Well we fly back home today leaving Montevideo at 5.50pm, everything is pretty much packed and Jonathan is going to give us a lift upto the airport. Just a few more goodbyes to say and check our mail before we go. It still feels strange that we´ve finished here and are heading back, but it will be nice to see our families, as we´ve definitely missed them. But it´s going to be strange adapting back to life in England after our time here.

We´ve had a nice week in Montevideo, but it´s been strange - having left Salto, and finished, but not having gone home yet. It´s been great to catch up with everyone down here. Also we managed to time it just right for Daniel´s birthday party which was great fun.

Our time in Uruguay is coming to an end, the last 9 months seem to have flown by really quickly, it's incredible. It's interesting to look back over the time we've spent here and see what's happened. Firstly, I'm amazed at how my Spanish has improved in the time we've been out here - well I say Spanish, more like Rio-de-la-plata-ish. When we came out here, I could only understand a few words of spanish and speak about the same, where as now, I have had conversations with people, taught the communion group, and preached (well writing it in English and translating it first!). God has definitely helped me to get to this point - I couldn't have done it on my own I'm sure. I still find myself falling into the same mistakes in the language though, particularly when praying in church!

Looking at the work we've been involved with, the Youth group appears to have the most obvious changes - when we first started it, the kids were all very shy, and didn't like to take part in discussions or to pray at the end of the session. Now most of them are taking part, and last week all of them prayed aloud at the end of the session. Also the homegroup in the parish has grown in confidence and are now meeting more frequently.

I'm certainly going to miss the people we've met out here, especially the kids. It's going to be quite strange to go back to my old routine. Going back to living in a bigger city, having to get up and drive an hour to work every morning.

To be continued as I think of other things...

Ingredients

• thin Beef steak- cut into small strips or pieces

• small piece of Ginger

• Cumin

• Carrots

• Broccoli

• Green Pepper

1. Heat some oil in a pan, and add the ginger and cumin.

2. After a few seconds cooking, add the Beef.

3. Once the beef is cooked, add the vegetables and stir fry for about 5 minutes.

Served in the picture with Egg fried rice:

• 1/2 medium sized Onion (finely chopped)

• 2 Eggs (beaten)

• 1/2 cup of rice

• 1 cup of water

1. Heat the rice with 1 cup of water until the water has boiled right off.

2. Fry the onion until starting to brown, then add the rice.

3. Mix the rice and onion and fry briefly, before adding the egg.

4. Mix the egg in with the rice and onions.

So I arrived in Montevideo at 6.30 on the overnight bus from Salto, to go to the American Airlines office where I thought it would be just a case of them telling me the options and prices for them, and me selecting the one we wanted. I was wrong! I got to the office, and showed the lady in there the tickets, and she looked them up on the computer. Aparently there wasn't anything to tell her whether or not I could change the route, it just said I could change the dates for free - If I wanted to do anything else I had to speak to the original travel agent (in England), and get them to get the airline office in London to put the details on the computer system! So I went to an internet cafe and phoned our travel agent (Key Travel), who took a few details from me, and then said "you're a purple, I'm going to have to transfer you" - whatever that meant! Once she found that the other department was busy, so decided to try and help me herself, so I found out that we couldn't change the route - so what would have been the point of transfering me? In the end I got the dates changed so we don't have a stopover in Miami anymore, so that we can get through Miami before it gets too close to 4 July.

Yesterday I rang up American Airlines to find out if we could change the route of our flight or not, and they got so far with it, even found all the details for our tickets on their computer and then decided that they needed to see the actual tickets! So I asked if fax would be acceptable, but no, so here I am in Montevideo. The plan is to post some of our stuff back home from here too as it should be more reliable. Hopefully we'll be able to change the route of our flights to go back via Sao Paulo instead of Miami, as that would be a much shorter route, and wouldn't have to spend as long waiting around. Just have to see what they say today, and how much they want to charge me for it. Although looking on their website, the other route looked cheaper than the route we've currently got tickets for - so hopefully that means we should be able to do it :)

Yesterday I looked at Pentecost with the kids - firstly I asked them "what day is it tomorrow?" and got answers such as Palm Sunday, or Day of selling 'Pasteles'! When I told them it was Pentecost, only one of them could say it and had to teach the others - despite most of them having been in the church for at least 2 years! We went on to look at Acts 2:1-13 and talked about what had happened - which went well. Then I asked them who the Holy Spirit is - to which the first answer was God, which I was pleased with. We then followed on by looking at John 16 - where Jesus told the disciples of the work of the Spirit. In the end they seemed to have a good understanding of the basics about Pentecost - we'll see next week how much they remember. At the end we finished off by doing pictures of Pentecost using tissue paper as tongues of fire.

Snudge and Des

We had a really encouraging home group on Tuesday this week - it was an answer to prayer! The group has decided to meet ever week, whether or not Gilberto (the vicar) is around. This shows quite a growth for the group, as they are always very reliant on him, and the studies often just end up to be him preaching. It was a really good study on John 1:35-42 - where Andrew goes and tells his brother Simon Peter that they've found the Messiah. It led onto all sorts of things in the area of how can we encourage growth in the church by different ways of inviting people - both within the existing congregation and outside. It was also interesting afterwards to here some of the concerns of the people in the group, and to realise that the same concerns are found here as back home - the small group who appear to do everything without any credit and keep getting given more to do, and the larger group whose involvement is restricted to services.

The study also made me think about the phrase that John used: "The Lamb of God" - What would it have meant to the people at the time? Would it have been understood in the same way as we do? Clearly the Jews would have know of the lamb as the sacrifice at the passover, but would they have made any link between this and a person being referred to as "Lamb of God"? It obviously had an impact on John's followers, but they'd heard his other teachings about Jesus, and his testimony of Jesus' baptism.