At last some hint of a former reality has returned. Karen is taking her youth group to Uganda in the summer. She (they) needs to raise 11,000.00 STG to cover the costs of the trip. One of the ways they are planning to raise money is sponsored exercise - on exercise machines. They have been collecting the machines, and will do the exercise over Lent. We took two machines to Luton that we had collected from members of Christ Church to help them out. The just giving link is:http://www.justgiving.com/pamoja09

Heres what she says on FaceBook:

A bunch of us are heading to Uganda in August 09 and we need to raise some money!
Pamoja is the Swahili word for 'together'. We at Pamoja have a passion and a call to see the world changed through working with and in the global community. We want to do life together with young people in Uganda, by hanging out, learning the culture and being real in every situation. We are passionate about team-work and encouraging one another to grow as responsible human beings.

You'll see most of the team members on the side (with the exception of Laura, Josh and Stephan; who are allergic to Facebook). Some of us don't EVER do exercise, this for us will be a mountain to climb. It's for a good cause though!

Jo was at football, so we couldn't go until after 5pm. Jo would have to drive too - on the motorway - an experience she doesn't enjoy. We arrived about 6:30pm, and Karen took us to a restaurant close by, which was full, so we went to another in town.

It was so good to be in a normal conversation, not forever talking about shoulders and pain, although Karen did say she had not been able to find anything on psychological methods for dealing with pain. There were many topics covered, but at one point the discussion got quite heated. Liz is involved in outreach work at a youth club, where she has been left in charge because of illness. It is not even part of her job! She has had to ban some very disruptive boys - they are always confrontational and only appear to come to cause trouble and break things (like doors!). We all agreed that they need to be shown Gods love and what Christ has done for them. We couldn't agree on how, and what might be done with the people that God has in the situation. We couldn't even agree that banning them was the best solution, but the others at the youth club also need to be shown Gods love, and that is happening in the context of the activities.

The discussion went on for a while, so much so that the restaurant staff left us alone, with empty plates in front of us for a long time.

We got out of the restaurant later than expected, and home later than expected. So I was up later than expected, but got to church on-time - a good thing too, as I was leading today. Another small return to normality. Warner, an ex-bank manager, spoke about money.