Not "Where Next" but "Where Now"?

wisdom comes in a carrier bag

2012-01-28T04:21:00.001Z

We bought bottled water in Chennai last night and found this on the bag:

chennai

2012-01-25T04:17:00.001Z

I'm in Chennai, India again visiting the children on the Grassroots child sponsorship scheme.

News at the Grassroots blog

wall envy

2012-01-07T13:44:00.000Z

For Christmas this year, Dan's parents gave me a lovely piece of art by Louise Verity at Wall Envy ArtI discovered Wall Envy quite by mistake a couple of months ago. I love typography so it was an instant hit with me, and the combination of one quote painted boldly onto a page of smaller text really works. It was hard to choose a favourite - perhaps we should just paper our flat with book pages and invite Louise to come and paint quotes all over it?In the end I chose a piece with a line from a poem which I think sums up Dan and I quite well. The poem in question is Arthur O'Shaughnessy's "Ode"

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

The first one, the Christmas present, just had the first 2 lines. When we put it up on the wall in our hallway there was a fairly obvious space for a second so we ordered one with the last 2 lines to go with it.

For me, the words are a reminder of an Eden Burning song I loved during my teenage years which was inspired by the poem.

Incidentally, if you are of the same generation as me and long to listen to Eden Burning even though your cassette player packed up ages ago, The Hatchery (a best-of EB album) is available for download with a suggested charity donation of £5.

prunes, polar bears and postmodern truth

2011-12-18T05:00:00.001Z

According to a report published the European Food Safety Agency in December 2011, the laxative qualities of prunes have no scientific basis and cannot be proven. As such, producers are no longer allowed to sell them as an aid to bowel function. (perhaps if the folks at the EFSA stopped talking out of their backsides for a while the prunes might have a chance?)

If that recent ruling wasn't preposterous enough, it followed hot on the heels of the November report, which brought the ground breaking news that water has no proven effect on dehydration. So convinced are the EFSA of this, that anyone selling water as a rehydration aid faces a 2 year prison sentence.

I'm all for the EU taking action to prevent unsubstantiated claims on food packaging, but things can go too far. I wonder what the EU would recommend as a remedy for dehydration? Have they not noticed the clue in the word? DeHYDRAtion. Hydra. A prefix of Greek origin, meaning water.

In the same week back in December, news reports were filled with the apparent scandalous revelation that some of the BBC's fine Frozen Planet series was, in fact, filmed in a Norwegian zoo. David Attenborough announced that beneath the snowy slopes, new polar bear lives were beginning as the images cut to scenes of the delivery of tiny bear cubs. According to newspapers, this was misleading, blatant deception.

Were viewers misled? Or blatantly deceived?Or were they treated to rare images of an extremely private event, filmed under conditions which meant that the mother bear didn't know the cameras were there and therefore had no desire to eat the crew as a post-labour snack?

Attenborough later defended the decision, reminding the angry viewers that he and his team were making a film and took the necessary actions to make sure that viewers saw the best possible scenes. Whilst the zoo location (and the circumstances of those snowflakes forming before your very eyes, and that weird thing with the furry caterpillar) wasn't made immediately clear in that episode, the availability of several "How we made this..." clips on the Frozen Planet website give clear information.

The EU's pontifications on prunes and water might be funny. And Mr Attenborough's apparent desire to mislead us all may well have fuelled many pub-table debates. But I think they also offer us a mirror on today's post modern desire for truth.

Yeah yeah, so postmodernism claims that there is no absolute truth (save for... blah blah blah) but postmodern society seems to have missed that briefing meeting and remains fixated on the quest for truth.

So much so, that truth is the most important thing, to be revealed at all costs. And there are many costs.

Continuing with these examples, the desire for absolute truth about prunes and water, mean that these remedies that millions have relied on anecdotally and experientially for many years are now dismissed, simply because science couldn't fully prove them infallible. I don't imagine prune sales figures changed much following the release of that report. Those who found them... err... moving, probably continue to be... err... moved. And those who don't continue to find other ways.

When it comes to polar bears, the desire for absolute truth means the death of any sort of magic in film making. Frozen Planet is a fantastic documentary series, with breathtaking footage of some of the most oblique places on earth. Including, in fact, the polar bear labour ward at a Norwegian zoo. It might not have been under the snow in the Arctic Circle. I've never been there, but I've never been to the zoo in Norway either, nor have I ever seen a polar bear give birth. What Frozen Planet showed were scenes that the majority of viewers would never otherwise have witnessed. Whether the new polar lives that Attenborough mentioned were the same ones we witnessed is irrelevant in the context of the documentary as a whole.

At times, it's necessary to suspend disbelief in order to fully engage with a film. That's obvious with fantasy, cartoons, fiction etc. And easier perhaps, knowing from the start that it isn't true. But sometimes it's the case with documentaries and factual material too. The birth of the polar bear (or growth of the snowflake, or cocooning of the hairy 17 year old caterpillar) were no less beautiful or captivating for being filmed in controlled circumstances. In fact, for the 45 minutes of each episode, it wasn't at all necessary to know where or how any of it was filmed. It was simply an opportunity to witness the awesome events of nature which happen in parts of the world I'll never visit. The insistence on immediate factual truth at a level of intimate detail is like the precocious kid at school who proudly announces in the playground that Santa doesn't exist. It might be true, but that doesn't mean his peers need to know. Not just yet.

I'm not saying that we should all just lie to each other for the sake of art, or that truth isn't important. Just that scientifically proven truth isn't always necessary. That having a right to know something isn't the same as actually needing to know.

Take, for example, the first episode of the new series of Sherlock. Aired on BBC 1 on Monday, the Daily Mail the next morning carried stories of complaints of excessive nudity... including pictures of said, apparently unnecessary nudity. If, as the Mail claimed, the scenes were so offensive, did readers really need to see them again?

Are we willing to sacrifice the magic of entertainment and the wisdom of common sense for the sake of absolute scientifically provable truth? And might it not also be true that some truths, perhaps the most important ones, are not scientifically provable?

[Edited to add that Seth Godin has blogged on a similar theme today. Thanks for pointing that out Phil]

happy christmas thomas?

2011-10-10T08:22:00.002+01:00

‎"Writing Christmas out of Thomas the Tank Engine is like writing Quidditch out of Harry Potter because you can't actually aviate on a broom. Some people might not believe in God but I don't really believe in talking trains and I'm happy to watch it with my son"

(Chris Evans, Radio 2, 10/10/11)

plural marriages?

2011-10-09T22:22:00.003+01:00

Here's another blog I wish I'd written, to add to my list on the sidebar.I quite enjoy reading C Jane's blog. She's honest and funny and seems pretty normal - all good things! But this particular post is one I wish I'd written. It's a sentiment I've expressed a fair few times myself, albeit not so eloquently as this. I'm not a Mormon, so my angle on it might have been a little different, but the point is the same.

I'd summarise it here, but it's not that long and so well written that there's not much point rewriting it. You might as well just read it.So here it is: My Plural Marriage; An Ode To Steve Jobs by C Jane Kendrick

And if you're not convinced by the blog itself, it's worth viewing just for that last photograph...

a new blog

2011-10-02T17:04:00.003+01:00

I've been playing around with blogger's new interface, and their new blog templates and layouts.

I love that you can now add pages as tabs at the top of each blog. So far, I've added a tab for each of my blogs. A resources blog that I've had for ages, and a new one...

http://rachmade.blogspot.com uses one of the new blog templates to display all the things I've made - cakes, art, photos, papercraft and all manner of other things. I love the way it looks and works, so I'm sure more will be added. It also means that all the baking and crafting I do will go there, so this blog can be a bit more focussed on... err... whatever it was meant to be for in the first place!

having enough foolishness

2011-09-30T23:49:00.001+01:00

This Franciscan blessing was used at the end of one of the Faithworks events we went to over the summer (either Brian McLaren or Shane Claiborne, I forget which) but something of it stuck with me. I particularly like the end bit - the bit about having enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world, and doing what others claim can't be done.This is my prayer for the year....

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort themAnd turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done to bring justice and kindness to all

celebrating re month

2011-04-09T16:58:00.001+01:00

April has arrived, sun and all, and Celebrating RE Month is over for another year. Here's how it looked to Celebrate RE from here...

I have travelled over 2500 miles, to meet over 2500 children and young people.

That's 1 train journey, 2 van journeys, a few London buses and tubes, 1 car journey for which I wasn't driving and, according to google, more than 24 hours spent on the road in my own car. If you look at the map (click it for a bigger version) you'll see I've driven all the way round the M25, as well as most of the M1, M4, M6, M23 and half the A1(M)

I've visited primary schools in Leeds and Farnham, a middle school in Pinvin and high schools in Littlehampton, Leeds, Gillingham, Nottingham, Sutton, Manchester, Bristol and Crawley, been part of an RE teacher training event in Twickenham and had meetings in Farnham, London and Luton.

Along the way, I've met some fantastic RE teachers and trainee teachers who are passionate about their subject, and about finding interesting and engaging ways for their pupils to explore Religious Education and really get their teeth into the questions of faith, life and belief that are part of it all.

There've been some great pupils too, who've really taken the time to see what the resources I bring are all about and to consider their own thoughts and beliefs too.

For example:
E, a sixth form student, who popped his head round the door while a class at his school were using breathe, wanting to know what it was. We explained it briefly and invited him to the later sessions. He was a pretty cool kind of guy, if you know what I mean, and I wasn't sure he'd come back. He did. In fact, he was one of the first to arrive at the next session. Armed with an ipod and headphones, he headed onto the mat but came off about 10 minutes later. "That was well hard miss" was his feedback as he put his shoes back on. We chatted for a bit about what it was all about. I admired his honesty - it is hard to think through this stuff, especially when you're surrounded by 34 others doing the same thing. After lunch there was a similar session. E came to that one too, willing to give it another try. Here's his post it note feedback at the end of that session:

At another school, we met A. About 8 or 9 years old, A came to Orison with lots of questions about whether or not God exists, writing "Are you real God, because I don't know" on a post it note on the bubble tube, and "Why can't we see God?" on a big piece of paper on the floor full of questions for God. A also wrote her name on a big poster of a hand that we use for students to remind themselves that God knows who they are, if they want to. It seemed quite significant to see her name written there, surrounded by questions around the room about whether or not God (the one with the hands...) might even be real.

I love my job. For lots of reasons. One of those is that I get to see glimpses of the depth that there is in children and young people today. Even the classes that appear to be doing little more than messing around produce some great feedback and questions at the end of their sessions. I'm challenged by them to continue to find ways to help them explore and express these feelings, and to help them to learn how faith and spirituality can be a part of that journey.

So many of their questions and comments reveal much of what is happening with them. They leave you wishing you had answers for them, and praying that they find them.

There was T, who spent an hour in Orison and left a trail everywhere he went, writing "Why did my sister have to die?" wherever there was an opportunity. What do you say to him?

And a year 10 pupil who asked a simple question as his feedback after breathe:

What's your answer?

Or an honest moment from a teenage girl, revealing how she feels about herself:

This photo of Japan on a world map gives you some idea of how much young people are looking for genuine ways to respond to the things they see in the news.

There are loads more stories I could tell you, and more photographs too. And that's just the stuff I know about - I'm sure there's plenty more that was going on that none of the teachers or volunteers involved were aware of either. And this is why RE is important. Within a good school pastoral support system, and SMSC provision, RE enables pupils to really engage with the difficult questions, learn about how other people deal with them and find the tools and skills they need to be able to deal with them themselves too. Why do people die? Why do natural disasters happen? Why are some people rich while others are poor? Why do families break up?

It hasn't just been about schools, either. In the midst of all that, Tim Abbott and I ran a session at an RE Teacher Training evening at St Mary's University College in Twickenham, encouraging RE teachers to continue to look for creative ways to tackle spiritual development with their pupils. There was also the licensing of a friend of ours, just embarking on life as a pioneer minister for the Church of England on a new estate in Corby, the opportunity to play contrabassoon for the first time in about 10 years with the All Souls Orchestra at Prom Praise, a fun morning playing in a stream with some children, mojitos at sunset with the neighbours and a day with some students in Bristol, painting the inside of a store cupboard as part of a music video project (more on that later...)

This final photo of some student feedback sums it up for me. It was left after a breathe session and there was a similar comment left after an Orison session too. I didn't write either of them, and it's encouraging to read. But looking back over everything that's happened this month, I think it's my response too. Seeing so many children and young people exploring the questions and issues of faith and belief, and leaving such heartfelt responses - God might just actually be real!

cinnamonies

2011-03-06T18:20:00.001Z

I baked some banana cupcakes yesterday (same as my normal banana cake but in smaller cases!) and, being cupcakes, they needed some sort of icing.

I'd found a few recipes for honey cinnamon frosting so that was the plan. Most feedback seemed to suggest that the honey made it too sweet so I settled on a cinnamon buttercream. Unfortunately I'm not a detail person so discovered a little too late that we didn't have enough icing sugar. Fail!

The result was a brown gloop with floating lumps of butter in it. It should have been thrown away really, but I thought it'd be worth a rescue attempt first. I zapped it in the microwave to melt the butter, and then stirred in about 250g flour (50g self raising, 200g plain, don't ask why!) and about 1tsp bicarbonate of soda. Baked it for 30mins and...

There are a few recipes online for cinnamon brownies, all of which seem to be chocolate brownies with added cinnamon. These are different in that there's no chocolate in them, just cinnamon.

As you can see, it's gone a bit hollow in the middle but apart from that they're pretty good. Well, considering they were a rescued mistake anyway! I think the crust on the top is helped by the fact that I used icing sugar. I'm going to work on the recipe to perfect it, but this is a good start!

It went something like this:

120g butter
400g icing sugar
1 dessert spoon cinnamon
50g self raising flour
200g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

- cream butter and sugar (hopefully you're better at this than me but if not, 90 seconds in the microwave will help)

- add cinnamon, flour and bicarb and mix well

- spread evenly in a lined tin and bake at 180c for 20 minutes or until the top is springy to touch. The inside should be gooey when you take them out - that'll set into a moist squidgy brownie-like consistency as the cake cools. If it's really really runny, put it back in for 10 minutes more but do resist the temptation to over cook it.

