Thousands of wings and big ants!

We heard a lot of "fluttering" during the night, and the woke up to find rather large insect wings around the house, and literally thousands of them out the front of the house.  Turns out they are large flying ants that come out in their masses, drop the wings of and then bury themselves into the ground.  It also turns out they are the ants that I enjoy eating as a snack in the village!

We have finally finished filling our spare room with the furniture and kids stuff that we have been moving into our house.  We "bought" (Was a very cheap price) from our friends who are leaving next week.  We now have all kinds of things including a nice big bed, camping gear, chairs, kitchen appliances, kids beds, toys, to be honest the list is endless!  It was so kind of them.  We are now going to build a fence around our house and then we can get our dogs back! (and also keep out any rabid dogs!)

Flood church is going great.  We had a leaders meeting on Monday and the church is making some great progress.  I have also met with Lusekero (many times), Harrison and Blessings, and started to work out what the work will look like in Floods Village (Kudoko).  Please pray for these guys as it will be unfamiliar ground for them, and also pray for the materials we end up using, pray that we will pick the right stuff!

The Dalitso side of things is going a little slower.  Limon, who I will be continuing to work with alongside the families that we have been with since we started in Malawi, has been away this week, so I'm waiting until next week to get together with him and decide how we will continue the work there.  However I've been involved with the team in Malingunde, been to visit the families and had a few meetings with Tom H.

Jo is still well, she's been spending time at Crisis nursery, and really enjoying giving the kids some quality time out of their cots playing.  We are into our second trimester now!  Thats pretty exciting!

Lots of love and blessings x  

Lightening and Seeds

Worship time at Flood

We've had some major lightening storms over the last few nights which brought some rain with them too!  Thats meant it's cooled down ever so slightly!

It's been a wonderful week since I last updated you.  We've had some really positive meetings with people and it's amazing to see some little seeds that we sowed over the last year start to take root and grow! (Sorry for the Christian Jargon, but we are missionaries!).

The missionary term is something I really struggled with at first, as it's something that all Christians should be anyway.  Because of that we ended up being very "project" focused, and almost forgetting the fact the Jesus will make the difference.  Because of that, it's taken a real shift in our focus and almost an acceptance of the missionary tag for us to find ourselves doing what we are doing.

Last week we put some things in place with a few individuals at Flood church, and tomorrow we are out in Malingunde with Tom of the Dalitso Trust to start to look at how can do something similar with his team there.  It's been a lot of meetings so far, but we've only been here a week and already things are building momentum.  We are learning it's not about the projects we end up doing, but about the individuals we do them with and through.  I want to do myself out of a job!  I want to see someone become better than me at it, and even to know God more than I do!  We are so excited about this new stage of our work here, and so thankful to find ourselves in this place.

In terms of life here things are great.  Jo is the best pregnant women.  Sometimes I just check the scan, because rather than draining her or making her sick she seems energized and all glowey (I know thats not a word!).  In-fact last Thursday I was violently ill, nearly a hospital case, and Jo managed to combine a maternity check up, picking up stuff from our friends who are leaving Malawi and giving us all of their furniture etc, getting dinner at their house, cleaning up after me, (I was that ill) going to the doctors for me and spending time saying kind words to me!  Wonder women I must say.  In term of me being sick, it was horrific, I have never been that out of control! But it only lasted 12 hours, and then after a nights sleep I was right as rain.

O.K. so signing off, God bless x

Home and hot again!

Maybe it's just because we were scrapping ice of the car windows on Thursday, but boy is it hot!  Apparently this, however, is nothing and we should have been here last week before the spot of rain cooled everything down!  

We are back safe and sound.  We had great flights and connections, as ever, and every time we thank God for no delays no turbulence  and no lost luggage.  It's amazing to wave good bye to our bags in Heathrow, and to see them turn up in the Dusty little Lilongwe airport.  This may change once we have kids, but right now I love flying.  The only downside is my knee tends to swell up, as it had done this time.

We were greeted yesterday by Danny, a guy we are sharing a house with until another house is finished.  When we left, all they needed to do was hook the water and electricity up, that's still all they need to do!  It's great to see him again.  Then Sean, the leader of Flood church, popped over to say hi, followed by Ian and Jessica and their 3 kids, and then Tom & Alison and their 3 kids.  At one point there was 13 of us and it seemed like a welcome party!  Very nice.  Today we walked over to Maryann and Emanuel's house to have lunch and while Jo went to buy us a very much needed fan (it was terrible trying to sleep in the heat last night), I managed to get out to area 49 (an area right outside the city) with Sean and his brother (avid Arsenal fans) and watch Arsenal vs Man U (Sorry Man U fans, but it was great!).  I'm always surprised to find sky T.V in these places considering I can't afford it at home!

So we are great, struggling with the heat, but really great.  Sorry no pics as of yet, but I will get some!

Lots of love

Flights booked, bags packed!

Just a quick note to say that our flights our booked and 2 out of our 4 suite cases are packed!  We are leaving on Thursday 6th November, and can't wait!