Mornings and early mornings...

I seem to have been so stiff when waking up in the early morning over the past couple of weeks. Of course, morning stiffness is pretty "normal" for me (because of my challenges with osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia) but it's seemed worse than usual over the past weeks. I wasn't sure whether it was a result of my early morning swimming, or from carrying firewood recently, or perhaps from spending a lot more time on the computer these two weeks, after the two previous weeks of seminars. Of course, it could also just be the changing season and the fact that the cooler, rainier weather is on the way.

Even so, I've continued with my commitment to early morning swimming at least once a week, and am trusting that I'll ultimately see the benefit of getting regular exercise over the winter months. I've also been working in the library every morning and am encouraged by the good progress I've managed to make with my computer work this month - including writing a project handbook for the SLC and preparing a powerpoint and workshop that I'll present at next week's KKI conference. My morning commitments seem to be bearing good fruit. As Ada said yesterday (speaking of a dance group she's working with at church): "No pain, no gain!"

A rather different morning activity will be happening this Saturday, when a large group of local ladies gathers at our church for breakfast. Our regular breakfasts (for the ladies who receive food packages from the ABC) haven't happened since we moved into our new building and didn't have a kitchen yet. But now we have a kitchen, and this Saturday will see the first ladies breakfast in our new church premises. More than fifty ladies (with more than fifty children) have signed up for that. Usually about half of them actually turn up on the day, so we're expecting that Saturday's breakfast will be attended by around 30 ladies and will have a kids programme for about 30 children. These ladies are usually a mixture of Spaniards, South Americans, Eastern Europeans and North Africans who live here in Alhaurín. Please join us in praying that they will be blessed and that their hearts will be softened towards the message of God's love and truth. Ladies from previous breakfasts have later come to Alpha Courses and have given their lives to the Lord. Two of them were baptised in August this year.

I'll be helping to drive ladies to and from the breakfast on Saturday, but I won't be very involved in the actual programme this time, as I've been preparing to leave for Germany after the weekend. That will be another early morning start. A friend is going to sleep over at my house on Sunday night, so that she can drive me to the airport at 4 o'clock on Monday morning. I'm flying to Munich, where we'll have two days of meetings as a KKI European leadership team. (That's Curtis, Andy, Gerhard and myself.) Then we'll drive to the Black Forest for the conference itself. And finally, on 4th November, I'll fly back from Stuttgart to Malaga - arriving on the same flight as some of our students coming for the Strategic Leadership Course that begins that day. Thanks for your prayers over the coming ten days of meetings, conference and travels. And thanks also for remembering the breakfast ladies in your prayers.