An Attitude of Gratitude #365reasons

Update: This didn't last as long as I intended, by quite some way! I think it did make me more thankful, but my perseverance leaves a lot to be desired, and I'm definitely still a long way from being as thankful as i could be. Re-reading this has challenged me to think about this again!



No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

'Thanks'. One of those words we say so often it completely loses meaning. Like when you repeat a word over and over until it doesn't sound real any more: spoon. Spoon. Spooon. Spoonspoonspoonspoon.spOOn. spoon. Is that even a word? Point proved. My actual point is, I've been really challenged at the start of this new year to rethink thankfulness. To rediscover the meaning of 'thanks'. Apparently 'thanks' appears in the bible 151 times. It clearly an important topic!

What does it mean to 'always be thankful' or to 'give thanks in all circumstances' as the NIV phrases it? It's easier to be thankful when things are going well than when life gets tough. But this verse clearly tells us we should be thankful in both these situations (and everything in beteeen. Like every theory in Constitutional Law I'm sure this is a continuum and life generally sits somewhere on the scale between perfection and disaster.)  Let's start with the  times when life is going well. Easy to be thankful, right? Or perhaps not... 

I know I'm guilty of taking so many things for granted, for focusing on what I don't have as opposed to what I do. There's been a lot of articles recently calling us the 'entitled generation'. In some ways I think this is unfair - we are a generation that is repeatedly condemned, and this needs to stop. But that's another discussion for another time. I think the problem of entitlement is very real, but extends beyond  my generation to my parents' generation as well. For those of you who haven't read these articles I'm talking about, the problem of entitlement is as follows: We have started to believe we are entitled to the good things in life, that we have a right to them. Entitled to meat 7 days a week. Entitled to a car. Entitled to a foreign holiday at least once a year. Entitled to fast internet and good phone signal. Entitled to nice clothes. And with this sense of entitlement, we have forgotten what a privilege these things are. So we complain when we don't get them, rather than giving thanks when we do. I'm as guilty of this as the next person (you've all heard the rant about internet speed back home in Sheriffhales...!) Why would we be entitled us to any of these? If we look at ancient kings, they had nightly entertainment, luxury bathing, wine, spices from around the world and time to admire the wonders of nature. Is that really so different to our lifestyle? I'm not saying we should throw away these things and adopt a John-the-Baptist-camel-hair-and-locusts life instead. I'm saying we need to consciously change our attitude from one of entitlement to one of gratitude. To intentionally recognise the things we do have, and to be thankful for them. It's all too easy not to recognise how much we have until we don't have it anymore. In the words of Passenger:

"Well you only need the light when it's burning low

Only miss the sun when it starts to snow

Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low

Only hate the road when you’re missin' home

Only know you love her when you let her go"

Consumerism has a lot to answer for regarding this attitude of entitlement and dissatisfaction. One of the biggest myths is that the market exists to create satisfied customers, but if we think about it, it’s actually the opposite. A truly satisfied customer would never return to the shop. Business depends on us being satisfied just enough to appreciate what we've bought, but not satisfied enough to be content with just one purchase. This constant desire for more has spilled over into the rest of our lives. 1 Timothy 6:6 says 'Godliness with contentment is great gain'. Contentment is not having everything you want. Nor is it grudgingly settling for less than you think you deserve because that's a holy thing to do (Holy points are not actually a thing.) Contentment is the attitude of realising how much we already have. When we find contentment, it frees us from the never ending cycle of needing more. Of having to work longer hours to get a better holiday than the last one, which then doesn't quite meet our expectations, so we work even harder to get an even better holiday etc.  This is one of the reasons I think we are told to be thankful - because in giving thanks we are focussing on the good things we have, rather than the things we don't. 

So what about those situations when life seems rubbish. When everything goes wrong. When you're behind on work, missing home, your bike breaks and to top it all off your pick-me-up cup of tea has fairy liquid in cause in washing the mug you only got as far as putting the fairy in... (True story. That was the low point of last term.) Or even worse. Life really can suck sometimes. Surely God can't expect us to be thankful then, when there is nothing to be thankful for? But then if we look back at the verse, it says 'in all circumstances'. That means the low points too. For me, this is definitely harder to fix than my lack of thankfulness in the good times. I think the book of Psalms is a real gift in these situations, and reflect the attitude we should try and take. The psalmists pour our their raw emotion when life went wrong. Yet it is always turned round to praise. Take Psalm 42 - As the deer pants for streams of water, so I long for you. You've probably sung this to the horrendously twee tune we've attached to it. I remember someone saying once that screamo/heavy metal would be a more appropriate genre for this psalm. Deer do not skip around happily when they are dying from dehydration. This psalm is one of AGONY. Of screaming out at God. Yet the psalmist then turns it back round to praise.

v11: 'Why am I so discouraged? 

Why am I so sad? 

I will put my hope in God! 

I will praise him again - my Saviour and my God'. 

In these times, it's ok to scream at God. But we need to remember his faithfulness too, and turn back to praise. If we look hard enough, there will usually be something to still be thankful for. Search for this, and hold onto it. But if we can find nothing else to be thankful for, if everything really has been taken away from us, we know that salvation and hope in our saviour Jesus Christ has not. We can depend on the character and faithfulness and love of God - there are so many promises of this in the bible. The chance to have a relationship with God is the biggest privilege we could ever have been given. We therefore will always have something to be thankful for. And in these low situations, turn to the psalms for support, encouragement and guidance. They have been given to us as part of scripture to help us pray when we can't find the words ourselves. Use them! (Same goes for the good times too - literally every emotion is covered in there!)

To be always thankful is a hard ask, but it's something I really want to work towards this year. I believe in order to do this, thankfulness needs to become a way of life, not just something I do on occasion. I want to have an attitude of gratitude in everything I do. To start with, I'm going to have to be really intentional about this. To purposely look for and make opportunities to be thankful. I hope by the end of the year it will become more natural, but I know it's not going to be a finished work by this time next year. 

I hope that in doing this, I will gain freedom from the pressure to always have the next, best, biggest things, and that it will lead me to live a less self-centred life, where I am not consumed by a desire to increase my own share. That I will find contentment in realising just how much I already have. I love Matt Redman's song, "10,000 reasons", and when thinking about thankfulness at the beginning of the year, I was really struck by the line '10,000 reasons for my heart to find...' 10,000 is a lot, so I thought I'd start with a more realistic target of 365...  I know I missed the boat somewhat with new years resolutions (but since when have I done anything the normal way...!), but each day for the next year I want to post something I'm thankful for on my twitter account. Some days it might be big things, and other days it'll be the little things. I think they're both of importance - God is God in all our life, not just the big things. 

Why am I doing this publically? 1) I hope it will encourage and inspire others towards thankfulness, even if just for a moment in their day. 2) More importantly, it means you can hold me accountable to this much easier than if it was just in a journal. Please hold me to this, and if I get slack please please pick me up on it. You have my permission!! 

If this is something you fancy having a go at, I'd love you to join me in this! Pick whatever number you like -maybe just try it for a week (#7reasons) or take it up for a month (#31reasons) or for lent (#40reasons), or go the whole hog and join me for the year (#365reasons)!! And if you'd just like to follow my attempts to stay thankful, you'll find me on twitter.

Read more »

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 »