Nearing the End in Portugal

Hello! We've had a wonderful time here in Ersmesinde, near Porto, Portugal. We've been working with a church who are very missions-minded and really want to reach out to their area. We've been helping out practically ( as it's a new building there are a lot of little jobs to do), speaking at church meetings, painting children's faces in the park and getting to know lots of amazing people! We've been really blessed through the people in the church and all of their stories. There are missionaries from Switzerland, the USA, England and Brasil among the people who we've met and God's doing a lot here. 

A point for praise: last night the boys spoke at a meeting in a drug rehabilitation centre with the pastor, Samuel, and seven men gave their lives to Christ! On our last night of ministry God was still working!

We are now debriefing along with the other Transit Team, John and James from Lifehope and Neil Mason (the field leader of OM Portugal). Chris, Mike and Sarah will be heading home on Sunday morning and Marvin, Chorong, Elya and Hannah will be travelling with the van back to Lifehope and going to their different destinations from there.

Keep on praying as we go home and try to readjust to "normal" life, all except Marvin and Chorong who will stay on with OM. Thank you again for all of your prayers!

God bless!

London Has Been and Gone

In the last post we were still with David and Sharon in Spain. Since then we have driven to Porto in Portugal, flown to London, worked for w week with a church in Bromley, Greater London, and flown back to Porto. We had a wonderful time in Bromley (more details will follow). We are now working with a church here in Porto; taking part in their services, singing carols in the street and helping to clean the building.

Thank you for praying for us! We're on the home staight now, this is the last place that we'll be working, but  pray that we finish strong and that God gives us strength until the very end!

¡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!

Greetings From France!

Since Saturday 6th October we have been in France! We are staying at the OM France offices in Pontault-Combault, near Paris, and we have been having a great time! We had the pleasure of being joined by a few other team mates for some days, which we really enjoyed. Here are some photos which capture a few moments from our first while.

Meet Tabea and Naemi, two wonderful German girls who joined us for the first few days here. They were a joy to work with and helped so much!

This is Elke, another German lady who was here with Tabea and Naemi and then with her husband. She also worked hard and served alongside is in whatever there was for us to do here. Getting to know her was a great blessing for all of us.

Here are Sarah and Chorong working hard  - cleaning the walls in the church in Saint Denis! We were so glad that we could do this for the church and fro the ladies coming to the classes, because we were able to make a real, visible difference, which was satisfying!

Elya takes good photos.

One of our days was mainly spent in prayer for some towns nearby. Here we prayed for a church that is being planted in the town, that they would get a building and that God would provide all that they need. We also prayed in Romainville for that town as were giving out information the next day about events that the church is running to celebrate their 30th anniversary.

Here we are in the home of a wonderful couple, Rachel and Rich Hendrikson, who gave us lunch after we helped disrtibute information about their church around Pontault-Combault. Protestant churches are viewed with a lot of suspicion by some people in France, so it was great to be able to inform people about what the church does and who they are.

Thank you for taking the time to find out about all that we're doing. Please pray for the OM France team, you can find out about all that they do here: http://www.fr.om.org/eng/.

Pray for outreach that we are helping with in Val d'Europe among the English speakers living there next week, that God would lead us and use us in all that we do there. 

God bless you!

We're in the Alps. The Alps!

We've traveled around 30 hours altogether to get here, with an amazing day in Budapest in between, and we're finally in Forterocca in Italy! It's a beautiful place, we're delighted to see the other transit team and John (from OM Lifehope) again, and hopefully it will be a useful time of review and rest!

Go bless you!

On The Road Again!

It's 5 o'clock in the morning, and Transit Team 4 are setting out on another epic drive. As Chorong said in our first video, "Transit is about adventure!", and we're sure that another adventure awaits us as we travel from Moldova to the OM Hungary base near Budapest! The trip will take between 18 and 22 hours, but we're aiming to beat all expectations! Pray that it goes well and that we all get enough rest to make use of the training time in Italy.

God's richest blessings to you!