Ups and downs

Living surrounded by mountains, ups and downs are kind of inevitable really. And life has been full of ups and downs in other ways too since we got back from our visit to the UK. 

Back in the days when I had to do performance appraisals with staff, we were always told to present feedback in a “good news – bad news – good news” sandwich. So here are some of the ups, downs and ups of the last couple of months. 

Ups…  

• Graduating our five phase 2 students on to phase 3. At every stage we celebrate achievements with speeches, certificates and cake. And of course we had to have sugar paste tomatoes on our cake. The highlights of graduation for me were a beautiful song from one of the students, Ntsiki, and a very moving speech from Shepherd, another student. 
• Welcoming Peter and Glenys Barham from Woodgreen Evangelical Church, our home church in the UK. They spent a week with us and blessed us ok so many many ways. 

Downs…

• Health (again!) as we went through a bad reaction to anaesthetic for poor Zoë, meaning that a day op turned into a three day stay. We are so thankful for access to good healthcare and for health insurance. Izzy has had a series of viruses and then Zoë had mumps.  Maybe just all a coincidence but we have been aware more than once that the devil doesn’t play fair and is not above attacking our children. 
• We said goodbye to Melody, one of our students, who was finding it too hard to juggle the course and her childcare. We miss her but I keep in touch and we met up again just yesterday for a chat. We also said goodbye last week to Shepherd who has left to take up a great opportunity as a telecoms engineer. His gentle and godly spirit will be much missed by students and staff alike.  
• It was also hard to say goodbye again to friends and family in the UK. 

And ups…

• God has answered prayer in a mighty way in the lives of our students as we see them growing spiritually. This has been very visible over the last few weeks when a difficult situation has been turned around completely and one of our students is visibly transformed as he has been coming to understand the power of love and forgiveness. His previously stern demeanour has been replaced by a much more joyful spirit and a new closeness with the rest of the team. God is so good!  There are other stories of how our students are finding their families affected for good by the growth experienced at Living Hope. God is growing so much more than vegetables in that place!
• We welcomed a new SIM family to the valley today and look forward to getting to know them and their three teenage daughters better. 
• We see answers to prayer in so many ways, from changed lives to firemen’s poles – you’ll have to wait for another time for that story. And this is such an encouragement to us, not least as we look ahead to next year and trust God that he will provide the shortfall in our support. 

The Bible has many references to mountains and valleys and we treasure them as we live and serve here in our valley, knowing that even if the mountains should crumble into the sea, our God will remain good and faithful as he has always been. 

Thank you for reading, for praying, for supporting, for encouraging.