Back in Pèdè

We are safely back in our house in Pèdè, and very happy to settle somewhere after a summer of travelling! (We like travelling too, but after a while it's good to stop!)

For us parents, at least, the familiar routines are easy to pick up again, and it really doesn't feel like we were gone for a year. It was lovely to be welcomed back by the translation team and their families, and to be back in our church here again.

For the kids, a year is a long time, but when we first arrived back in the house they were too excited about getting out all the toys they left here to worry about anything else! And their friends here have been round to play too, and they picked their friendship back up where they'd left off, which was good to see. It is nice to have space again, both in the house and the compound, after living in a relatively small flat with very close neighbours! If I find Benjy a bit loud I can move (or move him) to a different bit of the house!

I am happy to be back with my team again. It is so much easier to coordinate our work when we are all in one place! And if I have a question I can just ask it, rather than sending an email and having to wait until their connection is good enough to pick up my email and reply.

It is rainy season, and our first few days back were very wet. Then we had a week without rain, by the end of which everyone was saying we really needed rain for the fields. And then yesterday it rained steadily from 7am till 3pm, so that was a relief.



Houses and fields on the outskirts of our village



"It's raining, it's pouring..."

Back to Benin

We arrived safely back in Benin last Sunday evening, got our new one-year visas in Cotonou, and travelled up to Parakou yesterday (Friday). We're now spending the weekend in Parakou to do some shopping and catch up with friends, and we will head home to Pèdè on Monday.

It has been good to arrive during rainy season - not that we've seen much rain yet - as the temperatures have been "mild". The highest we've had so far was 31°C when we arrived in Parakou yesterday.

I celebrated my 40th on Thursday in Cotonou. Our friends Alain and Christiane Soudrain invited us to come and have an evening meal with the short-term French team (of about 15 people) who had just arrived in Benin the day before. It was interesting to meet them, and nice to have birthday cake and be sung to by so many people (in French, Spanish and Fon!).

During our 8 hour wait in Istanbul:

Cotonou with our friends Alain and Christiane:

Timing

This is the fourth time we have left the UK as a family to travel to Benin. And it is the first time that we haven't had to leave early in the morning. I am very grateful for that. When I know I have to get up before my usual wake-up time I never sleep well, and I tend to wake up several times in the night. Then I feel sick when I wake up, and end up feeling weird for most of the day.

This time we don't even leave my parents' until after teatime, which means I have all day tomorrow to do the last-minute things (all but one suitcase are already packed), and - I hope! - I should sleep well tonight.

Of course, the flipside is that I had jolly well better sleep well tonight, because our journey timetable is slightly crazy. We have a flight at 11.45pm, which will only last four hours, and then we have to wait around for 8 hours at the airport in Turkey. Our flight to Benin leaves there early afternoon, and we'll arrive in Cotonou after a seven-hour flight. So we'll have been travelling for about 24 hours without much chance of good sleep in there!

I know lots of people are praying for us, and I am very grateful!