2013

As 2013 comes to an end, I've had myself a bit of a reflection on what I’ve done in the past year. And wow is it a long list! 

2013 has been an incredible year and certainly a memorable one.

Back in January, I met my friend’s wife and daughter, who very quickly became very special to me. I’m so proud to be ‘Aunty Lorna’ to Berindah, and also now to Brian and Terry’s second daughter, Breanna, who was born in October and who I had the honour of naming.

Me with Terry and Berindah at Lake Victoria in February

I saw some amazing sights of God’s creation, particularly whilst on Safari in Murchison Falls National Park.
Being in Uganda for half the year, I learnt a lot of new skills including how to shower with a bucket and the optimum times for using pit latrines (i.e. not in the mid-day heat!). 

Our shower in Kuffu village

I learnt to cook a few traditional Ugandan dishes, and also to light and cook on a charcoal stove. I also learnt a lot of the local language – Luganda, and East African sign language. I learnt to braid African hair and to ride a motorbike (well… kind of!). One thing I didn’t do so well at learning was riding on the cross-bar of a bicycle, but oh well – you can’t do it all!

With all that learning, I did a fair bit of teaching too. I taught regularly in 2 different schools in Uganda, and did a bit of teaching in another school too. I had the absolute privilege of teaching numerous children to read and write and to witness their incredible progress.

Two of my students; Godfrey and Alex,
learning to read during three intensive reading weeks in Kuffu village in May

Teaching phonics in Kayunga village in June

Living in a rural village for a fair amount of time in Uganda, I learnt a whole new definition of the term ‘roughing it’, but I actually grew to love it and to appreciate the simplicity of a life that involves fetching water from a bore hole, sleeping on a mattress on the floor and showering in a bucket!

Andrew and I fetching water in Kuffu village in March

As well as all this I got to help with some really exciting projects including building a church, regular outreach work in the slums of Kampala, sponsored children’s projects, a project providing physiotherapy for children with cerebral palsy in rural areas, and a sponsored widow’s project.

Working with Kisaakye Rehabilitation Centre in Kayunga Village in June

I had some pretty amazing experiences at other times too, like swimming in the largest lake in the world – Lake Victoria, attending a Ugandan graduation party, turning 19 in Uganda and having an incredible birthday celebration.

On the shore of Lake Victoria near Entebbe in February

Also single-handedly cooking enough pancakes for 40 people, dispensing prescriptions in a makeshift pharmacy as part of a medical mission, taking part in a huge church picnic on the beach by Lake Victoria and having a massive water fight at 1.30am!

There are some things I did this year that I’m not quite so keen to repeat, such as eating cow’s lungs and getting tonsillitis, and there are others that I doubt I will ever get to do again, like having an interview for Bible college on Skype, and joining the locals in welcoming a short term mission team from the UK!

Lining up to welcome the visitors to Kuffu village in June

Clearly, I managed to squeeze a fair amount into the first half of 2013! As well as all of this, I fell in love with God all over again, several times, and saw him do so many things that I thought were impossible.

Of course, at the beginning of July, I got on a plane and flew back to the UK. That’s another thing that I’ve never done before – moving back to the UK having been living in a different country! 

Moving back to the UK in July

I had a difficult couple of months readjusting and suffering from re-entry culture shock, as well as missing the people I grew so close to in Uganda, but this didn’t stop me from filling up my summer with an array of things like cooking rice and beans for over 100 people, volunteering with Adventure Plus on an adventure holiday in the Peak District and taking a youth group to Soul Survivor for the first time. 

Beans for the Ugandan meal I held at Christ Church Chineham in July

Clare and I looking cool in our
onesies at Soul Survivor in August

I also worked for the Diocese of Winchester and helped to organise a Diocesan Conference. And all of this before September when I moved to the Isle of Wight and became a youth worker, and following that Skype interview earlier in the year, I started studying for my degree in Applied Theology and Youth and Community Work at Moorlands College.
I joined the Isle of Wight YFC team and set up new youth groups at my placement church on the Island. I also went on retreat to Pembrokeshire with the YFC team and I got my first car!

