Last weekend I was away on one of the Funky Frog camps for leaders.

As the first Funky Frog Clubs were established back in 2011/12, we realised that the leaders could use ongoing training and support both to expand their knowledge and skills but also to encourage them to persevere in their work with the children. We came up with the idea of an annual camp for the leaders and the first camps were held in 2013. At first there were two, then three and now there are four, held in all the areas where we have clusters of Clubs.

This weekend’s camp was in an area called La Mojana, a region of outstanding natural beauty and biodiversity (one of the most biodiverse areas in Colombia, which makes it one of the most biodiverse on the planet).

The theme was Returning Home, encouraging the leaders to experience and enjoy their relationship as sons and daughters (not servants!) in their heavenly Father’s house. We also held workshops on keeping children safe on the internet, making resources out of easily obtained materials, being constructors of peace and working with children aged 9 to 11, the oldest children in the Club.

Apart from two huge thunderstorms with associated powercuts, all went well.

A big thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered The First Colombian in Space, my short story imagining the life of a child in a Funky Frog Club, and donated to the work of Vive. With the pound strengthening against the peso, every donation has just that litte more value!

At the circus in January, I spotted a young lad who looked familiar.

“¿Miguel?” I asked.

And so it was. Miguel had his photo taken by a photographer who visited his Vive Kids Club in 2012 and is now 17 years old, an active member of his church group and a service-hearted and friendly young man.

2012

2017

This is what it’s all about.

After several extremely pleasant weeks in Scotland and Germany, I am now back in Colombia.

I got to my flat last Tuesday morning and within six hours I was off again, this time to the Coast, for our annual Circus (crazy, I know!). At the Circus, we invite three leaders from each of our Clubs to spend five days together learning how to run an event for children. After three days of preparation, the leaders put on the event for the children in the community in which we are based, before taking the ideas home for the children of their club. This year, about 140 leaders came, and we had a wonderful time, preparing and then delivering an action-packed day-and-a half’s activty for about 350 children.

We chose “Peace” as this year’s topic: how to have peace with God and how to be an agent of peace in the world. To see the Bible’s message of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness unfold in an area that suffered terribly in the conflict of the past, was very moving.

I was on the Coast last week, literally, for a change (I got a wee dip in the Caribbean) and it was great fun, as usual.

It’s always just so unexpected.

In the ladies’ toilets at the airport in Montería, there was a workman perched on the toilet seat, working on the cistern and singing unselfconsciously along to his radio.

On the bus on the way to the town where our event was being held, there was a drunk man, and no seat for him so he held on to the bar, but occasionally one hand flopped down and patted me on the head. “Hold on with both hands,” someone told him. Finally, a young country lad (complete with machete strapped to his thigh) let him have his seat where he promptly fell asleep.

And on the plane home, I listened in to a grandfather and grandson finding shapes in the clouds:

“It’s an elephant! No, a crocoelephant! No, a crocophelantceros! A car! No, a cake!”

In between we had a successful camp for 30 Children’s Club leaders. The highlight of that was when two of them, older women who are neighbours, received a phone call to tell them that they were going to get materials to build a house. They actually jumped for joy!

A sleepy cat.

A stack of plastic chairs. (In the evening, the family will sit on their porch and greet the people going by with a cry of “Adios”.)

The shoes left outside while the lady of the house sweeps the floor.

And on television, El Chavo del 8, a Mexican sitcom from the 70s, which is on every Saturday.

An ordinary Saturday on the Colombian Coast.

Last weekend I was at a camp for our Children’s Club leaders on the Coast in a town I usually associate with smothering heat.

But God was gracious and it was relatively cool, allowing us to complete our activities with less sweat than usual.

It was so cool for the locals that they sat shivering, huddled up in all the clothes they could find.

Would you like to guess what temperature it was?

A chilly 26 degrees celsius.

I told them that 26 degrees was a rare and roasting hot day in Scotland and they could hardly believe it!