Victoria Falls - a truly epic story

01/04/2013 - Easter Monday

I have fallen more in love with God and discovered more of my own stupidity in the last couple of days than almost any other time in my life. Here’s what happened.

I went to Victoria Falls on Thursday, and it is the most awesome thing. It was so awesome I almost cried. And in the afternoon I did the bungee jump off the bridge – 111 metres down through the Zambezi gorge – and I survived. And while I was bouncing around I could see a rainbow that went all the way round into a perfect circle, and it might have been the adrenaline, but it really felt like a covenant. Like God was reminding me how beautiful he is and that he loves me. Which was good preparation. So then on Friday we went on a day trip to Botswana which was absolutely incredible – we saw so many elephants, and giraffes, and a buffalo and a leopard and even a lion! And it just felt like God was smiling over that place – with its incredible beauty, and the strange, wonderful creatures. It was an amazing day.

And then on Saturday we went back to the falls, and I took my bible and my notebook and I went and sat on the bank of the river, just before the edge, and prayed for people, and read the bible, and wrote. And then just as I was praying for my friend Lara, she appeared, and we chatted, and my mate George joined us, and we climbed along a bit further and found a tree trunk, right on the brink of the waterfall, and we sat in the most amazing place in the world. I can’t possibly describe it to you, but I wrote a poem while I was there that attempted to express something of the awe and the delight – so here goes (feel free to skip):

They came to the Great Waterfall.
They could see the river rushing towards
the endless horizon of bubbling white water.
They followed the bank, picking their way
breathlessly through the trees until they
reached the brink.
Just on the cusp.
Sitting on a twisted tree trunk at the end of the world.
And they felt like if they jumped,
they would land in eternity.
And the water seemed to leap and dance
on the edge of oblivion before it fell,
and it roared, like Aslan trying to get your attention.
And it felt like God was smiling.
Laughing at his own exuberance.
And they smiled back.
And whenever they looked at eachother,
they burst out laughing at the
sheer, needless, majesty.
And somewhere in them stirred
a strange longing, a hunger,
to make the leap.
To jump off the edge.
To be, all of a sudden,
immersed, engulfed, enrobed,
in the power, the glory, the pure water.
To fall and be forgotten
in the midst of majesty.
To become nothing but a part of the roar.
But instead, they left their tree and
clambered down carefully down to the
very bank of the great river,
to a cleft in the edge,
 a chink in the armour,
a miracle of gentleness.
And they let the water wash their feet.
And they felt clean. They felt delighted.
And they felt found and lost all at the same time.
And together they looked out across the thundering flood
as far as they could see
And again they felt like God was smiling.
And they were right.

And after I had finished writing that, and reading some bible, and praising God for his awesomeness, I got up to leave. And I climbed back the 5 metres along the bank to where I’d left my bag  - containing my wallet, my phone, my ipod and my passport – and it was gone. And I thought, ‘I hope Lara picked it up, but if not, it was worth it.’

Thereafter followed about an hour of worrying and trying to find or contact Lara or George, and praying a lot, and trying to trust God. And telling him that I didn’t need him to give it back, but it would be nice. And then eventually I found Lara and she said, “I’m sorry.”

And that was a horrible feeling. And I walked around for a while pretending to have things to do, and then I went and got my bible and I kneeled down and I cried. And then I opened up my bible to Hebrews 12, and read, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus... who endured the cross”. And at those words, honestly the whole horrible feeling just left me, and I smiled, and I thought, ‘If Jesus can do the cross, I can deal with a passport.’ And then I read this in Philippians 3 – “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” And I kept smiling and I knew that Jesus is enough. I could lose everything, and Jesus would still be enough.

And I skyped the family, and got to talk to my brother for the first time since I came back and it was beautiful and he told me he has “JESUS IS ENOUGH” written on a big piece of paper, stuck to his bedroom wall, and I loved it and I was so happy and I praised God for him, and for being enough.

So today, I decided to go back to the falls in the morning, just to check with the office if a bag had been handed in. And I told God, that he didn’t need to give it back to me, but he is kind, and I am his child, and he knows how to give good gifts to his children, and please could he give my passport back.

And I walked into the office and they didn’t have anything. So I walked back towards the place where I’d lost it, so that I could check that a baboon hadn’t just moved it a bit, and then just pray some more. And on the way, I saw a family of tourists, holding a little plastic wallet and looking through it. And I realised it was my plastic wallet – and they said, “Is it you?!” and I said “Yes!” and I took my passport and my bank cards and my visa off them and I wept with joy. And I thanked them and I sat down on the floor and laughed and cried and praised God. And I had a picture with their little daughter, and I thanked them again, and they left, and I knelt down on the path and thanked Jesus from the bottom of my heart. And I had the most beautiful time of my life. In all those parables, the lost coin, the lost sheep, the lost son, I understand that feeling now. The feeling of losing something and finding it again – how beautiful and delightful that is. And it blows my mind that God feels that much joy when one of us lost children comes home. And I put everything in the plastic bag I’d brought my bible in and I promised to keep it very close, and I went back to the place on the edge of the world, to thank God. And I wrote this:

“HOSANNA! You are the greatest. I love you that did this on Easter Saturday and Sunday as well! Nice touch. I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU. You are enough. And you are so kind. How can you be this awesome and still have time to be kind to me? I can see the end of the rainbow. You are the greatest God. You are the kindest Father.

I cannot find words for your goodness. “What is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man that you care for him?”

I will dance and I will sing and I will love and laugh and play and praise you all of my days.”

And then I turned round to my plastic bag – which I’d carefully placed just behind me in a hollow in the tree roots so that no one could steal it this time! – and took out my bible to find something to read. And as I turned back I saw a flash of yellow and felt a gust of wind. And I looked down, and the wind had taken the bag, too light now, through a gap in the roots I hadn’t noticed, and down, into Victoria Falls. It was gone, over the edge, into oblivion, lost in the most permanent way imaginable. And I swore at myself, loudly, and then I laughed. And I stood and stared, grinning at the waterfall for a little while. And then I picked up my notebook and wrote this:

“Well. I’m never going to forget this. You’re so good and I just throw it away.

Thank you though - for everything.

I just dropped my identity into your glory, which is a good metaphor even if it was a stupid reality.

