Merry Christmas everyone!

Hello!

So, Christmas is only a week away - how exciting! It doesn’t quite feel like it here, given the high temperatures, but we’re doing our best to get into the festive spirit. The past two weeks have been as busy as ever, and we’re now really looking forward to our approaching holiday - in two days’ time we’ll be off to Antelope Park! Anyway, before I get to that, here’s an update on the past couple of weeks...

Foundations For Farming: This is the one Oasis project we’ve been continuing through the month of December. Our mealies (or maize plants) have now grown to about a foot in height, which we are quite excited about. They’re really coming along nicely. We’ve been going back each week to check up on their progress, and to weed the plot. We’ve all caught the sun nicely from doing all our farming (I have a rather splendid patch of burn on my back), but it’s been enjoyable. All the motherly instincts in me are coming out in those plants! It’s really nice to have something physical to do, and something where we can see the progress and the results of our work week by week. We just keep praying that they’ll all keep growing!

Northside Community Church:
The vast majority of the work we’ve been doing at the church is Christmas-related. There’s been a lot more cutting, sticking and folding - doing the jobs that no-one else has time to do. We’ve also helped Sarah organize SALT books (Sunday School teaching resources), dating way back to 1981. That was a mass clear-out, and something Sarah really appreciated us doing. It’s not very exciting work, but it’s making a difference to people, and they really appreciate our help. We’re learning what is meant in Luke 16 when we are told to be “faithful in little things”. Not everything we do here will be huge and incredible, but by serving others in the little things we are learning, before we tackle the big things. And people really appreciate it - we have the time, and we are willing, so we can help.
This weekend the church has two Carols by Candlelight services - one in the nearby shopping village, and one in the church. Last night we were in the Village, and for that service Jess, Helen and I were selling candles and holders, and then we performed two drama pieces as well. It’s very much outreach focused there, so our skits were based on the true meaning of Christmas. It was a very nice evening, despite the rain! Honestly, if you get caught out in the rain here you get soaked! On Sunday night’s carol service we have the responsibility of ... the lights. It means we’ll get to enjoy the service too, which will be nice.
At Northside we also had a day of baking mince pies and biscuits, for the various Christmas events that are happening soon. We did this with the help of lots of children, so as you can imagine it was messy stuff, but amusing and fun too!
As I said before, we have the responsibility of doing the children’s talks on the Sunday morning services. Last week there was a special service for the Upward celebration (I’ll tell you more about that just now), so our second talk will be tomorrow. We have it all planned out, so hopefully it will go well.

Upward Soccer Camp:
Otherwise known as football (sadly, I have definitely got in the way of calling it soccer here, purely because people struggle to understand when you say football!). Upward Soccer Clinic is a soccer camp for kids aged 5 to 13 which took place last week, from Thursday to Sunday. We were team leaders; it was exhausting, but lots of fun! The first three mornings (the sessions ran from 8am till 12 noon) involved being with our teams, and leading the half-hour devotional times in between taking the kids round the soccer skills stations. On the Saturday they also had two mini-matches: I was very proud of my team, when they won 7-0 and 5-0. We had some real football stars! I had 3 girls and 5 boys, and a big mix of ages in my group (called Team David, because we “defeat the giants”) The youngest was a brilliant little boy called Alex, who struggled with skills like step-overs and things because his legs were barely long enough to step over the ball! But his effort was absolutely fantastic, and each day he’d come to me and ask if I thought he was improving, and tell me about how he’d been practising the night before and things. The oldest was another boy named Alistair, and although he was quite a bit older than some of the kids he was very helpful and encouraging. On the Sunday morning, all the kids were invited to come to Northside for an “Upward celebration”, where we sang the songs they learned and gave a certificate to each child, for various different things. It was a really good way of bringing families who don’t usually come to church into the church, because it was a very informal service. And the kids all seemed to love the week they had!
Being leaders at a soccer camp is not something Helen, Jess and I would have initially thought we were cut out for, but we were enthusiastic and gave it our all (and thankfully didn’t have to teach any kids skills!) We were the encouragers, the supporters, the “pick-you-up-when-you-fall-down”-ers, and ended up really enjoying it, despite the early mornings (we were up at 5am each day...)

