Friends' School training top turns up in the Democratic Republic of Congo!

Old Scholar Katherine Patton (née Bell), who is currently living in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was astonished to find a market stall holder in the jungle village of Mouale sporting an FSL training top....

Katherine left Friends' in 2006 and trained to be a teacher, and her most recent post was in Harmony Hill Primary School. She went to the Democratic Republic of Congo last summer with her husband Adam. Katherine takes up the story:

"We are in the Republic of Congo with an organisation called Ambassadors Football. This is a worldwide organisation which shares the gospel of Jesus Christ through football. Ambassadors Football is new in Congo, so we have been here since July 2015 to help establish the ministry and to train local churches in football coaching and Bible teaching."

Adam and I were on a bit of a road trip last week to a small village called Mouale, about 600km away from us here in Impfondo. It is near the border of the Central African Republic and is literally in the middle of the jungle! We had a 2 day road trip to get there: over rivers, through swamps and under thick rainforest canopies..! The purpose of the trip was to train some guys from the local church in how to do football ministry. While we were there, we went to the market and saw a man sitting in one of the shops wearing a FSL sports jacket! We went in to chat with him and he said that he loves the jacket because it has a fleece inside…something we cannot understand because the temperature here is regularly over 40 degrees. He had bought it in another village about 300km west of Mouale. We went back to find him the next day to see if there was a name on the jacket, but unfortunately we couldn’t find him."