping. It ended up that I was the guest speaker, so I had half an hour to prepare a mini talk in Spanish, which I didn't feel went too badly considering! I think they understood me at least...!

I feel like my Spanish is improving, although there are many times that I am frustrated that I don't know more or can't express exactly what I want, but thank you for all your prayers on this, it has been much easier than I feared!

Prayer points:

• Visas: our current visas run out on the 10th June, so please pray that we won't have any issues getting them renewed
• Team relationships - that God will keep strengthening the team and drawing us closer together
• Health - Just ask that God will protect us all health wise over the rest of our time here.
• Rain - Santa Marta is in desperate need of rain. Please pray that God will send water!

Read more »

Fiestas, Reflection and Packing

Our last week in Bogotá was a very special time, but a sad one also, as I don't like goodbyes. We spent Monday and Tuesday trying to finish off the project with the kids. Unfortunately, the farmers decided they wanted to strike on these days, meaning traveling across the centre of the city was near impossible, so only about 10 pupils turned up on Monday, and about 20 on the Tuesday. Never mind! We got the background board spray painted in the school colours (a bit of manly time for Josh!!) and have stuck down all the tiles we had so far, and we have left instructions for finishing it off, so hopefully when we drop in at the end of our time in Colombia, it'll be finished.

On Wednesday we had a party to say goodbye to the pupils, as they had a bank holiday (again!!) on the Thursday and a PD day on the Friday. We decided we would get the students to make most of the food for the party, so we also had some cooking lessons on Tuesday. One group made marble cake, another made a bakewell traybake, and another made mini trifles.

We decorated the assembly hall with Colombian and British bunting and flags and lots of balloons. We'd put together a photo slideshow of all the things we had done with them since we arrived, which they found hilarious. Then they tucked in to the party food - with the typically British mini cheese and jam sandwiches (separate, but only because we were making them, not the Colombians!) and big bowls of crisps added to the baking efforts of the classes. Crisps here are super cool. They have these things called De Toditos, that have 3 or 4 different types of crisp in one packet. Why do we not have this back home?!

After the food, we presented each student with a certificate and a union jack coloured friendship bracelet to remember us by. We had also bought a coffee maker for the staff to put in their staff room to say thanks for all their hard work, kindness and support. Then the kids surprised us! They had put together a photo of the whole school with each of us round the edge doing our name signs, and had bought us all a mochila (a Colombian style of bag). 

They then opened the floor for anyone who wanted to say a few words, and almost half the school stood up to say something! One of the most special was a boy called Alvaro, who has the most infectious laugh ever, and is always laughing at something. He stood up and said 'before you guys came, I didn't really think I was good enough to do anything as a career. I didn't have any idea what I wanted to do. But then you came and did the cooking lessons with us and I really enjoyed them and now I think I would like to be a chef when I'm older, because I think I would be good at that'. It was amazing to hear how we had had an impact for him, in a way we could never have imagined. Lots of the pupils came up to me to say how much they had loved the music lessons too, and how much they had learnt through them, which was a real encouragement as these were the hardest lessons we had! After we had said our goodbyes, the staff then had planned another party for us, which was great fun. We had avena, a milky drink made from oats and pan de bono (I think, there's a few with quite similar names!) which are round balls of bread with cheese in. 

We used Thursday as a spiritual reflection day. We started off with worship, followed by a prayer walk around Chapinero. We then watched the Passion of the Christ. It was the first time I saw this film, and although I had to watch most of it from behind a cushion, I'm really glad I have now watched it, because I think it gives more depth and meaning to the Easter story. We also had some time for private bible study, in which I looked at some of the prophesies that Jesus fulfilled, which was really interesting. We then enjoyed another delicious bowl of ahiaco (the lovely Colombian soup) and headed to Abi's house for a change of scenery for the afternoon. Abi did a devotion with us on being a Christian at uni, which was great. She took a totally different angle to any of the talks/devotions I've heard on this before, which was so interesting and helpful. After that we looked at the armour of God in detail, and finally listened to a sermon by Simon Guillebaud whilst eating some amazing pizzas. All in all, a really great day and nice to have time to reflect.

On Friday morning we did a couple of things we had left to do in the centre of Bogotá. When we got back, one of the church members had come to give us a little present and to say goodbye, which was so kind of her and really reinforced our feeling of truly belonging to the Vineyard church. It wasn't until about 6 that we managed to start the packing process, and sorting the kitchen and communal room out, so we didn't make it to bed until 2am. At least our flight wasn't stupidly early the following morning!

