Sorry all for being soooo crazily late with this blog!! you know how it is, mad rush up to Christmas followed by serious crashing out. In our case it took me the whole 3 weeks of holiday to recover, the first week after finishing work I had the flu and spent the week lying on the sofa trying to figure out if I had a temperature or it was just hot!! I recovered just enough to enjoy the Christmas weekend with friends Rita, Franklin and their baby Isabella. It was great to celebrate Christmas with them, Rita being American meant we followed more Anglo/American style, also it was Isabella's first Christmas so that is always special. Thanks to modern technology I was also able to join the family at Mum's house on Christmas Eve and at Dad's house on Christmas day via Skype and participate in opening of presents, charades etc. unfortunately I couldn't join in the food! but we made do with roast chicken!They left on boxing day and with my renewed health I started to organise all the papers I need for the renewal of my visa, which I needed to be renewed before today, however, as nothing is simple it turned out that 2 of the letters needed to be signed for and authenticated here in Colombia by Rosa, who is in France, we tried various ways of organising it but in the end it hasn't worked out so I have had to get a 30 day extension so I have time to reapply via YWAM rather than directly with El Refugio. So that has been quite stressful, please continue to pray that I get everything sorted before the 10th Feb
New Year Eve was spent at the YWAM base along with the few remaining YWAMers and a couple of extras who were staying at the base over the festive season. We ate together, prayed together then watched a film up to 11.45 when we walked down to the water front to watch the fireworks across the river in the old town. New Years day was spent on the beach with the guys from the base, Cece the Dog, and just about everyone else in the city!! we had to walk back as all of the transport was full! The following week was again spent doing visa things but also I joined a gym in the shopping centre! It is an expensive gym but with the money my family sent me for Christmas presents I was able to sign up for 6 months, so up to when I come home in July. Since then I have been nearly every day and have already lost 1kg :)
I suppose I should tell of all that happened before Christmas with the kids, well Wednesday we took 85 kids to the planetarium followed by a burger each which I had to get up at 5am to prepare! then on Friday we had the Christmas Parties morning and afternoon, The food this year was donated by a company in Santa Marta, a city about 4 hours drive away, but it came raw, over 100 fish, yucca and plantains, therefore, Thursday was spent preparing it all ready to cook again from 5am Friday morning. Those who weren't preparing food were wrapping the 200+ presents for the kids! I managed to get cuts and blisters all over my hands by peeling the yucca! then helped with the present wrapping. So hardly surprising that after all that come Monday I was on my back with the flu!
But now that is all in the past and we are looking forward to 2012 and what it has to offer, the biggest thing for me is that in July and August I am planning on coming back to the UK to visit and participate in the YWAM Olympic outreach, I am not sure what that will look like yet but I am looking forward to it, as well as seeing friends and family and enjoying the long summer evenings (although sunny here it is dark by 6pm every night).
I hope all of you had a great Christmas and New Year
God Bless
Petra
No comments:
Post a Comment