This is my final post from the Canaries, since we are getting the plane home in a couple of hours. For now, I will briefly tell you about our experience of the world cup final.

Anyway, on Sunday we were invited by some friends to go to a locals’ Canarian bar to watch the match. We arrived, and were immediately decorated with red and yellow facepaint, and greeted with cheers of “Viva España!” One chap had an old car horn that made a vuvuzela sound like a penny whistle – it was loud, irritating and wonderful.

Before the match began we were treated to Spanish warmup coverage. This was quite a contrast to the staid, balanced coverage we get in the UK, with discussion of tactics, previous performance, the plus sides and weaknesses of both teams and predictions. Instead of that, they had half an hour of shots of Spaniards scoring amazing goals, footage of crowds in Madrid, and atmospheric interviews with backlit players explaining just why Spain are going to win. And didn’t mention the Netherlands once.

Then we watched the game. It was pretty poor, I imagine most of you watched it too, but the crowd in the pub added a level of excitement, noise and expectation.At the end, when Spain scored with 5 minutes to go, the footage immediately started showing the crowds in Madrid again, and the wild celebrations. This was despite the fact that the match hadn’t actually ended yet, and Netherlands even managed to get the ball into Spain’s box a couple of times.

All in all, whilst the standard of play was so bad that I think neither team deserve to be called Champions, it was also fun afterwards driving back round the island hooting the car horn, cheering and feeling like we belonged.

That’s all folks, see you back in England! (I would love to tell you all about my coffee conversion, as promised, but I’m in the cheap internet cafe in town, and uploading photos is just not going to happen. Tomorrow, I promise!)

I´m writing this on the balcony of our new apartment in Corralejo. Well, technically I´m writing it on a computer in an internet cafe, after having written it old school style last night on a piece of paper. Currently rather hoping the owner of said cafe doesn´t notice how much sand there is on the floor, chair and keyboard.

Anyway, we are here having moved from out (pretty shoddy) previous apartment, a move paid for entirely by our travel agents. Considering that we have only paid €320 for two weeks in our old apartment and the new one is €300 for just one, I´d say that they´ve helped us out nicely. Another proof that complaining works.

So I´m sitting out here at about midnight´and I´m listening to the noise. Because it´s crazy loud. This sleepy Spanish coastal village is full of people driving around blowing vuvuzelas out of car windows, hooting horns and cheering. If you have even the foggiest of awareness about sport, you´ll know that Spain just beat Germany 1-0 in the semi finals of the World Cup. On a Spanish island with a huge resident German population, it turns out that this is quite a big deal.

I leave you with the view from our balcony and the news that I like coffee, having finally come out of the “there is no God hot beverage but Tea” closet. More on that tomorrow (or assuming the sand gets me banned from this one, whenever I next get to an internet cafe).

Ciao!

Today started late. I had no excuse, I just decided not to get up, and the beauty of voluntary work is that no one can tell me off if I don’t come in.

I went for a nice long run, that ended with me the wrong side of the motorway, and having to cross it – since there was no way I was going to backtrack all the way I had come.

Do you find that you itch loads after you really sweat? I don’t know why it happens, but its pretty annoying. I had a quick shower afterwards, which cleared it up, and then off I went to work.

Only Hlingiwe was there, sleeping. I was still fairly warm after all my exercise, and its the middle of summer, and she had a plug in fire heater next to her!

I then turned my attention to the computer. And the mess that it is. I cleaned and tidied my one last night, and I realised the time had come to do it here. Through the desktop PC, there was 6 different stores of documents, many of them containing duplicates, triplicates or worse. I combined them all, to form one folder of documents that was over 10Gb!

Then I reinstalled Windows. I seem to spend my life doing this. In the book I wrote last time, I said this:

“My main job today was sorting out computers. It is a little depressing how machines designed to increase our efficiency and productivity cause us more time getting frustrated because we are achieving nothing than anything else. Urban Dictionary dot Com has a definition for computers:

“A tool designed to accelerate, and automate, errors.”

I think that’s a pretty good description of most computers. I have personally today spent more than 4 hours trying to persuade one huge, expensive bundle of wire to function in the way Satan intended.“

When I got home, I started to read a book I borrowed from church, called “God’s Smuggler To China”. I got really challenged about prayer whilst reading it. It was talking about prayer, and how people should be praying so hard that they are weeping, shouting out to God, praying continuously, and I just thought about how I don’t do that. I don’t give time to God anywhere near enough. And maybe that’s why the thing I attempt fail. Like my band – we pray every time we pray and we are flourishing.

But when was the last time I lifted up CP.co.uk in ardent prayer? DIYsheffield? Medrevise? I can’t just try to achieve things that I know God wants without asking Him to get involved too!

So I spent a long time on my bed, praying, and reading the bible, asking Him to bless every project I could think of, our relationship, my friends, my family – everything. It was good.

I also played some football later, and ate some burgers.

But the most important thing was the prayer.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand;

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Philippians 4:6

Pray!

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