This week has been our rest week, which we spent in Cartagena, a city on the north coast of Colombia. It's a beautiful city and we've really been able to unwind and reflect on our time in Bogotá, and prepare ourselves for Santa Marta. We leave for Santa Marta in 2 hours - very exciting but also a little scary!

We have been studying worship songs in our devotions this week, and I want to leave you with the lyrics of a song by Matt Redman which sums up really well my feelings looking back on Bogotá (Prayer requests are right at the bottom!):

Standing on this mountaintop

Looking just how far we’ve come

Knowing that for every step

You were with us

Kneeling on this battle ground

Seeing just how much You’ve done

Knowing every victory

Was Your power in us

Scars and struggles on the way

But with joy our hearts can say

Yes, our hearts can say

Never once did we ever walk alone

Never once did You leave us on our own

You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Scars and struggles on the way

But with joy our hearts can say

Never once did we ever walk alone

Carried by Your constant grace

Held within Your perfect peace

Never once, no, we never walk alone

Every step we are breathing in Your grace

Evermore we’ll be breathing out Your praise

You are faithful, God, You are faithful

You are faithful, God, You are faithful

You are faithful, God, You are faithful

You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Prayer requests:

• Thank God for a great rest week
• That we settle in quickly in Santa Marta
• That language won't be too much of a problem (No one in our project speaks English!)
• For spiritual protection for the team
• For good health and good team relations

Read more »

Don't worry, be happy, you're in Colombia!

I'm sorry this is a little late again, we had a lot of very late nights last week so I never got time to post. Although we had a crazily busy week, there isn't much that's interesting to re-tell. We taught some more BSL classes, which the kids just love and we have started work on an exciting project. Each pupil and member of staff gets a square wooden tile on which they have to design and paint something that represents them (this was harder to explain than we first thought, as the Colombian education system does not encourage creativity or thinking for yourself). All these tiles will then be stuck together into a larger frame and hung up somewhere in the school. Most of the pupils have now done theirs, but due to a famers' strike in the centre yesterday only about 10 kids made it to school so we still have a number of people to try and catch up before Friday.

This week we have witnessed a lot more of the Colombian hospitality. We were invited to the pastor's  house on Wednesday where we had ajiaco (an amazing Colombian soup served with avacado and rice) and spent some time talking about his testimony and his vision for the Bogota vineyard church. His testimony is incredible - his Dad was part of the most dangerous drug cartel, he ended being homeless as a child for a number of years, was taken in by someone who practised witchcraft and was then invited to church by someone and from that point on gave his life to Christ. His vision for the church is to buy their own place (they currently rent the top floor of a persian restaurant) in Chapinero, the neighbourhood where we are currently working and living. Chapinero has a large red light district, and has a very big problem with homelessness and prostitution. Victor (the pastor) wants to set up a coffee house in the church as a way of building relationships with people, especially students of the nearby university, but also to get out on the streets with the homeless and the prostitues and build relationships with them by sharing in their experiences and doing life with them. It's an incredible vision and I really pray that this will go ahead. Out of the blue this week they were donated a posh coffee maker, the kind used in coffee shops, which is a huge answer to prayer as there is no way they could have afforded to buy one, and how can you start a coffee house without a coffee maker?

We were also invited to another church member's house for ajiaco on Friday, which was a great chance to spend more time getting to know people and practice our Spanish. I also had my first phonecall in Spanish that evening, which I was so worried about, as it is much harder to speak a foreign langauge on the phone than face to face, but it was fine and I made myself understood and could understand the reply! The people we were going with stopped at the Colobian equivalent of Waitrose on the way, and whilst we were waiting we had a look to see what imported food they had that we couldn't find elsewhere - bad idea! We found a small bottle of wostershire sauce for about $10 (I can't find the pound sign on here, so just read $ as pounds!!), brie, smoked and blue cheese, each about $6 for a teeny piece and sausages, again costing a fortune. I hadn't realised how much I was missing cheese with flavour. The Colombian stuff is pretty tasteless and plasticy. Definitely on the list for when I come home, along with cereal which I am once again missing!

Sunday was our last service at the Vineyard church. We wanted to say thank you to them for being like a great big family to us, but we hadn't had time to prepare anything before the service, so I sat during the sermon trying to write something in my best Spanish, which I then read out. I have no idea how much of it made sense but they loved the fact I tried in Spanish and gave me a round of applause at the end. The whole church then prayed for us as we move on to Santa Marta, which was so touching, and it really made us realise how much they cared about us - they weren´t just pretending to be like our family, they really cared about us as if we were family. After the service, we shared lunch with a lot of the church members in the persian restaurant where we have church. It was a really special time, but also sad to have to say goodbye. I think that might be a semi constant feeling this week!

