It has been a week now since I finished a five day course on Member Care while Managing Crisis. It was an intense course starting at 8:15am and finishing at 6:30pm each day. My head felt fuzzy for a couple of days afterwards :). It was a fantastic course and I learned a lot. The course is designed to teach leaders how to look after their staff and peers during a crisis situation. For those of you reading this who live in a cross-cultural setting you will identify with the following list of crises that people face. Civil unrest, natural disasters, road accidents, plane crashes, bomb threats, violence, robberies, sickness are just but a few of the issues that people face. When we live in our home countries there is usually a support network that we can tap into that helps us through any crisis we might face. This is often not the case for the cross-cultural worker.

This course was an introduction into how to help people who have gone through crisis within our own organisation and others that we know of. We practiced peer crisis de-briefing within the workshop using the techniques we were taught which was very helpful. It was amazing to hear what people have been through in their lives and seeing how God was faithful through it all.

The facilitators leading the course had a wealth of experience in living cross-culturally as well as in dealing with people who have gone through crisis. Not only that but the participants also brought with them their own expertise in various areas. It was a rich learning environment and very beneficial.

The MMCT (Mobile Member Care Team) have a good set up in West Africa and so now they are looking to setting up a team here in East Africa. This will enable more workshops to be done as well as providing support to those that need it.

So you might be wondering what happens now. Well there are more courses that I can do with the MMCT which I would like to pursue. One of them is to become a Peer Responder which would qualify me to actually do de-briefs with peoplel who have gone through a crisis. Also there is a need to help with logistics and facilitate a workshop for the MMCT which I am interested in doing. We will see how things develop in the months ahead.

Simon did a great job with Joshua and Zara whilst I was gone. He flew morning flights only so he was home for Joshua and Zara in the afternoon which was a blessing. By the last day Joshua and Zara had had enough of me not being home in the afternoon and Joshua told me that I should tell the course leaders that I was sick so I could stay home. I guess I was missed :)

Thanks to all of you who prayed for me and for Simon and the children. Everything worked out really well and so I give thanks for that!