Planting Apples in Africa?

With only a few hours left in Senegal, we've been working hard today to process and wrap up our involvement as an advance team for the "Planting Together" vision. We've been reviewing some of the video footage that Marta has taken, making transcripts of the parts spoken in French, and writing translations that will be used for the subtitles. We've taken time to pray together, listen to the Lord and formulate a report of the people we've met and the possibilities that exist for future partnerships in outreach. Somewhat amazingly, after a whole week of having no electricity during daytime hours, we've had electricity all day today - which allowed us to work on our computers for editing video and translating transcripts. (As four of us sat together, working on our Macintosh computers, someone joked that it looked as if we were planting "Apples" in Africa!) Very soon, it will be time to pack our bags, head to the airport and take an overnight flight back to Madrid. Then, in just a few weeks' time, when we meet as a King's Kids European leadership team in Switzerland, we'll take more time to seek God's guidance concerning the right "next steps" in the development of this vision that He's put on our hearts. Thanks for your prayers for our processing together, and for smooth and safe travel back to Europe again.

I see that they've had a rather rainy week back home in Alhaurin while we were in Africa, but I'm thankful that I'll be going back to what looks like a pleasantly dry and sunny week ahead. I'm going to be house sitting and dog sitting at Villa Rehoboth while my friends are in the UK.

Sunday at Sea

Our time in Senegal is slowly drawing to a close. We've met many people and seen several different tree-related projects. We've chatted with missionaries and given them and their families little gifts from Spain. Above you can see 5 year old Dorcas, trying out a Spanish fan in the African heat. Today we went to a morning worship service at a local church and then we decided to take a boat trip out to Goree island. Its name means "good harbour" but Goree, now a national heritage site, used to be the "holding area" for African slaves before they were shipped across the Atlantic, separated from their families and sold to rich landowners who put them to work in the cotton plantations. Many thousands of Africans passed through there during two centuries of the slave trade, and many hundreds died there too. Several of our African King's Kids groups visited Goree back in 1996, when we were taking teams to work with African American churches during the Olympic Games in Atlanta. Part of our goal at that time was for African young people to be able to ask African Americans for forgiveness for the slave trade. (It wasn't only Americans and Europeans who traded in slaves; many Africans were also involved in capturing their brothers and selling them into slavery.) So today we had an opportunity to go to Goree island, and it was a sobering experience to visit a slave house like the one where thousands of men, women and children were imprisoned in squalid conditions before the slave trade was finally abolished in the 1800s. 
It was a beautiful day, though, and we enjoyed the short boat trip from the port of Dakar to the little island of Goree. Curtis, who took a Spanish KKI group to South Africa last year, said that it reminded him of the boat trip they took out to Robben Island to see where Nelson Mandela and others had been imprisoned during the apartheid years. Mandela made a visit to Goree in the 1990s, as did Pope John Paul, who asked the African people's forgiveness for the role that European Catholics had played in the trading of slaves.

Our overland adventure

Having used "taxis" for most of the week, we hired a six seater vehicle over the past two days for our longest trip of this week in Senegal - southwards to Mbouru and then further inland to Kaolack. José Luis was our designated driver, and I have to admit that I was very thankful not to be in his shoes: a considerable part of the journey between Fatick and Kaolack was on a road that basically consisted of non-stop potholes - some of them several metres wide and more than six inches deep! It was a busy road, and it was somewhat surreal to watch cars, huge trucks and donkey carts all "slaloming" from one side of the road to the other in order to avoid the parts that were impassable. I reckon that the vehicles spent at least as much time on the wrong side of the road as on their own side, and it could be slightly scary to see an enormous eighteen wheeler truck coming directly towards us on our side of the road.