During the meal, Victor came out with my favourite quote of the week. He is hoping to come and visit us in Santa Marta because the vineyard church we will be working with there is a plant of the Bogota vineyard, and Abi was asking him if he had made any plans with the pastor from Santa Marta. Victor replied, 'Don't worry, be happy, you're in Colombia. I don't want to make plans, I'll just turn up!' I think this pretty well sums up the attitude of Colombians towards most things! Sometimes it is frustrating that plans are made and then don't happen or get changed, but we are learning not to bother planning things most of the time, and through this God has taught us a lot about his faithfulness and by not having plans it has forced us to put our trust in Him a lot more. In Britain we plan stuff so much I think it can sometimes be difficult to rely on God fully, or perhaps we don't even leave room for God's plans at all. This also ties in with the spontaneous hospitality that seems so common here. If we are constantly tied to plans then do we have room for this kind of service? Just my intresting thought for the week - don't know what you guys think about this?

Prayer requests:

• That leaving won't be too sad, that the sentiment will be deep but not too upsetting
• I currently have tonsilitus, so prayer for healing would be great!
• That the project in Santa Marta will be ready to receive us
• For the vineyard church and Chapinero in general
• For our spiritual reflection day on Thursday, that God will really be with us and we will have a really good day with time to reflect on our time here in Bogota and that we will be open to what God wants to say to us

Read more »

Only in Colombia...

After last week's mahoosive update (thank you to anyone who stuck with it through to the end), I'll try and keep this one fairly light!! I have a lollipop for inspiration and some upbeat music so hopefully this will be a fun post...

As the title of this post suggests, we have had a number of crazy/awesome experiences this week that really wouldn't happen anywhere but Colombia:

Because this week was Semana Santa there were no kids in school so we had the place to ourselves (or so I thought when I rolled out of bed and came downstairs in my pyjamas on Monday morning to discover the teachers were all in, much to their amusement...) Monday was just a rest day for us as we were shattered after a few very intense weeks. Mary and Naomi went out for a while and came back and told us about an incredible experience they had just had at McDonald's. This made Josh and I desperate for a burger, so we also headed out to McDonald's. Whilst we were waiting for our order we noticed some of the workers signing to each other so we started a conversation with them in Colombian sign language. The smiles on their faces when they realised we knew sign language were so big. It was great to meet some deaf people outside of the school and it means this is a burger I will never forget.

From Tuesday to Thursday we went away for a retreat to the countryside. Some of Abi's friends have a finca about 4 hours from Bogotá near a town called Villa de Leiva, which is a beautiful old colonial town - one of the few that survived the Spanish conquistadores. The finca (a house with a small plot of land) was absolutely beautiful with stunning views of the mountains. Colombia is so diverse, and I couldn't believe how different this area is to Bogotá. On the Wednesday we hired a driver to take us round a number of the local attractions. He had a pick-up truck with 5 seats inside, and there were 8 of us in total, so obviously some of us went in the back. But then we discovered there are certain roads where it is prohibited for people to travel in the back of pick up trucks so we had to cram all 8 of us inside the cab for these parts - only in Colombia! This was particularly fun after some obleas (wafer things) filled with arequipe (a very sugary hyperness-inducing caramel) with bohemian rhapsody playing at full volume... Lunch on Wednesday consisted of a huge platter of meat (pork ribs, a local sausage called Loganiza, black pudding type sausage, grilled beef and grilled pork) with potatoes, plantain and boyacan arepas. I have never before seen so much meat on one plate - once again, only in Colombia!

On Thursday we went to see a tagua workshop. Tagua is a type of seed that is particularly common in Colombia and they make lots of things from it. It was really interesting to find out more about it (more info on my Blipfoto if you want to know) and to see a craftsman at work. The bus was supposed to be picking us up from the finca at 3pm. Gloria, one lady in the family who owned the finca, had been at the house the whole time we were there and really wanted to cook lunch for us before we left, so we headed back to the house for a delicious soup with corn on the cob and chicken in it. The bus driver then phoned to say the traffic out of Bogotá was crazy and he was therefore running really late and wouldn't be picking us up for another 2 or 3 hours. This then led to another 'Only in Colombia' moment. We wanted to go out and get ice creams, so we were going to walk to the nearest town to buy some. Most of the family who would be spending Easter at the finca had arrived by now, and wouldn't hear of us walking to the town, so someone went and got their car to give us a lift. We couldn't all fit in so Josh and I said we would stay behind. After this car had left, someone else went and got their car because they were worried that we would never get to see this town otherwise. No amount of polite refusal would work so we followed behind in another car. When we arrived back with the ice creams, we sat around with the 12 or so people in this family eating and chatting. They then put the salsa on and started dancing with us. When the bus finally arrived, the whole family came down to the road to say goodbye and they were all hugging and kissing us, even though they had only met us an hour before. This is so Colombian - can you even imagine this happening in the UK?!