And everything else...
God at work: We have each been so challenged in our time here, and are growing in our faith. We have learnt what a faithful God we have - he has protected us at every turn. We've also learned that we don't need to be doing huge, massive things to make a difference. Sometimes it's the little things that people really appreciate. I've found my daily quiet times in the morning have helped me grow and sustained me - the number of times the passage I've studied has come into relevance that day is far from coincidence, I'm sure. Each night we pray together, about the day, our issues, and the days ahead, and we've found that God really does hear and answer our prayers. As we've been feeling homesick, He's surrounded us with people who are just there to be our friends and "family", which is incredible. We found that working with the kids at Upward Sports was brilliant too, because, like at Gateway, although a lot of them know about God (their biblical knowledge is outstanding for their age!), they don't know him personally.

Relationships: We have formed some wonderful friendships here. I do have a special mention to make, to Nix and Gayle, who have been brilliant - we decorated Gayle's hoouse with many festive things, and she often comes to our rescue in times of crisis, She is therefore named "Super Gayle". And Nix is such a good friend to us, and never fails to make me laugh. Her stories of Zimbabwean life are highly entertaining! (Ok, so that mention has nothing to do with the fact that they have both read this and both asked about it....) Our other friends have been equally brilliant to us, and we're going to Victoria Falls at New Year with two of the other girls from the bible study and their friends.
Things have been a little strange with Kate away, but Sarah is wonderful. She is full of advice and wisdom, and when we had more problems with our car she was right on hand to help us out. Everyone in our church has been wonderful too, and we've had dinner with a few different people. It's really nice to feel part of the church community, and to know ltos of people too.

This and that: We've had an enjoyable few weeks. This morning we went to a flea market to buy each other Christmas presents, and tried our bargaining skills with the sellers. We were all quite proud of ourselves! We also went to a pantomime - it was so cheesy and fantastic and put us righjt in the Christmas mood! There are so many similarities to a British pantomime, but so many differences too. It was certainly an experience to remember.

Prayer Points:

• continued safety - we are going travelling as of Monday, so as we go to areas of Zimbabwe we don't know we are praying God will still protect us and watch over us!
• the Christmas children's talks - they've been fun to prepare, and we hope we can deliver them with confidence, and make people think a little more about Christmas.
• the outreach events Northside has planned. We really hope that people in the community will be provoked to think about what it's all about.
• homesickness. Obviously as Christmas approaches we're all thinking about home a lot more, but we pray we can enjoy our experience of a hot Christmas here, and not miss friends and family too much.
• our car! Geoff (the car) is not always very happy. We've spent quite a lot getting him fixed, so we pray he will last us our trip this week, and that we'll get there and back without any problems!

Thank you once again for your continued support. The next time I write will be when I return from Victoria Falls, so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

God bless,

Jo

Prayer points :)

Ok, so have a little bit more time now. Here we go with a few prayer requests:
- Upward Soccer camp. Don't worry, this does not mean I am coaching football (I think that would be disastrous). Basically, we are team leaders, making sure we have all our kids at all times, and also leading a half-hour devotion session in the middle of the day. The kids here are now on holiday for a month, so it's an outreach thing for them to do during the break. We're praying that they'll be open to hearing about Jesus (about 60% of them won't be from Christian homes) and just that they'll have a brilliant time too. For us, energy will be the issue, and wisdom in what to say to these kids.
- safety. A regular feature! We've been really lucky so far, there haven't been any accidents. We just hope this continues, particularly with our upcoming trip to Antelope Park (a game reserve) and Victoria Falls over New Year.
- that we won't miss home too much over the festive season! We love being really involved in Christmas at the church - it definitely takes our mind off the fact we're not with our friends and family at home. As Christmas approaches, please pray that we won't feel too homesick and that we'll be able to focus on all the exciting things we have planned rather than the fact we're not with our families.
- the talks on Sunday mornings. The first one went really well, so we now have a standard to keep up! We pray that God will use us and that we can really be helpful at Northside, in the small practical ways and in the more obvious way, when we're talking at the front of the church.
- health. Again, we have been really blessed in this area, with no major problems. Hopefully this will continue!