Our first stop of the day was at a project called Beersheba - which takes its name from Genesis chapter 21, where it says that Abraham planted a tree and worshipped God. The Beersheba project lays more of an emphasis on "naturally assisted regeneration" than on mass planting of new trees. This process involves teaching farmers to protect the trees in their fields from animals, and showing them how to promote growth by pruning the trees regularly when they are still small. It was amazing to see how many trees there were in Beersheba, compared to the surrounding land - just as a result of several years of protection and pruning. After we'd walked around the plantation and all taken turns doing some pruning, the Beersheba project leaders took us into a local village where we all sat on the ground and ate Tiébou Dienn with a Serer family. As well as enjoying their food and hospitality, and hearing the father's testimony of how he came to know God, we were also able to see a Serer Bible. There are more then thirty different languages in Senegal, the most widely spoken being Wolof, but Serer is the first of these languages to have a translation of the entire Bible, both old and new testaments.

After lunch, we travelled further inland (on the hair-raising stretch of road) to visit a different project, where villagers were planting jatropha trees. When pressed, the kernels of the jatropha fruit produce an oil that can be used as fuel - rather like diesel. It was late by then, and already dark by the time we got back to Kaolack, so we spent the night in an inn there, and then began our return journey this morning. On the way, we stopped to visit a couple of Senegalese YWAMers who work in evangelism and discipleship in a village near Fatick. They were thrilled to see us and, as they showed us around their mission base, they pointed out that the hedge around the property had been planted in 1997 by a team of Senegalese King's Kids. They themselves have continued to plant some trees in the area over the past thirteen years, and they are very open to hosting small European teams who'd like to join them for tree-planting and evangelism. Soon, it was time to head back to Dakar where, before going home for dinner, we went out to the most western point of the African continent and took some photos of the pelicans and the sunset at the beach there. Tomorrow we'll be going to church in the morning, and then on Monday we'll be taking some time to pray over the many experiences and impressions we've had in our travels of the past few days. It has all been incredibly encouraging, and we need God's wisdom to discern which of these many openings and opportunities are the right ones to pursue at first.

On the road again

There has been no electricity here for most of the week, so there hasn't been much opportunity to send emails or do any blogging. But here are some photos of our trip yesterday to visit missionaries in Sangalkam - an hour or so from Dakar.  When we talked about the vision that God had given us to investigate the possibility of outreaches including tree-planting projects, they got very excited and said that some of the things we shared were a confirmation of things that God had also spoken to them about a new wave of people coming to bless Senegal in the years ahead. We enjoyed our visit with them, and we were also able to join their African students in eating the Senegalese national dish, Tiébou Dienn (pronounced cheebo-jen) which is a rice dish with fish and vegetables. Most Senegalese will serve the rice in a large dish, with the vegetables and fish in the centre. Half a dozen people will sit around and all eat from the same dish - either with their hands or with spoons. Today we'll be driving a couple of hundred kilometres further south and inland  to visit more tree-planting initiatives, and will be spending the night in the town of Kaolack, only returning to Dakar on Saturday evening. If we have electricity and internet again by then, I'll try to post some more news on Saturday or Sunday.

Images of Dakar

Today we remained in the city of Dakar and took some time to connect with local Christians - a pastor and some missionaries - to share the vision God has given us and to draw on their wisdom and experience concerning the customs and culture of this nation. This helps us to pray more intelligently for Senegal and also opens up possible partnerships for future outreach involvement together. Our videographer went out in the afternoon to snap some of the sights and sounds of this African city: the ladies carrying heavy loads on their heads, the donkeys and goats that wander in the sandy streets, the brightly coloured and overcrowded buses. One of our team members is in Africa for the first time in his life, and he confessed to being "shocked" at the sense of chaos and at the incredible amount of litter you see dumped everywhere: along the roadsides of the city, and piled up on Hann beach (near where we are staying.) It's true that if you've not been in Africa before, all the sights and sounds and smells can be rather overwhelming at first.
Some of the YWAM missionaries here are involved in medical ministry - at a clinic which they started many years ago when the mercy ship Anastasis came to Dakar. Today, a doctor came to treat some of the children that other Dakar YWAMers work with in a daily kids' club here in Hann Plage. Tomorrow we'll also visit another clinic, a little further inland, when we travel to meet people in another town.