On Friday we made hot cross buns and lime curd to help us get into an Easter mood. Abi came over on Saturday morning to help us book flights to our next project on the coast (we leave in less than 2 weeks, I can't believe how fast time here has gone) and we then travelled up the mountain to Paraiso, a neighbourhood where Jen, another Latin Link missionary, works. It was her 21st birthday so we went up to give her a mini surprise party, complete with tea and cake.

Sunday was an Easter Sunday to remember. We had hot cross buns for breakfast whilst listening to all the Easter classics (See what a morning, He has risen etc etc). Then we went to church where we introduced the Colombians to hot cross buns over coffee. After the service we went back to Abi's house with lots of Colombians from church for a lunch of fajitas, followed by an easter egg hunt (well, chocolate football hunt, as they don't sell chocolate eggs here) then a short salsa class and a few ceilidh dances. Such a crazy afternoon, and definitely another 'Only in Colombia' day, but an Easter day that will stay with me forever. It was very different to Easter back home, but equally special.

This short blog post has turned out to be quite long...sorry I got a little carried away! And there's still so much more I could tell you. I haven't even started telling you what God has been doing over these past few weeks. Maybe I'll save that up and write it all in one big post at the end of our time in Bogotá...

Love you all lots! Chao! (They need to learn how to spell Ciao here...)

Prayer requests:

• That our last 2 weeks would be really productive and really special
• For improved Spanish skills, which will be really important in Santa Marta
• Thank God for his presence with us over the past few weeks, and for all the crazy yet amazing things we have been able to do and experience

Read more »

Covered in ice cream!

Hello again! I’m sorry I didn’t get chance to write an update last week, the school found out on Friday afternoon that the government were coming in to inspect on Monday, so the time I would usually spend writing my blog was spent deep cleaning the kitchen and organising the sports cupboard.

Since my last blog, we have had two fantastic cooking classes with the pupils. In the first one we made ice cream the old fashioned way of mixing ice and salt in a container around the cream. This was inspired by our visit to Usaquen (mentioned in my last blog) where we saw some people doing this in metal bowls. We adapted this slightly to use 2 sizes of zip lock bags. Our test went really well with just plain vanilla ice cream so we decided to add some flavourings. Unfortunately this dramtically slowed down the freezing process so the first class didn’t get to eat theirs until the end of the day after we had put it in the freezer. From then on we went back to plain vanilla and let them add flavourings like fruit pulp (super common here – it’s sorta their version of squash) or crushed biscuits at the end, like a sundae. The kids loved doing this, although some of them were surprised it was cold and one person even tried to put it in the microwave! We didn’t quite understand this, because ice cream is fairly common in Bogotá so it’s not like they’ve never seen it before… Most weeks we seem to be covered in flour from our cooking lesson, so we figured ice cream would be less messy. We forgot that ice melts, and a couple of people managed to split their bags, so not only was there a mini flood at the end of the lesson, we were also completely covered in cream and salt. Being covered in cream or flour does make a difference from being covered in cement in Tanzania!

In our other cooking lesson we made mini scones with them, and gave them the choice of raisins or cheese to flavour them with. It was roughly a 50/50 mix as to which flavour they chose, but everyone put jam and cream on the top, regardless of the underlying flavour. Cheese is often combined with a type of guava jam called bocadillo or put into hot chocolate (both of which I have tried this last week), so I’m not entirely sure the Colombian’s have worked out that cheese is savoury!

The teachers at the school kept telling us how jealous they were of the kids’ cooking lessons, so we organised an after school lesson for them 2 weeks ago, in which we made a Bakewell tart and mini egg custards. They absolutely loved it, and it brought out their inner child – I think more flour was thrown in this lesson than any lesson with the students! It was definitely an unforgettable lesson, as half way through the Bogotá weather hit and a very heavy hailstorm followed by torrential rain led to the upstairs of the school flooding, so we had to pause our lesson to go and sweep out water for about an hour!! This week they repaid the favour and taught us how to make empanadas (the Colombian version of a Cornish pasty) and a layered dessert of biscuits and a creamy lime filling. Delicious!