I'll let you know when I've improved the recipe...

sixth form drop in

2011-03-02T21:24:00.000Z

Celebrating RE Month, Day 2: Long Eaton School, Derbyshire

At Long Eaton School the sixth formers were invited to drop in and use breathe whenever they had a free lesson. As well as 2 full sessions with years 12 and 13, the year 10 Health and Social Care class popped in as part of their cultural diversity module.

I won't write much about it here - watch out for news from the school themselves on their blog...

For now, I'll leave you with this comment from one of the students:

You can see some of their responses to the question "Where Is God?" on the breathe flickr page.

beliefs and ethics

2011-03-01T22:29:00.002Z

March 2011 has been designated Celebrating RE Month. Schools have been encouraged to plan special events and activities to highlight the subject and to remind us all how valuable and interesting it is. It's all the more vital to be raising the profile of good Religious Education in light of the current proposals to remove RE from the baccalaureate curriculum.

Breathe and Orison (my two jobs) are both resources which support and feed into the RE curriculum for schools, as well as touching on aspects of citizenship, SMSC, SEAL, PSHE, sociology and so many other things. As a result, this next month is full, to say the least. I'll try and keep this updated throughout the month.

Celebrating RE Month, Day 1: Belief and Ethics Day, Robert Napier Sixth Form Centre, Gillingham
The year 12 and 13 students at Robert Gillingham had a two-part Belief and Ethics morning, with each group experiencing Breathe as well as using Bob Marley and U2 to open up discussion on how to express personal spirituality, writing mission statements to help apply this to life at school and globally as well as individually.

It's a privilege to be able to be part of students taking time to engage with the spiritual side of life. The personal reflective side of RE is important, taking it beyond learning history and fact and giving young people the skills and the time to engage with this stuff personally.

A glimpse of what we got up to...
This image shows one student's response to one of the activities, looking at uniqueness and individuality. Users select 6 adjectives to describe themselves, adding their own description in the middle of the ring. Without the student's own word, there are over 400 million potential combinations of words so the chances of any other student choosing exactly the same are small to say the least.

tagged: the ccm praise meme

2011-02-08T13:51:00.001Z

Reading through a few blogs over the weekend, I found that I'd been tagged by Tim to participate in a meme that's doing the rounds.

So here it is:

Please try to name ONE (I know, there are so many to choose from) CCM praise song that you find unbearable and at least 2-3 reasons why, pointing to specific lyrics if you must.

Tim writes a good answer, and links to a few others who make valid points about the lyrical content of some of the songs being sung in churches these days.

Well, Tim et al, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I can't participate. Not because I have any problem with the meme as such (although it is a little negative, and perhaps not the best way to encourage our worship songwriters to improve on their lyrics in future writing?) It's this...

When it comes to worship songs, I have literally no memory for them. In the moment I'm fine - the lyrics come back to me and I can join in with many songs without needing to see the words. But take me out of that context and ask me to suggest a song and I won't be able to think of more than one or two.

I was part of the service planning team at the church I worked at for a while, but this sieve-like aspect of my memory does become a fairly obvious disability in such situations and it wasn't long before the decision was made that my skills were probably better used elsewhere!

There's probably a reason for this, but I can't work out what it is. I'm married to a musician who has spent a fair amount of his time travelling across the country to play in worship bands at various conferences and events. Since 1998, Dan and I between us have worked at 17 weeks of Spring Harvest, 4 Keswicks, 9 weeks of Soul Survivor, 3 Soul In The City projects, 5 Youthwork conferences, 2 childrens ministry conferences and played at several services and concerts with the All Souls Orchestra. On top of that there's all the church services in various churches. So the exposure has been there!

It might be that I almost never listen to Christian music, worship or entertainment. There's reasons for this, which are probably for another blog post, or maybe better off not being publically aired at all?

So there are probably many songs that I could use for this meme. Lyrics which I find amusing or confusing or that I totally disagree with. But I can't remember what they are!

Having declined to answer this myself, some might say that I have lost the right to tag other bloggers. I'm going to do it anyway. I tag Liz, Jude and The Vicar's Wife

coming up this term...

2011-01-27T11:31:00.001Z

The spring term is always busy in schoolswork - the school has settled into it's rhythm after the disruption of new September and Christmas, and there aren't too many exams to get in the way of other stuff.

This year, the Religious Education Council of England and Wales have designated March as Celebrating RE Month and are encouraging schools to put on special events to show off the best of RE and remind us of its importance.

So what are Orison and breathe doing to celebrate RE this month? (Well, this term actually - a month is never enough!)

Breathe

Breathe offered free bookings during Celebrating RE Month, so over the next few weeks we're going to be in Northampton, Milton Keynes, Enfield, Plymouth, Central London, Gillingham, Nottingham, Manchester, Sutton, Leeds, Crawley and Egham. If you're interested in resources for spiritual development for 16-19 year olds and would like to see breathe in action, drop me a line and we'll make some arrangements.

Orison

March is Orison's busiest month yet, with 4 consecutive weeks of Orison taking place in Littlehampton, Leeds, Worcester and Manchester. 2 of these are secondary and 2 are primary so we'll see the full range - that's over 2000 children and young people experiencing a prayer space in their school in the space of 4 weeks! If you want to visit a school prayer space, again, get in touch and we'll see what we can do. Or see some of Orison in action at the Children & Families Ministry Conference in Eastbourne in February.

Orison is part of the Prayer Spaces In Schools Network. We're aware of prayer spaces happening in UK schools in Leeds, Colchester, Oxford, Romford and Wakefield during March, and there's probably loads more that we haven't heard about yet too. Check out some of the stories from recent prayer spaces in schools on the website.

A busy month, but exciting stuff. Watch this space...

caramel macchiato cupcakes

2011-01-22T11:22:00.002Z

I've been making cupcakes for my sister in law's 30th birthday party this afternoon. The whole process started with me googling for interesting cupcake recipes to suit the occasion. There are loads of fantastic cupcake recipes out there - I chose Chocolate Mud Cupcakes, Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes and Lemon Meringue Cupcakes, as well as the Caramel Macchiato Cupcakes here.

I've modified the recipe a little bit so I'm going to share it here. The original is on the My Buttery Fingers blog.

Coffee Cupcakes
313g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
180ml strongly brewed coffee, cooled to warm
60ml milk
1 tbsp Tia Maria
170g unsalted butter, softened
200g sugar
3 eggs
1 sachet Starbucks VIA instant coffee
Additional Tia Maria to add afterwards

1. Preheat oven to 170c
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time
4. Mix in coffee, milk and Tia Maria
5. Add flour and baking powder and mix until fully integrated
6. Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for 15-18 minutes
7. When cooked, remove from oven and allow to cool.
8. Once the cakes are cooled, make a small opening in the top of each one with a knife and gently pour half a teaspoon of Tia Maria into each one. This will enhance the coffee flavour, and give moist cakes.

Whipped Cream Topping
200g (around 1 cup) whipping cream
3 tbsp (40g) sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tsp Tia Maria
Caramel ice cream sauce

1. Beat cream and sugar together until soft peaks begin to form
2. Add vanilla extract and Tia Maria
3. Pipe or spoon onto the top of each cake
4. Drizzle caramel sauce over the top of the cakes.
5. Enjoy!

an imaginative experience

2011-01-14T22:20:00.001Z

It's been an unbelievable 6 months since I last blogged. That's not because nothing blogworthy has happened. More that so much has happened I haven't had time to stop and blog it. I hope to blog more this year, about all sorts of things. I'm also hoping to read more so it seemed to make sense to start by blogging the first book I read this year...

An Imaginative Experience, by Mary Wesley

I'd never heard of Mary Wesley before and only read this book because mum passed it on after she'd finished it. I think she found it in a charity shop? I'm glad she did.

The story opens with a bizarre scene in which a woman pulls the emergency stop cord on a train, jumps off, helps a sheep stranded in a nearby field and then gets back on the train again. That event, and the reactions of two of the passengers on the train, set up the twisting course of the rest of the book.

Wesley's characters are well constructed. Believable human beings with a normal, day-to-day life into which her surprises and changes are thrown. The novel skips between their lives seamlessly, placing apparently random happenings alongside one another.

It's an easy read with a gripping storyline. A great blend of predictability and unexpected shifts in direction. I'll be looking for more Wesley novels this year. Now where's my library card?

The 7 Link Challenge

2010-07-24T21:23:00.000+01:00

The Church Mouse has just posted his response to the 7 Link Challenge

His blog is far better than mine, with more depth and a hugely wider readership but I thought I'd do it anyway, if nothing else, as an excuse to look over my blog archive...

So...

* Your first post
My first post? It was short and really quite pointless. Still, you've got to start somewhere...

* A post you enjoyed writing the most
That'd have to be "Someone I'd Like You To Meet" written just after my Grandad died. It was sad because he died, but I really enjoyed thinking through who he was and why I admired him. An amazing man.

* A post which had a great discussion
"Discussion" isn't something which happens often on my blog. People comment occasionally, but to call it discussion would be a bit of a stretch. My most commented blog is this one in which I asked people to name my new puppet.

* A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written
There are many of these. I wish I'd kept a record of more of them - in fact this meme has inspired me to start that, hence the link list in the sidebar. Here's one...
Just Keep It To Yourself, by Nick Baines

* Your most helpful post
That'd have to be either of my two advisory posts:
How Not To Arrive At An Interview
101 Ways To Guarantee A Good Seat On A Train

* A post with a title that you are proud of
Not thought much about this one. This is probably my most intriguing title... the rest are either ridiculously practical, or silly puns.

* A post that you wish more people had read
That'd have to be "Don't Buy Me A Birthday Present" because if more people had read it, more people might have acted on it and we could have made even more of a difference. There's always next year...

orison in cheddar

2010-06-19T09:13:00.000+01:00

Updates from the Orison room which has been at the Kings of Wessex School in Cheddar all week are on the Orison blog.

Find them here and here...

new prayer resources

2010-05-30T13:51:00.004+01:00

I spent some time with the young people at church this morning.

We had a quick game of Psalm Consequences to get us started. If you don't know what that is, there's an example here - it's a way of writing a psalm together, based on the old favourite party game, Consequences. I can't remember where we learnt it and neither can The Shiny Headed Prophet who blogs about it here!

After that, we had a few Orison activities set up in another room, mostly to give the young people some experience of creative prayer. We used the Fizzy Forgiveness and the Hand of God, as well as an intercessory video made by Ben Wilkes.

Back in the room, the young people got into small groups and chose a theme (Wow, thank you, sorry or please) and some objects to work with. Here's what they came up with.

Bin Your Sin
Write down a sin.
Look into the mirror
On the other side, write down what you see inside yourself (anger, jealousy, hate etc)
Scrunch up your slip and throw it in the bin (saying sorry)
Look into the mirror again and write the difference from what you saw before onto a fresh slip.
Light a candle and watch it burn a new light of forgiveness and read the verses around the candles.

Party Popper Forgiveness
Take a party popper and pull the string to release all the bad things you have done.
Take a wipe to clean yourself so you are fully free of sin.
Get a torch to show you the way to God properly.
Put your name down if a TV, DS, phone.... takes you away from God.

Pebble Reflection

Reflect on how amazing God is.
His awesomeness can come all at once and is shockingly amazing but also how God works over time. Think about how God wipes away the dirt and smoothens the rough edges like a pebble in the sea. He polishes us and perfects us. Take a pebble and tell God how amazing he is.

Party Popper Prayers
1. Take a party popper.
2. Think where you need GOD to work in your life or someone else's
3. Write the name of a person or thing on the top of your party popper as you are praying.
4. To send it off to God & put that thing in God's hands, pull the party popper.

Wow Prayers
Wow!
Please pray while looking at the cross and ask that he would WOW you.
Ask God for something you've been praying for or something that would amaze you. After praying pop a party popper defending on your prayer.

Green=something you've praying for that you want God to answer
Orange=something amazing in your life that you have never experienced
Red=Something that you want done in another persons life
Blue=other

Messages/prayers can be written on the cross!

The Hand of WOW
Our hands are used for many things. To comfort others, to hold precious objects and to write notes on them. Write a note of WOW to God. As you write the note, take a bookmark to remember God never forgets you.

Isaiah 49:16 "See I have written your name on the palm of my hands"

a new blog

2010-05-15T02:18:00.005+01:00

I have a new blog. It's been around for a while but I only just made it public.

It's nothing exciting - simply an online database-style space where I can store/link to things I find online which might be useful one day for planning creative worship, prayer meetings, prayer rooms, school resources, elements for services... anything really.

So far it's quite small but the plan is to keep adding things as they come up (and as I remember) in the hope that at least some of it will be useful to someone someday. It's for those moments when you know you've seen the perfect video for that session you're planning but you just can't remember what it was called or how you found it.

As it says on the blog, these resources aren't mine, nor am I claiming that they are. They are song lyrics, quotes, videos, images etc - all things which are around the internet. The blog simply links to them, categorises them and makes them easier to find.

If it's useful to you, great, enjoy!

http://resourcesforcreativeworshipandprayer.blogspot.com/
(catchy URL eh?!)

New blog templates today, here and on the resources blog, both thanks to the amazingly creative Lena at simplyfabulousbloggertemplates.com/

muffins

2010-05-10T08:32:00.001+01:00

This one needs some work - I made 5 batches of this yesterday with varying density and texture.

Basic mixture:
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
3/8 cup oil

Combine dry ingredients.
Add wet ingredients.
Bake at 200'c for 20 minutes or until done.

Carrot & Apple - Use half plain and half wholemeal flour. Add 1 cup grated carrot and half cup grated apple.

Banana, Honey & Oat - Add 1 large banana, half cup oats and 2tbsp honey

Blueberry - Add 1 cup fresh blueberries

Raspberry & White Chocolate - Add 1 cup fresh raspberries and 100g chopped white chocolate

Chocolate Cherry - Add 1 tin cherries in juice (drained), 2 tbsp cocoa and 1 tsp chilli powder

orison blog

2010-04-27T13:46:00.000+01:00

Since we started Orison almost a year ago, I've been blogging stories and photos here to keep an archive record of what's been happening and also as a place to share the stories with whoever's interested.

