This past month has yet again been a crazy busy one! We have not had a saturday off in a long time! It's quite tiring, but so many good things to do.

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been having more teaching by Steve, and he's been speaking about Evangelism, and about scripture memorisation and wisdom, and lots of really interesting topics, that are made alot more interesting by his amazing life stories! He has such an incredible testimony and it is inspiring to me how he's come through that.

Things have been really great recently as a group, I think that since Mendoza we have bonded alot more. The group are becoming alot closer and spending more time together, which is really great (it does mean I am a little behind on my work.. just like at home), but it's really good building up the relationships and having alot of fun together. not that we didn't before, but we seem alot more relaxed with one another now, and alot more open which is great.

The Hogar has been pretty good this month, we are slowly seeing progress. The boys know us well now, and so it's not such a battle with them. They enjoy it when we turn up and we never have to try to persuade them to join in. We went one Saturday and made these Lizards made of beads, I was a little sceptical but Santtu told me that she had done it before and boys love it. So we went for it, and she was completly right, they LOVED IT. It was not easy, but once they got the hang of it, they really enjoyed. Even the oldest ones made things (I'm talking.. 17 and 18 year tolds doing crafts with us! Miracle!). We have started a theme in the programmes now of being a soldier in God's army. We have gone to Roman soldier style, and I made a fancy dress outfit for Fito, one of the leaders who comes with us to the Hogar. Last week we did a drama about the fall of Jericho. I was Rahab (luckily they don't know the story too well so that they know what that meant..!) but I just hid in a big cardboard Jericho and then was carried off at the end once the walls fell down! It was a nice easy role. Clearly I was the star though.

The garden is going well also, we now have a patio area, I will try to get pictures up soon, or put some on my facebook. Last time we went it was a bit difficult because half way through our time with them, the boys were called in for a meeting, and they were told that a few members of staff were leaving. The boys took it really badly, some of the younger ones were crying, and the older ones were teasing the others, I feel it was also a way of dealing with it. I can imagine it is difficult for them if staff changes, it is kind of like family leaving them again. They do not deal well with any kind of change well. We just had to carry on working even though they were not behaving well.

This weekend we are going on a retreat, as the whole team with a load of the leaders too. We are going about 2 hours out of Santiago which will be really nice, we can see some countrysiiiiideeeee. They say the temperature today will be around 39 and mid 30s for the rest of the weekend. There is a pool there so we will be having a really nice relaxing time hopefully. Sounds a little different to the weather in England maybe? Just to rub it in :) The retreat is lead by Steven who is going to be doing teaching about dammaged emotions.. think it could be quite an emotional weekend!

Please pray
+For the Hogar, pray for the work we are doing, and pray for the Tia's working there all day every day. Pray for the Children who have to go through some of the leaders leaving. Pray that we can support the whole situation and bring God's love in to it.
+Pray for the weekend away, pray that we will have a really good time as a group, and that we will learn alot and that we will be open to what God wants to do.
+Pray for safety when we're travelling today and also back on Sunday.

Thanks everyone for reading :) Love to you all, xxxxx