Journeys

We are still in the midst of orientation here but are well underway with the training. Soon, we will be working in three different community outreach groups here in Paisley. We will have one group doing sports ministry with kids in a local park, another will be working with troubled kids in one of the hardest neighborhoods in all of Scotland. And yet another group will be serving at the equivalent of a homeless shelter/soup kitchen. YWAM Paisley is really working towards being more active in the local community, so we are the first team to be venturing down this road and are very excited to be part of this.
As well as serving in the local community we also do some of our class room training to the great outdoors and have that as our class room. We will be doing a lot of hiking, trekking, mountain climbing and gorge walking. In about three weeks we will be doing a five day trek into North Umbria, England. Hiking for about 14-16 miles each day. We have been keeping ourselves active and trying to stay in shape for our trekking. Which is easy to do when we walk about four-six miles into town and back everyday or every other day, (going back home from town is all up hill!)
Yesterday a couple of us decided to "attempt" to find our way to a local super market to pick up some real food. As I got directions from one of the staff members there was a small detail that I kind of didn't catch.... so we went walking in almost the opposite direction for about 20 minutes before we stopped a local to ask "where is Morrisons?" When He pointed us in the opposite direction and said you'll be walking for a "life time" we wondered how long is a lifetime to the Scottish.... its a long time. At one point while standing at a round about there was a crossing guard for the school who saw the puzzled look on our faces and knew right away that we were lost, so she gave us a ride in her car up the road to the school and gave us directions from there, which were a bit hard to understand underneath the strong Scottish accent. We finally found it, and were able to get our food/laundry detergent and make our way back home in the rain... Our quick twenty minute walk to the super market ended up talking us probably about an hour and a half.... ah, the adventures you can have living in a foreign country.

posted by Tonya @ 4:22 AM