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

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My video update from Bogota

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

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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!

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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