3 days left

Well, now the trip is very close and I cannot decide if I am excited or quite what I feel. It is a bit difficult to know what to feel when you have no idea what to expect. Well, not much idea anyway. The norwegian word "spent" has no equal in english but does sum up how I am feeling. "Spent" is often translated as excited but it is not quite correct. Excited in English is a singularly positive word where as "spent" has an element of nervousness in it. If you ask me now how I am feeling I would reply that I am "spent" in the norwegian sense of the word.

I have quite a strange selection of items now gathered into a heap in the sitting room. Not the normal holiday packing. Here are a couple of examples of the odder things in my luggage heap: 100 tubes of toothpaste, 40 laminated posters of bible stories, 100 syringes (no, I have not taken to drugs!), some non-cotton swabs and my holiday reading would appear to be called "Where women have no doctor".

I want two things primarily for this trip, to honour God in all we say and do and that we as individuals as well as the team will come closer to Him. This trip in my mind is not as much about what we get or experience but how we can serve the people we meet in Cambodia. There will of course be lots of new experiences but that is definately secondary.

I have been invited to speak at the churches where we are on the Sundays. Those of you reading this will know that I am not often stuck for words but this time I am struggling. Partly because I have been a bit too busy to spend time listening to God and what he wants me to say to the people I will speak to, and partly because every time I start to think I realise how culturally based much of what I normally say is. I feel therefore my words will be at best culturally irrelevant to the people I will meet. The answer I know is to seek God and prioritise that. He knows what he wants to use me to say to them. The challenge in real terms is finding the space and the calm to listen to Him.