We also had a day of incredibly successful music lessons two weeks ago. Patti, the director of the school, wanted us to try and increase their awareness of vibrations, so we used this as our focus for the lesson. Due to one thing and another, we had no lesson plan 5 minutes before our first lesson, and we just prayed for inspiration, and God told us to stop worrying and that we would be given the ideas as and when we needed them. Which he did! We started our first lesson and the ideas just came and it went so well. We used the bass drum with some rice on so they could see the vibrations and sat them round it so they could all touch it and feel it. We then made them take their hands off the drum and see if they could feel it through the floor, which they could. A lot of the advice we were given/found said that it’s best if they take their shoes off, but here in Bogotá they think you will get sick if you don't have shoes on, so that didn't work for us. They were really good at remembering where they had felt vibrations before and telling us what made those vibrations. It was a great lesson, they were really engaged and we learnt a lot too.

Another special lesson we did this week was a social studies class with grades 10 and 11. We spoke to them for about an hour on life in Britain, what our home cities/village look like, what some British traditions are etc. and then they had so many questions to ask that it continued for at least another 45 minutes. They were so interested to find out about Britain. They learn a lot about America here, but not so much about the UK. They were fascinated by the loch ness monster, and they couldn't get over the fact some people might eat pheasant from time to time, but to them it's perfectly normal to eat guinea pig!

The school inspectors were meant to come on Monday, hence why we had spent Friday night tidying some rooms. They phoned up on Monday to say they couldn't come and eventually turned up on Thursday for a grand total of 8 minutes... Patti seems to think it went well, so we are all just praying for the license to come through in the week after Easter.

In our weekends we have done a variety of things. We went to see Bogota club, Millionares play football at their home stadium which is just round the corner from us. The atmosphere as great, we won 4-0 and Josh really enjoyed having something more manly to do (He is very good at putting up with us three girls!!). On that Sunday we stayed at the pesian restaurant where church is held for a delicious lunch after the service. The following weekend we met up with all the other Latin Link missionaries in Bogota and went into the centre of town. There was an amazing carnival going on, and the costumes of all the percussion ensembles made me think that SYPE (Shropshire Youth Percussion Ensemble) never tried hard enough with our outfits! We then went up the Colpatria tower, which is the tallest building in Bogota and has a spetacular viewing platform at the top where you can look out over the city and the surrounding mountains. We finished the day enjoying a lovely tea in an amazing Colombian cafe. On the Sunday we went to church, enjoyed a lunch together at Crepes & Waffles (this really needs to be introduced back home...) and then Felipe, one of Abi's friends, came over to give us a salsa dance lesson. Although I was very self concious at first, it turned out to be a lot of fun! This weekend just gone we had a very relaxed couple of days. We spent Saturday wandering around the centre of Bogota, exploring the artisan markets (where I bought Mum's birthday present - ooh look she's all excited now!!!)  and on Sunday we went horse riding up in the mountains around Bogota. It was great fun but I was minorly terrified the whole time. I had a stroppy horse who didn't want to do anything she was told, would try and bite any horse that got too near, and would stop to eat whenever it fancied. But the scenery was awseome and it was a cool way to see it. This week is Semana Santa (holy week) so there are no kids in school. We are going to use this time for some planning, to visit some of the other Latin Link projects in Bogota and also to relax and rest after a very busy few weeks.

Sorry this has been so long! As usual, Blipfoto has been updated, and I've now added a link at the top of this page :)

Prayer requests:

• Team Health - Josh has had a bad stomach bug and is just finishing his antibiotics, so prayer that he would make a full recovery quickly would be great. I've also been very tired recently, so prayers for energy would be fab!
• School License - pray that this would come through and the government wouldn't keep dragging their heels over this
• Final few weeks here - pray that goodbyes wouldn't be too difficult and that we wouldn't be to apprehensive about moving to Santa Marta.

Read more »

Bogota and beyond!

So, since my last post, I have had the most AMAZING weekend! It was a long one because Monday was one of the 18 public holidays they have each year here (compared to the 8 we have in England!) We spent Saturday at the botanical gardens, which was so peaceful and relaxing. There is a beautiful rose garden, which was my favourite part, but they also have a huge greenhouse with different rooms for each of the climates found in Colombia, which was super cool ('cheverisimo' as they would say here).