The exciting news is that the Orison website now has its very own blog space. At http://orisonschools.org.uk/news you'll find up to date stories of Orison prayer spaces in schools, information about available resources and anything else which might be relevant. There's also a space where you can read twitter updates tagged with #orison for brief news as it happens.

orison at knaresborough st john primary school

2010-04-22T21:19:00.002+01:00

This week we're working with a team from the York Schools & Youth Trust, running a prayer space in Knaresborough St John Primary School for 2 days. Today was day 1 and we met 3 classes of year 3/4 pupils and 1 year 5 class before the biggest surprise of the day, when 2 year 6 classes turned up at once!

Thankfully we're in the school hall so there's plenty of space and the pupils were sensible enough to work together well to make sure they got the best out of the resources.

We've got 5 main areas this time - the bubble zone, the sorry/forgiveness zone, a thank you space, a world zone and the brand-new WOW zone.

The pupils have been great and are enjoying getting stuck in, writing prayers for children in Chennai, thinking about forgiveness with the fizzy vitamin tablets, covering the bubble tube in post-it note prayers, enjoying the effects of the UV lights as they write WOWs in highlighter pen or on fluorescent paper and thinking of endless things to say thank you for on the big sheet of paper on the floor.

We'll be back tomorrow to meet the rest of the school, including Reception and years 1 & 2.

WOW prayers have wow factor as they glow under the UV lights

Pupils respond to hearing about the lives of children in Chennai by praying for change

The bubble zone offers opportunities for children to respond to current news and events

"I wish my cat could do back flips" What can we say, except "Amen"?

roasting seeds

2010-04-07T23:11:00.001+01:00

Not wishing to give the impression that this blog is becoming domesticated, I'm really aware that lately I use a lot of internet-based recipes which is great at the time (remind me of that on the day I cover my laptop in gravy or something) but it makes it quite hard to find things the next time I want to cook them. So I'm going to throw a few of my favourites up here in the hope that it might actually result in Dan & I eating the same meal twice, rather than several variations of something we once made and liked. As a bonus, you can be sure that any recipe I list here is something we tried and enjoyed!

So... today's favourite recipe is...

Spicy Roasted Butternut Squash Seeds
from Recipezaar

Ingredients

* seeds from 4 butternut squash or 1 pumpkin
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon cumin
* 1/8 teaspoon chilli powder
* 1 tablespoon butter

Directions

1. Remove the fibres from the seeds.
2. Place the butter, salt and spices in a mound on the centre of a baking sheet and scatter the seeds on top.
3. Bake in preheated oven for about 1 minute at 180 degrees C until the butter is melted.
4. Lower oven to 160 degrees, mix and spread seed into single layer and bake for 30-40 minutes until crisp.

orison at pilgrim's way school, farnham

2010-03-17T22:12:00.003Z

We've just finished 2.5 days at Pilgrim's Way Primary School in Farnham - 8 great sessions with every year group from year 6 down to two nursery classes, with busy, chaotic lunchtime sessions in between. Lots of fun, plenty of opportunity for children to experience God in their own school context.

Isaiah 49:16 - see, I have written your name on the palms of my hands

Younger pupils draw their prayers rather than using words

While half the class are in the Orison space, the other half make prayer plates, thinking about different types of prayers; WOW! Thank you. Sorry. Hope.

And my favourite:

Children use a big sheet of paper on the floor to write their questions they'd like to ask God. This was written by a year 5 pupil.

orison at st peters day 4

2010-02-25T18:18:00.000Z

The prayers on the bubble tube reveal the depths of what's going
through these young people's minds.

"that when my mum drinks, she won't get aggressive towards me."

"that my grandad will survive his operation"

"that my grandma will finally agree to come and live near us"

"help my two friends who are really struggling"

"can you please help me get some money before Sunday"

"take away her pain please lord"

"why does things like this happen? Make it better"

"how long will it take for me to learn how to listen to your amazing
voice?"

"please may you tell me why I am unique"

"I wish my mum would listen to me more. I also wish that I could spend
more time with her in the week, not just at weekends"

"help me to forgive as readily as you have forgiven me"

"help me to get over what has happened in my life and help me find out
what is wrong with me"

These are just a small sample of what's written on the hundreds of
post-it notes in here every day. It's an amazing privilege to be able
to offer space for these kids to think through this stuff, in a safe
place where they are reminded that a loving, merciful and powerful God
is listening.

Will you join in our "amen" to these heart cries?

orison guildford - days 1 and 2

2010-02-23T18:25:00.001Z

We're having a great week at St Peter's in Guildford.

We've seen 247 pupils over the past couple of days for several amazing sessions in the prayer space.

It's really simple, and nothing to do with us as a team. We invite them in, explain what's happening and then (mostly) leave them to explore the area and the resources for themselves.

Highlights so far include:

- J, a year 7 boy writing negative words in a sand tray, things that people had spoken to him which were painful. Most children in this area simply wipe the words away with their hands but this boy was really digging in and scrunching the sand in his hands. When he had finished his hands were still sandy. "It was all over my hands," he said, "The words had messed me up." He then moved on to another zone where he spent some time thinking about what had been said to him before dropping a vitamin tablet into some water as a symbol of forgiveness and letting go. "I had to get it off my hands. I had to let go. I feel better now."

- Some deep, heartfelt prayers left on post-it notes on the bubble tube - prayers for family members who are ill, for absent parents, for confusing and complicated situations which pupils are worried about.

- One girl said she liked the image zone and looking in the mirrors because she realised that she was unique and special, that there's nobody else quite like her. She said she was going to think that every time she looked in a mirror now. This might seem simple but the mirrors are so difficult for so many of the pupils we meet. It's so exciting to be able to turn it into a positive and encouraging experience, even for a few.

- We've been really busy at lunchtimes with plenty of pupils returning for more, often bringing friends from other classes who haven't seen the space yet. We've had to start a system on the door to maintain a workable number of people in the room at any time. It's really exciting to have pupils queueing to get into a prayer room in their school.

- Adrian shared some stories of answered prayer in his life at the end of some of today's sessions. Amazing things that God has done for him, and the pupils (and staff!) were hanging on his every word. Afterwards, one girl summed it up, saying "I didn't believe in prayer before but now that I've heard how it can change lives, I think it's worth doing."

Many thanks for all your prayers and support. As I said at the beginning, this isn't anything we're doing, it's all about God and the young people meeting together in the room. Please keep praying:

- for more young people to recognise that what they feel when they are in there is God. It's an exciting room, multi-sensory, interactive, different to most of what they find in school, and it'd be easy to miss that the important thing behind it is God. We're not there to entertain.

- for the pupils who have been so obviously struggling with difficult personal situations. The prayer room gives them space to deal with some of that but these things are ongoing. These situations include:
* an operation next week
* absent parents, in some cases with pupils not even ever having known them
* ill family members
* the after effects of having moved school due to bullying
* the struggles which come with being placed in the bottom set, and the social stigma that brings, usually quite unfairly

- the team. Team changes tomorrow as Adrian moves on and Stuart and Chris come and join us. Pray for continued energy and enthusiasm. As exciting as it is, we do still get weary of it at times and we're keen to offer the best we can to every pupil, even if they are in the class who come at 3pm, when we've done it 5 times already that day and our blood-caffeine levels drop dangerously low.

orison

2010-02-21T18:47:00.000Z

It's the end of a long Sunday.

Paul, Rob, Chris, Hugo and I have spent the day in an exam hall at a high school in Guildford putting up marquees, gazebos and dome tents, hanging fairy lights, filling bubble tubes, taping rolls of paper to the floor... setting up for another prayer space week. We've not been to this school before so a first for us and them.

Looks exciting so far. The zones are more integrated than we've had them before - still 4 clearly defined areas but much closer together and zig zagging around each other. I think it makes the room more exciting, with it's inviting winding spaces to explore.

The first class, a year 7 group, arrive at 9am tomorrow.

If praying is your thing, please pray for:
- the pupils, that they'd get involved, use the resources and take the time to think and consider. Our heart really is simply that they'd meet with God this week in a personal and relevant way.
- the staff, that this would be more than just a visiting exhibition for them, that they'd encounter God through it too. Staff are often moved by the depth of prayers and responses they see coming from their pupils. We're praying that they recognise God at work.
- the team, that we'd be open to be used by God and that we'd know when that means we should step in and when to step back, and also that we'd be pushing (in the right kinds of ways) to see the Holy Spirit at work every day. Oh, and that we'd meet God in there too. It's not just for the kids, right?!

Specifics for tomorrow are:
8.30am - Hugo briefs the team while Rach goes to the staff briefing to talk to the teachers about what's going on
9.05am - year 7 class
10.35am - year 7 class
11.45am - year 8 class
lunchtime - open for year 10 and 11 to drop in
1.45pm - year 9 class
2.55pm - year 7 class

more truffles

2009-12-13T21:18:00.001Z

I love chilli and chocolate together so this recipe is a must-try for me! I figured while I'm in Domestic-Goddess-Blogger mode, I may as well share this one too! I've modified the recipe a little as we melt our chocolate and cream a different way - none of that bowls over pans of water business!

Classic Truffles
Ingredients
200g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa content), broken into pieces
200ml double cream
chilli powder, to taste (optional)
cocoa powder, for dusting

Method
1. Put the cream in a saucepan over a low heat and warm it slowly but don't let it boil. Alternatively, microwave it a bit...
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the broken up chocolate. You won't need to add any more heat, the hot cream will melt the chocolate.
3. Mix well until incorporated and add the chilli powder.
4. Place aside to cool and firm up.
5. Once firm, take teaspoons of the mixture, dust with cocoa powder and roll into even-shaped balls, then leave to set.

Just on that last step, we've always rolled the balls and then dusted them in cocoa powder. I can't see how it would work the other way around. Am I missing out on a stroke of truffling genius, or is this an error in the original recipe?

christmas pudding truffles

2009-12-13T14:16:00.001Z

Last year, Dan and I made loads of these cute sweets after Dan saw Nigella making them on TV. We searched for ages for the recipe and ended up finding the programme on iPlayer and writing it down. Since then I've found it on one blog but nowhere else. So I thought I'd add it here for everyone else to enjoy and so there's twice as much chance of people finding it if they google.

Ingredients
- 125g best-quality dark chocolate, finely chopped
- 350g leftover, or freshly cooked and cooled, Christmas pudding
- 60ml sherry
- 2 x 15ml tablespoons golden syrup

and for the decorations
- 100g white chocolate, finely chopped
- 6 red glacé cherries
- 6 green glacé cherries, or 6 short lengths angelica
(this was the fiddly bit - this year I might try white icing, food colouring and a tiny paintbrush)

So here's how to do it...

Melt the dark chocolate and then mix it in with the crumbled up Christmas pudding, sherry and syrup. Roll into balls and put each ball into a mini cake case.

Then top the balls with melted white chocolate and arrange 2 pieces of green and 1 red cherry on top to look like holly.

The sweet-making bit is easy. The decoration bit not so much and after about 6 you'll be asking yourself why you even bothered to start this project. All that will be forgotten though, once you see people's faces when you give them these cute sweets you've made.

Enjoy!

[edited to add:]
Here's a picture of this year's production. This was using double the quantities in the recipe and produced 81 truffles.

join the fan club...

2009-11-19T13:52:00.000Z

I've just created a fan page on Facebook for breathe. It's really basic at the moment - minimal info with a few photos.

The idea is that eventually it'll become part of a resource for teenagers who have experienced breathe at their school or college, somewhere they can go to continue to think through the questions and issues raised.

It's early days, but what I really need at the moment is 100 fans so that I can register a simple Facebook url for the page. That's where you come in. Could you donate a few mouse-clicks and become one of the first 100 fans?

You'll find the page at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/breathe/180193384129?v=wall
(catchy eh?)

don't buy me a birthday present...

2009-11-01T00:23:00.000Z

...buy a Christmas present for these children instead.

Here's why (and if you can't be bothered to read it all, details of how to give are at the end of the post)

These kids live in the slum in Chennai, where I visited in January. The people who live in the slum are Dalits, lovely people who, because of the Hindu caste system, are considered to be at the "bottom of the pile." They have very little, struggle to find good jobs and are living in 2mx2m huts with families of up to 10 people along the banks of a river which acts as the city's main sewer. Every year, monsoon season causes the river to flood, filling the houses with filthy water and waste. Alcoholism is extremely common, and it's not difficult to understand why. Life is hard.

Grassroots is working with SKM - the church in the community, who are supporting the people there in many ways, including an after-school club which is attended by 100+ children every day, for homework support, teaching, games and sometimes food.

Because the caste system is a Hindu construct, families who convert to Christianity are seen by the government as not being Dalits any more. This means that they lose their government funded rice subsidies. Unfortunately, other systems do not see things this way and it doesn't necessarily become any easier to find work or move out of the slum. The families are left with no rice subsidy but no extra income.

In the Indian culture, important festivals are celebrated by everyone wearing bright new clothes. Children's clothing in India is extremely expensive, costing approximately 3 times the average salary of a person living in the slum. Having special new clothes really is a treat for these children. Financially, buying festival clothing for the children of Christian families is often impossible, which in turn means that the rest of the community are led to believe that Christmas isn't so important, because if it was, the children would be wearing celebration clothes.

Every year, SKM buys a Christmas present for each of the 100 children in the after school club. The children love their new outfits and take extra care of them, whilst also grabbing hold of any opportunity to wear them. It's part of the community enjoying celebrating Christmas together, giving Christians an opportunity to demonstrate their faith, and inviting others to come and find out.

Last year we raised over £300 for HIV testing in Tanzania for my birthday. It was great fun, and actually quite liberating not getting any presents (not that I'm not grateful for anything you might have given me in the past, obviously!) so I'm going to do it again. Who knows, maybe it'll become an annual thing. This year, the toddler group at our church have raised £400 for the children in India. Are we going to be beaten by a bunch of 2 year olds...?

To give you some idea, it costs around £10 for an outfit for one child. Any money left over will be used to support other ministries in the slum.

So, if you want to join me in celebrating my birthday, here's how. Click on this link. It'll take you to a page on the Grassroots website where you can either donate by credit card or find information on how to send money by post. Make sure you include a note with my name so that they know where to put it.

Donate to Grassroots

orison feedback

2009-10-26T11:24:00.000Z

The kit is all back in its boxes, the team are tired but happy (well, I am - and I hope the rest are too!) and the pupils have left school in the distant past and are concentrating on half term.

