Bank holiday weekend, three days on a Scout leaders training camp. There’s nothing like sleeping in a tent, running around in a field, inventing impossible gadgets out of bits of wood tied up with string, playing silly games in the river (mobile phone in pocket; oops), and coming home smelling of campfire amongst other less mentionable flavours, to make me disproportionately pleased with myself. The site was fantastic; big eucalyptus plantation, with a grassy clearing in the middle for tents etc. and a tranquil river (until we arrived that is) running around the perimeter.
Today I drove to Obispo Trejo, a village some two and a half hours away, to visit the Latin Link short-termer who’s working in the children’s home there. A five hour round trip is really too far to develop a good mentoring relationship in my un-humble opinion, (unless of course either of the two parties doesn’t have anything better to do with their life) but she seems to be an easygoing and resilient type so I think we’ll figure it out. The home is run by an older couple from Buenos Aires who moved to Obispo Trejo to take on the leadership when they were newly weds, and are still there forty four years later. They are now taking more of a back-seat in terms of the day to day washing, cooking and wiping noses, and at the moment the house-mother figure is Miriam, who lives in the home with her own four children, as well as being the maternal first port of call for the other twenty residents. Her story isn’t mine to tell here, but to say that she is one of the people who Paul had in mind when he says “ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (Ephesians 1; I’m preaching on it on Sunday) She’s an inspirational lady.
Joni is fascinated by batteries at the moment having received a couple of battery operated things for his birthday. Now he thinks that he can make any of his toys do anything he wants as long as he can find a hole to insert a battery into. He’s also decided that three weeks is more than long enough to wait between birthdays, hence yesterday he informed me that he needed a cake and a balloon and some more presents. It’s in my diary for eleven months time.