Facts and Friction

Part of our preparation for living and working overseas with MAF is a course called 'Facts and Friction'. It helps to equip us with the visions and values of MAF, giving us information about the organisation in general, what is expected of us and more about what it is like to live overseas in an African country.

It is a two week course and we did the first one in 2008, just before Abigail was born as part of our application process with MAF. Up until now, it has been based in Ashburnham Place, a beautiful conference and retreat centre in Kent, although we learnt that this will be the last one there.

Most people do both weeks of the course at the same time and so we joined a group that had already been working together for a week. They were very welcoming though and we made some good friends who we will be keeping in touch with over the coming weeks and months. One family have already headed to Uganda over the weekend and will be moving on to Chad in a few months and others will be going to Uganda, Kenya and us to Tanzania.

We covered all kinds of topics, learning from both the trainers and each other, everything from manuals to missiology, bribery to car-jacking, malaria to newsletters and everything in between ... including what to do in a grenade attack, which we got to put into practice one afternoon out in the grounds of Ashburnham!

One highlight for us, in particular, was meeting and spending time with Stuart King, the founder of MAF. Although 90 years old now he still plays an active part in getting to know all the new members of MAF and had lots of fun with us on our 'health' day working out which bugs give you which diseases!! It's amazing that the first MAF flight (that he flew) went from Croydon ... where we were both living when we started to consider MAF as our mission organisation!

While, we were busy in the classroom, the girls were having lots of fun with either Jenny's mum or Mark's parents, who between them came down and looked after them. There was a great playroom, which the girls really enjoyed ... but the seaside wasn't too far away, so they had a few trips down there, collecting stones and eating ice-creams.

We were very grateful that they were able to do that, it was great that MAF make allowances for it ... and that the grandparents were able to have the opportunity to see what we were up to, as well as have some quality time with the girls before we head overseas and whisk them away!

We really enjoyed the week and everything we learnt ... now all that is left is some family time and then sorting through and packing up all our belongings ready for our flight to Tanzania on Saturday. We expect our next update to come from Africa!!!