On Sunday, we went back to the Vineyard church where we went the previous week with Abi. They have it at the top of a Persian restaurant, and everyone sits on comfy benches along one wall, or on cushions on the floor against the other. The service is in Spanish, but someone often translates the sermon for us, and the songs are often ones we know in English, like Blessed be your name or Come, now is the time to worship, but sung in Spanish, which is great fun! The service 'starts' at 10.30 (aka 11) so we turned up at 10.20 to find no one there and went for an awkward walk round the block until someone recognised us from the previous week and asked if we had forgotten where the church was! We had no plans for lunch but the same couple (Maciel and Alvero) who invited us for lunch the previous week found out about this, and quickly invited us round for lunch again. Colombian hospitality in incredible. Us Brits could really learn something from their generosity and spontaneity. After a delicious lunch, they took us to a neighbourhood of Bogota called Usaken, which has a beautiful artisan and crafts market on a Sunday, where I bought some lovely earrings.It was such a nice way to spend an afternoon, and I was overwhelmed by their hospitality, and that we could have such an amazing day considering we had no plans first thing that morning.

Maciel and Alvero said they would be visiting a lake out of the city called Guatavita on Monday and asked if we would like to join them. It was on our list to see, and as it is a 2 hour drive from where we stay, it was going to be difficult for us to get there, so we gratefully accepted. Monday was an amazing day. The lake has a lot of history and is fundamental in the legend of El Dorado. It was a pretty walk up to the lake, although the altitude of 3000m made it a little challenging, but the view from the top was worth every step. The lake is a beautiful turquoise colour and the mountain scenery around it is amazing. They then took us to the new town of Guatavita which is very pretty and bought us a delicious lunch of trout and chips. I have never had such a big plate of trout before!

The rest of the week has also been good, but very tiring. We had 5 music lessons this week, the first of which was a slight disaster as we didn't manage to communicate anything we wanted them to do, but they got progressively better, and we were so pleased with how the last one went! Our cooking lessons have also been good fun, making bread with all the classes. We have started work on tidying some cupboards and storage rooms that desperately need sorting but no one here has the time as they are desperately short staffed. It's a big task but we are more than happy to do it.We are continuing with the board games lessons, and this week I taugh the kids Pass the Pigs, which is one of the Preston family's favourite games!

On Wednesday we had the chance to visit another project in the south of the city, called Children's Vision International, who have 3 children's homes, a school and a medical centre. It's great to see other projects that are going on in the city, and their story is so encouraging. It started out with a lady taking in a baby she found abandoned under a bridge 20 years ago, and now it is a really well run organisation with one of the best stocked medical centres I've seen in a developing country and 195 kids at their school. It's encouraging to see how much of a difference can be made, from such small beginnings.

Once again, my photos from the week are on blipfoto :)

Prayer requests:

• For the school lisence which needs to come through ASAP. The school have done all they can and are just waiting on the government.
• For Felipe,  a Colombian we met and became good friends with, who has gone to Leticia (a city in the very very south of Colombia, in the Amazon) to do a YWAM discipleship training course. Pray that he settles in well and really knows God's presence with him.
• For Alvero and Maciel, thank God for their kindness, and pray that he will bless them as they try to start a family
• For team relations, that minor disagreements would not lead to bigger arguments

Read more »

Our first week at school

This week has been super busy, teaching lots of lessons and also having classes ourselves. One of the highlights of the week was teaching cookery classes, in which we made shortbread biscuits. The school covers school years from pre-school all the way up to year 11, but every class got stuck in and loved the cooking. Next week we think we might make some bread with them.
Josh and I also took our first music lesson which was a very interesting experience. We were so nervous and stayed up until gone midnight planning it but the kids engaged so well, and the activities we had picked worked well. It's really hard having grown up as a hearing musician to try and comprehend how the deaf respond to music and vibrations, and to know what activities will and will not work. Thank you so much to everyone who responded to our frantic prayer requests the night before and for all the suggestions of activities to try, they've been so helpful .
One of our main aims for the week was to help decorate the classrooms, which we have nearly completed. Decorations ranged from a tree of fruits with everyone's name and birthday written on their favourite fruit, along with the fruits of the spirit, to a solar system with people's names and birthdays written on the planets and a little space man holding the Colombian and British flags.
We have sign language lessons twice a week from 2-4 to help us improve our communication with the children. They are great fun but also very helpful and our communication gets better day by day. I am also getting more confident with my Spanish and often surprise myself with how much I can understand (I still have a lot to learn though!)
Other highlights of the week are: Dinner on Sunday with an amazing group of Colombians from Abi's church (the food was fantastic and the conversation was even better. We felt so welcomed, it was really amazing), cooking a roast dinner to celebrate the birthdays of a couple of Latin Link Striders (the next type of placement up from step) and the chance to meet a couple of native people from the Cachua tribe from the Colombian Amazon. They are working with some missionaries to translate the bible into their native language and was so interesting to hear how in the past 35 years the tribe has gone from worshiping native gods, with no knowledge of the one true God, to half of the tribe becoming Christians.
There's been a few times this week we've been completely out of our comfort zone and been quite nervous of how things would go, especially the music classes and the assembly. But through this, God has really shown his faithfulness and every time we have turned to God saying "HELP!", he has filled us with a sense of his peace and the things we had worried about went very smoothly and the inspiration we needed for different things from our assembly drama to what to decorate the classes with has been provided and has been so successful. Thank you God!!

