Sorry for the radio-silence about what we've been getting up to out here! I've just been so busy getting back into everything and meeting back up with all the friends I made last year! It almost feels like I've never been away, and I'm once again falling more and more in love with the culture, communities and people I have the blessing of coming alongside in these few months.
Our main project this year has been installing a water line to give a community of around 100 families access to clean, running water - as opposed to getting it from the river, where they mostly have been doing so far. This will give the community much better standards of health and will hopefully be a massive blessing to them. We've also, in the last week, started digging out 2 big pits which will be the foundations for some toilet blocks for the community to use. This is what I was helping with this morning - digging out one of these deep pits, which will be about as tall as me! (And already is so on one side!!!) I have to say, throwing each shovel-full of dirt from the floor of the pit right up to the top of the pile of dirt we'd been forming as we go, really took it out of my puny arm muscles! Now, as I type this, I am very conscious of each muscle being used to do so! Hahaha! As we dig each morning, I've been trying to come up with some "team-bonding" questions for my little team of diggers in that pit - well, I was trying to come up with a reason for us all to take a short break and drink more water at any rate! And this morning I asked, "If you could design a t-shirt, to sum up your time here so far, what would it have on it?" I don't know why I'd had t-shirts on my mind, but hey! And one of the guys on the team said his would say, "Willingness". Willingness, because if they hadn't been willing, it would've just been really hard work, and like slave labour, and there wouldn't have been the joy and blessing they'd experienced through coming out and working. And on the face of it, it's a really strange thing - people give up their cash, their time, their nice comfy English lives, and come here to dig and dig and dig and dig, in the sweltering heat with sweat dripping down their necks, and yet they are SO willing. Every day, this team have come out ready and willing to work hard and to love the people they meet. And THAT has been a major blessing to me in working with them. 'Willingness' also reminds me of so many of the stories of people working here. Missionaries from abroad, local pastors, Sister Mercedes in her testimony; all of them, in their wide array of completely different stories - all of them have one thing in common. That they were willing to follow God, despite not knowing how or what exactly they would be following him into. Willingness to give their lives completely and utterly over to him. That is the challenge I meet here. Do I have that willingness in my heart?
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AuthorI'm a recent Cambridge Theology graduate now studying for a Masters in Biblical Studies and blogging about all sorts of things! I'm interested in faith, Church, theology, social action, the great outdoors and being creative, and all of those things - along with many more - come through in my posts!
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April 2020
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