It’s definitely my fault now, which is good.

I love you Jesus and you are enough, and the beautiful thing is that however stupid I am, I can’t lose you, I can never throw your love away. You are always going to be there, and I will always be yours. You will always have my picture in your wallet.

And right now your wallet is the whirlpool at the bottom of Victoria Falls.

And now at last, I know, that Christ’s power is made perfect in my weakness.

There is something perfect about this.”

So now I’m going to the police station to try and get a police report. I don’t think they’re going to believe my story.  The last two days have been literally unbelievable. God has taught me so much, and held me so close. Jesus is enough.

And you have to admit, it’s a pretty incredible story.

N.B. Thursday 04/04/2013

Just to let you know – that it’s all good now! Mum wanted me to wait until this was the case before I put up the blog, so that’s why I’m a few days late. In the meantime I have typed and printed my own police report (“The secretary is on holiday... and there’s no ink in the printer!”); made three visits to the British High Commission in Lusaka, after an encouraging initial welcome from a security guard - “Your trespassing, that was not an official entrance”; and taken a day bus that was so delayed it turned into a night bus. But I have got over the border. I am safely and legally in Malawi, and I’ve now got about 16 weeks to complete what’s supposed to be a 4-6 week process to get a proper passport.

Also, over the last few days it has properly sunk in how incredibly stupid I was. The seriousness of my foolishness was initially sort of hidden from me by an immense cloud of God’s grace and kindness, and it took a day thinking about how much my parents were worrying to realise that God’s goodness being infinitely, unstoppably good, does not stop my badness being bad. I suppose that’s what grace actually is – is God being incredibly good even though we are genuinely bad. So, in that sense:

“Twas grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

15 Hours to Think About Tigers

We had a 15 hour bus journey into Zambia on Tuesday, during which I finished Life of Pi. And it’s a brilliant book and I would recommend it highly. I won’t ruin it for you but it’s beautiful because it ends with a huge question mark, and that’s always better than simply a full stop.  Although it’s somehow unsatisfying at the same time. Anyway, I had a long time to think about it and it really did get me thinking. The book says a lot of interesting stuff about tigers, but I was most interested in what it says about doubt and faith. There’s a beautiful quote near the end – when Pi tells some officials his story and they tell him it’s not really believable – he says this:

“If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? ... Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?”

They reply, “We’re just being reasonable.”

“So am I! Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit, Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.”

I love that line. Which is funny because I’m a huge fan of reason, and I’m constantly attempting to explain to people how reasonable faith is - how much evidence there is for Jesus, how much God makes sense. But if I’m honest, that line about the bathwater has really got a point. When you get to the really big things, the glorious things – the existence of life, the experience of love, a relationship with God – reason is just not a big enough tool box. Maybe God created life and love and beauty and cares about us creatures; maybe we are an utterly marvellous cosmic accident, a one in a million – who knows maybe there are a million other universes out there failing to contain such glorious flukes; or maybe we do have a creator, we do have a purpose, but no one bothered to tell us who or what that is. Reason charges boldly towards the canyon and then skids desperately to a halt, scrambling backwards and gasping for breath as rocks and earth tumble into the profound abyss of maybe.

And so each of us has a life. And we have a choice between staying in doubt, or moving from doubt to faith. Of course if we choose the leap of faith there are many places we may try to leap to – including atheism – but the first choice is whether we are going to leap anywhere at all. The book has another awesome bit about doubt:

“Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the Garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Corss, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

Agnosticism, doubt, uncertainty, is a kind of paralysis. Deciding that we’ll never know what the purpose of life is, is like building a house at a fork in the road. People pass by on their way and ask why you have built a house in the middle of nothingness – and you tell them that you couldn’t decide which road to take – “So you decided to stay here at the fork, forever?” – “It seemed the only reasonable solution.”

On a deeper level than just quotes (which I won’t explain because it would be boring and would completely ruin the book for you), Life of Pi is all about the choice between imagination and “dry, yeastless factuality”, that refuses to see higher, further, differently. I’m not an expert on literature (yet) but I think basically the message is that it’s better to imagine a life worth living than settle for one that isn’t. But on this one, I’ve got a better idea. I would recommend to you not imagination, but hope.

There’s a difference. Someone once said that, “Faith can move mountains. Even if sometimes God hands you a shovel.” Imagination is the gift of seeing the world differently to how it really is. And hope does that too – it has a vision of a different world. But hope picks up a shovel. Hope does not ignore the real world, it changes the real world. Faith does not leap out into nothingness and enjoy the fall into oblivion. Faith jumps for the other side, and discovers a whole new land. A question mark is a beautiful thing, but it doesn’t have to be the end because this life turns out to be a dialogue. God speaks. I’m not saying we should pretend that life has a purpose, that love and beauty and peace are more than illusions or animal instincts, I’m saying we can believe that it really is true. There’s a a bit in the Bible that says, “I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air”. I love that. Me and my family, Rachael, my church, my mate risking his life in China - we are not shadow boxing. We’re not wasting our lives on a pleasant, admirable fantasy. We’ve made the leap, and we’ve landed on solid ground, and I just want to tell you that it’s beautiful over here.  

A question for you

The exams have been taken, the mad rush by the teachers to mark about 600 papers (6 subjects, 100 students) and then rank them and fill out their school reports has been completed just about successfully, and Term 2 is over. We’re officially half way through our teaching here. Which feels quite strange to say.

And now we are on our way to Lilongwe, and from Lilongwe, Zambia, and from Zambia, the world! Or possibly Tanzania. I did think about writing a profound post about how going travelling with no set plan or certain destination is like training for following Jesus, not knowing where he’ll lead you, but knowing it will be awesome in some way you didn’t really ask for, but I can’t be bothered. So I’ll just quickly share with you my current dilemma instead and ask for your prayers or possibly even your advice.

So the dates for the school holidays were always going to be from the 22^nd of March to the 22^nd of April, a nice round month, plenty of time to see Victoria Falls and then continue on into Tanzania or Botswana – whichever takes your fancy – and visit a game reserve or something like that. However, yesterday, just before we left our school we were informed that the government has changed the dates – nationally – and Term 3 will start on April the 8^th. That’s a two week holiday instead of four.