On Retreat with the IOW YFC team in October

So that’s it! What an incredible year. I’m so thankful for all the opportunities I’ve had this year, and everything that has made it all possible. But now I look to the future with optimism of equally amazing experiences to come.

…Bring it on!

Christmas

I drove home from Eynsham on Christmas eve, driving into the driveway just at the moment that my Dad got home, so that was good timing! With my parents, I went to the Carol service at Christ Church which was lovely and it felt good to be back at my home church and to see everyone there.
My brother, John, arrived in the evening to stay the night ready for Christmas day morning. It was so good to all be together as a family. We went to church together on Christmas day, when Father Christmas even made an appearance! (Although he had an uncanny resemblance to my Dad - I wonder why?!)

Christmas day was lovely. It was just like old times, spending the day together, sharing gifts and eating good food. The only bad bit was that Mum and I failed to beat Dad and John at 'The Logo Game' causing massively over the top victory celebration from my Dad!

Messing around with my brother and the cat.

I also got a chance on Christmas day to call some of my friends in Uganda which was lovely. This Christmas cant really have been more different than it was from my Christmas last year when I was in Uganda. It was so lovely to spend it with my family again, but I've also really missed my 'African family' this Christmas time. 

On Boxing Day, my grandparents joined us for lunch and we had a good laugh about my Mum's habit of giving weird gifts. This year they included a hay bale and a bag of compost!

We saw my Grandparents again on Friday evening when we joined them and my Uncle's family for Chinese and games - this time we avoided the crazy victory celebration by beating the men in a men vs women game of 'His and Hers'. We did however discover that my uncle know's a worrying amount about skirts!

Team 'Man' getting into a game of 'His and Hers'

This evening we're off to the other side of the family - to visit my Aunt on my Dad's side and her kids and grandkids, and then I'm off to Eynsham again on Tuesday for New Year celebrations.

Pray this week for...
- Me as I try to get an essay written
- Safety as I travel around this week

Back in the Centre of the Universe!

It’s Christmas!!! I’m writing this from Clare’s house in Eynsham (the centre of the universe!) where I’ve been for the past couple of days … I think it’s quickly becoming my second home!

A lot has happened in the past week.
Last weekend I got to skype a couple of my friends in Uganda including Brian’s daughter Berindah who I used to look after a lot. She turned 2 just before we left and it was so lovely to see her and how much she has grown, although it made me miss her a lot. (Huge thanks to Jon who is one of Smile’s current gappers, for letting us use his laptop and Skype account to talk to each oth

er!)

I went to a Carols by Candlelight service on Sunday evening with my host family which was lovely. I’ve heard a lot about that service since living with them so it was nice to get the opportunity to go along.


We had planned to have our last YFC meeting of the year on the beach on Monday morning but it was raining so we had it in Ben’s house, who lives near the sea! Still, it was good fun. I also got my car heater fixed that day so I wont freeze anymore when I’m driving – it’s quite the opposite now – it’s like a sauna in there!


My placement church did a posada this year (little figures of Mary and Joseph make their way around everyone’s house in the congregation during advent) so on Monday evening I took Mary and Joseph to their next host. It was really nice to get to spend some time with Bernie and Martin and to get to meet some of their family who were over for the evening.

I ended up back in school on Wednesday, which was a strange experience as it was obviously so different from the schools I was working at in Uganda and I haven’t really been in any since then. James and I ran an assembly about happiness with a ‘family fortunes’ theme.

I read the Christmas story at a toddler group Christmas party on Tuesday – a bit of a younger audience than I’m used to, but I think that it went well and they seemed to enjoy it.

We had a YFC Christmas social in the evening with some good food and an ‘interesting’ game of articulate!

