Kenya

A year ago, I was getting ready for my first trip on an aeroplane - yes, folks, there are still those of us who don't travel on them every day.

I went to Kenya with a group of friends, on a fact finding mission, learning what work was being done amongst the people in the slums, and in some of the rural areas of that beautiful country. We saw the way people had picked themselves up after the post election violence of 2008, and we saw poverty on a scale it's difficult to imagine when you're here in the UK. But we also saw smiling faces, children with a sense of fun and mischief who chased after us shouting the one English phrase they knew - "How are you?". And we saw hope.

I've turned my experiences into a book about the trip and the work we were privileged to become a part of. The book is entitled "Grasshoppers don't eat grapes" and I'm about ready to look for a publisher for it. Any profit it makes which would normally come to me will go towards the work that is being done out there.

Watch this space for details of when it's published and where you can buy it.

The picture at the top was taken at Likuyana, Soy District, just north of Eldoret. The people there had no church and were meeting in someone's garden shed. Thanks to a generous gift from All Saints and St Richard's Churches in Crowborough,UK, and thanks to the fund raising efforts of the church members themselves, we were looking at land to buy so a new church could be built.