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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