Thank you so much for your prayers, it's greatly appreciated. We really are experiencing God's love and goodness here, and we're learning so much. I know that He hears and answers our prayers - He is a God of compassion and of grace. And he wants us to share in that!

I'll post again in a few weeks' time,

Jo

Introducing Big Bird...

Hello again,

I hope you are all well. We’ve seen clips of the snow on the news here - wow! I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little bit jealous. Just a day of snow would be wonderful, then I’d happily come back here to the sunshine. Sadly that’s not quite how weather systems work... So instead I will have to enjoy the sun and storms we’re getting here! In fact, I have a tan! Well, a driver’s tan - my right arm is noticeably more tanned than my left, from where I’ve had the window rolled down in the car as we’re driving a long. But still, I will take any tan I get. How strange it will be to have a sunny, hot Christmas...

Anyway, back to my news. Things are changing in our routine a bit now, as Oasis projects quieten down over the month of December, so a lot more of our work is at Northside. But I’ll go into that “just now” (which in Zim means “soon”, we have learned!).

Mbare Pre-school: We finished at Mbare for this year just last week. The children have a “graduation” ceremony as they move up from the pre-school into Grade 1, and we watched them practice it and had a final chance to play with them and talk to them. Their presentations for the graduation were very sweet: reciting months of the year, days of the week, numbers, nursery rhymes... They know a surprising amount! It will be interesting getting to know a new group of kids in the new year, but hopefully we’ll feel useful right from the beginning as we’ll have a better idea of what is expected of us and how to adapt our activities to suit their age and English-speaking abilities! The netball at Mbare also finished for the year, and again hopefully next year when we return I’ll be able to join in coaching a little bit, and we’ll get to know the coaches and girls even better.

Jewellery-making: We’ve still loved doing this, and now Kate has gone to the UK she is selling some of the things we’ve made over there. We have a nice array of necklaces, earrings and bracelets that we’re all quite proud of!

Foundations For Farming: I am now (un)officially a farmer! Helen, Jess and I, along with the Oasis director’s gardener, Ouda, are tneding to our little plot of land outside the Oasis offices. It’s bigger than 6m x 6m though! We have 494 holes, each with 3 maize seeds planted in them. That makes 1482 little seeds planted in our plot. Each with love and care. We were very proud of ourselves when we dug the holes, put in the fertiliser and planted the seeds all in one (hot!) morning. Now we have to keep checking up on the land to weed and things. I feel like a protective mother - I was so proud when we saw the first green shoots sprout up from the ground the other day. Hopefully the maize will be fully grown before we leave, in time for us to harvest, but we’re not entirely sure...

Gateway Grade 6 Camp: So I mentioned this in my prayer requests in the last blog (and a big thank you to those who were praying for me!). The camp went really well - I loved it, and the 90 kids did too! Basically, we were leaders on a Grade 6 (aged 11) activity camp in Sanganayi Creek, aka. “the bush”, about 2 hours outside of Harare. The overall aim: to help the teachers select prefects for next year (by seeing how the kids worked in teams and who the leaders were), while also slipping in some God-stuff (it was a Christian school). It was brilliant, but absolutely exhausting! Lost my voice too - trying to get yourself heard over a large group of kids takes effort.  For those of you who know of Scripture Union camps, think of that, then cross it with boot camp, and you have Grade 6 camp! While in Britain there are many rules about child safety and child protection, it’s not such a big issue here. We were allowed to “punish” the kids in whichever ever way we saw fit - so long as we did the exercise with them (promoting the idea of being a team ... make sense?) So, each morning at 6am they had to do exercise for 45 minutes, run “to the grid” which was about 500m away, do push-ups (“When I say one, you say one. ONE” “One, thank you sir!”), that kind of thing... And at night, if they were talking past lights out, we could get them up to make them do things, until they stopped talking. I felt so cruel, but I was actually a very nice leader in comparison to what some of the guys made their campers do! What’s more, the kids didn’t even seem to mind - well, they asked for it! I mean literally asked for it. Helen was asked by her dorm as they were being punished if they could do 20 push-ups. It was really quite funny, and so different to any Christian-related camp at home. I had some really good kids in my group, and some absolute terrors. Hence why I lost my voice. By the end of it they worked pretty well together, but they were shattered. They had to do so much though that it was to be expected.

