Wow, keeping up a blog is difficult! But I have a solution (which I have absolutely stolen from one of my favourite authors’ blog): The Friday Four!
1. My highlight of the week, or maybe even month, for our OVC programme is one of the girls from our Mountain View Club. This week we have started helping her to become formally looked after (fostered?) by a neighbour when we realised she was at risk of neglect at home. The LSEs say that she has always coloured in black and grey and dark colours, but this last week they showed me a photo of her in holiday club holding up her picture done in bright rainbow colours with a huge grin on her face! What an awesome reminder of why we’re doing this.
2. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot this week is how we glamorize mission work. It’s so easy to say to people back home I’m going to help the poor, starving, vulnerable children on the other side of the world. We tend to think that the people out there are so oppressed by the broken systems of the world. And yet there are people and children suffering on our own doorstep. Why don’t we feel the same call and compassion for them? Why is it that Living Hope has probably more than ten times the number of volunteers and churches supporting it from overseas compared to locally? Being here and trying to untangle the messiness of family situations has shown me that yes, there are broken systems, but these people, like the rest of us, are also broken themselves. The more I’ve tried to help, the more I’ve found myself judging them for their faults. So, really, what I’m trying to say is that mission work ‘out there’ is just as difficult as mission work in our home town. The closer we are to people the easier it is to see their imperfections, and the harder it becomes to romanticise the issues. And I sympathise with anyone who feels called to minister to me!
3. I have needed a lot of patience this week. I have two nemeses to deal with on my own doorstep...my landlord’s dogs! They are driving me insane. Every morning when I leave, I have to open the gate to drive out. And no matter what I try the dogs are just waiting for the chance to escape and run up and down the road outside. Of course, they don’t listen to me because I’m just the lodger. So I have to spend 5 minutes running around outside shouting and waving after them until they finally decide to go back inside. Grrrr. At least that's my excuse for being late a few times this week!
4. I’ll finish with a huge THANK YOU to some special people who sent me a small package of chocolatey goodness this week! It was the best surprise on Tuesday morning when I got to work. Even if most of the chocolate had melted flat. Chocolate is still chocolate! And I pretty much inhaled one bar right then and there! What...it was a rough morning having to chase after some dogs....
That’s all for today. Hopefully catch up next week!
