cheese

hey all!

so this is christmas, and what have you done? another year over, a new one just begun!...yeh we're feeling a tad hyper from tiredness haha... :-S

Saturday - we went to visit some of Alannah's old neighbours and her old coordinator from her gap year. Alannah was really excited about catching up with Majella and her daughter and we were both inspired to hear about her vision for her work as a pastor's wife in the local community Alannah used to live in. Her dedication and commitment to God's will and works never ceases to amaze us! Alannah was initially a little sad when she heard Majella had left Oasis but can see now that it was time for her to leave and that God has bigger and better plans for her! Good time! :) Prayers.com
The family that Alannah and her team used to live next door to (Jonathon, Cherubin, Sharon, Solomi) has had a baby since she was last in india called Priscilla. She's ADORABLE! Yolly enjoyed meeting the family and playing with the kids. Solomi is still as hilarious as ever...'come play,no? come play. come come COME!' Sharon is now 9 and much taller and has amazing English!

Bob Fitts - don't know if any of you have heard of him...he's an american worship leader. We got invited to see him play with some of our church friends and yeh...once you get over the initial cheese and patronising voice, he's alright :) God definitely used the concert to speak to many of us so that was great :) God uses everyone :)

Sunday - church was good. The service was about surrendering our lives to God's will in every aspect of our everyday lives. We both felt it really speak to us and challenge us about how we spend each day.
We played Pictionary on a wipe board in the evening at Adonai Church, at the cafe evening. We both got very competitive and scared some of our own team not just the opposing one! Alannah claims that she was toning down her competitiveness too...eeek! Yolly drew an actually very good picture of an astronaut but unfortunately Alannah and the others totally failed to see what it was...we kepts thinking it was an eskimo...oh dear...

Yesterday (Tuesday) was our last day with Oasis and was very sad :( We had to say goodbye to the 5 lovely women we had been teaching english to everyday for the past 2 weeks. We'd got to know them really well and have created great friendships. On Monday's lesson we taught them about directions so we used their last lesson as a practical getting them to direct us to a certain street (which involved us nearly risking our lives a few times by incorrect directions made hahahaha). The girls did really well on the whole though and certainly picked up the phrase 'follow the bend'. After they directed us to a certain point, we took over and directed them into Cafe Coffee Day, which is the equivalent of Starbucks here. They were really surprised and very excited since we didn't realise that most of them had never been able to afford to go to such a place before. We got them to order drinks and something to eat in english and then were really blessed to receive cards and jewellery as goodbye presents.
Each of our cards had a little message from each girl in it in english and then a bible verse which they had prayed about. Yolly's was about being a fisher of men, which was amazingly cool because of her calling as an evangelist!! And Alannah's was about bearing fruit, which was also amazingly cool because God had been speaking to her a lot about the same thing over the past few months too! Good times..again! :)
We went to Latha's house in the evening (she leads the community project we were teaching our girls in and is an old friend of Alannah) and had some well tasty food! Yolly ate with her hand for the second time and actually didn't get it all over her face, she's very proud! We had a brilliant time there and enjoyed meeting Latha's family and playing with her nephew and nieces. We were also given amazing head massages too...mmmmmm...

Alannah has enjoyed having freezing cold hokey cokey showers again because of the frequent power cuts (for those of you who don't know what she means, check out her last blog from her gap year). PLEASE PRAY for India. The monsoon is delayed and is causing crop failure and many power cuts. Delhi is especially bad, they have no electricity at all and hardly any water. The Govt here are trying to work out ways of transporting water there but if this continues, the whole of India is in mega trouble. Please pray for the monsoon! Thanks!

Today we rested in the afternoon and napped for 2 hours because we were so worn out after our busy schedule of being in several places in one day every day. Tomorrow we will begin to work full time at the school and make resources for them in the afternoons :)

Right its time for us to go. Off for another meal out at some of the Oasis staff's house - Beth and Charles and their daughter Jessie who's now THREE woah!

