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Some wise words from my lovely weekend down on the south coast:- Our life with Christ is an exchanged life - his becomes ours, but we also have to give ours over to him.
- God calls us to go deeper in our relationship with him...we can't get so full of what we have that we don't continue to dig deeper.
- We must be desperate for Jesus.
- What we are is what we reproduce, not what we say. We need to model the Word of God for our young people.
- Who is our parish? Is it only our church members? Is it the community around the church? Is it our town? Who then are we responsible for?
- Faith has moved mountains before and it can again!
Wow...what a weekend I just returned from. I was at a YouthWork conference, the largest conference for youth workers/pastors in the UK. There were about 2000 of us youth workers there. We spent all weekend learning, meeting others, attending seminars, worshipping and being in the presence of God. I have not felt that full, that energized, that refreshed in a long time. I came back to my home first in excitement to be back (I missed it!) and secondly, eager to start work again so I can use what I had learned. The whole weekend was called Reform and we were digging deeper into reforming ourselves and reforming our youth. We cannot reform our young people until we reform ourselves and that involves reading his word, meditating on it, seeking his guidance and pushing our relationship to the next level. As one of the worship leaders wrote in a song, we are to be concerned with what God wants us to be concerned with. She wrote:"Break our hearts for the things that break yours." Justice. Equality. Love. Mercy. Kindness. One thing I really took to heart this weekend is this: We are all made in God's image; we are all "good" in God's eyes...and that should make us feel special. We are God's children and we are wonderfully made. How great is our God.Peace be with you.<><
On the 3rd of November, was my 22nd birthday. I thought it was going to come and pass me by...but that was definitely NOT the case. On the Sunday before my birthday, my host family, supervisor and family, and a few other families/people from church threw me a surprise birthday party at a bowling alley/mall/pizza hut area. I actually did know it was happening...two of the little boys let the cat out of the bag that morning by telling me, "We're coming to your party today!" From them on, I had an inkling but didn't know what was going on completely. But it was so much fun! We bowled and then went to pizza after. My host family had brought a cake that Daniel had made to Pizza Hut and the waiters brought it out to me. He did an excellent job with the cake! Then on my actual birthday, Tuesday, I went to work thinking it was going to be a normal day, but busy because we had SO much to do! Well we worked for about 2 hours and then surprisingly again, some ladies from church took me out to lunch. We went to this lovely tea room and had panini's and tea and cakes. It was delicious and great fun. When we finally got back to work, we only had an hour left, so I tried my best to get as much done, and then we went home. I went for a short run...and got absolutely drenched. When I left the house to start out, it was calm and dry...by the time I got to the end of my street it was throwing it down. But I have always enjoyed running in the rain, so I kept going...and then...I was running along a really busy road, and this monster truck drove by and went threw a monster puddle. WELL, like in any movie where this happens...I got pummeled by the water. Haha. It was perfect..and hilarious. I was running alone so it wasn't as great because I couldn't laugh with someone...but I laughed out loud. When I got home and dried, Helen, Ian and Daniel were there and we had tea (dinner) together. Then we had a family bday celebration..cake and gifts and then we played some games. It was lovely. Helen, Sarah, and I then went to book club where we got some new great reads and ate MORE cake and just hung out. It was an absolutely wonderful birthday!!
We just completed our first week of a new sporty club at the church. It was called The Pulse and was a drop-in center for the youth to come and play indoor games, outside sports on the green, wii, get sweets and just "chill." It was the first time ever that the church has tried to have such a club and we had pretty decent numbers. The first day we had 12 kids and by the end we got up to 16. It was so great! The reason for the club was that it was half term for the schools, so kids were not in school for the week. We wanted to have somewhere for the kids to come to, a time for us to connect more with them and maybe get new faces in the church. We did have a few new faces, which was really great to see! The kids seemed to enjoy themselves, for the club was a drop-in center, meaning the kids could just drop in from any time between 1-4. However, the kids were dropped off at 1 and most did not leave until after 4. They seemed to not want to leave! Whoo! It was exciting to see! I took the ones that wanted to, out on the green and played football for 3 of the days....even though it was a mud hole! We all would come back in the church filthy and smells, sweaty and wet. The last day I slid on the green and reeked the whole rest of the day! But it was definitely worth
it. I thank God for such a great week, a time to connect to new kids, share the Gospel and overall, have fun playing sports! Since it was so successful, we will talk about what to do next! I can't wait.
