The Journey: January 2013

On the 21st December I started out on a journey that I thought would take a maximum of 30 hours to get home! What I didn't take into consideration is that when one flight is delayed you miss the next. This happened after I flew from Belo Horizonte to Lisbon, Portugal. My next flight was delayed by about 3 hours, add that to the original 4 and a half hours scheduled waiting between flights... is a lot of waiting, meaning that when I finally arrived in London, yes I had missed my flight and there were no more that day, I had to wait overnight and got another one on Sunday morning and arrived home after about 43 hours of travelling!!

But my title says Blessings... you may question, where is the blessing in that!!?? In fact there are a few.... one was the little haven in a hotel that my airline arranged for me. So for about 6 or 7 glorious hours I spent in luxury! It's amazing how wonderful it can feel, walking on carpet, taking a shower in a 'sparkling' bathroom, sleeping in a double bed with crisp clean sheets and of course having a cup of tea!! God is good....

The next blessing was the welcome I got, after a little confusion concerning terminals.... Gareth, Bex and Louise came to greet me!!

cold and windy greeting!!!

And finally after that long trip.. what made it all worth it was arriving home! THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME!! What a blessing, to be able to come home!! And to add to the fact of being at home, of course it was Christmas time, and there is no better time to be at home. Family and friends all come together, from close and afar. I was so pleased that even though I missed the morning service with the kids acting the Christmas story, I was able to attend the Carol Service that evening and celebrate the true meaning of Christmas. The birth of Jesus Christ our Saviour.

It really was so special to spend Christmas at home and I thank all who participated to make that possible. I am so grateful.

And there is all the other wonderful things that I have been doing since I have been home; coffee with friends, movie nights with cousins, scrabble with Grani, dinner with friends, seeing my friends' kids a year older, meeting new babies that were born while I was away, seeing engagement rings of those who got engaged throughout the year, seeing the homes of my friends who got maried this year, being a part of Wes' launch of his new EP, spending time with my church family and of course on top of all that and more... eating!!! There have been many blessing so far and I still have a few weeks left that I know will be filled with Blessing because our God is good, I'm looking forward to the many other catch ups and hang outs that I have planned and those that are not yet planned!

I return to Belo Horizonte on the 27th January. If you are in Northern Ireland and would like to hear more about my work, I am doing an update in Ballynahinch Baptist Churchs mid-week prayer meeting, Wednesday 16th January at 8pm but feel free to come a little earlier at 7:30pm for a small sample of brazilian food and coffee.