So the retreat with work was another opportunity for God to teach me another lesson and open my eyes to something new. This was an experience difficult, emotional, but at the same time refreshing and a start to a new period with God.

The retreat was from Saturday until Monday (as it was one of the 15 bank holidays) that we have here.

On the Saturday we had a Christian Psychologist come and give us a workshop on team building based around personality styles, which was very interesting, but also slightly disheartening for me. There were four styles that we looked at: Dominant, influencer, sociable and cautious. We had to work through a grid of characteristics and in each 4, we had to mark which one we most identified with. For example, reserved, energetic, caring, expressive, there were 24 in total. We then had another grid where we had to mark down which letter we had marked under one of the 4 styles (this is easy, but I'm not explaining it very well, as it's hard to without seeing the paperwork) and at the end count them up. I'm sure there will be no surprises to know that I came out as dominant, followed by sociable, influencer and lastly cautious.

The main characteristics of a dominant personality are as follows: Likes to obtain results immediately, is persistent, takes leadership, accepts challenges, makes decisions quickly, resolves problems, is independent, and works a lot. The ideal world for a dominant personality is to have control, to change everything and to have a challenge. Then main characteristics of a sociable person are: gives support, loyal, consistent, helpful/obliging, good listener, and has self control. The ideal world for a sociable personality is to have peace, observe things and have stability and relationships. The main characteristics of an influencer are: optimism, to be agreeable, to know how to express themself, interactive, enthusiastic, to want to make a good impression, to be persuasive and to be positive. The ideal world for an influencer is to have fun, to dream and to be popular. Finally the main characteristics of a cautious personality are: to be ordered, self disciplined, conscientious, analytic, competent, precise, diplomatic with others and a perfectionist. The ideal world for a cautious person is to have perfection, to investigate things and to be right.

The psychologist then went on to tell us the percentage of the Colombian population for each style: Dominant- 10%, Sociable- 30-35%, influencer- 20-30% and cautious- 20-25%, so there you go, I'm in the minority in Colombia (cue sudden realisations of why I've been struggling!). We then looked at Biblical characters of each style: Dominant- Paul, Sociable- Abraham, Influencer- Peter, and Cautious- Moses.

The workshop was very interesting for me, and it helped all of us begin to understand each person's personality style more with advice on how to work with one another to. For me it was a realisation that I don't naturally fit into this culture with my personality, which caused emotions of sadness and fear, and begged the question "How am I going to continue living here for another 6 months?"

After this we of course had lunch (it was very much needed), and then went to watch the Colombia game (we had our priorities I order!). Later we went to the place where we would stay the weekend, which was located in the south of the city, and was absolutely freezing! The place was huge, but it was only us there, 8 of us to be exact. That night we had a Bible study, which for me was too much after such a long day with all the thoughts that were going round my head. I'm still really struggling to understand Bible studies and such intense, focused group situations, so my night was spent trying to listening, but more daydreaming and thinking about the morning session.

Sunday, we had a time of individual devotion on Luke 15:11-24 (the prodigal son) and a poster of a man kneeling and resting his head on the chest of another man who is comforting him, to contemplate over. I focused more on the text and had a real eye opening moment. What I realised/ remembered is that this story explains exactly what God did with me. I squandered my life away having said goodbye to God when I was about 15/16 years old, lived wildly, dangerously and spent everything I had emotionally. When I realised that I had nothing left in my heart I decided to give God another try, and when I returned to church, there He was waiting for me with His arms open. What I love about the story of the Prodigal Son is that the Father is waiting for him, and when he sees him from afar, the father is filled with mercy, runs to his son, and embraces him. He doesn't wait for the son to come to him, he goes to the son. I believe this is something truly special, and something that God does with us, even though God is always with us. Something that struck me about the poster was the act of surrender the man was doing by being on his knees. It reminded me how important it is to surrender ourselves to God, and He will embrace us, like in the poster. He won't abuse us, ridicule us or send us away; He will embrace us, comfort us and hold us, which again is something truly special. Reading and seeing these things reminded me how even though at that time I was sad, and scared about the previous days workshop, I could still give thanks to God and be comforted by Him for all that He has done for me so far. What an amazing God.

