¡Viva España!

Vale, estamos aqui, en España... ha ha, don't worry, I won't write this in Spanish. I am quite excited to be in a country where I can speak a little of the language though (this is Hannah speaking) - that hasn't been the case since mid-August! So we're in Spain right now, Villanueva de la Vera in Caceres to be precise. We are staying with an OM couple, David and Sharon, who are from Canada and the USA respectively. Their ministry involves living their lives here how they believe God wants them to, and reaching out to all the friends they have made through farming, being part of the local choir and the English school that Sharon teaches at.

This is the view from our bedroom, out over the olive trees. It is so beautiful here!

On Saturday we spent the day with different friends of David and Sharon's making
Dulce de Membrillo, a jam-type thing made from quince.
Elya's having an awesome time chopping!

Here Sarah is with one of our beloved olive trees. We spent a few days
harvesting the olives on the property and taking them to a co-operative
to be turned into oil. Now, when I close my eyes, all I see are olives...

These are the fruits of our labour on their way to be made into oil.
We picked 400 kilogrammes of olives, which is less than they've
had before, but still quite a lot we think!

We have spent some time in neighboring villages getting to know people and making contacts that we could leave with David and Sharon. We've had some good conversations so far, and we're hoping that we're being of some help to David and Sharon as well. We've had time to get back into team devotions over the last while and we have all really enjoyed getting into the Bible more together and hearing each other's thoughts.

Thank you for taking the time to see what we're doing! Please pray for David and Sharon as they show God's love to the people in this place.

In case you're wondering what the rest of the plan is for Transit, we're driving to Portugal on the 26th November. From Porto we fly to London on the 27th, where we stay for a week, before coming back to Porto and finishing there. We have to go to the UK for visa reasons, hence the time in London.

God bless!

France, Je T'aime!

The time has come to leave another country, and as always we're sad to be leaving but very excited to be going to the next place! Here are a few shots of our last few weeks in France to give you an idea of what we've been up to...

Our two weeks at the OM France base, near Paris, was spent 
distributing for five different churches. It was a very good use of 
our youthful fitness! Invitations for meetings, tracts and information
 about churches were all delivered in large numbers, and now none of
 us can go past a letter box without wanting to drop something into it!

These lovely people along with the team are some of the people we worked with this week - in Carpentras in the south of France. We have loved getting to know all of the wonderful people from this church! We did outreach in both Carpentras and a neighbouring town where they are planting a church, called L'Ilse-sur-la-Sorgue. This picture was taken after the second of two meetings, which we gave out invitations to, on the topic of, "God doesn't exist?!"

One of the ways in which we made contacts with people this week 
was by going to the park in L'Ilse -sur-la-Sorgue and doing free 
face-painting for kids and playing football with teenagers. This gave the 
French speakers really good opportunities to talk to the parents of the 
children and the boys they were playing football with. Chorong was able 
to pass on her face painting skills to people in the church, like Camille in 
the picture, so the church will be able to keep on using this to reach out!

We spent a couple of afternoons in the main square of Carpentras also, doing similar things to get talking to people. Chris and Marvin both used their musical giftings to make passers-by take a second look, and possibly stop and chat. And they aren't collecting money in that guitar, it was filled with free literature!

Here you can see Sarah, Mike and Hannah from the team along 
with Clement from the Carpentras church doing a mine in front of a 
crowd of people who were passing by. This one used the picture of 
getting stuck to a chair of wet paint to illustrate how we can get stuck in 
sin and only God can help get us out of bad situations.

Marvin spoke at the church's youth group and used hats and other props to give us all a more realistic view of world missions! He challenged the young people to be open to where God may be calling them, and to get involved in missions in whatever way they can.

We take off at 4 am on Monday morning for Villanueva de la Vera in Spain, so please pray that the journey goes well, and that Rex (the van) doesn't give us any trouble! Pray also for the contacts the church has made this week, that they will be fruitful! Ask the Lord that the people who heard the gospel in the meetings this week will respond to it, and pray that the church plant in L'Isle-sur-la-Sourge will get the rooms that they have been planning to buy.

God bless you!