We spent last week running an Orison prayer space at Salesian High School in Chertsey. Here are just some of the comments and stories from the week.

Thanks miss, it's really helped me. I was struggling with my faith but you've shown me that I don't have to be in a church to pray

When asked what had made her smile so much, a girl said "I've just been forgiven. By God. And I forgave someone else too.

One of our newer resources invited pupils to write words which others use to describe them in a sand tray. They could then choose not to believe those words by wiping them away with their hand and writing more positive alternatives instead. Conversations over this resource included -
- an 11 year old girl who said people called her ugly. She was genuinely one of the most beautiful girls in her class. Even when encouraged by the team member to choose "beautiful" as her alternative word, she could only bring herself to accept that other people might think she was OK
- a 12 year old boy wiping away tears as he tried to think of alternatives to the word he originally wrote - "misunderstood"
- a girl who wrote "unloved" in the sand turning to the next resource in the zone and writing her name on a large hand to represent being known and loved by God

The bubble tube was covered daily with heartfelt and deep prayers from students worried about exams, getting into trouble, making right decisions, ill parents, family struggles, friends in need...

Positive feedback from parents at an (unrelated) open evening the school had organised to hear parents' views on various aspects of the school. The prayer space was discussed and praised in the "Spirituality of the School" section with parents of pupils who hadn't yet visited demanding to know why their children hadn't been!

Paper on the floor filled daily with all manner of questions for God.
"Are you real?"
"Why does religion cause so much hate and argument?"
"Do you love me?"
"When will my parents stop arguing?"
"Why do people we love have to die?"
"Why is there suffering?"

"People in this world need to stop worrying about money and realise that we are all family. Our family needs help"
Prayer written for slum children in Chennai in response to information and images displayed about their situation.

This is just a small sample. There'd be no way to communicate all of what happened in the prayer room in one blog. Even those of us who were there have only the smallest of idea of what was actually going on. We presented a resource to around 800 children in 25 classes over 5 days, managing deep conversations with a few of them, general explanation and facilitation for many of them, and minimal crowd control for the few who still struggled to take it seriously. God is faithful, loving and merciful and met in ways that only He can know with so many of the pupils who experienced the space.

catching up

2009-10-03T22:46:00.001+01:00

I'm well aware that I haven't blogged for months. And that it's almost certainly true that nobody reads this so that doesn't matter much anyway. In fact, there's been loads I could have blogged about in that time. I've written so many posts (or part-posts) and then deleted them. Somehow they just didn't feel right. Hence the silence.

I should blog that I left my job at St James Clerkenwell and now work 4 days a week running breathe (a spirituality resource for 16-19 year olds) and 1 day a week on Orison (creative prayer spaces in schools) and that it's great.

I should blog that Orison spent 3 weeks at Soul Survivor hosting a prayer space in the Toolshed and having conversations with hundreds of people just bursting with potential for where prayer spaces could happen across the UK (and beyond) in the next year or so.

I should blog that we've moved house twice since May. And that our new flat is lovely, albeit full of boxes of stuff all piled in the wrong places at the moment. Or that my new job (the breathe one) involves working in an office back at LCET which is a fab schoolswork organisation in Luton where I did my year out, and that that means I work with an amazing team of awesome people who never cease to amaze, inspire and encourage me.

I should blog about how leaving St James Clerkenwell was really quite hard, but all part of God's plan for me and for them so the right thing to do (and how that was confirmed by God speaking to me through some amazing people and, among other things, a Mike & the Mechanics song!).

I even missed blogging our 7th wedding anniversary, and another chance to blog about how I'm married to the most fantastic husband ever. I think we've laughed together more this year than ever before. And whilst we're on the subject of husband, I could have blogged that he had his dreads cut off and has returned to his short hair which was a surprise... but a good one!

I could blog about 2 weekends away with some lovely lovely friends. Or numerous times spent with our super-cute goddaughter and her parents.

I could blog about how we've rejoined a church we used to be part of a few years ago and how lovely it is to be back in the family again. And also about how we're exploring other ways of being church and what all that means.

See? So much I could have blogged about. Maybe it would have been boring? Maybe it's good that I didn't? I don't know. It's certainly been an unbelievably amazing few months round here. I just couldn't find the words to blog it. Sorry.

orison online

2009-07-24T09:44:00.002+01:00

I've blogged a bit about Orison already but the exciting news this week is that the website and video are now online.

You can watch the video (and show it to your teacher, headteacher, youth worker, church leader, gran etc) here:

Orison from Stuart Boreham on Vimeo.

and then head on over to the website at:
www.orisonschools.org.uk
to find out more about what we do, why we do it and how you could do it in your school, college, church, back garden etc...

freedom

2009-06-19T10:24:00.002+01:00

Aung San Suu Kyi:
- democratically elected leader of Burma
- held under house arrest for over 13 years by the military dictatorship, for campaigning for human rights and democracy in her country
- currently on trial charged with breaking the terms of her house arrest, after an American man swam across the lake and refused to leave. She is being held in Insein prison, which is well known for it's abuse of prisoners, bad conditions and use of torture

Aung San Suu Kyi is 64 today. In her words: "Please use your liberty to promote ours"

The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations.
Aung San Suu Kyi

here's why...

2009-05-30T14:49:00.004+01:00

Just as young people need relationships, they need prayer. Young people are ripe for prayer because the core human struggles are so apparent in adolescence. Teenagers stand at the threshold of adult desires, with hearts that are soft and awake. Questions of identity and feelings of longing and suffering are breaking open in young people for the first time. They cry more often. They fall in love easily. They crave and seek friendships. They're inclined towards the ecstatic. We teach young people to pray so they'll know they're not alone; so they might find the source and endpoint of their restless desires; so they might find comfort and healing within an increasingly heartless and destructive world. To invite youth into prayer is to invite them to discover God within the heart of human experience.

Mark Yaconelli
Helping Teenagers to Pray

orison

2009-05-26T13:04:00.004+01:00

Last week I was working at Jubilee International High School in Addlestone, Surrey, running an Orison Prayer Space in their theatre.

Orison is a creative, interactive experience during which pupils are invited to stop and think about various issues, using activities, video material and installations to inspire and encourage them to pray.

This week we ran 4 zones:

Image Zone
Mirror cubicles in this zone gave pupils a chance to stop and look at themselves, thinking about what they do and don't like about themselves. The mirrors were surrounded by positive quotes about image for pupils to read to themselves.

Using Isaiah 49:16 "see I have written your names on the palm of my hands" there were two large images of hands on which pupils could write their names, giving them a sense of belonging and a reminder that they are known personally by God.

A table nearby was covered in tiny paper people. Pupils used these to represent where they fitted within their crowd of friends or class at school, and then to think about how they would like it to look and how they might pray and act to bring about these changes.

A looping video played constantly in this zone, showing lots of human faces, interspersed with quotes about seeing God's face. Pupils were asked to consider how they judged people on first look.

World Zone
This area was full of activities and information to encourage pupils to pray for the world around them, linking in with the citizenship curriculum and also a reminder that prayer goes beyond the personal and emotional.

A large map of the school catchment area soon became covered in prayer flags as pupils found their home, wrote a prayer and stuck a flag there. Around this, pupils used post-it notes to attach prayers to newspaper articles, world maps and photographs of children from child sponsorship programmes in Kenya, Tanzania and India.

Google Earth was also available in this zone, on a touch-screen computer. Pupils were able to search for any area of the world and look at satellite images as they prayed for it. One of my favourite moments in this zone was seeing 3 year 5 boys kneeling in front of the table, praying for safety at Thorpe Park as they looked at satellite images of it!

Sorry Zone
This zone used 2 activities to tackle the issues of forgiving and being forgiven.

Using magnadoodle children's toys, pupils wrote, drew or represented things that they were sorry for before wiping them away as they said sorry - an action symbolic of the way in which God forgives our sins when we say sorry to him.

Tables in this zone had large glass vases of water on them. Pupils sat at the table and held a vitamin tablet in their hand as they thought about situations in which people had hurt or upset them. They then dropped the tablet into the water and as they watched it fizz, thought about the feelings and emotions related to these situations and imagined them fizzing away too as they forgave.

Bubble Zone
The bubble zone (pictured above) was a relaxed area, with cushions and bean bags scattered around a papered floor. The centrepiece of the area was a tall bubble tube. Pupils were invited to sit and relax here, watching the bubbles rise as a symbol of our prayers going 'up' to God.

Pupils wrote prayers directly onto the floor or on post-it notes which were stuck onto the bubble tube.

View this article in full on the Grassroots website

oldest fish finger ever?

2009-05-01T00:51:00.001+01:00

01052009422
Originally uploaded by rachwarwick

This is Rotty - the fishy fish finger from frinton.

He was a prop at FAB Summer Camp 1995 - preserved for 14 years by a large amount of varnish. He doesn't smell, except of varnish and, as you can see, his high quality cape, safety goggles and crash helmet have protected him well.

blog silence?

2009-03-28T11:56:00.003Z

... can only mean I'm making noise elsewhere!

The lack of postings here is directly related to the undeniable fact that I've been sucked into the phenomenon that is Twitter.

It's been a while but the reason I'm posting this here today is that, as well as personal banal twitterings, we've been using Twitter as a communication vehicle for the pray for London network.

And this week, as I'm sure you've noticed, is a BIG week for London, with the G20 summit taking place right here on our doorstep. Huge issues are being discussed - the current economic situation, climate change... mind blowingly massive decisions need to be made, on a scale that makes me glad I'm not one of the 20. BUT... we need to remember that those at the G20 summit are there as representatives of all of us and, as such, we have a responsibility to stand with them in prayer, asking God to give them wisdom, perspective and courage as they make decisions with global impact.

Micah Challenge are running a 7-day prayer guide for this week, with short simple things to think about and pray as the summit takes place. It's well worth a read - why not download it and stick it in your toilet for daily reading?

If that's not your way, we'll be tweeting the prayer guide through @PrayForLondon on Twitter so sign up, follow us and get praying!

chennai - all in one place and in order

2009-02-18T12:37:00.002Z

Chennai day 1
Chennai day 2
Chennai day 3
Chennai day 4
Chennai day 5
Chennai day 6
Chennai day 7
Chennai day 8

Chennai photographs

Chenna slideshow - photos with information about the situation

chennai 09 - stuart's slideshow

2009-02-06T11:05:00.000Z

The Dalit People of Chennai from Stuart Boreham on Vimeo.

chennai 09 - the photographs

2009-02-03T22:10:00.002Z

Click on the picture to see all the photos (well, those uploaded so far...) from the trip

chennai 09 - the homecoming

2009-02-03T12:59:00.002Z

Reposted from the Grassroots India blog.

Well, the musician has got out his bugle once more and the last post is being played again.

We got to the airport on good time and bacuase of Phils magnificent good looks and fabulous Amercian Airways Premium Flyer card we were all upgraded to business class - yippee! Thats worth £22K just in case you are wondering.

So, while we thought that our Father was just blessing us, that fact was that when Buffy started being repeatedly sick during the flight and when the plane was diverted to first Copenhagen, then Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Birmingham and finally touching down at the East Midland Airport Adventure Land of Deep Joy with long looong waits, we realised that he had gone ahead of us to prepare the way. He knew we needed the sleep and the space.

Personally, i did not need the spiced Tiger Prawns with boiled potatoes that are still stinging me as I sit here, but the rest was fabulous.

So, to cut a long story short here we are in a rather lovely hotel in Hinckley (a town of 43,246 in the county of Leicestershire administered by Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council) hoping that the snow stays away tonight and BA can persuade some gallant coach drivers to get us down to Heathrow before lunch tomorrow - failing that sometime before Chjristmas might be nice

Buffy is better, God is goods and we are learning a great deal from our discussions and I am learning that the free wireless is pants.

Thank you all so much for you concern. A couple of families involved in this trip have been going through very difficult times back in Blighty this week but today it all seems to have lifted. Now, if only the weather would do the same so we can get home and be re-united.

Stuart

chennai 09 - day 7

2009-02-03T12:54:00.001Z

Reposted from the Grassroots India blog,

Probably the last blog from this trip, typed in the hotel whilst waiting for food. In 2 hours we are off to the airport with, as always on these kind of trips, mixed emotions.

today was Sunday - church day. We gently excused ourselves from the first service of the day, commencing as it does at 5am. (Where is our committment I wonder!?)

Arriving at 9am to avoid a red card for lateness we were soon joined by 250 or so passionate beleivers. Their joy and enthusiasm for worship was matched by its prodigious volume. Deborah is a great worship leader and seems to know all 6 volumes of the Tamil Songs of Praise entirely by heart - no mean acheievement. I spent one entire song trying to work out how to write 'Praise the Lord' in Tamil by counting the words to the over head projector slides and was excited to be told I had clearly written 'ord'. Zut alors.

the congregation consisted of 220 women and maybe 20 men, a perfect illustration of what for some of us represents the key issue of this ministry. How to address the imbalance is far from simple but Hugo, Catherine and Stuart all spoke again on breaking chains, coming to find the true God of Israel in the slum and the long walk of faith towards freedom.

Everyone on the team was involved in praying for the people afterwards, hungry for as they were for blessing.

After lunch, we did a 1.5 hour kids church Brity style to the apparent delight of 100kids. The seeions varied from pretty spot on concentrsation and participation to near riot. The greatest chaos errupted as we gave out pencils to a feeding frenzy (closely followed by a sharpening frenzy) but distributing sweets was carried out in relativly somber quiet. Which is of course the exact opposite of what would happen in the UK.

We talked to them about prayer. Keep talking to God, prayer is water to yuor souls, Jeremiah 3v33 and thre five fingered prayer chart. We pray that young lives will be strengthened and changed as a result.

Finaly, more church as Sam preached up a storm at the evenijng service talking about God's good words over us. Stuart managed to record one worship song that went on for 12 minutes 17seconds - Deep Purple better watch out.

And so.... please remember this wornderful mission in your prayers and pockets. Kevin and deborah have given up everything to serve these deprived people. They have spent their inheritence buying the church building, they have had Typhoid as has their daughter, thery get hardly any sleep as people come to them with needs at all times of the night and are never turned away - and they are loved in the community because of it and Jesus is seen there.

