Finishing with fondue... and with thanksgiving

Swiss cheese fondue has been a favourite dish of mine since the first time I worked with a YWAM training school in Switzerland - way back in the early 1980s. So it was a special treat for me yesterday when we decided to have fondue as a typical Swiss meal to bring an end to these weeks of child and youth ministry school here. Our PCYM staff, students and families form a group of more than thirty people, so the dining room needed to be set up with many small tables, with a fondue set on each. Then, after our special Swiss meal, the "dessert" was made up of different kinds of sweets and specialities from all the nations that we come from. (I brought tablet and shortbread from Scotland, the Dutch brought liquorice and peppermints, the Swiss gave different kinds of chocolate, and there was also a variety of different sweets and chocolate from Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Belgium.) It was a lot of fun.

When I've lived in other countries - like Scotland, South Africa and now in Spain - I've sometimes asked Swiss friends who came to visit me to bring a pack of ready-mixed cheese fondue with them, so that I could enjoy a taste of Switzerland there in that other country. I've never owned a proper fondue set, but have always "made do" with a saucepan or some other way of heating up the cheese. So it was a lovely surprise yesterday when we, the school leaders, were presented with a thank you gift for our work in organising and leading this course... and the gift included a genuine earthenware fondue set. I'm looking forward to being able to enjoy cheese fondue sometime when I'm back in Spain again.

And so our PCYM is coming to an end. We've been having a couple of days of "debriefing" and evaluation, when we can look back at the past nine months and be encouraged by hearing each other's testimonies of what we have learned and how we have grown in God. Yesterday we took time to pray for the different nations that the students are working in, and today we'll have a special time of commissioning and prayer for each individual student. We've also made kind of a "diploma" for each student and each of their children who have been part of the course since the beginning of the year, and we'll have a presentation of these certificates before finishing the day with a time of worship and thanksgiving to God. Our prayer is that these students can take the principles they have learned in PCYM, and apply them to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of young people and families in Europe and beyond.