Lots of love! Thank you so much for the prayers!
Yolly and Alannah :)
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The past 5 days - Yolly's update

Hi everyone, sorry ive taken so long to get back to you!
Alannah and I have been settling into our new routine, which involves helping at a preschool teaching the alphabet and numbers and teaching English to help train preschool teachers with Oasis.

Though this might not seem to be a busy day, getting to and from the different projects, along with the heat, and all the planning and preparation we have to do in our spare time has worn us out BIG TIME. Please pray for good rest and enough time to relax and enjoy ourselves as well as spending time with God.

I'm so thankful that God spoke to me on Sunday at church and challenged me to be honest with Alannah about how I was feeling because it meant that she could be honest with me too and it meant we are more comfortable with each other now and are closer and stronger because of it. We had a fun evening with the youth at another church playing games like uno, laughing until our stomachs ached and riding on the back of motorbikes (without helmets!)

I feel that we've started to bond more with the kids and the women who we've been teaching and I feel like I understand my colleagues more. They are extremely faithful and serving women and men of God!

Because we're feeling quite rundown at the moment, we're worried we're more prone to getting ill especially since many of our friends here have come down with a prolonged virus, which has been devastating to their work. Please pray against illness for us, we'd be really grateful!

Another prayer-point would be in meeting up with and spending time socialising and catching-up with Indian friends. We're feeling the strain of having a lot of work to do and not enough time to meet up with people.

Alannah was delighted to see 2 of her past students from the preschool she used to work in with Oasis during her gap year - Priyakumari and Stephen. There will be many pictures of these 2 kids to come!!!

We love you all and thank you SO MUCH for supporting us and praying for us!
God Bless you and speak to you soon!
Love Yolly and Alannah xxxx

Alannah's update

Hey people! This is my insight as to how things have been. Yolly shall be sending her update soon too :)

I don't have much time since again tea will be ready soon...

It is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good to be back. It hit me for the first time that I was actually going back as the plane landed in Bangalore so that was a bit weird and suddenly thought, 'wait, am i sure i want to come back?' at which point it was too late of course but of course now im tres glad i did!!!

One day into being back and I was straight back into the indian accent, lingo and head wobble. All my indian friends have been laughing at me about it and about the fact i still remember the city very well. I've had some interesting 'compliments' since meeting everyone again. The best included, 'you looking a little chubby now', 'hey, wow, you now have blossomed no?' and my favourite, 'wow, you actually look pretty now!' The genuine look of surprise on this person's face as they said it made my DAY hahahaha.

Yolly is just amazing. Thought she's still very tired from the flight, she's already settling in really well. She loves the food and spice and is already getting on well with everyone here too. She even argued with an auto driver the other day because he was ripping us off, i just stood back amazed!

We're working part time with Oasis in the afternoons for 2 weeks teaching English to young girls in Doddigunta (a local slum community) and are running a girls club on Mondays for them. Then the rest of our time is spent at Grace's preschool since she needs more help considering there are only 2 teachers with 75 young children!

Erm dont know what else really to say now...hmmm...im back at Hope Chapel church on Sunday and am really really looking forward to that since most of my indian friends go there. It is really strange being back without Hattie and Becky, i just can't get my head around it at times! I've shown Yolly loads of the places we used to go to especially around the areas where we're living and working and its so strange not having the other 2 with us!

Prayers
- good health, no illnesses yet and hopefully none to come!
- we make the most of our time here but don't push ourselves to do too much at once since we're tiring out quite easily because of our work and the weather.
- we have oodles of fun!
- we will continue to seek God and listen to Him/learn new things from Him :)

Dinner's ready, must dash! byeeeeeeeeeeee

A quick update :)

Hey everyone!

Thank God that we've arrived safely in Bangalore and have a BEAUTIFUL house/room we're staying in :)

Please pray for:
- energy, we're really tired!
- settling down
- a continuation/building of good relationships
- NO ILLNESSES - Alannah's had enough bad experience of that from her last trip and we're only here for a short while and so want to make the most of it.
- We continue to seek God, His will and learn new things about Him.

Sorry we can't chat long but dinner is ready!
We shall set aside some time to give you a proper update soon :)

Much love to you all!
Yolly and Alannah xxxx