Day one in Dakar

Yesterday was a day of travelling from Europe to Africa. From our departure airports of Malaga, Barcelona and Marseille, the five of us met up in Madrid and travelled together on the five-hour flight down to Senegal. It was almost midnight when we finally arrived at our destination. This morning after breakfast, we and our hosts met to pray for the day. I had to smile when I realised that the seven of us were from seven different nations: France, Switzerland, Spain, Scotland, USA, New Zealand and Holland. We stayed within the city of Dakar today, meeting with government officials and representatives from forestation initiatives. One of the these was the project known as the "Great Green Wall," which is a vision to build a wall of trees, 15 kilometres wide, across the breadth of the African continent, starting in Senegal, reaching to Djibouti, and passing through eleven nations on the way. There are opportunities for teams of volunteers to be involved in the tree planting season, while at the same time reaching out to local villagers with other help such as language lessons, computer classes, primary health care, sports, and so on. Later in the week, we'll be travelling to visit similar projects that are based in other parts of the country. Our goal is to identify possible partners who would be able and willing to host teams of young people among their seasonal volunteers. Thanks for your prayers as we continue to visit places and make contact with people. Electricity is a bit erratic (we had no electricity for eight or nine hours today) and when there's no electricity there's no internet. But I'll post some more news here on the blog whenever I can.

Off to Africa

Nearly fourteen years ago, when I was teaching on a child and youth ministry training course in Dakar, Senegal, the students and staff gave me this picture as a thank you gift. A picture of village life in West Africa, it's made of different colours of sand glued onto a canvas. Tomorrow I'll be heading back to Dakar for the first time since that previous trip, and I'd value your prayers as we visit various tree-planting initiatives and investigate future outreach possibilities. Perhaps you could pray for me whenever you clean your teeth. (See post for 21st January.)

House and hospitality

Our house has been rather a busy place this week. Last weekend we had a visiting missionary staying with us for a couple of days, mid-week we hosted some church folks as part of a special week of prayer meetings, and this morning saw the launch of a new discipleship group for pre-teen girls. Half a dozen 10 - 12 year old girls, some from church and some from Gabriela's class at school, gathered at our house for breakfast and a time of considering issues related to growing up and making decisions for the future. A different group, made up of pre-teen boys, will be meeting at a friend's house this year.

How often do you brush your teeth?

I have a friend in Polmont, Scotland, who says she always remembers praying for me when I made a trip in 1997 to speak on a PCYM (child and youth ministry school) in Senegal, West Africa. The reason she remembers it is because I had asked people if they would commit to praying for me - for my health, travel and ministry involvement - whenever they were brushing their teeth. Most people brush their teeth twice or maybe even three times a day - perhaps for a minute or two each time. If someone were to pray for me every time they cleaned their teeth, that would be three to five minutes of prayer every day. That might not sound like very much in itself, but it could add up to more then twenty minutes of prayer in the course of a week. And if twenty people were all praying while they brushed their teeth, I would be blessed by the fruit of six or seven hours of prayer. Imagine how powerful that would be!

In just a few days' time, I will be going back to Senegal for the first time since 1997. This time the trip is for the purpose of investigating possible outreach opportunities that would partner with tree-planting initiatives - allowing European and African young people to work side by side in blessing the continent and informally chatting about the love of God. Five of us from Spain and France are making the trip to Dakar next week - including a videographer who will make a promotional clip that we can show when recruiting people to be part of future outreach teams. We'll leave Europe on Monday 24th,  spend a week in Dakar and then return to Spain/France again on the first of February. Would you be willing to pray for me next week during this trip? Could you commit to praying for us when you brush your teeth every morning or evening? I'd appreciate your prayers for safe travel, and for good health while we're there. (I've known quite a bit of pain recently from the arthritis in my foot, so I'd value your prayers that this isn't a hindrance to any walking we'll be doing while visiting tree-planting projects.) You could also pray that we'll have good unity as a team, and that we'll make good contacts with possible future ministry partners in Senegal and other African nations. Thank you, and do drop me a line if you decide to be part of my teeth-cleaning prayer team next week. I look forward to giving you encouraging feedback from our trip.