They are the only protestant church in, as far as we can ascertain, any of the 10 slums in Chennai.

Stuart

Day 7 photos

chennai 09 - day 6

2009-01-31T18:02:00.002Z

Reposted from the Grassroots India blog

Probably a shorter update today as is late and tomorrow is a full on day of church (Hugo preaching), kids club (everyone teaching) and church again (Sam preaching) followed by checking out of the hotel at midnight, airport at 2am and onto the plane home at 4am ( and at the same time)

Sam and Stuart out shooting early on, hacking around the city with David our host in a 3 wheeler clearly meant for 2. Many adventures including The Great Music Shop Banghra Gamble and the "You Can't Use a Camera That Big Here Without a Liscence, Squire" Jobsworth Swarm whilst visitng the supposed burial place of St Thomas the Doubting who, for the un-educated amongst you (and those like me whose church history is a bit ropey and had to ask Sam) brought Christianity to the tamils in the 1st century.

On the way back we passed a Don Bosco catholic school like one the ones Stuart has connections with in the UK and Kenya and managed to blag our way in, had 20 minutes with the principal and recieved a gold leaf invitation to their 50th anniversary dinner and gig later that night in the presence of the American ambassador. More on that story later...

Meanwhile the ladies had minced off to the local sari and shirt emporium where they delighted in buying Deborah, apparently the worlds most decisive shopper, a new sari and something similar for themselves. So look out for tomorrows photos...

Back to hotel and then to Kevin's church when Hugo and Phil joined us back from Hydrabad I am guessing they may tell their own story but it is both wonderful and complex and remarkable they are still in one piece in some ways. I am assured that next time they will take the train. And thank God for road traffic angels.

Stuart and Rachel went with Kevin in the the darker slums to film some of the residents talking about their lives. Filmed a 18 month semi clothed baby squatting alone by the side of the poo bridge next to a huge mess of adult waste. Unspeakable.

After extensive planning for tomorrow's church contributions Sam and Stuart had a slightly more comfortable ride back to the Don Bosco school to be greeted by 4000 boys and presumably 8000 parents pretty much talking animatedly whilst a bunch of robed dignitries sat enthroned on a distant huge stage talking about things into a monster PA. So chaotic but so Indian. Its a great school with the best results in the state and, to give them their due, the kids had been sitting there for 3 hours when we arrived.

Dinner for all afterwards with Kevin and Deborah at the hotel and a surfit of curries powerful enough to seriously impair an asian Henry VIII. (Apologies if that is one obscure reference too many...)

Pleaase pray that tomorrow the things we have seen and felt here and feel passionate about will be communicated to the people in God's way and that we might set some spiritual and physical balls rolling on the way to bringing more Kingdom rule to the Dalits

Stuart

day 6 photos

chennai 09 - day 5

2009-01-31T17:58:00.001Z

Reposted from the Grassroots India blog.

Today we literally broke some chains. (And for once that is, literally, a correct use of the word literally)

Sam left early to go and visit the magisterial Bishop of Madras in his palatial cathedral residence.

For the rest of us the morning was spent in the hotel typing up the details of the hundred or so children interviewed yesterday and sorting out the pictures to the correct spec.

At midday we went to the church to join the Friday prayer and fasting meeting. Initially 6 and eventually 60 people, mostly women turned up at Kevins church to pray with an extraordinary passion and to testify about previous answers.

Squatting cross legged on the concrete floor individuals would pray at 100mph for 8 minutes at a time until an amen was heard - just about the only word we understood in the whole session other than 'stodrum' which means 'praisethelord' - then Kevin would start a song, accompanied by talented ladys on the bongos and tamboruine.

After an hour or so or enthusiastic prayer and, in my case, 20 shifts of position and numb buttocks, it was our turn. Catherine spoke about how when Paul adn Silas prayed in prison everyoe's chains, not just their own, were broken. Queue Rachel with the 30foot long paper chain we had all (but mostly Buffy) helped to tape toghther. As the women put their hands onto the long chain everyone cried to God for their own presonal nrelease fron bondages that we can only imagine and as at nod from Kevin the symbol ws duly torn apart and finely shredded by the 20 or so kids who were also there.

15 minutes of indivdual blessing and prayers followed at which Sam arrived back and announced that the Bishop had taken him off ot a wedding and despite Sam being the only un-robed official present (or should that be non-robed? Certainly not de-frocked, mind...) got him to bless and preach to the 5 couples being wed. In 20 years time as children are looking at their parents wedding pictures they will ask with awed voice 'umma, who is that white man in the stipped shirt and combat trousers standing next to those men in dresses?'. Church, eh?

In the afternoon we finished off interviewing the remaining 10 children, filmed some of them with the team, interrogated the combat trousered one on camera and had some special time with Kevin and Deborah.

The more we hear about life as a Dalit the more shocking and ridiculous the whole situation is to western ears. It seems almost impossible to beleiev that such predjudice can exist in a Nation that possits itself as a democracy.

Stuart

day 5 photos

Suryapet Day 2 - Friday

Hugo remarked that our day started with "The Full Indian" (as opposed to the Full English) breakfast - wonderful food, but with that tinge of "I really shouldn't have eaten that much!" We met with Samson & Grace and discussed some key questions; during this we proposed an "orphan program" vs. the current "orphanage" -- it seems to us that this could be scaleable over time into a program that could support 1000's of children (compared to the current 100), and a suitable transition plan could be developed based on fostering. Please pray for Samson and Grace as they consider this, and it's impact -- it will be a very big change, a "paradigm shift", and one where they will definitely move between inspiration and fear (many times).

The afternoon was a visit to a 2nd village church and the dedication of a new building. It was a powerful time of expressing that the people are the living church, and we coined a new phrase: "the pastorhood of all believers". Please pray for this new church of 50+ members... that they could step into serving their community as a much more powerful voice that simply trying to gather everyone on a Sunday.

As is cutomary on a Friday evening, we went for a curry... but I bet it won't taste as good again for a long time, and the atmosphere sitting outside on a warm evening was electric (snow this weekend in the UK eh?)

So, to Saturday... up at 4am; maybe being drowsy was necessary for the "spicy road", renamed "vindaloo"... WOW -- saw more close shaves in one drive than I want to again, and two *horrible* accidents.

So the team are back together again in Chennai, planning for 3 services tomorrow in the Dalit church with Kevin and Deborah. Pray for discernment and inspiration to bring the right word that can be used by the Spirit in a powerful way, one that's simple enough to be captured across a different culture (and through Kevin's translation).

Phil

chennai 09 - day 4

2009-01-31T17:53:00.002Z

Reposted from the Grassroots India blog

Greetings from Suryapet. On dial-up - remember that? Visited an interesting foundation in Hyderabad; Hugo loved the MBA speak - the 6 P's and 5 R's! Drive to Suryapet was spicey, and we have guards at our hotel from the local police. Today we have spent with Samson. Visited his project, which was wonderful. Lots of fantatsic smiling faces and opportunities to tell them "Jesus loves you". We also visited the "field of dreams", and travelled to a village church where God showed up big time, and several people were prayed for -- please pray for one lady in particular who seemed to experience deliverance, and made so much noise she grabed a large teenage group on bikes... enter a fantastic youth event, sharing about how Jesus can deliver us... BRILLIANT!

Please pray tomorrow as we meet as a team and propose some new ideas... we need to discern where God's next step is.

Hugo

Our turn. Back in the hotel after a long drive out to the dalit villages 70km or so down the coast. A bit of tourism on the way at a big rocky lump called 'krishna's butterball' but more resembling one of king kongs droppings.

We arrived at the village to see a large croud of 50 or so people by the side of the road on the plot next to the church. Seemingly just for us, the local witch doctor spirt dude had turned up and was about to slaughter a goat and summon spritis and demons and goodness knows what else. Kevin was not peturbed as he said the presecne of praying christians means their side show would not work. The atmospehere was dark and unplesasant, detectable, even by someone like me not much given to feelings, as lump in the throat, a bad taste in the chest.

We sat in the small church and prayed with the wife of the pastor and her young child. On the 27th of December, one month before, her fit healthy husband of 38 years of age had dropped dead, apparently from a heart attack. The un-welcome presence of the christian church in the mostly hindu village and the beating of the spiritists drums were a reminder that perhaps physical symptoms can have spiritual causes. It was very sobering.

Soon the leaf clad wild man and his accomplice stomped off minus goat and we begun to visit the local homes, praying with the people. The houses were small, mostly of wood and straw with tiny low doors that allowed entry only to toddlers or bent triple adults.

The atmosphere lifted as the 40 or so children of the vilage came home fofrom school and joined our caravan, shouting and laughing behind us wherever we went. It was like a march for Jesus lead by giants. We also managed a woirld record in the 'how many children can you fit into a very small hut' competition. (27 if you are interested, plus 8 adults and a baby.)

We prayed for health and support. the people work long hours in the fields planting rice or tending cattle. They get up at 4am, go to the field at first light, come home when it is dark and go to sleep on the mud floors.

At least 2 families who had converted from Hinduism to Christianity and were leaders in the church had receieved remarkable provision in their work which had enabled them to build much better brick houses, still little more than tenements by our standards but remarkable in such a village.

We drank the hot sweet tea they call chai with milk that I had filmed coming out of the cow 5 minutes before. Sam and Stuart, much to the other's slight disappointment , have discovered they are both closet Twitchers and every so often there would be a shout of 'look at that!' and 'what on earth is that bird?'. Birds became a theme as we saw the village ducks being herded back to the huts for the night.

The stuggles of the Dalit in a society that rejects them and tries to simply ignore their existance were highlighted again as was the shadow of alcohol destroying the heads of the houshold.

Tomorrow, pleaae pray for Sam as he goes to see the Bishop of Madras ( a very important man ) to look at their Dalit education program , for Hugo and Phil as they travel the spicey road once more and for the rest as we attend the church prayer meeting, interview the rest of the children and return to the slums to do a bit more filming.

Stuart

Day 3 photos

chennai 09 - day 3

2009-01-31T17:52:00.001Z

Reposted from the Grassroots India Blog

Hi all,

Sitting in the hotel after a loooong but fulfilling day working with Kevin in and around the church in the slum.

This morning Hugo and Phil left for meetings in Hydrabad that they will no doubt update the blog on later. Kevin, rachel and Stuart went out early-ish to film in the slum area called 'Riverside'. Its on the inside of a bend in the river and consequently surrounded by sewage on 3 sides. Several thousand people live in that area and the slum additionally extends 1000m along the river in each direction. Kevin spoke to rachel about life in the slums and some of the issues and he was filmed doing so.

Later the teams joined together again at the church and accompanied Kevin for a trip over the river (crossing very much in the centre of the famous 'poo bridge' for a prayer walk around the snake, demon and alcohol infused slum on the other bank. Many issues were prayed for with some evidence of spiritual activity as a result.

The whole team were much alarmed by the amount of alcohol related issues we uncovered. So mnay of the wives receiev regular, apparently daily beatings from their husbands who come home late from working in the fish market having spent their free time and most of the families income on spirits from either the government owned off-licences or the gansgter managed illegal stills in the slums.

Of all the peoiple we prayed for we met only 3 sober husbands. It seemed the slums would be such a different place if the men were fulfilling their role as Dads and spouses but lack of hope, poor ediucation and strong peer pressure seems to often to result in desperate addcitons. The life expectancy of men is much less than that of the women due to the fact so many of them drink virtually from late teenages until... well, death.

We all felt moved and disturbed by this and a bit helpless so will probably be hearing more about how Kevin feels on the issue.

After lunch (this time on plates) we spent the next 4 hours interviewing, weighing, measuring, eyetesting, photographing and praying for the 100 children in Kevin's club. Hard work that gradually accelarated to a fevered (but still extremely accurate) pace as the light began to fail. We have 6 more to finish and as I type this at one end of the table Rachel and Catherine are copying up the interview forms into a PC at the other end.

Stuart

(Rachel wishes to point out that her fingers are on a PC but her heart in a the Mac)

chennai 09 - day 2

2009-01-31T17:45:00.004Z

Reposted from the Grassroots India blog

Children we met while out visiting families and praying for them in the Chennai slum. The morning was taken up with 3 hours of walking from one family to the next and being invited in to hear from those there and pray for them.
Hugo

After we got back to the centre we had a wonderful meal off banana leaves and then sat down to arrange the rest of the week's programme. Then at 5pm we joined the children who are sponsored through Grassroots at their after school club. They were very boisterous and fantastic. We sat with them and looked through the work they were doing. In the schools in the morning there are over 100 to a class. Here 2 teachers to every 30 children.
Hugo

chennai 09 - day 1

2009-01-31T17:41:00.002Z

Reposted from the Grassroots India blog

The team managed to have an adventure even before leaving the ground. Just on the approach road to depatures at terminal 5, Hugos car decided to become terminal and broke down. The AA man (very nice man) told me it had broken down in one of the most dangerous places possible!! The team were packed off to book in not knowing if Hugo would be able to follow them or not as the car could not just be left without causing a major bomb scare. Well lots of frantic phone calls later Hugo did get the flight, the car limped home towed by the AA man, probably a right off and is now looking like a hypocrit on my drive ( it looks the same as always). So all that and still they had not taken off... i did not mention that one of the team was also selected for special security checks so was not allowed to check in ahead of time. He is a big man who needed big leg room... no idea what happened. Well they are still in the air.. I wonder what is happening there? I will let you know if and when I get any information.
God Bless
Sharon

Greetings from Chennai - we all arrived safely, boredom on the flight being the principle problem post "the breakdown". We've checked into the Blue Daimond, and at 3:30am (it's 5.5 hours ahead of the UK) are preparing to get some shut-eye... Kevin and David met us at the airport with garlands of flowers - beautiful, they're creating a heavenly scent in an otherwise manly room - male job #1 was to undo all the cables and recharge eveything
Phil

chennai photos

2009-01-28T16:28:00.001Z

interviewing children who are part of the sponsorship scheme

india-bound...

2009-01-25T19:26:00.002Z

I'll be off early in the morning to meet Catherine, Buffy, Stuart, Hugo, Sam and Phil at Heathrow before we fly off to Chennai for the week. I don't know much detail about what we'll be doing just yet but it'll be something to do with this:

...and news will be posted regularly at the indiablog on the Grassroots website which may or may not automatically be transferred to here - time will tell!