So my partner Michael is part of a group of volunteers who have rented a car for the month, and he’s talked to his fellow teachers and they are happy for him to stay away for the whole month of the original holiday, which he’s keen to do so as not to waste his money and to enjoy the opportunity to travel as much as he can, which is fair enough. However, for me things are not so simple. My fellow Standard 6 teacher, Miss Chakola, has been granted her request to transfer to another school, so is leaving and is supposed to be replaced by a new teacher for next term. So I’m not sure how acceptable it would be to ask this new person to teach my subjects for two weeks and then take them off him/her again. Perhaps more importantly, I also teach about 4 hours a week of English to the Standard 8s, who are taking their primary school leaving exams in mid-May. They are massively important for their future, and 40% of the English exam is writing compositions and making sentences, which they struggle with massively, and I have been helping with. (Or, to be more precise, trying to help with.) So two weeks of lessons for them is quite a big deal.

So now the question is – where does God want me? I was introduced to an awesome bit of the bible the other day, from 1 Corinthians 15:

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.”

So I’m determined to stand firm and let nothing move me – but the problem is, which ‘work of the Lord’ should I give myself to fully for those two weeks?

God has been so good so far in giving me awesome conversations and relationships with the other volunteers – I’ve made some great friends and even had the chance to help one guy really rediscover a faith that he had started to lose, which is definitely in my mind one of the most worthwhile things I have been able to do in Malawi. I love chatting to people about Jesus, and everything that following him has done to change my life, and how much awesome stuff he’s done for me, and in the people that I know. I genuinely love it – and I sometimes God uses my life as a way to tap someone on the shoulder and let him know that he’s there. And that’s pretty much the greatest privilege I could ever have! So I have no doubt that travelling with my mates is the work of the Lord, God loves them and he loves it when me and the other Christians care for each other and encourage each other to love him more, and he loves it when we introduce other people to him.

But…

Obviously teaching kids to speak English better and hopefully get into secondary school, then get a job and help their families and countries to develop – that’s God’s work too. He loves that. And he loves me spending time with the other teachers, and receiving so much awesomeness and generosity from him through them.

So what should I do? I’ve got a week or so to pray and think and work it out. So if you could ask God to give me wisdom, and then courage to stand firm, that’d be awesome. And if you have any advice that’d be great too!

I have five nipples (and 9 other things you might find interesting)

1.      I have five nipples at the moment. At a time and location unknown, 
actuated by motives that remain unclear, a mosquito has bitten me
three times in a neat line across my chest. It’s beautiful.
2.      We cooked African cake with our deputy headmistress a couple of
weeks ago – it’s quite easy, you mush up bananas into baby food, add
maize flour, and deep fry – but she gave us some freshly cooked
‘mandas’ – basically deep fried sugary bread – and they were
absolutely incredible. Unfortunately Michael (my hilarious partner)
managed to convince me that the mystery liquid in a bottle in the hut
was golden syrup. I dipped and ate. He laughed. I swallowed,
unimpressed and slightly confused by the taste. He gleefully informed
me that it was pork fat. From a week ago. Yum.
3.      I took a ride on an ox cart the other day. Michael drove it for a
while – but was quite ineffective – it turned out this was because the
driver encourages the oxen by prodding their private parts with his
foot.
4.      Cooking in a rural Malawian kitchen – mud oven thing inside mud hut
with no chimney, in which you burn firewood – is more challenging than
I had imagined. I tried to cook some eggs there because I couldn’t be
bothered to start our fire – and found myself coughing uncontrollably
and completely blinded by the smoke! Brian told me to sit down on the
floor or just let his niece do it – this worked well. Never let a
stupid westerner use Malawian technology.
5.      A big thunderstorm blasted a lot of whitewash off one of our walls
the other week (we were lucky, one teacher’s fence collapsed and
another watched his whole kitchen hut as it was dislodged by the wind
and thrown into his house – the house survived intact, the kitchen not
so much). It’s now been resurfaced, but they had no whitewash so it’s
mud grey. So our house has now got quite a funky art-deco feature-wall
look. Some students from the school also ‘resmeared’ our mud floor,
which is great, it just raised the floor level a bit, which meant I
had to scrape away some of it with the back of a fork to allow the
door to actually open!
6.      I climbed a tree at school the other day, and I’m pretty sure I
could see for 10 or 20 miles across the savannah to the mountains. I’m
getting strangely accustomed to spectacular beauty.
7.      Last week fellow teacher and general legend Mr Robins Kamanga came
into my class and asked if he could have some of my learners who had
missed the manual work after school yesterday. I wasn’t a big fan of
them missing lessons, but I supposed if a few of them had tried to
skive, they should have to do it like everyone else. He said something
in Chichewa and my class promptly dropped in size from 70 to 15.
8.      This morning we drove back from Mua to Mtunthama, leaving at
4 in the morning. The main road for this route includes driving through
a game reserve. This meant we were treated to the sight of a whole family
of baboons on the road, including a couple mating. Not the sort of thing you 
usually see on your morning commute.
9.      This Sunday I am doing the talk at the evening church service of
Kamuzu Academy student chapel. I was going to talk to them about how
they should not be stupid and western like me, but I think now I’m not
going to try and tell them what to do, I’m just going to read the
parable of the lost son, and tell them how incredibly, personally, and
permanently their Dad in heaven loves them. So please, if you pray,
ask God to calm some of my nervousnesses about that and to speak to
them through what I say.
10.     Finally, I’d like to boast about how manly I am now. The other day
a little kid thought it’d be funny to throw a live caterpillar through
the window into my classroom! There was some commotion, I established
the cause of it, took a deep breath, walked through to the back where
it was, picked it up, and threw it right back at them. MAN.

Rejection - the dementor of the muggle world - and the only true patronus

Rejection might just be the most painful thing we experience as human beings – setting aside gallstones and giving birth. To be unwanted, unchosen unloved. Like a dementor, it seems to suck some part of your soul out through your ribs and leaves you feeling utterly and unbearably empty.

But at the same time, it is, in a way, what makes being human possible. Because without the other person having a real choice, it means nothing to be chosen. We wouldn’t understand what it was to be ‘wanted’ in a world where ‘unwanted’ didn’t exist. Love cannot exist without unlove.

