Mission training day

As regular readers may remember I am travelling to Israel/Palestine with highway projects to help with their mission initiatives amongst palastinian arabs. On Saturday I had a days training, and I found the whole day really exciting. Not only the anticiaption about going, but also the slight fear about going to a completely different culture. Learning about some of the cultural dos and don'ts that will be essential for me as I stay with some palestinian hosts. The work sounds like it will be fairly exhausting and also fairly 'off the cuff' as no full itinery is yet available for our work with young people in Reineh. This is a town adjacent to Nazereth and Cana, so no doubt Christ would've travelled through it on the way to a certain wedding feast. We will mainly be working alongside a number of agencies promoting reconciliation between palaestian arabs of differing faiths, listening to their stories and helping run fun activities to keep them amused. On our days off we also get chance to visit Jericho in the west bank, on the edge of the dead sea, travel on the sea of galilee and to the mount of the beatitudes amongst other things. I'm sure it will be a truely rewarding experience. During the worship at the training event I got a real sense of God in the place, an almost physical presence as we sang. So I trust that God too, is excited about these continued projects, and not just the impact it will have on those we meet, but also the impact they will have on us, particularly as we engage in conversations about faith. There are still places available on some of the september projects to Jordon, but if you can't make that I recommend you check out the highway projects website and perhaps apply for one of the missions next year.

It was also a really sunny day, and me and chris purchased a tent for our germany trip. In the eve I went to see x-men III with v, though we were disappointed with the disjointed storyline. Such a shame as the other two films are really enjoyable, and you can read so much allogories into the way that the mutants are treated in these films. They could be any oppressed member of society that society wants to 'cure' be that gays or asylum seekers.