18. Have you been away?

So we have just had the privilege of spending a few weeks in England with family and friends where we have laughed and cried and been extremely well fed in what seems like most regions of this fair land.

 

It's been great, really great. For the most part it has been strangely normal - driving in to Poole it felt like we were returning from a weekend away, and later someone asked Jason if we'd been on holiday - but it has also been challenging and in some ways uncomfortable.  I say this because we returned to England at the most commercially exploitative part of the year, where conspicuous consumption reaches epic proportions both before Christmas in a bid to buy the 'best' gifts, and after Christmas in a bid to get the 'best' sale bargains. I have found myself torn between my penchant for grabbing those sales bargains (I am, after all, from Yorkshire), and being acutely aware of the difficult financial situation for the majority of people in Zambia. The question 'do I really need this' has been extremely valuable (if slightly irritating as I am led by my conscious to put the item back on the shelf) and without wishing to sound preachy is a question many of us in the West should ask more often.  I think Jason wants to write a little more about this in a longer blog for the future, so I'll hold off the suspense for you until then.

 

We go back in less than a week and I confess to feeling daunted about it, about the task in hand and wondering whether we really will make a lasting difference. But we are also excited about what the next year has to hold.  There are already two teams coming over to us on short term missions which we are massively excited about (there is always room for more by the way) and we are being supported by another team visiting a different organisation in the area.  We are helping to plan the J-Life training for the next group starting in February and have a number of embryonic ideas for how to take Jireh crafts forward, partly fuelled by some successful meetings with stockists in England, and links we have been fostering back in Zambia. Of course, even the best laid plans change and evolve, but at least we have some things to work with

 

As we end 2013 we look back on an amazing year for us, and as we start 2014 Jason, myself and the boys would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year. Thank you to those who have supported us in whatever means and in whatever country, whether through prayer, finances, time stuffing envelopes, providing board and lodging, being a shoulder to lean (and cry) on, sending us letters and parcels, or simply being there at the end of a phone or computer, we couldn't do this without you.

 

God bless you all.