In the evening I picked up Clare – one of the girls that I was with in Uganda, as she came to stay for a few days. It was so lovely to see her and just to be together again after so long.
On Wednesday evening we got to speak to Alex on Skype from Uganda for his birthday. Alex is Smile Uganda's project manager who we lived with.

Clare came along to the DofE group that I volunteer at on Wednesday and helped me with planning on Thursday for Rock Solid. We went to meet my friend Rachel for a coffee and then went to the beach for a while. Rock Solid in the evening was really good fun, and then on Friday, Clare and I went for a walk before we had to start getting ready for Vibe – a youth event in the evening. I introduced the century old Randall family tradition of ‘Fishing Over the Door’ to everyone at Vibe, which they all thought was really odd!

Clare and I left the island on Saturday morning and went on a road trip to Oxford. We stopped in Winchester to look around the Christmas market and to get some lunch (where Clare managed to pour almost a whole jug of water over me! We ended up stood in the bathroom – me in a cubicle whilst Clare dried my jeans under the hand drier!). We arrived at Clare’s home in Eynsham in the afternoon and picked up Andrew (another gapper) in the evening. Over the weekend we accumulated more gappers until we were all together on Monday. We had such a lovely time together. It’s just nice to be together again. We also got a Skype call from our friends in Uganda who just happened to all be together at the Smile house for a Christmas party on the same day! Wow! It was such a blessing to all be together again, and it felt like we had never been apart. We did lots of catching up, but generally just enjoyed being with one another for a while.

So it's Christmas now and I'll be driving home tomorrow morning and staying in Basingstoke for a couple of weeks.
Please pray this week for...

- Christmas - that everyone will have a lovely time.

- Pray that I'll have a good rest and enjoy spending time with friends and family.

Hot Chocolate and Bushtuker Trials

It definitely seems like more than a week ago since I was at Moorlands! This week has been very busy.
On Monday, after our usual morning meeting, a bunch of us headed off to a local school to serve free hot chocolates to the students during their lunch break as part of AOK (Acts of Kindness). We played Christmas music and wore Santa hats and had lots of fun. Making a good few hundred mugs of hot chocolate is pretty messy work, so we had lots of clearing up to do too.
In the evening a few of us met up just to spend some time together. It seems to be that everyone I socialize with here is involved in youth work - I think the only reason that a lot of people our age actually stay on the island is to do youth work, so there's not that many of us!
The next day I had a lunch meeting with some staff from Moorlands (where I study) and my placement supervisor and YFC to talk about the YTP scheme and how our placements are going. I then spent the afternoon planning a talk for Emerge - a youth event on Friday.
Wednesday was a similar day with lots of planning - for the talk and for my Rock Solid youth club, and then a meeting in the evening at church to talk about my work there.
After a meeting in the morning, I spent most of Thursday preparing for Rock Solid. The young people had asked for 'Bushtuker Trials' (i.e. eating disgusting things) ... and I don't think they'll be asking for that again after what I prepared for them to do on Thursday evening! We talked about fear and why people get scared of things and we talked about the fact that God is with us even when we're in scary situations.
I received Mary and Joseph on Friday morning as part of the Posada. They're little figurines of Mary and Joseph that travel around different homes of people in the church during Advent, and I have them for the whole weekend!

Mary and Joseph

I spent all of Friday morning and most of the afternoon preparing my talk for the evening, and then headed down to help set up in the late afternoon. Emerge went well, we had some time to worship God together, and I talked about the Holy Spirit and the things that we can do to allow it to be at work in our lives. I had some positive feedback which was nice to hear, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to speak.
I was definitely ready for my day off today, and after a much needed lie-in, I went out to meet a couple of friends for some hot chocolate in the afternoon which was nice. I got back and called a friend in Uganda, who happened to be with 2 other friends, and his daughters, so I got to speak to all of them which was lovely and very funny. I still can't quite get my head around speaking to Berindah on the phone, as when I last saw her she was too young to talk properly!
So I now have one week left on the island before I go home for Christmas. I'm so excited to see Clare in a few days who is going to stay for a few days this week, and then to meet up with the rest of the gappers that I was in Uganda with. Having lived together for so long, it feels like we've been apart for a very long time. I can't wait to all be together again, and then to go home to spend a decent amount of time with my parents, and to see everyone at Christ Church over Christmas.