And it’s more than that – maybe without rejection, God couldn’t be God. Why do I say that? I was reading John’s first letter in the bible recently, and there’s a bit where I honestly weep sometimes when I read it. (It’s 1 John 4:7-12 if you care about such things.) First it says that God is love. That’s who God is. And then it defines love: ‘This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.’ Sin, basically, is when we reject God. So love is God’s response to rejection. That is what true love is. And it’s the very fibre of God’s being.

Jesus once asked his disciples, “Why is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected?” Well I think Jesus had to “suffer much and be rejected” to be truly like God. Because to be God is to suffer much and be rejected. And for us to become like God – to be children truly like our Dad – we too must be rejected. In order for us to truly love. And this rejected love is not that of the stalker – the hand snatching what it can from that which it ‘loves’ – it is the love of the father, sitting up all night, waiting for his runaway daughter to come home. ‘Jesus, how many nights should I wait for her? A week?’  - ‘I tell you, not seven night but seventy seven nights.’ Do not stop waiting. Do not stop loving. Because every night you will know more what it feels like to be God. The father who sits, and waits, and weeps, and knows that some of his children are never going to come home.

My mate Fatsani

The other day I’d set my Standard 6 class some work to do and I was sat on my chair watching them do it. So a few of them have started talking a bit, so I look around for who it is. I notice at the front Fatsani Munkhondya talking to the girl next to him. Fatsani is pretty small, not up to my shoulders, ridiculously enthusiastic, and has the most happy-making smile in existence. And I just watched him chatting away, grinning like he does and making this little tiny girl laugh, and in the end when he saw me looking and thought I was going to tell him to be quiet, I just smiled.

Now I just think about that moment – the two of them laughing together about something in Chichewa that I didn’t understand – and I think, God is a good creator. I mean – laughter – who thought of that? Imagine the kind of person that invents laughter. Dostoevsky once said that if God knew he was creating a world where one child would weep desperately for its lost mother he should have chosen not to create anything at all. And that’s a beautiful thing to say. But why let suffering triumph over joy? Why not say that if God knew that just once, in a little village in the middle of Africa, Fatsani Munkhondya was going to smile like that and make the little girl next to him laugh, then everything was worth it.

What if the long hard journey home was worth it not just for the warmth of the embrace on the doorstep, but for the moments of bizarre beauty and joy that sprung up like wildflowers along the way? Maybe it’s an act of faith – maybe it’s just a good idea – to lift our eyes from the brokenness to the beauty long enough to start cultivating joy in the burnt and barren fields of the world.

I’m not saying we ignore suffering – that would be as far from being like Jesus as it’s possible to get. I’m just saying that when I come out here to the back porch to pray or write, I don’t look that often at our rubbish pit, and think about the kids I saw searching through it once. I look at the mountains on the horizon. And the sun glittering on the morning dew. And the chickens wandering around in their own weird way. And I think about our Dad, our Creator, the one who invented the chicken and the sunrise and I think about how he knows my name. How my name is carved onto the palm of his hand. And it means that when I get up, I can walk past those kids I saw in our rubbish pit, and when they shout ‘Kuvina!’ – that’s dance in Chichewa – I can do a little, stupid dance with a genuine smile on my face and enjoy it when they laugh at me. I can choose joy. Just like Fatsani does.

The Perfect Pearl

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Saviour and my God.

Jesus told a short story – a really short story – about a man and some buried treasure. He says there’s a guy, and somehow – who knows what he was up to – he finds hidden treasure in someone else’s field. Obviously he’s over the moon – this is the greatest find imaginable, he’s set for life – and he puts the treasure back where he found it, runs home, sells everything he has and scrapes together the cash to buy the field. And he gets the field and the treasure. And everyone lived happily ever after, except possibly the original owner of the field, when he notices that the poor guy he sold that field to is suddenly some kind of dancing-for-joy, lottery-rollover millionaire.

Anyway, straight away Jesus told another two-liner story. He said there was a merchant looking for fine pearls, and then one day he came across one of immense value – a lot like that guy in Toy Story 2 when he finds Woody in the jumble sale – and just like the other guy he runs home, sells everything, absolutely everything, and buys that pearl.

And Jesus said that the kingdom of God is like that treasure, and that pearl.

And my favourite bit is where it says – about the buried treasure guy – “in his joy he went and sold everything he had”. Just imagine selling all your stuff. Imagine selling your fridge – complete with a few carrots and some yoghurt – your kitchen table, your phone, your favourite clothes, that thing you’ve had since you were in primary school, your mattress, your bed, your house. Imagine watching the boxes go out the door and into the van and off to auction. Imagine the hammer falling again and again as memory after memory, useful tool after beautiful thing goes for some amount or another.

Now try to imagine doing that, joyfully. Imagine running to greet the van and skipping a bit as you run back to grave the first box of stuff; imagine grinning inanely at all the people as they walk out holding your phone and your ipod and just bursting our laughing when you hear them whispering to each other, trying to work our if you’re crazy or you just racked up a lot of gambling debts. Imagine striding up to the auctioneer as the last person leaves, taking his hammer and having a go at banging it yourself, laughing with him and giving him a massive hug. And it’s not as if you hated your stuff, it’s just that you’re not really thinking about it – you’re thinking about what you’re about to get. And every time you do the temptation to woop or clap is overwhelming.

That is how good God is. He’s that good. And if we could just grasp how high and wide and long and deep Jesus’ love is – we would burst out into some ridiculous dance, or just lie down and laugh for hours, or run and hug everyone in sight. Every moment of beauty we’ve known, every burst of joy, every overwhelming surge of love for another human being is just a shadown, a tiny glimpse of this ultimate beauty, this perfect pearl.

And I say all this because this week I’ve been a bit like the original owner of that field. Woefully oblivious to the awesome, awesome, awesome thing that I’ve had all along. I realised today that I’ve thanked God for plenty of things this week – he’s given me real joy in my teaching, some genuine Malawian friends, a great relationship with the other Standard 6 teacher, a brilliant day-after-Valentine’s Day, a lovely chat with my parents and all sorts of little things – but it all felt a bit weird, a bit empty, a bit hollow. Because I forgot to thank him for him. I forgot to praise him. I took my eyes off how beautiful Jesus is. I ended up thiking his goodness consisted of the stuff he does for me, but this goodness is way, way bigger than that. He’s the one who moulded the galaxies between his fingertips, and invented the dragonfly. He’s the brains behind smiling, and the touch of someone else’s skin, and that feeling when you’re out in the open air at night, and B flat minor.

