family portrait

family portrait, originally uploaded by fiona cooper.

A family walk on a sunny Boxing Day in Suffolk.

Season's Greetings

a refreshing few days

I got back yesterday from a lovely time visiting my friend Arantxa in Salamanca, Spain. It was the first time in three years that I'd been back there and I loved every minute! Arantxa and I spent many hours talking about life, God and the universe and it was almost like it had been back when we were living together all those years ago. We walked the streets of Salamanca at my request every day. I really enjoyed the bright, crisp winter weather, feeling my face to be very cold while the rest of me was wrapped up warm, and enjoying the blue, blue skies. We passed through the Plaza Mayor as many times as I could persuade Arantxa it was necessary (a lot!) and ate roasted chestnuts as we wandered in the evening, with the Christmas lights brightening the streets. All in all, a very lovely time. ¡Que se repita!

If you want to see photos I took, go to my Picasa album:

Salamanca December 07

a busy couple of months

It's been a while, I know. There has been a lot going on at work but nothing new or unusual enough for me to feel the urge to write about it. I did workshops with the 1st and 2nd year teacher trainees on how to teach English to young children. The second year group are a lovely bunch of girls; we are blessed to have them at FEISA, and they were very enthusiastic from the beginning. The first years are a much more difficult group and, while doing the workshops I got the feeling that they were thinking it was a bit of a waste of time, so I was very surprised and gratified that my perceptions in fact had been wrong, when they wrote out their evaluation of the workshops. There were only one or two negative comments and almost all of them gave me 5 out of 5!

My parents came for their second visit in as many years! They had a fabulous time watching birds in the Chaco with a British bloke called Paul. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of birdwatching so I was pleased to leave them in the safe and capable hands of Paul while I got on with work at FEISA for a week! We visited the Iguazú falls again and the Jesuit ruins, in the south of Paraguay. I got to see a different part of the country with them, which was lovely. We stayed together at the SIM guest house in Asunción, so I had to get used to my mum's snoring quickly! And that meant Mum and Dad met (albeit briefly!) a number of the other missionaries I work alongside.

It was a very dry winter here, which meant drought for those living in the harsh western region called the Chaco, and it also provided fuel for thousands of forest fires to break out. Fortunately, there has been some rain in the past month or so, which has helped, though not enough to solve the water shortage yet.

I did my first solo visits to girls on teaching practice in October. A bit scary at first but I found I enjoyed being able to input into their training in a direct way. I saw some fantastic teaching and some decidedly underwhelming teaching too! Fortunately, there was a lot more that was positive than negative!

This photo shows one of our students as she supervises kids painting their playground wall

And here the children are painting themselves!


Other things I've been involved in include the design for a website we're putting together. There will be a Spanish part for prospective students and an English part for prospective donors/praying people. The Spanish part is with the website design company now and should be up and running within the next few weeks. The English part will take longer, but we're all quite excited about it, as you can imagine!

We have also taken the mobile play scheme to many, many schools over the past month. Our third year students have taken advantage of this service to enhance their teaching practices in schools in very poor areas. Some of the kids have been so overwhelmed they just didn't know what to do when faced with so many toys! I was playing in the home corner with one little girl, going along with the story she was making up and she was so delighted that I was responding to her play that she gave me a kiss on the cheek!



It's now near the end of the academic year so exams are coming up, which make the students quite stressed, as you can imagine. Everybody is exhausted and it's getting hotter, which makes everything that much more tiring, so we're all looking forward to the end of term!

At the end of October, I went away to a lovely hotel in the trees near a lake about an hour from Asunción, for a women's retreat with 6 others from the SIM team in Paraguay. It was a really wonderful weekend. We were the only guests at the hotel for most of the weekend, so it felt completely luxurious, swimming in the pool by ourselves, having the waiters at our beck and call...! It was fantastic to get to know everyone a bit better and to spend time with each other focusing on God and how to make Jesus our treasure. It really touched my heart and made me reassess my commitment to my Lord. If I really want to experience the joy of the Lord, I have realised this will entail discipline and sacrifice as well as suffering along the way. A hard thing to come to terms with but I am now convinced that the price is worth paying. If you want to pray for me, please pray that I will find fullness of joy in my relationship with my Saviour.

These are some of the women on the retreat; clockwise from left: Kelly, Alyssa, Vonnie, Lissy with Timmy


the extra ones in this picture are Sarah (front left) and Cherlynn (back right) oh, and me, as you can see!

Cynthia's Story

In order to give you a view of how FEISA is impacting lives, here's the story of one student, who was in my English class last year:

(photo of Cynthia at a play scheme this year)

"The love of God called me in 2006 when I was lost in the world, in religiosity, empty and with serious problems in my marriage. That January, I saw an advert in the newspaper for the Early Years Teacher Training course at FEISA. Teaching had been my dream for a long time but I had never had the opportunity or the finances to study. I found out that FEISA offers scholarships so I applied and a few days later I was accepted on the course. The scholarship was a real blessing because I was in a difficult situation; my husband was the only wage earner in the family and studying was difficult because I had 3 children who were also going to school. In this way, God was preparing the way for me towards an encounter with him.

"When I arrived at FEISA, I encountered the love of God through the people there and, in the Christian Worldview classes I discovered that salvation comes through faith and not by works, as I had believed.

"By July 2006, my relationship with my husband was deteriorating to the point that I wanted to leave him, even though I loved him a lot. I couldn't take the jealousy or the physical and verbal abuse any longer. The following month, my sister Liliana invited me to meetings where they talked about God and in September, I met him, God the Father, (Abba, Daddy!) at church. I continued to grow and that very month I started going to a Bible study where the Lord began shaping my life. In April 2007 I was baptised by full immersion, also known as water baptism.

"My brothers and sisters at FEISA were the fertile soil which welcomed this little seed.

"Nowadays my parents are studying the Bible, as is my husband. That monster changed into a wonderful and handsome prince, but, unlike the story of Beauty and the Beast, where everything ends when Beauty kisses the Beast and he changes and becomes handsome and they fall in love, in this story, it was God who showed us his love and this love changed us both.

"I thank the people at FEISA for their prayers and their support because the Word tells us that faith without works is dead and I feel the love of God through them, my brothers and sisters in Christ. I thank them because they are instruments in God's hands and thanks to this, God can change the lives of his children."