The Cyprus team has been going well. It's been an intense three weeks, though.

Our first week was spent mostly painting the church hall. Technically, we were staining it, since it's covered in wooden siding. That was our first introduction to the blazing Cyprus sun, at least for Andrew and me. We would spend most mornings and at least part of most afternoons working on the building. For lunch, members of the Greek church brought us food, so we got to try Cypriot cooking. We also went to Finikoudes, the beach in Larnaca, one afternoon.

Every evening, we ran youth club for young people ages 12-18 at the church hall. The young people here are a wonderful bunch. Not very mature in their faith, perhaps, but full of energy and life. No cliques; everyone is friends with everyone else. They're all very talented, too, an artsy bunch. They love to act and ham it up, which makes youth club a lot of fun. We played games with them for about an hour-and-a-half each evening, followed by a talk or testimony by one of the team members.

During our second week, we ran Bible club for kids ages 5-12 at the church. On the day when we had the most, there were forty-five; on the day when we had the least, there were twenty-four. We began each day with opening exercises--singing, a story from the life of Joseph, and memory verse. Then half of the kids played games outside while the other half worked on a craft, and then they traded places. The kids had loads and loads of energy. Even after running around in the sun all morning, most of them were still active enough to chase Andrew all over the church property, laughing and screaming, while we cleaned up.

We continued to run youth club in the evenings during that week, which made the week quite intense. We would eat lunch at the house of someone in the church after Bible club, usually at about two o'clock in the afternoon. We'd get back to our house at about four o'clock, sleep for a little while, then go to youth club at about six o'clock. We wouldn't get back from youth club until at least half ten, sometimes later. But it was well worth it. We did activities with the youth: a photo scavenger hunt, a film night, a games night, a beach night, etc. They were up for the silliest things. For the photo scavenger hunt, one of the guys pretended to eat a live pigeon.

Last weekend, on Saturday afternoon, we went with fourteen of the young people (ages 16-18) up into the Troodos Mountains for youth camp. We stayed there until late Tuesday afternoon. The mountains aren't anything like the Rockies, but they smelled and felt the same. Pine trees thick on steep rocky slopes, blue ridges marching away into the distance. Our camp was on top of one of the mountains, and from the back of the kitchen, where we washed dishes, we had a lovely view of a long blue valley.

John George from Northern Ireland was our speaker for the weekend. He gave three talks on Ecclesiastes, which were really challenging. A call to put God at the centre of our lives: not to waste life, but to spend it pursuing Him. The young people were very responsive, and we had good discussion times after each talk.

Our days during camp were pretty free. We spent a lot of time just hanging out, playing games, going for walks, stargazing, sitting around talking, etc. A woman from the church and her daughter cooked for us, and we all helped with the chores. The tents were canvas pavilions set up on concrete pads with proper beds inside. We spent most of our time outside, though, sitting in the warm sunshine.

Yesterday, the youth group went on a trip to Waterworld, a water park about half-an-hour from Larnaca. Since it was the day after camp, the team and the young people who'd gone to camp were all still really tired. There were about thirty of us in the group, and we had a lot of fun. The water park was small enough that we could do most of the rides before lunch and then spend the afternoon either going back on ones we'd done or just relaxing. Lorna worked on her tan. I swam in some of the pools reserved for swimming and watched the young people go down the rides again.

Today we've been resting. It's been good to have some time to ourselves. Andrew has spent most of the day up in his room on his laptop, and Lorna, Kait, and I have spent most of it sitting in the living area, reading or on the internet, and listening to Lorna's iPod (she has an apparently inexhaustible music collection). Kait is making pizza for us tonight, and Chris and some of his friends are coming over to watch a film with us.

Cyprus is a lot like Oklahoma in many ways. Flat, with some big hills, and extremely dry. The fields are already brown, round haybales trundled untidily to bake in the sun. The houses are all white blocks, very square, with water tanks on top. Here, though, they can grow rhododendrons and bouganvillea, and there are palm trees everywhere.

Today I went for a walk along the big salt lake near the Mastris' house (we're staying with Adam and Jeanette Mastris, who are away in the States for their son's wedding at the minute). It's so barren. The salt lake is mostly empty at this time of year, one dead flat sheet of salt sparkling in the sun, stretching away with a tiny sheen of water in the middle. To the west, there are houses--square and white with red roofs--, and beyond them the vague blue bulk of the foothills rising against a bleached blue sky. Dead eucalyptus trees grew along the path with their bark hanging in shreds, and thick stands of bamboo grew ten or twelve feet high where the land was lower. I saw a fluffy cat playing with an enormous black snake that must've been four or five feet long--very surreal.

Tomorrow we're going to a nicer beach for the day with Chris and company (Alisia Burgess, Martha, a girl from youth club, and Alex, her college-aged brother), and then on Saturday to Paphos. Sabbath day will be another day of double church--first the English church, then the Greek--and on Monday I assume we'll be packing up.

Church here is quite an experience. Both the English and the Greek groups are small, though the Greek group is slightly larger. During Greek church, we sit at the back, and one of the elders interprets for us. Thus there's a constant low muttering undercurrent during the service of Greek being turned into English. Both churches, however, sing Psalms, so when the Greek church sings a Psalm to a familiar tune, we just sing that same Psalm in English.

Andrew and I fly back to the States on Tuesday. Our flights leave at the joyous time of 5:00 a.m. We go from Larnaca to Heathrow, where he takes a plane to Kansas, and I take a plane to Houston, and then to Oklahoma City. It's going to be a long, long day.