All full up

What a very full week this has been. After we finished the Barnabas weekend with older missionaries from different parts of Western Europe, we entered into a special week of prayer and fasting with our local church. We've been meeting to pray in a different home every night; it was at our house on Wednesday.


Amidst the final preparations for my trip to Africa next week, there has also been a sudden influx of LDC applications over the past ten days; at one point we had thirteen new applications to pray over, and we realised that we had probably already reached capacity in terms of available housing and the number of people that can actually fit in the classroom for lectures or around the tables for meals. After accepting several new delegates this week, we finally had to call a halt and start turning people away. We're going to be a group of nearly 70 people for this year's LDC: that's 33 delegates, 16 staff, 12 children and 4 child minders. Some of those that we couldn't accept have asked to be put on a waiting list for next year, while others will be applying to LDCs in other parts of the world instead. We have leadership development courses this year in India, Thailand and Chile, and the possibility of new LDCs beginning in New Zealand and Canada during 2012.


By the way, the couple who've come to cook for our last two LDCs in Spain are unable to be with us this year, so do drop me a line if you or someone you know might be interested in coming to Malaga this year to shop and cook for part or all of the LDC. Please join us in praying that we can find a Christian couple or individual who would be able and willing to take on this ministry task. Thanks.

Feels like winter again

We had a beautiful sunny weekend for our Barnabas gathering. Temperatures were sometimes as high as eighteen or twenty degrees, and people enjoyed sitting outside to eat lunch. We had some good times of prayer and brain-storming about the sort of role that elder-type people can play within the context of the mission in Europe. It was also fun for me to chat with some of the people who had come from England and Ireland, as I'd worked with their children on King's Kids outreaches that I led twenty years ago.


Temperatures have suddenly dropped, though, and now it feels much more like winter again in Alhaurin. It's a cloudy nine degrees today and even colder in the evenings. We can see the snow on the mountains (thankfully not here in the town) and we're very grateful for the fireplace in our house. In less than a week's time, I'll be heading down to Africa, however, and so I'll be able to enjoy some warmer temperatures again. I'd appreciate your prayers for our Senegal trip, as we investigate possible future outreach opportunities for European and African young people.

Thankful for some Spanish sunshine

Well, in contrast to the weather of my previous post, we're having a lovely sunny week here in Alhaurin. Still chilly enough to warrant a fire in the evenings, but pleasantly warm-ish during the afternoons. That will be a blessing for the group of people who are arriving to spend the weekend with us at Villa Rehoboth. This "Barnabas Network" weekend is a gathering of a small group of older missionaries who have kind of an "eldership" role within the mission. Some of them are coming to us from colder places, like Britain and Austria, so they'll no doubt be glad to see some blue sky and sunshine. We're very thankful that we're not having our torrential winter rains this weekend. The seminar begins this evening, so I'll be busy with some trips to the airport in the course of the day.

Santa in the snow?

I looked out the front window this morning when it was still half dark, and was amazed to see that Santa Claus seemed to be making a return visit to our house! On closer inspection, though, it turned out to be my Mum in a red coat: she'd gone outside to sweep aside the four or five inches of snow that had fallen during the night. We heard on TV that Edinburgh airport is closed this morning, but open again by the afternoon. Fortunately, I'm flying from Glasgow airport on Tuesday, and it looks as if this most recent snowfall will be dispersed by rain over the coming days. Meanwhile, back in Alhaurin de la Torre, where there's been torrential rain for the past week, it looks as if it's only eight degrees warmer than our weather today... but I see that they're forecasting sunny days of twenty two degrees by the end of the week. That kind of weather would qualify as a summer heat wave in Scotland!

