Thanney and Davy did a wonderful job in Cali, leaving the building work Friday evening with it ahead of schedule for completion on time in mid-November. It’s looking good, with some of the internal walls in place now, for a store room, kitchen for the workers to make life easy for providing drinks and food for the kids, a number of toilets for the kids, and for the adults too. The outside cladding is in place, there’s some work underway in Thanney’s absence, including levelling of the floor for tiles to be laid, and some amendment to the cladding in order for the final windows to be put in place…. so Thanney did a wonderful job in the 13 working days time frame he had available.  Pictures and video to follow!

All the church meetings were tremendous, with hundreds prayed for, and pretty much the same name number healed…. some, as have been reported in previous blogs, were wonderful, but whenever you’re sick or in pain, ANY healing, however ‘high profile’ or otherwise, is wonderful. Just to be involved in the spiritual atmosphere of the city of Cali, is a real privilege and a blessing: to have – now – hundreds and hundreds of really close friends, including with countless pastors and leaders, is just amazing.

In Cali airport yesterday, we were having a ‘goodbye’ coffee with one of my best-ever friends, Wilmar, and I had need to head for the baños (bathroom – good coffee!) and I was accosted by a lady I didn’t recognise, but who clearly recognised me, and asked if I’d pray for her – she was suffering from breast cancer. I got the other guys around her to pray, and she went away with a huge smile on her face… even up until the last minute, the desire and faith of people drive them to ask God to do a miracle for them…. it’s incredible what gets through an open heaven!

It was a long old haul home, a 135-minute delay in Cali en route to Bogota, but we had 3½ hours in Bogota to play with so it wasn’t critical. 10 hours on the uncomfortable seats of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner has been alleviated by the purchase of memory foam seat cushions (maybe a word of advice in advance for anyone travelling on a Dreamliner!). It’s funny, the journey to London is very ‘bearable’, but the final hour ‘hop’ from London to Belfast sometimes seems like the straw that breaks the camel’s back! Back home now, hobbling as a result of my stair-slide before I went away, and the pressure on the old legs, plus the same position sitting on the flight home, but hopefully tomorrow, they’ll be a bit easier….