We had some interesting experiences in Sanganyi - the most memorable of which might be hitch-hiking on a truck of manure. Lovely. The colour of the pool there will remain with me always too - it was green. Really green. You couldn’t even see your hand if you put it just under the surface of the water! But the kids seemed to love it - that was their washing for the week. I dealt with bucket-showers instead though. It was so hot there, you needed to cool down any way possible! In terms of the Christian side of things, it was slipped in a lot as the kids were doing their activities in terms of how we should act (supporting each other, etc) and then each morning we led devotional times with our team. I was really encouraged by the response of my group - they know a lot about the bible, but when we talked about it many of them had not thought about what it really meant for them. Therefore, many of them got a greater understanding of just how much God loves them, and how much He wants to have a relationship - with them! It was also the only time when they all listened to each other, ALL the time, which made a nice change...

It was a really good week as well, in terms of us getting to know the young adults in our church too, since they were the other leaders. When we first went to Northside we weren’t really having many conversation other than “how was your week...?”, but now we can have such a laugh with the group that were leaders at the camp too.

Northside Community Church: We are now a lot more involved with the work in the church - as Oasis quietens down, things get busy at Northside! The school term has now finished, so things move into holiday mode. No more Wow Kidz (although the last session of that was a lot of fun - we made Christmas cards and had hot dogs!) or paired reading, but a lot more work, ironically.

Christmas time! - Jess, Helen and I have the responsibility of delivering the children’s talk in the Sunday morning services in the run-up to Christmas. I am actually really looking forward to it, although it will be a bit daunting speaking in front of the whole church! However, we have some good ideas, and it should be fun to present the Christmas message in different ways. The first service today went really well, with a focus on the “surprise” of Christmas. The kids loved the fact we had sweets for them at the end, and the lesson stuck with them which is nice! The adults seemed to appreciate it just as much too. We’ve also been decorating the church for Christmas, which has been lots of fun. I climbed the ladder to the top of the huge Christmas tree (although it’s a pine tree, not a fir...) to put our handmade star at the top. It was a proud moment. The tree is also flat at the back, but being the innovative, resourceful, fantastic team that we are, we managed to make it look festive and tree-shaped! We’ve also done a lot of star-making and star-cutting, for a few of the things going on around Christmastime.

Nativity Parade - Last night we had a nativity parade in the nearby shopping centre before they switched on their Christmas lights: it was our job to shepherd the little children and watch over them at night. We assured them that they need not be afraid of the bright lights from camera flashes as they flocked towards the stable scene. The children were wise and followed our instructions; I reckon our presents comforted them. Well, that’s what we thought we were going to be doing (sorry, I just really wanted to write all that - Helen and I had spent some time coming up with it!) What we actually ended up doing was dressing the kids for the nativity parade, then dressing up ourselves - as children’s characters! My alter-ego? Big Bird, from Sesame Street! Helen was Sylvester and Jess was Bugs Bunny, from Looney Tunes. What had happened was that the young adults from the church who were supposed to be doing it didn’t show up, so they needed three people to fill in - and we were those lucky girls! I can safely say that I did not expect to be dressing up as Big Bird and walking up and town a street for two hours while Christmas lights are being turned on and carols are being sung out. It’s tiring stuff: waving to kids; making up handshakes with teenagers; posing for many a photo (what was brilliant was that no-one could see my face, so I could pull funny faces and no-one knew!); being slightly abused by kids who are “too cool”; and getting very, very hot! God has some interesting plans up his sleeve, for sure. But Northside’s aim over Christmas is to get involved with the community, so while we were doing that there were competitions and things going on by the stage, where Pastor Cross was presenting. All in all, it was a ridiculous, fun, absurd evening, and an experience I will never forget! I now have something for my CV if ever I apply to work at Disneyland...

