Belgium

WOW, Belgium was amazing. We went for 4 days with 80 other members from our church. The aim of the mission was to run an English Fayre and Evening concert and to support and encourage the local church which we support.On THursday 12th April, at 8 o clock in the morning 17 cars and 1 van left One Church, Gloucester and headed for Dover port for a 12.55 sailing to Calais. The journey went smoothly and from Calais we travelled through France, into Belgium and to our destination; Herstal, Liege, Southern Belgium. We arrived at the church about 7pm that evening and were greeted with cups of tea, dinner and a big Welcome from the Church over there. After enjoying some food and fellowship with good friends we left in groups so go to the hotel. Our first challenge was to find the hotel. We came last - well someone has too!! It turns out there are 4 options for Liege in SatNav but the road we were looking for was only in one of them. We tried to put the road name in but it didn't accept it so we decided to head towards Liege anyway. After still not finding it we and 40 mins later we prayed out to God to help us and which after that prayer we had the idea that maybe we should look at the accents on the letters as that might be the issue - it turns out it was, and when logistics man Chris rang wondering where we were we were able to tell him that we now were headed in the right direction but were 10 miles away. Ahh the joys of mission. The hotel - Premiere Classe - well as Kev described it, it was clean and functional. It had a double bed, belgian telly and a space pod for a bathroom. Interesting. We fortunately were only sleeping there so it was ok. ON Friday we met at church and had a fantastic breakfast - in fact the food throughout was amazing - and then some orientation time/team time. In the afternoon we went down to the town square to start preparing for the english fayre. Pete and I ran the tin can alley stall. Who would've thought so much planning was needed to go into what seemed like such an easy stall. Set up the tins in a triangular shape and then someone knocks them down. We did that but soon discovered that with the wooden balls the tins weren't goon last very long before being too dented to be stacked on top of each other. So after various efforts into the design and how we were going to play it we decided to go with this:

The aim was to knock just the top tin off each post without knocking any other tins off. Saturday morning was the fayre - a big white marquee had been set up for the day to house the fayre and we spent the morning setting up tables, decorating the tent and making the place look inviting for the locals to come to. Once we were set up other menbers of the team came and played the various games on offer which was a good opportunity to practise our french. Trying to explain to french people when all you can say is Bonjour was interesting. A lot of "Oui's" and "Non' in various high pitched voices, questioning, agreeing, disagreeing etc. Most people got the idea and generally it was quite hard. Only 1 person actually managed to knock all 3 top tins off without displacing the others. Other stalls included tombolla, ping pong challenge, splat the rat, hook a duck, face painting,the bottle stall, craft and a stall selling English Cream teas. We had about 200 people came through the tent and we were able to invite them to the evening concert. In the evening we held a church-style concert of how we do church at easter in the UK. About 30 people came to the evening service which the Belgium Church were really pleased with. Sunday morning we were down at the community centre for church again. Simon spoke to the churches, it was great to share church with people whose language we didn;'t know but with whom we felt like family. Lauro's daughter Kerin did most of the translating and she was amazing going from french to englsih and back again without even blinking. We helped to pack down after the service and were ready to leave by about 1pm. We left in convoys of 3 heading towards calais. We got most of the way to Calais when the 'refuel' late came on and after travelling a few more miles decided to fuel up. Being englsih we assumed the petrol stations would be open, but not so. We went to a couple which were closed and one specifically for trucks, one which takes card payments but there is no cashier but that wouldn't accept our English cards. Finally we found a self-serve petrol station 4 miles from the port and were able to put some fuel in. The journey back was more choppy than on the way out but it was fine, no hiccups. We did get delayed on the M4 as there were traffic works which had cut the motorway down to 1 lane from 3 to fix a cat's eye. I guess the council didn't think that the last day of the esater holidays there would be a lot of people returning from holiday. We got delayed by about an hour and returned home by 11.30pm It was a short mission but definitely worth going and I can't wait to go again. I would love to take the kids with us next time, but it would depend on their age. Here are some photos from our trip:

Sometimes it comes one after another

This morning I opened the back door to let Bella (our cat) in to smell a rather smelly smell. Upon further examination I found a load of sewage had come up out of the outside drain. YUK. I had to goto work today so dropped Hannah & Joshua at their different places and phoned Pete to tell him the news. After discussing it we decided to phone the insurance company and see what they could do for us. Yesterday the car had a coil pack go on it again (at least a different one this time, only 2 more to go and we’ll have a full set of new ones). We have also been trying to solve its oil problem (i’ll have to ask Pete his thoughts on whether its solved) and then the front brakes went. Soon after that the back brakes went and Pete also discovered the calliper was so seized as to need replacing. We go to Belgium in less than 2 weeks in said car, anyone get the feeling the devil isn’t happy with us.!! So with these two events happening and the lack of money in my bank account, after I dropped Joshua off I crumbled – feeling overwhelmed with the one thing after another nature of this attack. I went round to a friend of mine who, very kindly, let me in as I just turned up on her doorstep out of the blue. We spent sometime talking and praying about things and I left feeling strengthened and ready to face the day. The insurance company couldn’t really help us if it was a general blockage but if it was something that is unlikely to happen – like a tree root going through the pipe – they could. It turns out it was a general blockage that affected us and two of our neighbours down the line. Also found out we should have rung Severn Trent as they would’ve come out for free to unblock it, however they have said we can write to them and they will consider refunding us the money. Will pray for favour with them tonight and ring them tomorrow to explain our situation and ask if they will refund us the money. The end of the day has been more pleasant, Joshua is gaining in confidence with swimming and even jumped in mostly by himself . I love that proud parent feeling you get when your child achieves something. Especially as I made a decision to move him from one swim class to a different – more expensive but with less children – class. Its paying off, I was right to move him, to give him the best chance possible. However, there’s always one of them as well, the evening meal wasn’t so good. Hannah & I had a disagreement. Oh how I wish I could get on/understand her better. We can get on so well and she’s a real pleasure to have around and then other times we just clash like fingernails running down a blackboard. Tomorrow is another day for God’s grace to work in me. I shall keep asking for more and hopefully, one day, I’ll get it right.