My Blipfoto has been updated again. There are photos for each day  since I arrived, you can use the little calendar on the right under the picture to navigate through the days.

Prayer requests:

• Definitely need to thank God for his faithfulness and that He is with us even though we are miles away from home in a strange country and culture
• For a restful weekend, as we are all quite tired after this week
• That team relations continue to grow and that the fun times will keep coming!

Read more »

Settling in, in Bogota

Hello all! (Please excuse any spelling or grammatical errors, Spanish keyboards are weird.)

This week has mainly been orientation and finding our way round Bogota:
We arrived on Monday after a very long day of traveling. We made our connecting flight in Miami (but only just!) and were greeted by the in country co-ordinator, Abi, at the airport. We were taken to our first project, the Philadelfia College for the Deaf, which is where we are both working and living for the next 2 months. The accomodation is lovely, we are in separate rooms with comfy beds and WiFi access! Monday evening we were introduced to arepas (a typically Colombian and Venezuelan corn pancake type of thing, filled with cheese) and the Colombian hot chocolate, which is AMAZING! It comes in bars which you melt in hot milk and its so, so much better than at home.

From Tuesday to Friday we completed a number of important tasks: getting bus passes; beginning to understand the Transmilenio (bus/metro system); learning how to use the charts in taxis so we don't get ripped off; finding our way around the nearest neighbourhood (called Las Galerias); sampling the delights of Colombian restaurant chain, Crepes&Waffles; discovering the nearest supermarket and stocking up on some essentials like laundry powder and hot chocolate.

We have also had our first sign language lesson, which will now be a bi-weekly occurance. It was great fun and I'm so excited to learn more! The contruction work here is on hold as something didn't go through with the plans, so instead we are going to be spending much more time with the pupils, which I'm so excited about! Next week we will be teaching a number of classes, including cooking and percussion which will be great fun. Our timetable looks quite busy, but hopefully it won't be too hectic.

Today was our day off so we went into the centre of Bogota to the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) which was very well done and really insightful into the history of Colombia. Tomorrow we will be off to church with Abi, and then we have been invited for lunch with some of her friends, which will be a fantastic opportunity to get to know some locals.

Since as we have quite good internet here, I'm going to try keeping a blipfoto daily photo journal here: http://www.blipfoto.com/rachelhpreston
The idea of a blipfoto journal is to upload one photo for each day as a way of helping you remember and share what happens each day. I might not be able to include a photo every day, and I will probably update it weekly with the past 7 days photos,  but I'll give it a go and see if it works out!

Prayer requests:

• For a great week with the pupils here, that we will connect well and really inspire them
• That we will pick up sign language quickly
• That the team continue to get to know each other and bond well
• That we will continue to settle in and not feel totally lost in this culture

Read more »

At the airport

Just a quick one to say we're at the airport. Check in took forever, but the kind man moved Naomi and I to extra leg room seats for free! Had to unpack my bag again at security, but at least we have plenty of time. I'll try and update you when we get to bogota!

Read more »

What will I actually be doing in Colombia?

Right, well I'm about to leave home but just thought I'd write a quick post to let you know a bit more about what I'll be up to in Colombia (or at least, what I think I'll be up to in Colombia - Latin America is similar to Africa in that plans don't mean anything and we might end up doing something totally different to what we thought!)

We have two projects - one in the capital city, Bogota, and the other in Santa Marta, a city on the coast.

The first couple of months in Colombia will be spent in Bogota working alongside the Colegio Filadelfia para los Sordos (CFS) – The Philadelphia School for the Deaf. There are two main aims for the Step team
whilst you we on this project. The first is very much of a practical nature as we will be helping the college as it begins to extend the current building to help create more space for their ongoing work. Part of this work will involve helping to construct a foot ramp to the entrance to enable wheelchair access to the first floor. We’ll get your hands dirty with a spot of brick laying, mixing concrete, clearing away rubble, painting etc. This practical help will be of huge benefit to the project as it will mean they are able to reach more people, offer better access to those with disabilities and reach out further into the community.

