All there is and ever has been is this endless stream of tasks, keeping me busy from the morning and into my offcial relaxing time, up to 19h30, 20h00 every night this week… At least that’s what it feels like! At least one thing was accomplished, namely that I mailed the books for the pastors on the book programme on Friday. I still need to send hard copies of the conference info to about 300 people, and I am kicking myself because from being stressed out I tackled this whole job from the wrong end, had too many copies of the brochure made and let some errors slip in. It looks slipshod, and I hate it, but it’s far too late to do anything about it. Now I’m just hoping people will either not notice or have patience with my blunders… I got a nice little reprieve on Friday afternoon, because the girls at the orphanage had gone to a youth camp and we couldn’t meet. It would have been nice to know before I got there, but o well! 
Had a movie night with some friends on Friday night - very relaxing, but very late. Yesterday morning is hard to account for, I got started slowly and know I did some work, but mostly little things in the flat and in my room, trying to organise the chaos that is my life right now. The girls’ group was interesting, there were only 5 girls and all about 13 or younger, they’re all friends of a little girl in the church who is actually too young for the group herself, in my opinion, but likes coming and loves bringing friends. We did a very simple craft, covering empty cans with gift wrap to make a cute pencilholder (thanks Lynn, my personal craft-adviser!) which didn’t take very long, although it’s amazing how challenging something like drawing straight lines and cutting out neatly can be for kids who don’t get to do stuff like that in school when they’re young. So I was actually glad that we didn’t finish too ridiculously early. After that back to home and more work…
This morning one of my great total of 2 Mozambican friends came to church with me. Claudia and Rosalina are from Beira and are studying at the Catholic University here. I don’t know how, but they started going to the same Bible study as I, and now that I’m in the flat they live a stones’ throw away in the bairro behind the Makonde buildings. Claudia was sick, so she didn’t come, and Rosalina overslept, but although we were late at least we made it. It was quite interesting - our one leader, Senhor Arnaldo, is the only one of our preachers who is fond of asking a lot of questions in his preaching. In our small, demure congregation, these are mostly treated as rhetorical questions and everyone just waits a moment or two before he supplies his own answer. Rosalina’s voice was quite prominent this morning as she eagerly piped up with the answer a number of time! Since our Bible study actually has very little Bible teaching, I never saw this side of her before. Just at the end of the message, a fairly large lizard that must have been walking around above our heads, dropped onto my lap. Luckily, though disgracefully, my mind had wandered a bit and I just stared at it and then brushed it off, too deep in reverie to scream from fright…
I would really appreciate prayer for the following:
- All the administrative tasks that I need to get done before I leave for South Africa - I would like to have all strings tied and everything in place to start Conference preparations when I get back
- That the Lord would call and bring every pastor whom He wants at the Conference to Nampula this year!
- That I would find grace, time and ideas to prepare my presentation that I need to bring at Constantia Park Baptist Church’s Missions week on the 9th of May
- That I would be able to relax and find joy in my Saviour again instead of feeling vaguely unhappy all day long because of unresolved work issues
