24hr rollercoaster.

I’ve heard it said that ‘’parting is such sweet sorrow’’ well if you ask me there’s nothing sweet about it it’s just sorrow.
I’ve never really been too bothered about goodbyes, I’m not sure why. I guess I’ve never really been away anywhere for a long period of time. I’ve never really had any hard goodbyes to say, (well except one which was hard but in a very different sort of way). But anyway, this time was flipping rough.
I’ve been aware of this trip for nearly a year now, I v been thinking about it praying, attempting to learn the language. Even right up to the week before fund raising, It hadn’t really sunk in. That this was the end of one season and the beginning of the next.
As I had to say goodbye to people, that a year or so ago I didn’t even really know, with the sound of nostalgia getting deafening in my ears, I was finding it flipping hard to let go. I had all kinds of thoughts, like I didn’t wanna go or that it wasn’t right or wasn’t the right time, but theses didn’t last too long. As people prayed and God spoke I knew this was the right track and it was for this very reason I started down this path in the first place so, you know, what can I say.
Saying that, it doesn’t make it any easier.

The last 24 hours in England become some of the highest and hardest ever, receiving some encouragements words and letters was amazing but the final goodbyes, although I do my best not to show it, just tore me up. I just feel blown away by how God has cultivated relationships that I find so hard to leave behind, and for this I am so thankful.

As I left my family in the airport it was monumental. We had all been talking random chit chat in a vain attempt to avoid the inevitable, but the time came all too soon. I can’t tell you how much my family have done for me and how they have supported me over the past 27 years. And to say good bye to little spoonface was like literally pulling off a leg(in the nicest sense of the term).

So I gets on the plan a bag of floating emotion, tears on hold all the while but trying not to look like a girl to the fella sittin next to me. Then as we lift in to the air I felt a slight sense of peace. As my natural thought rushed to ‘now you’re on your own’ a little someone pulled back words of encouragement to me that stated clearer than ever. You’re not on your own at all, this is right where I want you to be. Recently a kind and wise person wrote down for me, that everything was preparing me ‘ for such a time as this’Not that I was completely calm by then but faith had risen along with the plain and normality for a little while at least had been restored. Then I went to sleep

I met the legendary character Faton with his lovely wife at the airport and travelled past some familiar scenes, he relayed stories of expansion of the church, the emergence of an off shoot house church and various other projects and its captivating, to see God moving here as well as back home. I guess you sometimes get caught up in your own environment. But forget that actually, God is quite big. Good work God.

Accommodation nice, welcome nice, quick trip to the corner shop to get some supplies, super, all set. Pretty tired bye now so gonna kip out, thought I’d read the little book that I received before going with words and messages from the lovely people back home, boom, right back to that place again, not in complete sadness as I still realise I’m where I need to be but at the same time, flip. I’m just so fillipin emotional, I’m like a little girl, sorry folks, I just can’t help it. Then I read the greatest poem ever written (probably), also probably the sweetest yet strongest thing I’ve ever read, something handed to be just before I left and something that I’m sure, not just on this occasion, but for a long time to come will give me a massive amount of strength. And although its tears that fill my eyes, its hope, strength, truth, passion and expectance that fill my soul.
So thank you people of Thurrock, and further afield, in the immortal words of celebrated sports personality and actor Vinnie Jones ‘’It’s been emotional’’

Sorry it’s long; it’s just the best way to air out stuff you know. Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Love you