Please pray for me this week:

- As I draw my youth work to a close for Christmas - pray that everything will go well this week and that we'll have lots of fun.
- Pray for me as I speak at a toddler group on Tuesday - that I'll be able to engage the children and also their parents.

- I'm planning to take a couple of my young people to a youth event on Friday, so pray that they'll enjoy it and get a lot out of it.

A week at Moorlands

Last week I bought some playdough for my youth group, and I got very excited about it, so last week we made lots of playdough models during my Sunday morning youth group whilst we thought about what worship is.

My car was fixed last weekend just in time to drive it to Moorlands early on Monday morning. I had a whole week at Moorlands this week covering our New Testament module. We had lectures on the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and 1Corinthians.
We spent Tuesday and Wednesday looking at 1Corinthians, and lots of really interesting discussions were had, and lots of challenging points came up, for example...

"Church growth should not only be about increasing the number of people attending on a Sunday morning, but about growing the church family you have, into a people who better resemble Christ. "

"If more Christians emphasized the truth that, what is fundamental to our faith is that we believe that we have all hugely messed up, maybe people wouldn't feel so judged by the church."

"We should never manipulate the gospel message to make it attractive. Committing your life to Christ might be the best thing that many Christians believe that they've ever done, but it is a huge decision, and new believers need to know the decision they're making. " 

"Salvation comes first, obedience comes later."

We looked at and discussed lots of really interesting topics, especially whilst we were studying 1Corinthians, like sexual immorality, women in leadership, covering the head in worship, and love, among many other things. We also got to learn a bit about what life was like in 1st Century Corinth which really helps to understand the text and to bring it to life.

On Monday, Thursday and Friday we studied the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), looking at the differences and similarities between them, looking at some big questions like that arise from them, and studying a bit of what is known about the culture that Jesus lived in.

It was really good to get to spend some time with the people on my course, and to see some other students on my course who only come for block weeks. We had time every evening to catch up and socialize ... and to learn some weird new card games at the pub!

Being away from my placement for a week gave me a change to think about the position that I'm in at the moment. Sometimes I can't quite believe what I'm doing now. A year ago I never would have thought that I would be the sole youthworker at a church. Just a few months ago I was thinking of turning down my offer from Moorlands and I had no idea what I was going to do after getting back from Uganda. Although I knew that there were lot of things I could potentially do, the one thing that I had pretty much written off as something I was incapable of was youth work. But now here I am! God equips the called eh?!

So after lectures on Friday I jumped in the car and just about managed to miss the rush hour traffic on the way to Basingstoke. I stayed there for a night to visit Mum and Dad which was really nice. We just had a chilled out evening and a nice meal and it was lovely to have a cuddle :)

The next day, after a lie in and another chilled morning with Mum and Dad, I drove down to Southampton to see Esther on my way back to the Island. Just before I had to leave to catch the ferry, we decided that we still wanted to spend some more time together, and so Esther made a spontaneous trip to the Isle of Wight with me for a night. It was lovely to get to show her where I'm living and working, she got to meet some of my friends here on Saturday evening and then she came to church with me this morning and got to see my youth group and meet a few people.

I got a bit excited by my new playdough again, so for my youth group this morning, we spent time looking at the nativity story and then making playdough models and taking photos of them acting out the story. Great fun! :)

So it's been a good week! I'm now back on the island for another couple of weeks before I'm back in Basingstoke for Christmas.
Please  pray for me this week...

- As I write a talk that I'll be giving at a youth event on Friday

- At Rock Solid on Thursday

- And just generally that God will use me this week and that I'll enjoy it :)