He’s the Dad who’s so desperate to have us home that when we come crawling back he tells us to forget about the money we stole and the crap we spent it on because he’s invited the whole neighbourhood over for a party. He’s the shepherd who picked his way through the dangers of the night to try and find us wherever we’ve wandered off, because he won’t let us go through it alone. He’s the one who took on death and won.

He’s worth selling everything for. Easily. He’s worth giving up Rachael for. Easily. He’s worth giving up my family for. Easily. And that’s far too easy to forget, but when I remember it – I know it sounds pretentious but I think the only way to say it is – then I am alive.

Malawian Match Day

Fairly ordinary day to start with – picking ants off bread for breakfast (admittedly this is a new low in food hygiene), failing to wash (again), walking for an hour and a half to town, and indulging my penchant for ten kwacha roadside baked goods (today a kind of chewy potato/tomato/onion maize flour fritter, and then a donut that is more like nice bread really, but on the plus side, is a bit like nice bread). Also taking a bike taxi over some slightly soggy dirt roads.

But then it got interesting – it was the day of the big match, the first round of the national primary school football and netball cup, the winning of which is worth 1.6 million kwacha (it’s 500 kwacha to the pound so you can work out how much that is if you want). We were up against Chidampa at Ergo ground. Ergo football pitch is half sand and half thick grass, thistles and all. We were there just before kick-off time, 2:00pm. The opponents were nowhere to be seen. Then it started raining torrentially, for the second time that day. Our players and the smaller supporters who had tagged along found what shelter they could but got extremely wet and cold in their shorts and t-shirts. To keep warm they did some singing and dancing which any English choir would have been proud, or possibly incapable, of. And then the rain calmed down after an hour or so, and some Chidampo people arrived, and, to my astonishment, we actually started playing.

The sheer Malawianess of the occasion is impossible to describe – a kid wearing a hat woven from some grass and sticks, along with our team’s kit – a random goalie shirt, then 9 identical ‘SAHA’ Man U kits in a bring yellow that Man U have never even contemplated wearing, and for the captain an Arsenal shirt with ‘FABREGAS’ on it, in the same unimaginable yellow. The girls play netball in skirts and even faker Arsenal shirts. There are no visible sidelines so older kids patrol the edges of the pitch wielding big branches and smashing them down occasionally to discourage anyone from standing where they are just about to be, and thus fend off the inward creep of the crowd. The aforementioned crowd continues to shiver in the occasional showers and bitingly cold wind – and it does cross my mind that this is supposed to be Africa. A large group are keeping warm by dancing around the edges of the pitch (in fact on the pitch at all points other than the actual goals), chanting and clapping something that seems to have some relevance to the game. And then we score. And there is a huge pitch invasion – mainly conducted by five to ten year old kids about four foot tall – and I even see a giant doll – about the size of the kid holding it – that seems to be our rather inexplicable team mascot.

This happens after each of our four goals. It’s quite a comedic game of football – players slipping and sliding wildly over the pitch (it’s pretty tough playing football in a bog when no one has studs and in fact, only about half are wearing shoes). It is, I must admit, even funnier when the netballers slip over. And then it’s all over – 16-1 in the netball, 4-0 in the football. So our fellow teacher and avid dictionary reader Mr Robins Kamanga informs us that we have ‘clobbered them’ (he refrains from adding, as he likes to, ‘in grand style’) and Brian, the head coach, is so happy he gets us all some roasted maize for the walk home. Which is a lot better when it is hot and you are cold.

When we get home all is back to normal, and we cook rice, egg and tomatoes on our charcoal burner, as we do about every other night, and eat it with lots of salt and some orange squash. Then couple of

(delicious) Malawian toffee bar things, some chat, some use of the greatly anticipated toilet roll which we got yesterday, and brushing my teeth on the front porch (spitting anywhere because it just soaks into the ground). Then change, brush the roof-dust off the mattress and the sleeping bag (pyjamas and beautiful new pillow have been cunningly stashed inside the sleeping bag so are largely dust free) and then write this, and go to sleep.

And that was match day. Malawi-style. I’m really quite enjoying this now.

One month down, or possibly up, or sideways.

I left England on the 3^rd of January so it’s now 33 days since I was at home.

Which makes it 33 days since my feet were actually clean for over a minute; 33 days since a day of my life passed without ants featuring heavily; 33 days without seeing a potato, or real milk; and 33 days since I had a proper hug.

Those who know my love (some would say obsession) for Coco Pops and milk will be surprised to learn that the milk thing hasn’t bothered me too much. And actually anyone who knew me before I was 14ish will understand the joy of the news that we’ve found peanut butter in a nearby town! (Which, on inspection, claims to provide 25% of my daily fat intake in one serving. Just how I like it.)

Anyway, most of the time nothing is really getting to me, apart from the hugs thing. Before this trip I maintained a cool-guy stance of never really missing people – I have now thoroughly abandoned this stance. If you’ve ever given me a proper hug, I probably miss you. And in fact, of all the things I thought God might teach me in this time, I never expected that it would be to love and appreciate my grannies more! But sure enough, this he has done.

So anyway, I said last time about God humbling me, and he is still doing that (Including the way that the other Michael is consistently battering me at bananagrams AND ligretto), but he is not in any way being nasty to me. He is being spectacularly kind – so here are a few things that, if you pray, you are welcome to thank God for with me.

1)      The invention of the Kindle and setting me up with a teacher who should really be doing English at Cambridge instead of me!

The Standard 6 teacher who I’m helping, Martha Chakola, was looking through a book I was using in a lesson and asked me if I’d brought any more, so I ended up teaching her to use my Kindle and lending it to her. At first she said she’d give it back when she’d finished all the books on it, ‘so maybe tomorrow or the day after’! But while I explained that was a little bit optimistic, she’s getting through them at a crazy pace – I especially enjoyed getting it back and finding it set to huge font – she explained afterwards she had been trying to read in the dark!

So that’s just awesome, especially because she’s really getting into some of the books about God I’ve got on there, so it’s giving her a chance to explore her faith as well I think.

