Bouncing around the World....

Monday the 10th, I arrived in the OW Office for my holidays...woohoo....and some holiday it is turning out to be...within just 4 days I have visited 21 countries and spent some time in China to boot! I am helping with updating the stats that are currently in the drafts based on the new UN data on world population, country by country,which comes out every two years...I am actually enjoying it as I am being reminded of the population of various countries and obviously learning the population of MOST countries in the world (as if I knew them all!). I am also learning the makeup of the religions in each country and the Christians...when the Access data base is working/chugging away at doing the Country Summary Report, I then work on China! I have my work cut out for me...I'm working on organizing and summarizing the data that has been collected over the past 4 years on China...it is quite fascinating...one of the coolest things I read so far is that there is Bible College that has 200 places in China and 60 new places are open every year and there is fierce competition for the 60 new spaces...I later learned that there are around 240-250 Bible Colleges in China and all have similar problems! Pretty cool and very different from where I come from which is sad :(

My days are like this:
6:30 am Running with Molly ( OW Team Member from the States)
7:00 am Shower
8:00 am QTWJ(let's see how many of you can figure this one out!)
8:30 am Chapel
9:00 am Begin Bouncing from country to country
1:00 pm LUNCH
2:00 pm Back to bouncing....
5:15 pm Tea Time
and back to bouncing in the evenings or chillin', haven't spent too many evenings in the office, tonight is my first one...(Thursday August 13th)...but I hope to do more as I really want to finish these jobs before I go...if anyone thinks of it you could pray that that would be the case!

Tonight I went grocery shopping and I was so excited to find lime and coriander pappadams...I have missed them sooooooo much since I moved home!

I also picked up my favorite yogurt in the whole wide world it's Oncken Mango ,Papaya and Passion Fruit sooooooooooo good! Thanks Jen and Abe for picking up some for me to tie me over til now! BTW Jen and Abe Lo are friends of mine from when I was here in 06-07...yes Jen is the one that came to Potugal...I'm not sure if I mentioned this already but it's worth repeating if I didn't...when I arrived here at Bulstrode, Abe picked us up from the airport and he went out, I'm thinking at Jen's suggestion, and picked up flowers, a card, chocolates, water, cookies for me! It was so nice and I've been enjoying & sharing them, I might add, all week...then they gave me my yogurt and they had some rice crisps and oranges in their too....thanks sooooo much!

And Wania and Mark they've equipped me with a phone card and a mobile...thanks Mark and Wania....

Not only that but these two couples have opened their homes to me big time thank you so much...I feel so much at home here!

This week it was also wonderful to catch up with Jason(our fearless leader!) he has a new gig which I can't go into but it involves food, really good food and his friends sometimes benefit from this gig and enjoy a free meal, a really good meal...thanks Jason!

And then there's Molly I share space with Molly and she is wonderful, this morning she did chapel and she did an AMAZING job on presenting prayer needs for Northern India...way to go Molly...I even learned a few things...Molly is also my running partner...but she is on her way to Sweden this weekend...she'll be joining me again on Tuesday...

Regarding running I have ran every morning since I arrived...the first on my own...and the last 3 with Molly and one day Anna joined us too!

OK ladies I'm have done 6 and 1's and today we did 7's and 1's however, it is hillier here! I do miss my running group...I hope they are reading this blog! There is a horse field here that we often run in! The first day I was scared of the horses...there are many and they were running too...so I ran away...the second day I ran through...thanks to Molly!

That's all for now...trust all is well with you...week 2 is coming to an end very soon and then only 3 more to go...woohoo!