Colorado trip...

After the wedding I decided to take a couple of days to visit a church that’s been supporting me for the past two years. I had never been to the church before and thought it was high time to pay them a visit! So, off I went, to the airport and before I knew it the plane landed at Denver airport where I was greeted by an old family friend and his daughter. It was great to see them again. They live about 30 min from Denver in a place called Parker.

I spent July 12 – 16th in Parker, Colorado and absolutely loved it. The house I was staying at was lovely and the family I stayed with is great (you know who you are!). There was a good balance between work and fun. We started with a business lunch- how bad can that be ??? : ) Then we went to the church. It’s a church of 4000 people; I knew it’d be big, but I was still a bit overwhelmed. It is amazingly big, well organized, etc. It was great to be able to meet people that I had been receiving emails from etc over the past two years. The next day we had a breakfast meeting, discussing possibilities of church involvement in the Sierra Leone project. And after that it was time for some relaxation- I was treated to a couple of fun things at a local spa. Very nice!

On Saturday we went hiking in a place called Evergreen. It was absolutely beautiful. The mountains were picturesque and even though my fellow hikers said there wasn’t much snow on the mountain tops, it looked like plenty to me : ) I guess you can tell which one of us lives in Africa! While there, I also went to Denver for an evening. We actually went to an improv comedy night which was hilarious. Great fun!

The work related part of the trip involved speaking in the children’s services. There are about 400 children that go to the three different services; one on Sat evening, and two on Sun morning. It was pretty high tech and I had to show up ahead of time to get wired up with a microphone etc. After my presentation I also had to ‘run down’ to the adult service to make an appearance there when they introduced me. I spoke at all three children’s services; showing a power point presentation with lots of pictures of the house, the clinic, my church, and cultural stuff (doing laundry in the river, carrying water, carrying baskets of fruit on your head etc.) I think they enjoyed it.

Of course there was time for questions & answers afterwards. There were many questions about reptiles in particular (are there snakes, have you seen a snake, how big are the lizards etc). And then some very thoughtful questions such as: what do the people there wear, what do they eat, do you have a television, why did you go to Africa. And then the random questions: are your mom and dad black or white. It was fun to be able to share with the children about Sierra Leone. Their theme for the month was Contentment: being happy with what you have. So that fit in really well, when showing them the cultural differences. Hopefully some missions seeds were planted.

To sum up my trip to Colorado...AMAZING and I’ll be back.

PS: my brother and sister-in-law are moving to Colorado which gives me even more incentive!