I think what I’ve learned from all this is that we can actually serve people in so many ways. Just by doing the odd jobs that no-one else wants to do, or has that no-one has the time to do, and by being completely available and completely willing to throw ourselves into anything, we’re helping a lot. And who else can say that they dressed up as Big Bird in Zimbabwe?!

And everything else...:

God at work: We’ve seen God answer prayer here - a lot! Even with the little things. It is pretty strange for us, being thrown into living on our own and things for the first time in another country, but whenever we’ve had difficulties there’s always been some way out. The Lord’s provision is incredible! He’s been watching over us for our whole time, and granted us good health - although Helen and I have each been a little ill in the past week or so, it’s passed in a matter of days. Each of us has had a cold, and Jess has been bitten alive, the poor girl, but in general our health has been really good, considering we’re in a new climate, with some new foods, new routine and everything. God is good! Again, I’m constantly challenged here, in my own personal quiet times and in the way I act towards others or in certain situations. Sometimes you need to be taken out your comfort zone to see what’s really going on in your life. I know that coming here has helped me to appreciate what I have at home, particularly friends, family and church, and it has helped me realize that actually there is a whole lot I can do at home to serve others too.

It’s also been a challenge these past couple of weeks without Kate - but again God has surrounded us with wonderful people on whom we can rely. Which leads me onto...

Relationships: We really have been blessed in terms of the people who surround us here. Since Kate has left, Sarah Cross, the pastor’s wife, has stepped in as our “overseer”. Other women (and men!) at church have been equally caring and supportive, which is brilliant. One of the most interesting characters we’ve met here is Tiri - I call him ET, for Enthusiastic Tiri. He led the Grade 6 camp, and is very active in the church. It was Tiri who asked us to dress up as children’s characters. He is so positive, so enthusiastic and so encouraging, you cannot help but smile when you’re around him! We also feel a lot more part of the goings-on at Northside since camp and since we’ve started working there more often. We’ve even been to play tennis a few times with some of the young adults! The pizza and ice cream place just across the road from the church has proven to be a handy spot for impromptu socials too! Several people have invited us round for dinner, so we know more of the families in the church now too, which is lovely.

We’ve continued going to our bible study on Saturday nights, which we are still really enjoying. We feel like we know the people there really well now, and when we meet up with them it’s really just a chance for us to relax with friends and enjoy ourselves, away from responsibility, which everyone needs once in a while!

Culture: We have learned a lot about Zimbabwe as a country. And we’ve also picked up some of the commonly used phrases (“just now”; “guys”; “shame”; “ya”). My accent is slowly being lost, which is quite tragic! I think it’s the English influence from Jess and Helen too though, if I’m honest. We’ve learned a little bit of Shona, but not huge amounts. “Makadini” is “hello, how are you?”

In our bible study we’ve heard quite a lot about the farming situation here, and a man named Ben Freeth has come to the study twice now to talk to us about his experiences of being kicked off his farm. He has suffered awful injuries, but through it all has stuck to his faith in God. It’s very interesting how much of a heart he still has for Zimbabwe - despite all he has gone through he remains in Zimbabwe, instead of running to a different country. He and his father were involved in a court case where they took President Mugabe to court for  taking their land from them. I won’t tell you the outsome - the film is called “Mugabe and the White African”, which is really moving and challenging. I absolutely recommend it!

Sorry, out of time just now, but I will post up my points for prayer soon hopefully! Main things are safety, Upward sports (a soccer camp where we'll be leaders, leading devotion times and things with the kids), health and our holiday - we leave in two weeks for Antelope Park! Also that all the Christmas outreach things that Northside are doing will make people think. I'll post in more detail soon.

God bless,

Jo