Final day at "Hands" - Monday 21st May 2018

So my final day at Hands, and as usual on a Monday morning we had Men’s prayers at 7am before the Hands meeting at 8.00. The small group that I had been drafted too last week had prepared the focus of the meeting and it was two fold.

Firstly we wanted to pray for each of the service centres across Africa from the Lagos service centre in Nigeria in the North down through 2 service centres in the DRC, 1 in Malawi, 3 in Zambia, 1 in Mozambique 2 in Zimbabwe 2 in South Africa and 1 in Swaziland. Each of these Service centres support about 6-8 Care points.

I volunteered to create a power point of them. With a picture of the team and some prayer points sent on by each team. As we prayed members of the Hands team from the Hub stood up if they had recently been to or supported the service centre Team.

The second half of the morning was a communion service and I had suggested that we sing “Here is Bread, Here is Wine” unfortunately no one else new it, and so a quick WhatsApp to AJ and he recorded me off his piano and provided me a backing track.  It is amazing sometimes what can be achieved.

Following these meetings it had been decided by the Comms Team that they would film me for a Facebook item in July. I am sure that I don’t want to hear myself played back but we achieved this, and I moved on to have a final chat / debrief with Tommy, who had been my host for the week. My stay was nearly at an end but the final thing before saying goodbyes was to go for lunch with George and Carolyn.

People asked me if I had achieved what I set out to, but I am not sure that I actually had a goal like that, I was responding to Cats invitation to come to Hands when not responsible for a team and when I could take time to be at the Hub to see things happening in the everyday setting. To this end my stay has far exceeded expectations, I have had a full week, both at the Hub and also out in the community. Seeing the Mafambisa Care point working so well was a particular highlight.

The Cupboard will continue this blog in 56 days time, we will start seeing their introductions before that. Please pray for them as they tackle their A level exams and make their final preparations to come to Africa.