message from Val

A wet Sunday afternoon!
Chris and I were at the bus stop by 7.15 this morning, not knowing the bus times (which are erratic anyway) to go to the morning service which begins at 9 am. Since there was less traffic thatn a weekday we were there about 7.40 so we went for a walk around the area (good job Chris has a good sense of direction!). Ricardo, the local alcoholic, was still reclining by a wall but on our return he was just ´getting up´! Did not have long to wait before Zenaide arrived with a key and we could go in.
Seems like their Sunday morning service is a bit like West Cliff eveniong service, with a much smaller congregation. The pastor spoke for a while and then he and several others went off upstairs for the childrens woship time. Another lady preached on Job and we were invited to share something about our experience of God during difficult times (which was unexpected!)
The pastor then returned and we had a couple of songs and lengthy notices. We picked up from the notices on the screen that they are holding a special farewell service for us on Friday evening, which we feel is a great honour. Don´t know if we will have time to catch the plane home, we have a very full schedule next week with folk asking us to be at different places and knowing we have some redecoration to do at the church too.
When Chris and I returned dinner was ready, prepared by Iara; it was great to come back to a hot meal prepared by Iara. Elaine, Norah and I elected to reamin here (we did do the washing up!) while Iara took the others to a local market.
We will be going to our respective churches this evening so it will be another late night.
Chris is preaching at Ebeneezer church and Stella, Jaqui and I are to make contributions. Chris has decided we should sing Thank You Jesus, not one we have on CD so we won´t have any backing. We are hoping the music group might arrive early so we can have a run through; they might be able to pick up the melody.
It was super to be in touch with everyone at West Cliff this morning and made us feel a little homesick for a while. Having said that, within the space of one week we have become very attached to the Ebeneezer c hurch here and we will miss them when we return to England. Seems like we have been here ages!
God bless you all and thank you so very much for all your prayer support.