The second aim of the project will be to help facilitate and engage with an activity programme for the students. We’ll help out with things such as taking the young people to the park for sports/games days, host board game events in the school, run beauty days with the girls, help with cooking activities (particularly something typically British – maybe some kind of cookies) and much, much more.

The last 2 months will be spent working alongside a Vineyard church (La Viña) in a poor area of Santa Marta. 

The church we will be working alongside has very limited facilities and next to no space for running any children’s activities. With this in mind one of the main aims for our time in Santa Marta is to help with the construction a terrace area and an additional room. The practical work involved in doing this will be 

fairly simple however due to the heat it will definitely be bit of a challenge! In addition to the above, the team will also help with the weekly running of the church. This will involve helping in Sunday services, getting stuck in to children’s work, and then attending various mid-week groups. The church is also keen for the team to help with a variety of activities they have planned for reaching out to the local community.

I'll do my best to keep my blog updated for you, but we will also be writing weekly reports which will be put on the Latin Link website here.

Read more »

1 week till Colombia!

1 week to go till I’ll be in Colombia! It’s come round so fast, I can’t believe we leave on Monday!

I’ve just come back from our Latin Link Step Team orientation, and it has been an amazing few days. We started off on Wednesday and Thursday with team leaders’ training where we looked at some of the biblical principles behind good leadership. We also focussed on the more practical aspects of leading a team like planning our week, leading team devotions and resolving disagreements that may arise in the team. This was really useful and I now feel much more prepared for the task of leading a team. It also gave me chance to really get to know my co-leader, Josh, and to share ideas with the leaders of the step teams going to Nicaragua and Peru.

The rest of the teams arrived on Thursday evening. The weekend involved getting to know each other, sharing meals, lots of practical sessions to help prepare us for our time in Latin America, as well as an exciting photo challenge around London.

My team is amazing and I’m so excited for what God is going to do during our time in Colombia!

 

Team Colombia - Rachel, Bunny, Josh, Naomi, Mary (Top to bottom)

Once again, I’ll try to include prayer points on my blog updates. Your support in prayer is invaluable to my team and me!

Prayer requests:

• Final preparations this week go well, everything fits in our luggage and we don’t forget anything.
• That God would calm any nerves and fill us with excitement for our time away.
• For Josh and I, as we continue preparations for leading the team, that God would equip us and give us a sense of peace over the responsibility, and that we would trust in Him for everything.

Read more »

Photos from Tanzania!

Here, at last, are a few photos from Tanzania, sorry for the wait!

1 day old chick!

Mixing concrete for the chicken shed extension

Three water tanks completed

The market garden

Working with the Rehema ladies

Sports afternoon talk

Hostel lunch

Next stage of the health centre done

Church choir

Worship at sunrise

Read more »

Reflections on Tanzania - Part 2

Hello again! I'm sorry I've only just got round to writing this, Christmas happened and I never quite managed to make it to my blog. I will get some photos up asap for those of you who haven't seen them on Facebook. As I was away with a Christian charity and living with a bunch of Christians there was plenty of opportunity for faith based discussions etc. so this blog post is about some of the God stuff that was particularly important to me during the trip.

Bible verses: 
When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Ephesians 3:14-20

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity but of power, love and self discipline . 2 Timothy 1:7

For we are God's masterpiece . He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2:10

I also loved the book of Esther -I think it is now my favourite book. The whole of Romans 8 is really good too.

Quotes from Christian authors/speakers: 
"If it's God's will then it's God's bill"
"God's finger never points the way without his hand providing the strength to accomplish the the task he has for you"

Worship songs:
On Sunday evenings we would worship together. These are 3 of my favourites:
My Guardian
Saviour of the World
He Reigns

Spiritual reflection day: 
Half way through the trip we had a day which we dented entirely to God. It started with worship up Eagle Rock at sunrise and ended with worship up Eagle Rock at sunset. The rest of the day we spent listening to and discussing a sermon, reading the bible and praying. It was a great day and the sermon we listened to was particularly inspiring. It was titled 'The adventure of calling' and talked about how each of us has a calling, how it is exciting not knowing the entire map of our future and that sometimes God calls us to go first before he reveals why we are going. It is important to live by faith and not by fear. we should embrace risk for God's glory as unless there is an element of risk in our work for God there's no need for faith.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported me in prayer whilst I was away , God was definitely with me the whole time!

Read more »