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.