2)      Food. I have never meant ‘Thank you for this food’ so deeply as I do at the moment. Cooking Malawian beans for 3 hours has really taugh me to appreciate my dinner like never before (this works especially well if you didn’t realise and you started cooking at half 6!). And the other day I went and helped my mate Brian and his family fertilise their ‘garden’. I was imagining a little vegetable patch kind of garden, out the back of the house. In fact, Brian has  little hole next to every maize plant with a stick, and us putting a spoonful of pellets into each one. After the first 100 plants, with 1000 or so to go, this gets – in Brian’s words – ‘tiresome’. In this country, generosity has a real cost, and it really, really matters whether it rains. And yet their kindness and open-handedness, and their trust in God, is genuinely inspirational. And quite challenging.

3)      Creating. We camped at Kasungu National Park last weekend, which used to be amazing apparently, but has been thoroughly poached so that now it’s pretty much just hippo, and some awesome, awesome views. You might have read about the guy who made the six foot valentines card for the girl he liked – and how he thinks waterfalls and sunsets are a bit like God doing the same thing for us. Well, I honestly got out of my tent on Saturday night, looked up at the stars and said, out loud, “I love you too”. I know I’m a bit weird. But God is a bit awesome too.

PS. Here’s something you didn’t know. A perk of having a mud/charcoal floor, is that if – hypothetically of course – you had managed to spill a whole bucket of water into your living room/kitchen the other day, the floor would simply have absorbed the water by now. No sweeping or bailing required. Nice.

Weaknesses and Wonderfulnesses

I love Jesus sometimes. I mean obviously I’m aiming for the whole time but I suppose genuinely loving him on occasions is a good start – and, you will be glad to learn, I hope, that this is one of those occasions.

So, have some background. I’ve been asking Jesus to humble me for what must be nearly a year now. I know it sounds weird that I’m asking Jesus to change what I’m like rather than just doing it, but if you’ve ever tried you’ll know that something like pride is surprisingly tricky to change just by trying, so I ask Jesus to humble me, and I try to humble myself, and I hope that he’ll manage it with some help from me. Background over.

At the weekend I was feeling pretty exhausted. I’ve been pretty busy as you might have guessed, and even the ‘holiday’ weekend was quite effortful, and I haven’t had a proper Sabbath day off for ages, and I haven’t managed to spend enough time just chillin’ with Jesus. (Apologies to those with a more sophisticated taste in language, but I think chillin’ just about sums up what I’m missin’.) And the tiredness was starting to do that thing where it spills over from physical into mental and emotional and you just feel a bit like curling up for a long time, and it feels a bit silly when you remember that God promised that ‘those who hope in the LORD will ... soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint’. But then I got an email from my brother where he mentioned 2 Corinthians 12 verse 9. And I couldn’t remember what it was so I looked it up, and it just hit me like a really good hot shower. Paul writes this:

“To keep me from becoming conceited... there was given me a thorn in the flesh... Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I honestly - no religious kid exaggeration - felt such joy from reading those words. “My power is made perfect in weakness”. It just hit me that it was OK for me to be weak, to be struggling, even to fail – it’s OK. It’s even a good thing, because when I realise that I’m not ‘good enough’ all by myself, I get to see just how good Jesus is. You never know how much your dad loves you until you really, really need a hug.

And then this morning I had a double English lesson to start the day – that’s half seven until twenty to nine. But last night it rained (which is good, the crops needed it) but this meant (the causal link is yet to be fully explained to me) that the students were incredibly late. At 7:30 there was one person waiting for Standard 6 – my class. We started at quarter to eight with about 10 kids, and they were still arriving at 8:30. My lesson failed miserably, and I felt miserable. And I had half an hour before my next one. And I came back to the hut, and I got on my knees and I prayed. And I found myself thanking Jesus that he had actually humbled me – that I had realised that I am actually not very good at this. I am not very good at making myself easy to understand, I am not very good at remembering their names, or planning lessons that work at their level, or resisting the temptation to use more and longer words when they are struggling to grasp the few short ones I started with. And I prayed that his power would be made perfect in my weakness. That my struggles and failures would somehow help to reveal how beautiful he is. And then I went out to my next set of lessons.

And, because Jesus is cool like this, they were absolutely brilliant. Not perfect obviously – those problems haven’t just evaporated – but they were much more fun, they felt pretty successful, and as I was doing them I just got happier and happier and happier.

I hope this hasn’t been sickeningly cheesy for all of you – and thanks for reading how I’m doing! If there are things I’m failing to mention that anyone would like to know, please do ask!

Auf wiedersehen,

Mike

Mikey's Big Day Out

I heard somewhere that walking around barefoot actually makes your feet more sensitive over time and you end up having a fuller experience because you’ve stimulated the sensory receptors - or something like that. I feel a little bit like I’ve been metaphorically living barefoot these last few days, and it’s been really good.

I’ve moved into the mud-hut now, and it’s great, but I won’t start there I’ll start with the journey. Because in one day I experienced just such a volume of stuff, it almost felt profound. So I got a couple of buses (catching a Malawian bus is an experience in itself but we won’t get into that) and while I was waiting for the second bus to go, the conductor ripped his T-shirt trying to load someone’s bicycle on. And after a while he turned to me and just said, “Could you give me a new shirt?”! And he showed me the rip and pointed at my bag and asked me again, and now he’s kind of grinning and I look around for some kind of idea about what to do, and the other Malawians are kind of laughing too – so I laugh with them – and in the end we shake hands on the deal that I’ll give money to a charity rather than just giving him a shirt. Then once that bus got going I had a great conversation with a pin-stripe-suited, walking-stick-carrying septuagenarian school teacher, who was just one of those lovely old people who ooze kindness and all of that. Then I got off that bus and walked along the road for a while – and there was a moment that really looked like art, with one man doggedly cycling up a steep hill in the road, completely alone, with blank grassland stretching out on either side. Then I got picked up by my new host, Richard Hewitt – in a way that reminded me really weirdly of getting lifts back from town with Dad. Except it was a lot hotter. And the car was filled with a pleasant selection of African sculptures, which Dad’s usually wasn’t. Also, in the car, we were giving another guy a lift, and I was eating some custard creams (interesting they actually taste of custard here) and I offered him one, he said, ‘No, no you keep them’, so I had some more and offered again a bit later. He said, ‘Thank you!’, took the rest of the packet and put it in his bag! I tried to hide the look of mild confusion. Then I had a beautiful moment standing in a car park in Lilongwe, when I looked up and saw the moon, and it struck me that it’s the same moon that I could see back at home. I don’t think that’s as profound as it felt at the time, but there we go. And then on the next leg of the journey we stopped off for cold drinks and I got a bottle of ‘Peach and nectarine juice’ which contained mainly sugar but also milk and I probably would have thought it was disgusting in normal circumstances but after a hot day is was the sweetest nectar that ever passed my lips. (Excuse the poetry.) And then there was the most incredible sunset, and it reminded me of something I read the other day – the guy was telling a story of trying to woo this girl by making a 6 foot cardboard valentines card and delivering it to her office, and was sort of wondering if all the waterfalls, and sunsets, and deep sea fish with electric lights on their heads, aren’t a little bit like God making us a six foot valentines card in the hope of getting our attention. And that made me happy. Oh and I also saw a man cycling with a dead goat tied to the front of his bike.

