Answer: you go on holiday. This is why we found ourselves in Cyprus for a week’s holiday. No, that stuff hadn’t happened to us: but it had happened to our friend, and Jonathan’s god-mother, Judith (not her real name) who works in northern Iraq. It didn’t do us any harm to be in a warmer climate for a week: days of pool, beach and the hard question of which restaurant to dine in that evening. Our boys loved it, because Judith is a great story-teller! I’ve had to take notes of the stories they made up together and promise to write them up.

Another thing about going to meet Judith was being able to take her post – there is no trustworthy postal system, so we had a bundle of letters, magazines, books and, at Judith’s request, a couple of baby outfits… no, not for Judith!! But, as she said: “they make good presents…” We were asked for “two for girls and two for boys of early born (the newborn are usually too big for the babies here).”

So, we spent a week where all we did was chat, play, discuss, swim, build sandcastles, eat together – basically everyone was able to “be me” and relax. Which for Judith, was just as well: the second night Judith was back, she was in a local hospital “looking after our driver’s son who had just had pins put into a broken arm and was coming out of general anaesthetic, without pain relief until 5:30 the next morning. It was a long night!”

But her holiday? “My whole time in Cyprus was so good and a time where God refreshed, reenergised and revisioned (if you can have that word!) me!”

Sometimes, you can do good just by treating yourself – and a missionary – to a holiday!

So, on Saturday evening, twenty of us gathered in the vicarage to enjoy and bring and share supper, and to hear what the Kozhuharovs had to say. They were sent, by an Anglican mission agency (CMS) as Orthodox Christians to Orthodox Christians – but in another country (the Kozhuharovs are Bulgarian, but were sent to Russia). This was the first stage: to teach people about their faith. Then came the desire to tell the Orthodox about their western Christian cousins. This latter desire has led Daniela and Valentin into problems in their work in Moscow: for a time they were stopped from lecturing as they were ‘proselytising’ their students with dangerous talk about other faiths – after all, we all know that the Western churches are wrong (not being Orthodox)! However, the Kozhuharovs have persevered with their multi-layered quest for union: the third call was to also tell us in the West about our Orthodox cousins. And this, in turn has led to the fourth part of their call: to do something practically.

We are not talking organisational unity here, but a quest for a meeting of people at parish to parish level, to allow for a meeting of minds and hearts; to allow what unites us in Christ to overcome the mistrust engendered by our differences and by our history; this, of course involves spending time with the other – now we are having to float the idea of visiting Bulgaria or Moscow!

And Daniela’s book? It seems that the Soviets took most of the documented history of the Bulgarian church back to Moscow – where it still resides, so Daniela simply wanted to tell the tale of her own church to her own church. And, after various complications to do with getting information out of libraries, this is what she has managed to do!

(For more information on link missionaries see: www.cms-uk.org)

Daniela and Valentin will be visiting us at St Mary Magdalene, Belmont, Durham on 3rd May. As a ‘link’ church, we are committed to supporting Daniela and Valentin with prayer, encouragement and support: or, as the CMS website puts it: ‘we ask that your church or group provide support for your Link partner through prayer, giving and building a relationship with them. By working together, we can increase passion for mission among people and share in the burdens and blessings of mission work.’

The Kozhuharovs’ mission work involves them working with the Department of Religious Education in the Russian Orthodox Church and are based in Moscow. Their particular focus is Religious Education in schools and the re-establishment of Sunday schools for adults and children in parishes – all this, of course, would have been impossible only twenty years ago under the former Communist regime.

Over the past six months, their jobs have involved travelling over 14,000 kilometres (nearly 9000 miles) mainly by train and car as they attended conferences on Religious Education  and Missiology (yes, there is a branch of study looking at the hows and whys of mission) – they visited their home country of Bulgaria, where they organised a Christian Summer Camp. They also saw their daughter Zornista settled into her music studies in London – their son, Martin, is studying in Germany. Amongst all this Daniela has written a book on Church History (no doubt she can say more about this when they visit Durham in May)

Please do pray for Daniela and Valentin and for your link missionaries – if you don’t have a link missionary, why not explore the option with your minister and PCC? Such support for people is always welcome – as the Kozhuharovs say, ‘your support for our mission is your mission, and that your churches are missionary churches through your links with CMS and with us…’.

(For more information on link missionaries see: www.cms-uk.org)

Did you know that the Dead Sea – already 420 m below sea level – is falling by more than 1m each year? This is because the rivers which used to flow into it have been dammed up to provide freshwater for drinking and agriculture for Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

However, there is a plan for a “Red Sea-Dead Sea” pipeline to take water from the Red Sea, to desalinate some of it to provide much needed drinking water for the region, and pour the rest into the Dead Sea, to stabilize its level. BUT the Dead Sea falls under 3 jurisdictions: Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority, so the feasibility study must engage with three sets of people, who do not always get on!

Stephen McIlwaine is working on the environmental and social assessment for a British firm, and has the task of working closely with Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians. He says: ‘Each group has a very different perspective. Jordanians are concerned about getting more drinking water. Israelis are worried about the Jordan River drying up, and what will happen if salt water leaks from the pipe into the desert aquifers. Palestinians are concerned about their water rights – should they support this project, in advance of settling their legal rights over their aquifers and the Dead Sea shoreline, to which they currently have no access?

So for the last few months, Stephen has had meetings with local communities all over the region—with Bedouin in the Jordanian desert, with Palestinian university students in Bethlehem and Nablus in the West Bank, and also with Israeli farmers and kibbutzniks in the Arava desert. He says: ‘It’s a fascinating study – water is a very political issue here. We can be sitting in the morning in a Ramallah office, high in the West Bank mountains, talking about Israel restricting water supply to Palestinian towns, then be sitting in the evening with Israelis on the coast in Tel Aviv, hearing of their fears of the Palestinians.’

But while this project is on the table, and the 3 governments are involved, there is hope for co-operation. Please pray that the region’s water issues will be solved by cooperation, such as with this project, rather than through conflict.

If you want to know more about this project, go to www.worldbank.org/rds