What a difference a day makes!

Yesterday was hard, very hard, and I still marvel that we got through it with as many smiles as we did.

Today I saw a team go from being one of the most disorganized I’ve seen, to one of the most organized, all in the space of 3hours.

We had church in the morning – lively music, colourful sari’s, smiling faces, but it was a long hour and a half sitting cross-legged on the floor after the singing, listening to a service in Urdu. In true CRED-team style they soldiered through, but it did feel a bit like a lost opportunity for all those youngsters who don’t set foot in a church at home, and missed out on hearing the message here.

The afternoon was the time of great transformation – we were at the school where we will be all week, and having had a lunch of curry and rice, I went through the timetable of the week them again, just to clarify timings etc, and then left them to get on with preparing and sorting their classrooms.

Until this point the impression from them had been lack of knowledge about what they were doing, lack of preparation, and just a general ‘dizziness’ on it all, despite us doing the same sort of training and prep sessions that we do for all other teams.

But, give them their classrooms, and they were away! Blackboards decorated, posters up,  resources sorted – they even went round each others classrooms and let each other do a dry run and then receive positive feedback from their peers. I’ve not seen another team do that, but will definitely be encouraging it in the future as I now have a team who feel ready and sorted to face the morrow.

It was an incredible transformation, and the buzz this evening is really lovely to hear as they look forward to the week ahead.

Please keep praying for them; they are lovely, and I’m looking forward to seeing them grow this week, but the climate is hot and humid and the days are long.

Please also pray for the region – we have seen major flooding, rivers that burst their banks and several closed roads; and a lot of farmers will have lost their harvest, and thus their income – I assured them in church this morning that there are churches in UK praying for them, so please be one of those.

Thank you for all your support

Love and prayers

H