After breakfast we had some worship time and then spoke about the devotional. It was interesting to hear everyone's ideas and opinions and share what we had felt. Later on we had a workshop on adolescent mothers, which was from an investigation completed in Cartagena by a member of UCU there. Grace, my boss of UCU translated it, as there was no was I was going to understand it! It was really interesting and looked at the motivations for having a baby; the main themes being: to have an identity, to have a purpose in life, peer pressure, and social acceptance. It also looked at forms of protection when sex is planned, which included the use of a condom (21%, yes seriously, only this amount said tat they used a condom for planned sex!), ejaculating outside of the vagina (16%), using the morning after pill, others form of contraception, plus a few myths, which included: the women putting her legs up in the air after sex, and the women urinating after sex (yes many male adolescents believed that women urinate directly from the vagina). Finally, they looked at why adolescents have unplanned, unprotected sex. The reasons included: it is more pleasurable with protection, they wanted a baby, their friends hadn't got pregnant so they thought they wouldn't, they didn't have the money to buy contraceptive, and they believe in natural methods- so the hormonal cycle. Sadly there were other reasons for not using protection, like our future is out of our control so there is no point in making plans, they don't consider that their actions now have consequences for the future, and they only have the short-term vision. The guy also said that in this culture, it is better to be single and have a baby, divorced and single than simply single without having been married. Quite a sad reality to be honest.

Later on that day we began and completed in the night reports about the project that we do on HIV and Aids. We worked in pairs and had different questions to answer. I worked with Oscar and I think we did a pretty good job of our report. Later we watched a short film about a woman in Africa who lived with HIV, but only received medication after 3 years, when it was deemed serious enough that she would die! She went on to speak around the world of her experiences, but sadly died in 2007.

Monday was a devotion together, worship time after breakfast and a discussion then about our reports that we had completed. We then had some time alone to think about what God had been saying to us over the weekend. As I walked around all I could think about was "I don't fit in here, my personality is too different, what am I going to do?" Whilst trying to evade any answers to these thoughts, God said "Esther, you have a decision to make; you either continue to fight against the culture, which you won't change, or you allow me to help you adapt your personality to fit the culture". Well I'm not stupid so I said "Okay God, I'll trust you to help me adapt to fit in here, but where do I start?" I'm still waiting for that because actually I think it started the day I arrived, and without realising it, God has been adapting my personality ever so slightly. I know if I keep looking to Him and keep reading about how Jesus lived, my personality will adapt as I seek to be more like Him.

Anyway, as we re-grouped to talk about what we had been learning, thinking etc, I said a bit of this and also about the passage of the prodigal son. I was fighting back the tears as I spoke and ended things quite abruptly when it got too much. Later we had a time of prayer for each person, and as Grace prayed for me in English, the tears just fell. I wasn't the first to cry, but I certainly wasn't expecting to cry quite so much. I'm not sure what I cried, maybe relief that God was with me, relief that actually I will be able to do this time in Colombia and that it is possible to fit in more, an acceptance that I need God more than I realise or care to say (after all I am dominant and like to have control over things, plus I'm stubborn…it's a hard life!), I don't know. But what I do know is that after the tears came feelings of joy, a new determination and a deeper relationship with my Father in Heaven who loves me, cares for me and is always there for me fighting my corner. It also brought me closer to my workies, who also cried and let their barriers down. It was a special time and I'm very glad that I was able to share it with them.

Okay so very quickly I'm going to write something else that God has done since I returned from the retreat. Last Sunday (6th July) I was feeling a bit low, and went to church, as I hadn't been for a while and I wanted to spend time with God in that place. During the worship, we sung a song that I've mentioned before that has followed me ever since I first gave my life to God as a teenager. That morning I was feeling a bit distant from God, but singing that song was a reminder that God was with me. As I cried, yet again (getting a bit fed up of these tears!) I just knew that God was there saying "You can do it, but not alone. I am with you, use my strength, use what I have given you, you have people around you, use them to". WOW, what a God. After the service I met with a friend Erika, who helps out with the kids work in the second service. I went with her for a little bit, and as the church has missionaries from all over there were a couple of kids from the United States. I had the pleasure to translate a little bit for them both, and suddenly felt a sense of purpose (I know this isn't the needed thing, but it was there) and an idea came to mind…I could help with the kids work every so often and support these kids who know what it is like a little bit to be me. I'm going to pray about it, and also pray about getting involved in a young adults group there, as most people will live nearer by, so I might make some friends who are closer. I'm excited about all of this, so I ask that you pray with me about these two things. It's almost 6 months since I arrived, it's been hard, it's been emotional and I expect that the next 6 months will bring more challenges. However, I once again feel determined to carry on, to fight the fight and to win with God at my side. I feel I have a church where I can settle, and I have friends (J) who I want to get to know more.

God is good, better than good, He is awesome.

6 months peeps, 6 months!

xxxx

P.S The photo is of me and my workies.