Saturday Post -- 28//1/12

I shan’t lie to you: this blog post will be briefer than a Marks & Sparks management briefing on the briefs department. With a sermon to finish, a discipleship slot this afternoon, band practice and the first youth meeting of 2012 tonight, time is in short supply. Oh, and a football match of some import is due to kick off any time now!

Amanda’s lunch with the nurses last weekend was a great success, and a mutually beneficial enterprise all round. Since moving here, we’ve become keen fish eaters, the fish here being chunkier than a ‘Celebrity Fat Club’ contestant. However, we had not yet mastered the art of buying and cooking fish. Indeed, the best fish is only available at a certain place in town very early on a Saturday morning – that is, 8am (well, Amanda describes it as very early).

So, killing two birds with one stone, Amanda reckoned if some of her nursing colleagues could instruct her in how best to source and prepare the fish, she would host a veritable fish-feast for them. And so it proved, with the nurses still commenting today on how much of a good time they had. And the flat doesn’t even smell of fish any more.

I thought it best to steer clear of the sisterhood, and so I met up with my old language teacher friend, Farid, who I know some of you have been praying for. He is still ploughing away at university here, though picking up interesting language opportunities here and there; he spent a week on a luxury tourist boat translating for Americans earlier this month. He still comes along to church now and again and is well aware of what is preached on a Sunday, but hasn’t quite made that all-important step of faith yet. Fertile soil there, though – please keep praying.

At work, we have been up to our usual, with preparations continuing for the English classes (with an agreed-upon start-date decided this week of Tuesday 28^th of February) and a raft of audiology patients. Amanda has also been helping in an Excel course for the nurses at FT. Each month, the nurses have to submit a series of reports, recording in statistics the work done in each area of health over those four weeks or so. However, very few of the nursing team have ever received any training in Excel, and so, a good friend of ours from church, Jerry, who is also a tech-whizz, has kindly volunteered his services over the past couple of weeks. Amanda, the one who usually has to tidy up the reports for everyone at the end of the month, is assisting. Hopefully the new insights gained will ease the burden on her shoulders – though I must say, I personally wasn’t expecting the ‘where is the start button in Windows’ conversation to go on as long as it did!

Oh, and I got out last night for my first proper kickabout for a year or so. I can barely feel my legs.

Prayer

• Craig is preaching on the second-half of John 16 tomorrow morning. Pray for guidance as he continues his preparation.
•  For the new session of the church youth group, which gets underway tonight. Pray for wisdom for us as leaders as we seek to minister to them as a group and as individuals with a whole range of needs.

Praise

• On that note, give thanks for safe travels and an encouraging week for Ivonne, Mariana, and Wendy, who are three of the, let’s say, ‘young adults’ on the youth committee. They spent last week at a camp for youth leaders and have come back with new ideas aplenty.
• Give thanks also for continued opportunities over the past week to nurture our friendships here.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda