Preparations

With one of the boys, Milton, at Family Day

So, in 2 weeks time I will be flying over the Atlantic Ocean on my way to Manchester Airport, which leaves me divided! I am excitedly planning and thinking about what I will be doing while back in the UK, lots of exciting stuff apart from seeing family and friends for the first time in 18 months, some longer than that. The team coming from here to be at my home church for a week or so, then going to London for the Olympic fortnight to be part of the evangelism there. I am looking forward to having time to chill out, take time to reflect and seek God on what has passed and what is to come, to seek His next step for my life and ministry. 

However, before that, I have soooo much to do here!! the end of every 3 months is always a busy time for me with reports to write, the El Refugio Newsletter to get out, attendance records to finish and prizes to prepare for the kids who have had the best attendance. On top of this, this time I am also trying to get as much research done on the issue of sexual exploitation as possible before I come home so I have all the earthly information I can to pray over when I am home. All this as well as getting gifts to bring home and trying to finish well my time at the gym! 

All the business aside I am really enjoying myself at the moment. I had an excellent meeting with a lady from an agency called PROTECT that seeks to find and help victims or sexual exploitation and abuse through the prosecution of the abusers. she gave me some really useful insights into the issue of the under-age sex industry of Cartagena and has offered to take me out with her to meet some of the ladies who work on the streets here in order to build up relationships with them in the hope they will share their stories with me. Of course this will be after I get back from the UK. I also have the contact of the man in charge of the area of Sexual Exploitation in another very active agency here called Renacer (rebirth) who have done a lot of research and work in prevention via working with the tourist companies; operators, hoteliers, restaurateurs, taxi drivers etc. to help increase the reporting of foreign nationals asking for information on where they can find under-age girls and boys. Also, they run workshops for teenagers from at risk groups in order to make them aware of the risks of becoming involved and how to report anyone who is trying to get them into it. I am hoping to make contact with him this week to meet up. 

One of our gorgeous families

Also, on Monday we had our Family Day, which is always a good day with the kids and their families, a cross between sports day and fun day I was in charge of the races which went really well without much serious disagreement on who won, or the fairness of the race, an improvement on last year!! The only issue was in the mums and daughters 2 legged race when it was decided that the pair who won shouldn't of as mum carried the daughter to the finish line! Other than that we had games of twister or jenga and dancing as well. Next week our creative vacations start, this year we are focusing on culture so the first week we have people coming in to teach traditional dances and then the second week I will be leading a session on British Culture, along with  Julia teaching on German Culture. Any ideas welcome!) and then a friend is hopefully coming with some people from an indigenous tribe to share about their culture, this will then take me to my leaving date :D so it is all steam ahead until the moment I leave for the airport. My next blog will be from Sunny (hopefully) Stoke-on-Trent

God Bless you All

Petra