2008-12-16T08:24:00.002Z

To relieve the recent lack of postings here, I've 'borrowed' this from Lyn's blog (well worth a read...) Maybe next year I'll return to it and see how much has changed?

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii (not yet...)

5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis (no, but I stood on one in Thailand once)
10. Sang a solo

11. Bungee jumped (never... ever!)
12. Visited Paris (yes, but only a random art exhibition in a Hotel Ibis in the back streets. Want to go back and do it properly...)
13. Watched a lightning storm
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child (no but I sponsored one)
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train

21. Had a pillow fight (with Dan and Stu which resulted in a broken window!)
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person (not yet...)
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community (Is that really a 'spectator sport'?)
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied. (Is satisfaction about money?)
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke.
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class.
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book (I think this is a "not yet" too...)

81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating. (No, but I have eaten a pig that I had listened to it squealing as it was killed)
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life. (No, not directly)
90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a mobile phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day

big big thank you!

2008-11-27T22:34:00.003Z

This is a little late but even so, it's a huge thank you to all of you who were part of the fundraising I did for my birthday this year.

With your help, we raised a massive £300 which will be used on the Grassroots child sponsorship programme in Mbeya, Tanzania - probably to help fund HIV testing for each child so that those affected can be given extra nutrition and medical support.

So, thank you! You've helped make a difference.

If you weren't involved but would like to be, it's not to late to sponsor a child or donate towards the work in Tanzania.

P.S. Dan and I had a great weekend in Dublin seeing the sights, celebrating my old age and taking lots of photos

30 years!!

2008-10-19T19:54:00.004+01:00

Thirty years ago this weekend, people were noticing the nights drawing in, looking forward to gaining an hour when they put the clocks back in a few days time, and leaving nice big gaps in the wood piles they were preparing to make sure roast hedgehog wasn't on the menu for the day after bonfire night. And my mum was about 2 weeks away from giving birth to me. I don't know what she was doing exactly - I wasn't there (well, OK, technically I was but I couldn't see out) but I guess she was probably painting the woodchip yellow in the nursery and folding terry nappies.

That was back in 1978, which means that now, in 2008, I'm sat here noticing how dark it is, looking forward to an extra hour's sleep next weekend and enjoying the last few weeks of my 20s! Seeing as I'm going to be 30 this year, I thought it'd be a good idea to do something a bit different to celebrate.

Please please know that I don't expect anything at all from you. You don't have to buy presents or anything at all. If you don't want to or weren't going to or are wondering how you came to be reading this because you don't even know who I am, feel free to stop reading. BUT if you were thinking about sending me something for my birthday, read on....

Presents are lovely, and much appreciated, but really not necessary. This year we moved from a house in Coventry to a flat in London. Just ask any of the lovely people who helped us move in here - we've got way way too much stuff (and way way too many stairs to have carried all those boxes up!). I honestly can't think of anything I need or want this year, or where I'd put it if I could think of anything!

So... here's the plan. We've been involved with Grassroots in various ways over the last few years. It's a great charity that does all sorts of things in the UK and the rest of the world. One of these 'things' they do is an Alternative Gift shop, where you can buy mosquito nets, food parcels, pigs and all sorts of things which are used in the communities supported by the Child Sponsorship programme in Tanzania. I'd really love it if any money that you might have spent on a present for me could be sent to Grassroots instead so that they can put it to good use in this community.

I haven't selected a specific item from the alternative gifts yet - it seemed to make more sense to wait and see how much we raised between us before thinking about that side of things. Once I know, I'll talk to Hugo and Sharon about how that amount could best be used. If you're one of the lovely people who contribute, I'll make sure we let you know what happens.

If you do want to be part of this, head on over to the Donate page on the Grassroots website. From there, you can either donate by credit card, or download a form with all the information you'd need to send your donation by post. Alternatively you can send donations to me and I'll pass them on BUT if you're a taxpayer, it's much better to go directly to Grassroots as you'll be able to gift aid your donation which makes it worth a whole lot more. If you have any trouble with this, contact me or Grassroots and we'll sort it out.

If you do contribute, please make sure you add a note saying that its part of this so that the money ends up in the right pot.

Again, please don't feel you have to do this, or anything else, for me. Its just great knowing that you're our friend and hanging out with you every once in a while. If I'm still up to visiting people once old age hits, it'd be great to see you soon!

durban report part 5

2008-09-26T11:09:00.006+01:00

Five Prayer Walks
5. Central to the coast

We started the final section of the Cross-Durban Prayer Walk at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Berea, the home church of Jean who has many years of experience of prayer walking the city and whom we were standing alongside by being there and walking with her. The service that morning was jam packed so after the worship, communion, a dance piece, a few words from Jean about the walk, a brief hello from Hugo and a short word from Siya, we set off down the road towards the coast.

We were a much bigger group than the previous walks, with people from FGT and from Jean's intercession group (and even a dog!) joining us for the day. The first section of the walk was the same as we had walked 10 days previously, down through the Warwick Junction markets. It was great to walk through again and continue to pray blessings for the traders and families there. The market is hardly ever quiet - a constant vibrancy of life, 7 days a week. The only time I've ever seen it empty was during a transport strike which meant that many of the workers and shoppers were unable to get there.

As we emerged out of the markets, we reached the cathedral just in time to join the last few minutes of their multilingual mass, as scheduled. The cathedral is huge, and was full of people at the third mass of the day, this time held half in Zulu and half in English. As I've already mentioned in an earlier post, the cathedral is one of the host churches for the SITCD teams, involving the delegates in the work that they do in and around Warwick Junction, serving homeless and refugees with showers, food, clothes and education. It's an amazing place where God is very tangibly present and very evidently at work. We were greeted by an usher with the words "Ah yes, we know about you" and led to a chancel at the front.

The cathedral was rammed full of people, mostly black with some white faces. We'd arrived just in time for communion, which we were allowed to take and all tried desperately to look like we knew what we were doing in a situation quite different to what most of us were used to and half explained in Zulu! After a quick lunch in the car park, we went back in for the start of the Zulu mass, slipping out during a song so that we could head for our next destination.

St Paul's is an Anglican church on Pine Street, right in the centre of the city. There's a weekly group who visit refugee and homeless shelters who start there before going out each time. Some of the delegate teams joined this group and we were able to go and pray with them on a couple of occasions too. Our first stop on arrival at St Paul's was with the refugees who were living in the lower hall - originally from the Congo and having been recently 'redisplaced' by the xenophobic attacks. We prayed and worshipped with them before moving up to another hall to pray for the church and its ministries and involvements. The picture here shows the roll of paper which we'd carried along our way, writing down things that God had been saying, pictures, visions, significant verses etc.

Our final church stop for the day was Gate of Life church at the end of Smith Street. In previous years, delegate teams have served at Gate of Life, decorating their creche room and helping out with the creche. The creche is run by the church to serve refugee families in the area by providing free childcare while they look for work, and then affordable childcare once they are employed. The church have recently moved into a new building but we were able to meet at the creche centre to pray for their work there with Pastor Assan and a couple of other congregation members.

We left Gate of Life late in the afternoon and walked to our final destination - the beach. We had chosen to finish at the beach for several reasons. Even in post-apartheid Durban, there are still divides and inequalities between the many different racial groups in the city, mostly the result of long-standing generational lifestyle and attitudes - it's not deliberate, it just takes generations for these things to change. The beach is one of the few places where all people go as equals. It also felt right to finish at the sea; as Jean said "The British came from the sea, they return to the sea". Also, following the shape of the cross, we had walked three sections into the centre and then from the centre to the coast, symbolically bringing the churches together in Durban and then sending them out into Durban and the rest of the world.

As we stood on the beach, there was a sense of relief and finality. It was done. Jean shouted "It is finished" as she wrote it in the sand. Seven times she shouted it and we all responded "Amen, it is finished!"

durban report part 4

2008-09-15T21:26:00.003+01:00

Prayer walk 4 - south

The next section of the cross-Durban prayer walk started here, at what is known as "The John 3:16" church in Seaview. Seaview is south of the centre of Durban, just the other side of the Umbilo River. The "John 3:16 Church", so called because they have a HUGE sign outside displaying that Bible verse, does actually have another name, which I, like most of the rest of Durban, can't remember (Sorry Hansen!). It was great to be able to join with some of the church members here, to worship with them and pray for them. The church is situated in an area with a high crime rate and lots of prostitutes working on the streets around them. It is also historically significant, placed on a group of roads known as The Ladder which is part of the masonic influence over the city. We prayed for the church, and for the leaders, that they would be encouraged and strengthened, that there would be depth of relationship and true unity between them and the other churches in the area and for the work that they are doing in their community.

We walked on, praying for the area and for the things around. Seaview is fairly close to the port so has various military connections. A little way down the hill, we had to cross the M7, a motorway-level busy road but with a pedestrian crossing! Fairly scary as the green man didn't just flash... he ran! He also gave us barely enough time to dash across the road before the huuuuge lorries began hurtling towards us at great speed again. By the grace of God...!

Alongside the road, the Umbilo river runs towards the sea. We paused for a while on the bridge to pray. Somewhere around this area marks another corner of the triangular masonic net which I mentioned in my first report.

A couple of weeks previously, Lucy and I had walked this section of the walk, checking out the area and making sure it was possible to walk this way. As we crossed the bridge that day, Lucy came close to falling down a deep manhole which had been left open on the bridge. Jean later explained that the manhole covers are often stolen as they can be sold as scrap metal. We prayed at the time that these would be covered again to make the bridge safe. Coming up onto the bridge for a second time, it was a surprise to discover the holes covered with bright yellow manhole covers! Much safer! And yet another reminder that God answers prayer - even prayers about manhole covers!

Beside the river is a small nature reserve and a park, and then a fairly typical Durban residential area, which we passed through, praying as we headed on towards our second destination of the day, the Faith Family Church.

Some of the members of Faith Family Church were there to greet us and we very quickly got down to worshipping with them. Here, we were encouraged to pray more creatively as Pastor Rudy handed out flags amongst the congregation whilst displaying a list of the different meanings for the colours on the screen. For most of the team - as British as you can imagine, the thought of flag waving in worship was a little uncomfortable. Cultural differences I suppose - I don't think any of us think there's anything wrong with flag waving at all, we just don't really go for it ourselves.

As the sung worship ended, Rudy encouraged us in small groups to use the colours of the flags to pray for Durban - the groups with the blue flags praying for God's Holy Spirit to move in the city, the green flag groups praying for life, the red flag groups declaring the power of the blood of Christ etc.

During the next section of the walk, we were able to stop in various places for specific prayer;
- by the entrance to the Umbilo Cemetery
- at a high school
- outside an old people's home
- at a road junction
- a spot from which the university was visible on the hill
It was good to be able to pray for all these, and more, aspects of Durban as we walked, using the things we could see and hear to inspire our prayers.

Our next stop on this walk was not a church, but a small grassy area just beside the road along which we were walking. There are lots of churches in the area but we chose the grassland for its clear view of the port, and also because we had hoped that people from the many churches around would join us for a picnic at this point. Unfortunately we had to reschedule this walk due to other events in the city and ended up walking this way on a weekday so people were less able to gather with us.

After a relaxing lunch (including some chill out time on the swings!) we gathered round our large map to worship and pray for the city, with the map, the outdoors, the surrounding area, the view across the port and a couple of items of 'prophetic junk' to inspire us. Prophetic junk is a term we've started using to describe the items we pick up along the way when prayer walking - anything which catches our eye (and can legally/sensibly be taken) and which God appears to be speaking through. Today's prophetic junk was an old book cover inside which had been drawn some crude cartoon pictures - symbolising the desire for relationship and intimacy, and the struggles which young people are facing, and a heart-shaped weaver bird's nest, pictured below.

We stopped less on this last section of the walk, partly maybe due to tiredness? We did take some time out on Berea Road to pray outside a large masonic lodge situated right next to the road here. The Port Natal lodge was founded in 1858 and was the first in Kwa Zulu Natal. It stands beside the busy N3, a road from Durban's port out into mainland Africa, and just below the Ridge Road ley line which we walked the Sunday previously. We prayed again that the influences of masonry over Durban would be silenced, for truth and freedom for all those concerned.

Just around the corner from the lodge was our final stop for the day - the Berea Congregational Church. Our feet had a well-earned rest as we sat around the fountain in their forecourt and prayed for all that had been part of the day.

durban report part 3

2008-09-11T23:48:00.003+01:00

Prayer walk 3 - West

The second 'limb' of the cross prayer walk was from the west of Durban, into the centre. We walked it on a Sunday, meaning that we connected with more people in each church as they were already there for their service.

We started the day at Westville Christian Fellowship, a church full of people of all colours, tribes and races. WCF has been multicultural since before apartheid was over - a bold move at the time. You can read their history on their website. We were there for the beginning of their service so were able to worship with them, both for the kids worship (much dancing and actions!) and the 'adult' worship. The worship style that day was fairly similar to what you'd find at Soul Survivor and many other Western churches, although I'm told that they do also incorporate Zulu sword dancing into their services on occasion so we were sorry to have missed that. As we walked on from the church and into Chesterville township, we prayed for the church, who are currently building their own premises in the township with a view to becoming more part of the community.

Initially, this walk took us through a country club and down a road lined with large, affluent housing. Not too far down the road, we passed very close to the Pavillions shopping centre - a large mall built on the edge of the township. It's an amazing contrast to see such wealth and consumerism next to the simplistic shacks of the township. Many of the township's inhabitants work in Pavillions, which was built, in part, to create employment. We stopped by the mall to pray there, for that, for a masonic lodge clearly visible on top of a nearby hill, for recurring accidents which happen at the many busy road junctions in that area , for the hospital and prison nearby, and for various other things.

Beyond the Pavillions we began an 8km walk down Spine Road, a relatively busy and straight road which edges Chesterville Township. There is, for the most part, a small amount of wasteland between the township and the road so it was a little like praying for the township at arms length; disappointing in some ways as it would have been great to be able to be amongst the people, to experience a bit of the culture and to actually be able to talk and pray with people. We prayed into the many issues facing township dwellers across South Africa - high unemployment rates, rising living costs, security, violent xenophobic attacks, alcoholism and other addictions, HIV and AIDS and abuse of children.

