Back in February the team and I went to Burnley, England to the Swap conference. Swap is run by Pais and aims to allow Pais apprentices, schools workers and youth workers to come together to share ideas and experiences. We had four days of teaching from the Global Director and Founder, Paul Gibbs, as well as other Pais directors and partners, and collaboration with each other. We spent the week sleeping in a local church along with all of the Pais:GB teams and I absolutely loved the community we had there and the opportunity to get to know each other. The Pais:Germany teams were also there at the conference and it was amazing to see so many people all working to advance the Kingdom of God. Sometimes I get bogged down in the day to day work, especially when we're in the office, so it really helped me to step back and see the bigger picture. Talking to the other Pais people about how we came to join Pais helped me to remember why I did and how God brought me here. I'll be honest, I went with low expectations and wasn't really excited, but I actually think that helped because it meant the week was always going to surpass my expectations - and surprise me it did! I had a fun week where I learnt a lot and made some great friends! I then went off to Manchester for the weekend to meet up with some friends from uni and church there, before flying back to NI.
Like I said, I made some great friends at Swap and one of these was a guy called Luke. Soon after we got back he started telling me about a worship night he was planning in his home church in Oswestry. I realised it was going to be during the Easter holidays when I would be back in the Rhondda so I decided to drive to Oswestry and go to 'Passion Pais'. It was lovely to see some of the people from the GB teams again and we had a lot of fun! The worship evening was amazing, the band played really well and Dan brought an inspiring message about letting God's light shine! I then stayed overnight with a family from the church, and the next morning at church I took Sunday school with 2 of the guys on Pais:GB. While we were upstairs, Pete Baker, the GB national director, preached at the Sunday service and the worship band played again. I heard some fantastic reports afterwards about how it had gone and many people from the church were asking Luke if they could get an Oswestry Pais team!
It continues to amaze me the amount of people I meet in my life! I love that God has blessed me with the ability to make friends easily and am so grateful for the people he continues to put around me. The only downside to it is missing people... I miss my friends in Texas, my uni friends, my Audacious friends... so so much and it's so hard not knowing when I'll next see them. That's not including my family and friends at home in Wales who I get to see every couple of months and still miss regularly. This is why I LOVE Facebook!! (and blogging/email/the internet in general!). I get to keep in touch with people I meet, even those who I'm not sure if I'll ever meet again and especially fellow missionaries. I met this one girl in Texas, just by coincidence, who is a missionary in Africa and somehow ended up on her mailing list (probably through Facebook friendship). I haven't actually spoke to her since we met and will probably never see her again, but I enjoy getting her email updates, seeing the work she's doing and being able to pray for her! This post has gone off on a complete tangent, but I guess what I'm trying to say is... if you're reading this, then thank you. Thank you for caring about what I'm up to, thank you for supporting me and thank you for praying with me!!