Dates in the diary

As I sat down this week to fill in the "year planner" in the front of my 2011 diary, I got rather a surprise to see that the year is already quite full with many and varied ministry events. It looks like there's going to be more travelling for me this year - with trips to Senegal in January, to Hungary and Switzerland in March, to Austria in June, and to PCYMs in Jordan and Togo over the summer months. There are also plenty of dates in the diary for Villa Rehoboth in Spain - with a leadership seminar or retreat roughly once a month throughout the year, and an eight-week period in spring that's filled up with a coaching seminar and the annual leadership development course (LDC.) We're also launching a new training course this year: a strategic leadership course (SLC) that will run for three weeks in November. This week I've been working on designing an information flyer for that. Also in November, I'm going to be hosting a KKI national leaders gathering (about 50 King's Kids leaders from all over Europe) in Málaga. So it looks like being an interesting year with a wide variety of projects. Let me take this opportunity to say thank you to those of you who pray for me throughout the year. May God bless you too in 2011.

New year's news

For those of you who got error messages when trying to open the links from my 1st January post, it's probably a web-sharing issue with the server, and I've sometimes been having hassle with it too. Try clicking on these images to enlarge and read my latest newsletter. 

Snow in California

I've been at a couple of meetings recently where everyone was turning their thoughts to the things that lie ahead for us in 2011. On Sunday morning, I was the speaker at the morning service of my home church in Falkirk. That's beginning to be kind of a regular fixture;  since coming back to Europe, I've been the preacher on the first Sunday of every new year and have had the privilege of helping people evaluate how they might grow closer to God and be ready for His working in and through their lives in the year ahead.


Then, yesterday, someone from church invited me to go with them to a ladies' meeting in California. (No, not the California on the west coast of the USA. This California is a little village about four miles south of Falkirk - "up the braes" as the locals would say. In fact, it's the village where my grandmother was born, but I think this was the first time I had been there since the 1960s or 1970s. A signpost at the entrance to the town welcomes you to the "sunshine village," but in fact it was snowing while we were there!) 


It was fun to go to this lunch and worship meeting which brought together women from different parts of Scotland, as it was held in the home of a couple I had known nearly twenty years ago when they and their two children were part of a King's Kids Christmas outreach that I was leading in the east of Scotland. To this day, I still share testimonies from that team if I'm speaking about how children and teenagers can hear God's voice. This family lived in Glasgow at the time, so it was quite a surprise to reconnect with them and discover that they'd moved to California.

Another new year, another new vision

Another new year, another new decade. Perhaps it's a sign of impending old age that makes me feel time has flown by since we entered the new millennium. Now the decade of 2000, 2001 is already behind us and the decade of 2010, 2011 has already begun.

Speaking of time passing, I also realise that this week has been the fourth winter Christmas and New Year's day since I came back to Europe. It's been three and a half years since I said goodbye to Africa and, to tell the truth, for much of that time I still missed it terribly. Africa gets under your skin and into your heart. I haven't been back there since leaving, and a big part of the reason is that I knew I needed to settle in Europe and really allow it to become home before going back to visit Africa again.

Anyway, after a gap of three and a half years, 2011 will see me making my first Africa trip since my last (2007) visits to South Africa, Madagascar and Malawi. As mentioned in my last post of 2010, I've just renewed my yellow fever vaccination because I'll soon be going to Africa again. In fact, I'll quite possibly be making two trips to West Africa in 2011.

During 2010, I resigned from the KKI roles that I still held in Africa and I became part of a new leadership team for King's Kids in Europe. We've been asking God to give us a project that would gather and mobilise young people from all over Europe... and we've begun to birth a vision that will involve partnership between Europeans and Africans over the coming years. That's the reason for my trip to Senegal at the end of January, and you can read more about that in my first newsletter of 2011. Click here (page one) and here (page two) to open and read about one of my new projects for the new year.