It was a long walk. The route isn't particularly attractive or exciting but then we never said it would be. It was hard, walking so long through such poor areas having just come from somewhere at the other end of the scale. The realities of the contrasts of South Africa were ever present that afternoon. But then sometimes prayer is hard. Sometimes prayer is accepting the things you didn't want to see. Sometimes it's pushing on through the tough stuff that seems to never end. It was hard. But it was worth it.

Endless as it seemed, we did eventually reach our turning and began to walk up the hill into Cato Crest. If we'd thought that the contrast between the Pavillions and Chesterville was big, this was bigger. I think Cato Crest is possibly one of the worst shack dwellings I've seen. The shacks are small, very close together and built, seemingly, from whatever materials came to hand. There are people (and chickens!) everywhere, as far as you can see, in every tiny space up and down the hills.

Lucy, Kiran, Andrew and I had visited Cato Crest earlier in the week with Tim, who works in the area, supporting the local church and school and giving out food parcels regularly to families in need. He drove through with us, helping us to finalise our route to the church so that we wouldn't get lost when it came to the walk. Townships aren't always safe places to be, particularly not when you stand out as well as we do - very very white, obviously not locals. People are very wary of foreigners (and often rightly so) so it was important that we knew our way.

The walk into Cato Crest begins with a climb up a steep hill, which looked a little daunting from the bottom, especially after 8km, but we attacked it with enthusiasm, praying for the area, the people we saw, greeting those who passed us with the few Zulu words we could remember, praying for the developments we could see - the government are slowly tearing down the existing settlements and building low-cost housing in its place. These new buildings are slightly more hardwearing but take up more space than the original shacks, creating a different kind of housing problem.

Having reached the top, we headed on down the other side of the hill towards the church, which sits at the t-junction at the end of the road. The feeling of walking over that hill and reaching the junction was overwhelming. I'd remembered the area around the church as being busy, colourful, rammed full of shacks and houses with people all over the place. If you didn't know the church was there, you'd miss it (as Lucy and I did when we drove through the first time around) as there are so many buildings so close to it. As we walked down towards it this time, all I could see was a big gaping space, filled with debris and a large JCB. The church, thankfully, was still there, although I couldn't see it at first. The whole area looked so different that I honestly thought we'd taken a wrong turning, even though I was fairly confident we'd come the right way (and Lucy, Kiran and Andrew hadn't argued when I made the turnings!). It was a huge shock.

A small metal shipping container with ducks painted on the side helped me to find my bearings and we picked our way through the creche play area into the church. The church itself is barely more than a large shack with simple breeze block walls, a wooden frame and a corrugated metal roof. We walked blinking inside and were directed to some empty seats. It was amazingly dark and took a long time for my eyes to adjust enough to be able to see how many people were inside - around 40. It didn't help that the only window was directly behind Pastor Simon who was mid-sermon as we arrived.

Pastor Simon paused in the middle of his talk (about Paul and Timothy), to welcome us and to explain to his congregation who we were. He also took the time to explain to us that just the night before, there had been a fire and 29 of the shacks had been burnt to the ground, claiming the lives of 8 people, some of them children, and all known to members of the church, hence the large empty patch next to the church, and the blackened walls and beams of the church building. Some of the shacks which had burnt had been almost touching the church building. You can read a newspaper article about this fire at this South African news site.

He also explained that the darkness was due to the xenophobic attacks which took place at the end of May this year. A gang attacked the church, and Pastor Simon's family home next door, looting any valuables and ransacking the rest. They stole the PA system and generator which powered the lights but the church continue to meet and worship in the dim light.

At the end of his talk, which he continued after our arrival in Zulu and English for our benefit, Simon invited us to speak. This was when Siya did his thing! It was an amazing and beautiful moment as Siya came to the front and greeted the church in Zulu (sometimes translating into English so we knew what he was saying). (In case you were wondering, this wasn't a timely gift of spontaneous tongues, Siya was born and brought up in Cape Town). My Zulu isn't good enough (read 'isn't good at all') to know what he said but we reckon it was something to do with Jesus turning our mourning into dancing and how we should praise him even in the sad times. It wasn't long before he had the whole church on their feet, singing, praising and dancing (even us reluctant British dancers). It was fantastic to see God using Siya and his gifts there and to feel the atmosphere which had been sad and heavy, turn to one of joy and praise.

It was a huge privilege to have the opportunity to be able to pray for the people of this church. Siya and Simon invited anyone who wanted prayer to step forward - women first. The team gathered round to pray for the women of the community, allowing God to speak and hoping for a well-placed translator when he did! There are so many practical issues to pray for here; the means to support and feed families, employment for themselves, their husbands and older children, education for the children and so on, but most of these women simply asked that God would increase their faith. What an inspiration - so much obvious need and still their greatest desire is for more faith in God.

Having prayed for the women, we then invited any men to come forward for prayer in a similar way. The men from the team gathered around them to pray for them too.

As we left, we stopped for a few minutes in the playground just outside the church, where a creche runs during the week (the Inkosi Nathi (God with us) Little Disciples Creche and Pre School), to pray for the community. It was hard to find the words with so much around us - the shacks, the people, the fire, the mess it had left...

Tired, and still a little shocked, we walked back up the hill through the township and on towards the centre, still praying as we walked. We paused a few times on the way back, to pray for Jean's house, visible just up the hill as we walked past, for the Bible Society HQ in Durban and their work, outside Ben, Katie and Bertie's old hose to pray for them as this section of their life draws to a close and they seek God for what comes next, and by Durban Boys High School to pray for the pupils who were playing rugby in the rain!

We took a break for tea and rusks (not what we British people think of as rusks - more like a very hard shortbread biscuit which tastes great dunked in tea) for the rest of the afternoon as our walk that day was to finish at the St Thomas, Berea, evening service. St Thom's was the church which became home to us for the duration of our stay, as they very kindly hosted the team, providing beds and breakfasts and dealing extremely calmly with our random comings and goings! Rob Taylor, the vicar at St Thoms, was very involved with Soul Survivor in Durban a few years ago and he and his wife, Sue, sons, Paul and Mick, dogs, Wallace and Shadow, and, last but by no means least, cats, Aslan and Foot, welcomed us brilliantly.

The team served at St Thomas in various individual ways whilst we were there, with Katie, Steve, Wendy and Annie getting involved musically in the worship at their evening service, Andrew helping on the technical side and Annie speaking at one of the services towards the end of her stay. We also helped out with the refugees currently situated at the church but that's for another email update...

So we felt very much a part of the church family at St Thoms and it was great to be able to relax and join with them to worship at their evening service, with the opportunity to pray for some of the members at the end.

All in all, a difficult day - our longest walk of the five, with the most contrasts and challenges, the shock of the devastation at Cato Crest but also the privilege, once again, of seeing God at work in His church and the opportunity to be a part of it.

Day 2 Summary:
km walked: 13.7
churches visited: 3
general prayer stuff: unemployment, addiction, consumerism, freemasonry, contrasts, unity, healing

durban wordle

2008-09-11T12:59:00.002+01:00

(3rd update coming soon....)

circles

2008-09-05T00:08:00.002+01:00

durban report part 2

2008-09-04T19:00:00.003+01:00

Five Prayer Walks 2: Durban North

This was the first of four walks forming the Cross Durban Prayer Walk. There's a very fuzzy map of the walk at Cross Connections, I'll try and get a better version posted somewhere. The idea was to walk a cross-shape over the city of Durban, marking out God's sovereignty over the city by Christ's death on the cross. We were walking from church to church, symbolically connecting the churches in Durban together by the cross, building on existing unity and forging new links. When the British first came to Durban they came to divide and conquer, we were coming to unite and serve. There was also some significance in the direction of the walks, walking from the northern, western and southern points into the centre and then from the centre out to the coast, again symbolically bringing all the churches in to the centre and then out to the rest of the world.

I woke on Saturday morning with that excited feeling inside like a small child on Christmas morning! We started at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Durban North. COGS have been involved with SITC in Durban since the beginning, hosting teams working with Lungisani Indlela in Amaoti. It was great to worship together at the start of the walk and to take some time to listen to God.

We walked from COGS through Durban North, praying and listening to God as we went – allowing the things we saw and heard to inspire us to pray and stopping occasionally at historically, geographically, physically or spiritually significant places along the way to pray. These places included an area in which Masonic symbols are formed by the layout of the streets, a road junction which sees many accidents, a Swiss Masonic Lodge and a shop belonging to one of the local ladies who joined us for the walk. Durban North is a particularly affluent area, with large, well guarded houses. Security in Durban is such that almost all houses are surrounded by high walls with large remote-controlled gates and many have guard dogs.

Our second stop of the day was at Living Waters Mission, a predominantly Indian Full Gospel church just off the North Coast Road. We worshipped and prayed for the local area and the church there, who do various things in their community and a nearby township. There were several words spoken there about it being a place of healing, particularly that they would see people healed of HIV and AIDS. We look forward to hearing the stories!

As we moved on from LWM, we stopped under the railway bridge to pray for the railway system in South Africa. The South African rail network is the most highly developed rail system in Africa and is nearly 100 years old. For various reasons, including the development of the roads and highways, it is hardly used, with only half of the 20,000km of track being fully used and 35% of it not seeing any activity at all. We prayed that the government would begin to use the rail systems again for transporting freight around the country, and that it would become a safe and reliable way for people to travel. The rest of the morning’s walk carried on down the North Coast Road, alongside the railway so we continued to pray for the system as we walked.

Six days later, as we were having breakfast, we heard on the radio news that a group of government officials were meeting in Johannesburg to discuss proposals to start to reuse railway transport to move freight across the country! God answers prayer!

Before arriving at our third stop, we took some time to pray at the Connaught Bridge over the Umgeni River. It’s a busy road bridge and intersection between main roads, as well as a good viewpoint up into Durban from one side and down the river through the nature reserves to the sea on the other. The bridge also marks one corner of the triangular Masonic net I mentioned in the previous report. Here, we prayed against Masonic influences and strongholds over the city and for the lifting of this net.

Our third stop was at Morningside Vineyard in their new warehouse home. Like COGS, the Vineyard here have been very involved with the SITC delegates, hosting them in their church and working in the Cato Crest township (more about that in the next report). Here, we prayed particularly for children in Durban and South Africa and the many issues they face.

After stopping for lunch in the Burman Bush nature reserve nearby, we moved on towards our next church stop. The team questioned my route planning at this stage as we tackled several steep hills, stopping briefly at the top to worship as we caught our breath!

Church on Florida, where we were heading, also hosts delegates during SITC, this year placing them in a local school where they worked on decorating the hall. In the past, delegates here have done some street outreach on Florida Road (hence the name of the church,) which is a vibrant social area in the evenings. Florida Road is lined with various restaurants, bars and one or two clubs and the church is well situated to engage with people who are out for the evening. They’ve got some great stories of things which have happened as a result of this outreach.

The youth from Church on Florida had gathered to join with us when we arrived and we enjoyed worshipping and praying with them for the area and for young people in Durban.

We walked on to our final stop, Musgrave Methodist Church where we were welcomed by several church members and their new(ish) minister. Musgrave was the central point of the cross-walk so this was the first of four times we prayed there. I can't remember anything more specific about the prayer time here apart from miming the words to verse 2 of How Great is Our God to Steve as he led worship.... sorry! The lovely people at Musgrave Methodist then produced some amazing boerewors (sausages... only better!) and obligatory accompanying salad etc. A welcome sight at the end of the day!

Day 1 Summary:
km walked: 12.5
churches visited: 5
general prayer stuff: transport, industry, freemasonry, community

six years

2008-08-31T08:32:00.001+01:00

Six years of marriage...

... and we both buy each other the same South African chocolate bar as an anniversary gift! (OK so it was a predictable choice!)

durban report part 1

2008-08-27T16:49:00.007+01:00

Five Prayer Walks: Walk 1: Warwick Junction

Warwick Junction is the market area of Durban, situated beneath the flyover of the N3 as it comes into and out of the city. Various pedestrian
We prayer walked Warwick Junction one morning, starting in Berea at the Full Gospel Tabernacle and walking a full circuit through the market, taking in each section, the bus and railway stations, the largest mosque in the Southern hemisphere and Emmanuel Cathedral.

It’s a vibrant and colourful place with loads going on. I’ve been through five times now and always see things I missed before. Some people find it a bit daunting and dark, particularly at the end of the muthi market where many of the stalls are held by sangomas - traditional African healers or witch doctors. It’s hard not to feel conspicuous walking through as one of the only few white people for miles around, so obviously a tourist of some description.

We prayer walked Warwick Junction one morning, starting in Berea at the Full Gospel Tabernacle and walking a full circuit through the market, taking in each section, the bus and railway stations, the largest mosque in the Southern hemisphere and Emmanuel Cathedral.

As we walked, we prayed for various things - the people who live, work and shop there, for the businesses, for the many children who grow up in the markets and whatever else we felt God was saying to pray for at the time.

Just beyond the cathedral, we stopped under the end of the flyover. There’s currently a hydra serpent mural on the wall here which is gradually wearing off. Jean has had a new mural designed which celebrates the life and vibrancy of the city of Durban and is currently working her way through all the red tape to get it painted there. We stopped initially to pray for this project but while we were there, one of the team felt that God was saying it was time to pray for the end of the Masonic influences over the city. We stood praying about freemasonry and it’s strongholds in Durban, including some time when we just shouted the word “Enough!” over and over again. It was a powerful time, during which it definitely felt like things were shifting spiritually.

Whilst we were praying here, two asian men came over and asked us to pray for them. We explained that we were praying to Jesus, not Shembe (leader of the ancestral worship religion followed by many Zulus) and they still wanted prayer. The first man stood in the middle of the circle and we began to pray. The Holy Spirit was there quite powerfully and he burst into tears and ran away. None of us are really sure what happened but we’re praying that he continues to seek God.

As we passed the cathedral, we met one of the delegate teams who served there for 2 weeks. Having spent the morning cleaning graffiti off the cathedral walls, they were cooking and serving a meal for the hundreds of refugees and homeless people who gather there every day. The cathedral provides an amazing service, with showers, hot food, access to medical treatment and education.

