Emails from Jadie in London

7/26 This morning we made the sack lunches for the picnic and outing to Eastbourne, we had to make around 75. At 1pm we set up the coffee bar,and prayed. Today I served drinks the whole time. It is a busy job, they can have as many cups of coffee, tea or juice that they want and I think some people have around 10 cups during the 2 hours we are open. We are pretty much constantly serving someone a drink. Some people want to hang out and talk to you but it is hard to talk to some one and continue to serve drinks. I did get to have a few short conversations. A lot of people are surprised that I am from America, I have been told that I do not look like, talk like or act like an American. Some people say they thought I was from Spain, some thought I was from somewhere in Europe like Slovakia,or somewhere around there. I have been told that I do not have an American accent. And others say they have never met an American that listens to people, that all the Americans they have met just want to talk, and never listen.

7/27 Today we went to Eastbourne, it is a small town near the coast. Mostly retired people live there and tourist visit. It is an hour and a half train ride away. During the train ride I talked a little bit with one of the homeless guys he was really excited about going to the beach and kept telling me he was going to go paddling and asking me if I was going to go paddling. I did not know what he meant at first, I thought maybe he meant swimming and since it was kind of a cold day I told him it was to cold to get in the water. Then he would say no it won't be that cold I will check it out for you. I told him okay. I found out after a bit that when he said paddling he meant wadding. When we got to Eastbourne we split up into groups and went different places, some went straight to the beach and stayed there all day. Some went shopping. and the group I was with had some of the oldest and slowest people in it so we got about 2 blocks from the train station and they wanted to stop for coffee. We sat at a coffee shop for about an hour. While I was there I talked with someone else who told me all he believes about God and all the evangelism stuff he does. It was all good except that he believes that when we die we do not go straight to heaven but that we fall asleep until Jesus comes back and takes us to heaven. He says that it says this in the bible. I told him that I had never seen that in the bible but that I would look into it.When we left the coffee shop we got fish and chips and took it down to the beach to eat. It was not very good, it was to oily and did not have much flavor, and the beach is mostly rocks. I decided to go for a walk along the beach. I took about a 2 hour walk, and waded in the water some and looked in a few gift shops, then met up with my group back at the coffee shop where we started- it was time to go home.

7/28Today was the woman’s friendship club ministry, this time we had a clothes store for them. They get donations of clothes that they keep in a small room and give out to the coffee bar people. But mostly men come to the coffee bar so they save up the woman’s clothes and once a month bring them to the friendship club to give to the women. The woman’s ministry is at a different church so we had to bring all the clothes from that church to this church and then fold them nicely and lay them out for the women to look at. This took awhile to do. When the women came we served them coffee, or tea, and cookies, and socialized for a for about45 minutes. Then we let them look through the clothes. They had a lot fun.As they looked through them if they found something they liked but it didn't fit them they would give to one of the other ladies, or give it to one of us. When they where finished looking through the clothes we served them lunch,and talked some more. When the meeting is over we clean, and debrief and pray for the women. When we where done with this I came home and did my work duty for the week which is vacuuming the house where I stay. I have to vacuum 3 flights of stairs, and the landings/hallways, the living room, the guest room, and I did my room as well.It is a lot of work vacuuming the stairs.

7/29Today five of us went to a park to worship. 3 of the people that came could play guitar, and all three of them brought there guitars,and played together. We where at the park for about 2 1/2 hours, it was a nice day and we all enjoyed sitting in the park worshiping. One of the guys was from India, and one is from Norway and they tried to teach us a worship song in their languages. As we where getting ready to leave a couple people came over and asked if they could play one of our guitars. They had a group of children with them and said that they needed to entertain the children. This group is from Congo, I do not know what they are doing here. It was a group of 4 adults and around20 children. They had been playing soccer in the park the whole time we where worshiping and I think the adults where tired and needed a rest. They called all of the children to come over to us, and bring a drum that they had, then they had all the kids to sit in a circle and sing some songs in there language. It was really fun to listen to.They sang 3 songs and the last song 4 of the girls sang by themselves.They said that they are Christians and the songs they sang where christian songs. After they sang they asked us to sing a song, then all of the children wanted to go play soccer again.