That was just part of one day – loads of cool (and some less cool) stuff has happened since then. Current status update would probably be: very very tired, but really excited and loving the way God’s challenging me and encouraging me all at once.

This isn’t the most coherent piece of writing I’ve ever created – but I think I used up my artistry and wordsmithery on the short story I wrote the other day before I left Domasi, so you can have a read of that too if you want!

Empty Pavements

He made his way, hesitantly, and with knees and ankles jarring at every step, along the pavement. It felt alien and hard, as if the stone was jealously protecting its personal space. People stared at him as they walked past, some even stopped to talk about him, pointing and laughing. But not talking to him – it was as if he wasn’t even there. In a way he felt that he wasn’t.

He felt dislocated. Like a shoulder socket wrenched from its place he was floating painfully in a pool of pale fluid. These people were not his people. This ground was not his ground. And the funny thing was that it was spreading. His feet did not feel so much like his feet as they used to; and his thoughts were beginning to scatter and hide as if scared of eviction.

***

He was pounding the street s in breathless sprints – casting his eyes this way and that – desperate but with the patient air of one practiced in desperation. Beads of sweat rolled uninterrupted down the sides of his brow and flew from his jaw, warm brown eyes searching, searching, scanning the cityscape horizon with an intensity that made you long to be the one he was searching for and at the same time made you scared that you might be. He turned another corner.

***

Sure enough he felt lost, but it must be said that he didn’t know it. He caught glimpses in his mind of a memory or a hope, a feeling of welcome, a warmth, almost his own reflection, but whenever he tried to identify it all he could do was watch it flee into some darker corner of his self, scared by the clatter of his feet on the pavement. To walk on ground that is not your own for too long – it is the ache. The ache is nearly unnoticeable and nearly unbearable. A fatigue crept up his limbs and into his body. A loneliness. A dullness.

His heart beat faster.

***

His heart beat faster. His gaze melted into the deep, deep affection of fatherhood. His breaths became longer and less hurried but his steps quickened and grew lighter.

***

A thrill of peace rushed through his body, he could feel blood rushing out around his body as his feet became his once more, his thoughts gathered themselves from the nooks and crannies of his restless mind and assembled into one, overwhelming, gentle lump, one word: found. He had found himself, he had found what he had been looking for – he had realised what he had been looking for! – and he had been found. All at once. Fond memory and cherished hope crashed together like two great opposing waves and his soul was filled to overflowing with liquid peace. Rest. He felt the arms reach around him and gather him up. He felt his feet softly lift away from the alien ground.

***

The shepherd gently placed his sheep across his shoulders and, ignoring the startled looks of the city-dwellers passing on either side, began the long walk home.

Two Contradictory Blogs For The Price Of One

I'm really enjoying the shop names here in Malawi -
here are my top 3 so far besides this one:
3^rd – GOD IS LOVE BARBER SHOP
2^nd – GOD IS WONDERFUL HARDWARE SHOP
And in first place,
the very best example of this
bizarre marriage of theology and marketing
– GOD IS ABLE PHONE CHARGE

We’ve arrived now in Domasi Mission (where we’ll be working for the next seven months) and I don’t really know where to start! The good-news-guilt has subsided and been replaced by simple gratitude for how well looked after we are, and how beautiful the place is – just in case anyone still thinks I’m in any way a hero for coming here, the three of us have a kitchen with microwave/hob/oven/fridge/freezer, lots of working toilets/showers, and this is all in a guest house nearly as big as my house back home, easily capable of housing all 28 volunteers if it needed to. And we’ve got a view of a forest covered mountain. And today we got a lift in the back of the school pickup truck into Zomba[1] to get ourselves various foodstuffs including jelly. This is a good place.

The other big news is that we were introduced to the kids at the secondary school today in their morning prayers. Morning prayers is basically a mini church service that they have every weekday[2] - but the really cool thing is that it is led by the kids! A team of them tell everyone what songs to sing, lead the prayers, read the bible readings, and then one of them does a short talk – and this morning it was really good! Somewhat appropriately it was about confidence in God, and given by a guy called Michael. Can’t go wrong with a Michael. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, the only downside is that it’s difficult to join in with the awesome singing because the songs are in Chichewa! But maybe we’ll learn a few before we go.

And just in general I am really very happy because God has just been so kind in this last week - it still absolutely blows my mind that it’s only been a week since I left. I wrote down a list in my notebook of Good Things God Has Done So Far and it didn’t fit on one page. So many answered prayers, even a couple that seemed impossible, and I just keep marvelling at His creative genius – not just in the landscape of this country but in the other volunteers that I’ve got to be friends with. So, as they say here in Malawi, ‘God is good, all the time.

---

[1] The nearest town, most famous as the birthplace of Latin-American fitness dance classes

[2] At 6:30am!

