The days after a training week or the visit of a short-term mission team, are both blessedly and strangely quiet. Today was such a day. Sara, the secretary, has turned up at her usual hour and is elbow deep in receipts and spreadsheets in “the office”. Pedro, maintenance and grounds-person, wanders by with machete in hand, off to do battle, so he says, against the greenery, again. He tells me there´s a freshly harvested pineapple with my name on it in the Dining Room. Yummy. I get on with some light-weight house-keeping: gather up the bedclothes from the dormitories to be sent for laundering (in this case, Deysi, my neighbour has already asked to do it by hand so she can earn a bit of cash); collecting all the left-over hand-outs, bits of paper and assorted stationery items from the classroom to be filed and put away for the next time; sorting and disinfecting the kiddies toys as best as possible; bringing up the bits and bobs lent to the house where the Poynton B.C. team ladies had stayed for the last two weeks (wellies, a saucepan, a cooking gas canister etc.). A very different kind of morning from a week ago.
Top three moments from the last two weeks, in ascending order:
- Watching pink dolphins breach within metres of our boat whilst sat in the mouth of the River Samiria, just where it joins the River Marañon;
- Last Friday, when two fish-farm specialists from Iquitos came to talk to our training-week pastors about how to set-up their own domestic-scale fish-farms. They were followed by pastoral couple, Pr. Agustín and Hna. Isulina, also from Iquitos, who have already done this and who shared some of their personal experiences. It was a really good day for demonstrating God´s holistic mission.
- Getting three ladies from Poynton B.C. to act out a drama, on several occasions in different locations, to children and adults, showing how poop can get into our mouths via dirty hands and make us sick. The stars of the show were “Dad”, who demonstrated some expert squatting and open defecation and “Chicken”, who traipsed through the poop and promptly traipsed it through the house and over the baby, who had been playing innocently there.
Conclusion: wash your hands before you eat and after you poop! I´m sure I don’t need to tell any of you…
Love Laura x
Laura-Lee Lovering 
Hi Laura Glad to hear that you are keeping busy!!!! Good to hear that you will be joined by some new missionaries after their training in Birmingham. We have had Harvest in Mount Pleasant with donations of tins for food bank and a local Christian charity which helps former prisoners and drug addicts to get back on their feet. Our new children and families worker is getting busy, her first event will be a Fancy Dress Light party on 31st October. I’m sure you get the significance of that. She has also got us knitting sheep! She needs 20 for Christmas – I know no more than that. On a personal level life is getting busy as our son is getting married in March. He and his future wife are both 35, they met on a Christian dating web site. She lives in Newport, at the moment he is still in London and looking for a job in South Wales or perhaps even Bristol. I am busy making bunting to decorate the church where they are getting married and where the reception will be held. We do enjoy having your updates. Glenys