Another email from our son's outreach team in the Solomon Islands

Dear parents

I can proudly tell you that we are finished! we came back yesterday from travelling around makira island and are back in kira kira now. tomorrow, we're leaving for honiara, where we are going to visit the rhema church we went in in the first week in the solomons. but mostly, we're going to have debrief and re-entry before we go back on base next tuesday. we are all happy to relax now and are looking back on a challenging and amazing time.

first of all, the visas worked out well. so we went to tawatana two weeks ago. we were told the boatride there takes 2 hours, but we spent 11 hours on a ship that stopped in every village on the beach and was loading passengers and cargo in. the ship was very wavy. we arrived in tawatana after daylight and got welcomed by angry warriors in traditional costumes who held there spears in our faces and screamed at us. that's a traditional solomons welcome. even if they just pretend to be angry, i got really scared. it's pretty impressive! we did programmes there, as usual. the people liked it very much and came to spent time with us inbetween programmes, too. we also went visiting caves: 3 hours swimming and walking through knee deep water in total darkness! we left tawatana after 2 days to drive by truck on gravelroads to bia. warriors welcomed us again. this time, I hid behind the others backpacks. the priest in bia was younger than usually and there were a lot of young kids. some of us had problems with anger and frustration, we prayed into it. after bia, we went to makirima. it was different there, because it was a polynesian village and there culture is not the same as solomon islanders. we felt a lot of spiritual stuff going on, too. some of us had a really bad time, like feeling angry or frightened without any reason. we prayed for this place, too.

after all this spritual stuff, we were happy to be in pamua. it has a big college there and a lot of young people. we just stayed there one full day. we went to a small island close to pamua, too. it was beautiful!

so now, we're in kira kira. tonight, there is a dinner and programme for us to say thank you. we're looking forward to it. all in all, we learned a lot on outreach. we learned to use our talents and to step out in faith. God strechted ourselves and taught us to only rely on Him. we can go further with Him then we ever thought we could be because He is our strength. we also can't wait to go back home and make an impact where we live.

God is our strength on behalf of solomons 2