....OK, so that was the blog I wrote on Thursday evening. I didn’t manage to put it up until now but in the meantime quite a lot of stuff has happened. I got a call from my mate Sam (another volunteer) telling me that he is going to leave his intensely rural placement (we’re talking genuine mud hut) and go somewhere else, and he was wondering if any of the three of us here wanted to swap with him. So obviously I’ve been praying about that a lot, and talking to various wise people, and it’s pretty certain now that I’m going to go. Sam’s now worked out a few ways that he can leave even if I don’t swap with him, so my original hope of him taking a bit more time to try and get settled into his place is not going to materialise – so my choice is basically stay here so that there are four volunteers here and one (Sam’s partner Michael) left out there, or make it three here and two there. And it seems that the primary school in Chimbowe (that’s where the mud hut is) really does need a lot of help. So at the moment it seems pretty clear to me what the right thing to do is.

Obviously it’ll be a fair bit tougher out there but I’m not too worried about that, Michael and Sam tell me it’s an incredibly welcoming and generous community, and a pretty nice mud hut as mud huts go! And even when it is hard, I’m not too worried – genuinely because, as it says above, God is good, all the time (and for that matter, Jesus Never Fails). I heard a quote once from a Christian who was persecuted under communism in the eastern bloc – he said, ‘Christians are like nails, the harder you hit them, the deeper they go.’ So I’m actually pretty excited about what this adventure could do for my faith and my trust in God.

So obviously I would appreciate all your prayers, and please send me emails and things – I have no idea how the signal is out there so I can’t promise I’ll reply any time soon!

Cheers for reading!

MalawiBlog Number Two

I am in Africa.

It’s quite exciting. Very green and stuff. So far though we’ve spent pretty much all of our time in Mabuya Camp training and things with the other volunteers – so I haven’t got vast amounts of exciting things to tell you about the country as yet. But I can confirm that the road from the airport was pretty top notch!

Anyway, I thought I’d share some interesting GAP-YAH psychology with you. I’ve been trying to name it but I can’t quite – I was thinking about ‘greener-grass-syndrome’, but I’m going to go with ‘good-news-guilt’. What I mean by good-news-guilt is that when you find out more about your placement and where you’re staying, good news is bad news. Whenever you hear someone say, ‘Oh, yeah, apparently we have electricity and showers at our placement’, their voice is saturated with the cocktail of guilt and disappointment that comes from talking to a bunch of people who won’t have showers or electricity, and have just been telling you that they’re really glad about that because they didn’t come to Africa for it to be comfortable!

I am not immune to good-news-guilt. It crept up on me over the first 24 hours (we are apparently at the nicest accommodation out of anyone). But then I dragged it out of my subconscious and had a think about it. And really it brings you to the question – why are you here? And I’ve thought about it, and I think the main reason I’m here is because I love the idea of just serving and loving people 24-7. I did a falcon camp a few years ago (a Christian holiday camp for kids who wouldn’t get one otherwise) and I just loved it, because you forget everything else and you get up in the morning and worship Jesus and then all you do for the rest of the day is try to make people happy. It just felt like what being properly alive is all about. And the less boring, non-love-distractions you have to deal with, in my opinion, the better. So I’m hoping this is going to be like a giant version of that – with none of the things that distract me – just loving people and loving God for seven months in the middle of a beautiful beautiful bit of the world. I mean I’m not trying to make you all jealous, but that’s the life, isn’t it?

So, in short, I think it would be fair to describe my outlook as pretty optimistic!

That’s it for now I think – so until next time, if you pray, I’d love it if you could pray for me and the guys I’m doing this with, and if there’s anything anyone would like me to pray for, I would love to do that just drop me a message!

MalawiBlog Number One

Hello.

I did a lot of saying goodbye today so I thought I would do a bit of saying hello, and give everyone a pre-departure update so I get used to how this whole blogging thing is going to work.

So, status update:

I have not yet packed, as the photo will testify. I have been thoroughly equipped by various lovely family members and friends with a veritable cornucopia of miniature items (mini-alarm-clock, mini-torch, mini-speakers, mini-first-aid-kit, mini-sterile-first-aid-kit, mini-guitar...) but this bazaar of bite-sized goodness is, at time of writing, still wherever Mum put it when she took it out of the living room. (For those of you who know my house, that’s the playroom, just in case you were confused, but I didn’t feel comfortable admitting to having a ‘playroom’ in my house at the age of 18 in front of the whole internet.)

All the flat surfaces in my room look a bit like this

Real status update:

 But the state of my room is not what you are really interested in (I hope), it is rather the state of myself. So I will start as I intend to go on by including in these updates my real health in all its forms rather than just the medical and the practical.

So obviously saying goodbye has been quite sad, but in a way I think that’s good news – if I was saying goodbye to everyone I know for seven months and that wasn’t sad, that would make me a very lonely person – so I am glad to have been sad (and will be glad to be sad when I say goodbye to Mum and Dad on Thursday).

But I hope you will be happy to hear that I am not scared. This is not me trying to sound brave and cool – I am very much not brave or cool – because I was scared, I was getting increasingly frightened from Christmas day onwards last week, and I was fairly sure that was justified; it’s a big step to go somewhere like Malawi for such a long time, there is a lot to get ready that really matters, and I don’t really know anyone that will be out there with me. So a little bit of fear is only natural. But then joyfully I was woken early by a phone call from my mate Naffy on Sunday morning and this gave me time to go for a walk down to my favourite tree, and spend a good hour or so talking to God and reading my bible. And nothing spectacular or ‘supernatural’ came over me, but as I spent time with God he really did comfort me. There’s somewhere in the bible that it promises that he will “quiet you with his love” and maybe that’s a fair description. One of the parts of the bible I spent time with was in Jeremiah 17 where Jeremiah says, “Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed. Save me and I shall be saved.” And it made me think of a story I heard recently of a girl in Africa whose parents had just been killed by a militia who were rounding up Christians: as they pointed their guns at her they taunted her and asked, “Let your Jesus save you now!” – but she said to them, “My Jesus has already saved me.” And that’s just incredible, and I believe it’s true. And I just thought, faced with that, how can I be afraid of anything – let alone an exciting gap year trip?! And I genuinely ended up shouting “I AM FREE, NOTHING IS SCARY BUT YOU, GOD, AND YOU ARE NOT SCARY!” at a field full of sheep!

So there we go - hopefully I haven’t convinced you all I’m crazy with the very first blog - and hopefully these will be fairly interesting (I think they'll get more interesting when I actually arrive!). Please everyone let me know how you’re getting on while I’m away, and also a special thanks to Andy (Hood) for being a true brother in every sense.

Love, Mike.