A few days after we had prayer walked the area, a few people rang Ben, the SITC project leader to say that they were beginning to notice a difference in the atmosphere of Warwick Junction. I didn’t speak to any of them so I don’t know any specific details but it’s encouraging to hear that things are changing and that God is moving in the area.

durban prayer autoblog 48

2008-08-18T15:00:00.000+01:00

The end! I leave Durban today to fly home to the UK.

Thank you so so so much for your support. I've said it many times before but it makes a huge difference to know that there are so many of you back home praying while we're here.

Thank God for...
- you! Couldn't have done it without you.

durban prayer autoblog 47

2008-08-17T15:00:00.001+01:00

Alongside the delegates, there has been a small team of people here supporting them in many ways.

Thank God for...
- Ben, Sue, Dave, Stuart, Sue and everyone else
- Katie, Bertie and all the team back in the UK who worked on SITCD

Please pray for...
- all the above as SITCD comes to an end. They have all invested years of time into this and, as well as taking a well earned break, can now look ahead to whatever God has for them next. Pray for wisdom as they work this out!
- good rest and many blessings
- safe and straightforward travel as they return home (especially for Lucy who flies today)

durban prayer autoblog 46

2008-08-16T15:00:00.000+01:00

The last delegates leave Durban today, heading home to the UK. For many of the 100 delegates who have been out this year, it will have been their first overseas mission trip. For some, I suspect, not their last!

Thank God for...
- the ways in which he uses us in his work
- the willingness of 100 delegates to get in there and get working

Please pray for...
- the delegates who are flying home today
- all the delegates who have been here. Serving overseas in a culture so different from your own is a life-changing experience. It opens eyes, raises questions, changes perceptions, deepens faith and so much more. Pray that the changes in these young people's lives will be lasting changes and that they will continue to seek God in how they can serve and honour him

durban prayer autoblog 45

2008-08-15T15:00:00.002+01:00

So for the last 7 weeks, Durban has (mostly unknowingly) played host to 100 Soul Survivor delegates with a love for worshipping God and a heart to see lives changed. Durban is a city full of contrasts - wealth next to poverty, cultures side by side, numerous religions, worldviews etc. There are also various political implications and still, in some places, the after effects of apartheid.

God is at work here, changing the hearts and lives of people in so many ways. There's much to be done - some obvious, some not so obvious.

Thank God for...
- this city, its life and its people
- the freedom to be Christian here, and the many many people who are

Please pray for...
- this city!
- for resolution in difficult situations
- for employment, education, health, immigration and economy
- for increased peace and safety for all who live here
- that God would continue to move and that more and more people would come to know him

durban prayer autoblog 44

2008-08-14T15:00:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I mentioned all the people who are affected by the projects which happen here day in and day out. This is thousands and thousands of people across the city - refugee families, townships, schools, orphanages, child-led families.... so so many people.

Thank God for...
- all of them!

Please pray for...
- their situations. God knows each one of them, who they are, what's happening and what they need.
- them as they encounter God's love demonstrated so practically by local churches. Pray that those who do not yet know him will recognise it and start to explore and question. Pray that those who do know God will be encouraged and challenged to do the same.

durban prayer autoblog 43

2008-08-13T15:00:00.000+01:00

As SITC Durban 2008 is coming to an end it'd be great to be praying for all the ongoing ministries and life-changes that have happened as a result.

All the projects the delegates have worked with are existing church projects which the Durban churches work all year round.

Thank God for...
- these churches and their commitment to the work they are doing
- all the many many people whose lives are affected by the work

Please pray for...
- all these projects as they continue to work, sometimes in difficult or challenging situations, that God would protect them as they work and provide for all their needs

durban prayer autoblog 42

2008-08-12T15:00:00.000+01:00

With the prayer walk finished, the prayer team's work is mostly done here so it's time to head home.

Thank God for...
- Lucy, Dan, Steve, Andrew, Kiran, Zia, Becki, Hugo, Siya, Annie, Wendy, Karen, Katie and Sue (oh, and me!)

Please pray for...
- Annie, Wendy, Karen and Sue who are heading on to holidays and other adventures in South Africa
- Dan, Kiran, Andrew, Siya and Hugo who fly back to the UK today and Katie who flies back tomorrow
- Steve as he flies on to continue prayer walking in another African country tomorrow
- Lucy, Becki and I who are staying on for the rest of the week and will continue to support the delegates in their work

durban prayer autoblog 41

2008-08-11T15:00:00.001+01:00

The last three delegate teams start their second week of project work today.

Thank God for...
- These final 30 delegates

Please pray for...
- continued compassion and energy in them for the people they are working with
- all the people, churches, communities, places and situations that were touched by the prayer walk which finished yesterday, that God will continue to move.

P.S. Happy anniversary Mum & Dad!

durban prayer autoblog 40

2008-08-10T15:00:00.000+01:00

Today is the final day of our prayer walk. We'll be starting at a church in Musgrave (hopefully the Full Gospel Tabernacle) and walking east, towards the coast, stopping at the cathedral, Anglican church and Gate of Life on the way.

Thank God for...
- the many ways in which churches are involved in the city centre
- the diversity of life and culture found in the centre

Please pray for...
- us as we walk for the last time
- openness to God so that we pray, do and hear what He wants us to

durban prayer autoblog 39

2008-08-09T15:00:00.001+01:00

Today is a big day in Durban. Angus Buchan is speaking in the ABSA stadium. Angus has an amazing testimony, made famous by the film, Faith Like Potatoes. He now travels around the world speaking and preaching. His Mighty Men conference in South Africa a few months ago was attended by over 60,000 men.

Thank God for...
- Angus, his testimony and his ministry

Please pray for...
- the thousands of people who will hear him speak at the ABSA stadium this evening
- the churches in Durban who are hosting the event and will follow up any responses
- the three delegate teams who fly home today

durban prayer autoblog 38

2008-08-08T16:24:00.001+01:00

Prayer walk day 3

Today we walk the third leg of the prayer walk, starting in the south of Durban and walking towards the centre.

Thank God for...
- the warm reception we've received from churches in this area already

Please pray for...
- safety, protection and openness to God as we walk and pray
- one of the stops on this walk is on public land where we are hoping several local churches will join us
- Zia as she flies home today

P.S. Happy 86th birthday Grandma!

durban prayer autoblog 37

2008-08-07T15:00:00.002+01:00

Thursday again, and three more delegate teams are spending their last days with their projects.

Thank God for...
- all the time, effort, prayer and energy that these delegates have poured into their work

Please pray for...
- the team at Silver Willow and the 2 teams who have been at Greyville, as they finish their projects and think about all they have learnt, experienced and seen in the context of preparing to return home.

durban prayer autoblog 36

2008-08-06T16:01:00.000+01:00

We already have 4 days of prayer walking planned but have vaguely discussed putting in another day. More details as and when but if we do, it'll be one day this week.

Thank God for...
- the freedom to prayer walk the city of Durban.

Please pray for...
- these plans for an extra day of prayer walking - that God would bless them and make them happen if it's the right thing
- for wisdom for Lucy and I as we investigate setting up this walk

durban prayer autoblog 35

2008-08-05T15:00:00.002+01:00

The final prayer team member arrives today - Wendy is flying in from the UK to join the team, hopefully all refreshed after a day off yesterday. We'll be going out to visit the teams on project again, helping the newly arrived team settle in and think about how to integrate prayer into their work, and revisiting the teams who are starting their 2nd week.

Thank God for...
- a weekend of prayer walking

Please pray for...
- Wendy as she settles into the team
- the churches and people we met whilst prayer walking

durban prayer autoblog 34

2008-08-04T15:00:00.000+01:00

The final 30 delegates arrived yesterday from the UK and will be going out on project for the first time today.

Thank God for...
- the Westville and Emmanuel teams who will be at home by now
- these new delegates

Please pray for...
- Deborah and Andrew's team, working with the Presbyterian Beach Mission
- Fran and Adrian's team, working in Mayville with the Vineyard
- Ruth and Phil's team, working with Kwacare and His Church

durban prayer autoblog 33

2008-08-03T15:00:00.000+01:00

Prayer walk day 2!

Today we will walk the West leg of the prayer walk.

Thank God for...
- yesterday!
- all the places and people we'll encounter today

Please pray for...
- energy and enthusiasm for the prayer team
- not all the details of this section of the walk are finalised yet so do pray it gets sorted in time

durban prayer autoblog 32

2008-08-02T15:00:00.000+01:00

Prayer walk day 1!! We start the prayer walking today - with the first leg of the walk. In case you haven't heard this before now, we're going to be walking a cross shape over the city of Durban, stopping at various churches along the way to pray with and for them.

Today, we will start at the Vineyard church and finish up at a Methodist church in Berea, stopping at several other churches on the way. It's not a long walk - only about 10km with plenty of hills to climb!

Thank God for...
- Durban
- the churches and communities we will walk in, through and past today

Please pray for...
- us as we seek to hear from God for this city whilst we pray
- the places we will walk and the churches we will stop at. Significant in themselves, but even more so because they represent a huge number of other churches and communities in Durban because it is just too big for us to do it all.

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2008-08-01T15:00:00.002+01:00

More prayer team members join us today - Hugo and Siya

Thank God for...
- all the different prayer team members he's brought together from various different places and connections

Please pray for...
- safe and straightforward travel for Hugo and Siya
- us as a prayer team, that we would bond together well as a team
- good connections with the delegate teams as we spend time with them at their projects

P.S. Congratulations to Roger & Hannah, getting married today!

durban prayer autoblog 30

2008-07-31T15:00:00.001+01:00

The Westville and Emmanuel teams are finishing with their projects today, whilst the Silver Willow and Greyville teams are reaching the middle point.

Thank God for...
- all the different experiences the delegates are getting, and the opportunities to see and share God's love in action

Please pray for...
- these young people as they take in all that they are seeing and experiencing
- the people they are working with and all their various stories and situations

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2008-07-30T15:00:00.000+01:00

Whilst in Durban, the prayer team are being hosted by the very lovely Rob and Sue. Rob is a vicar in Durban and has been very supportive of SITCD for many years.

Thank God for...
- Rob and Sue and their faithfulness
- Rob and Sue's hospitality

Please pray for...
- Rob and Sue and their sons and dogs, who are all putting up with being invaded by 15 random prayer people for 2 weeks!

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2008-07-29T15:00:00.000+01:00

There was so much to get in yesterday that I didn't have space to fit in the fact that 3 more prayer team members arrived!

Thank God for...
- their safe and straightforward travel (OK, making some assumptions, but God is bigger than time so we can pray afterwards, right?)

Please pray for...
- Annie, Sue and Karen as they settle in to Durban and into the team

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2008-07-28T15:00:00.000+01:00

Monday again, with two teams returning for a 2nd week with their projects, whilst 3 are heading out for the first time.

Thank God for...
- all the logistics work that has gone into this so that 50 delegates can go out and serve projects across the city

Please pray for...
- Dan and Sarah's team, serving in Silver Willow with Mountainview Christian Fellowship
- Dan and Laura's team, serving at Greyville School with Church on Florida
- Gavin and Lydia's team, also serving at Greyville School

durban prayer autoblog 26

2008-07-27T15:00:00.001+01:00

More delegates!! We're entering our busiest time now, as 30 more delegates arrive in Durban ready to serve.

Thank God for...
- 30 more delegates
- the Parade Hotel

Please pray for...
- the SITCD team as they support 50 delegates
- safe and straightforward travel for the new teams

P.S. Happy Birthday Kim!

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2008-07-26T15:00:00.001+01:00

The next group of the prayer team arrive in Durban today.

Thank God for...
- Dan, Kiran, Andrew and Zia
- getting to see my husband again!

Please pray for...
- safe and straightforward travel for these 4. Their flights include a changeover in Abu Dhabi.

P.S. Congratulations to Ronald & Luisa, Kathryn & Carl and Dan & Fi, getting married today!

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2008-07-25T15:00:00.000+01:00

The 2 current delegate teams will be finishing their first week with the projects today. They'll have seen some difficult situations and heard some tough stories from the people they've met.

Thank God for...
- the work He's doing in Durban

Please pray for...
- the teams as they take time to think and pray about what they are experiencing
- more UK teams and the prayer team who are heading Durban-wards very soon...

P.S. Congratulations to David and Lisa, getting married today!

durban prayer autoblog 23

2008-07-24T15:00:00.000+01:00

The first of the prayer team arrives today - Steve Deeming. Steve is an experienced prayer walker who does all sorts of crazy things, usually with the excuse that God told him to! He joins us in Durban as part of an ongoing project to prayer walk the entire East coast of Africa.

Thank God for...
- Steve's passion, obedience and commitment
- all the praying and prayer walking Steve has done so far

Please pray for...
- safe and straightforward travel for Steve, today and in and around the country he is heading for when he leaves Durban
- clear communication between Steve and God!

Keep up with Steve, his praying and his cat at his blog

durban prayer autoblog 22

2008-07-23T15:00:00.001+01:00

In just over a week's time, we'll be starting the first leg of the prayer walk, walking a cross-shape over the city of Durban, stopping at churches along the way to pray for and with them. We're really keen for pray-ers of Durban to join us for this walk - for all or some of it.

Thank God for...
- the people from Durban who have already committed to walking and praying with us

Please pray for...
- good and effective communication about the walk, to enable as many people as possible to join us

durban prayer autoblog 21

2008-07-22T15:00:00.000+01:00

There's a small SITCD team out here, keeping things running, looking after delegates, relaying information back home and generally being lovely.

Thank God for...
- all of them, and the work they have put into this project, some of them for years, to make it happen

Please pray for...
- Ben, Katie, Dave, Sue, Stuart, Sue, Richard and anyone else I've missed (sorry!), for renewed strength, energy and enthusiasm for SITC and for continued passion to see the lives of Durban people and delegates alike changed by the power of God's love

durban prayer autoblog 20

2008-07-21T15:00:00.003+01:00

Just like 2 weeks ago, the two new delegate teams will meet their projects for the first time today.

Thank God for...
- the two host churches for this fortnight, and their projects

Please pray for...
- Jez and Karen's team, working in Westville
- Jess and Callum's team, working in the city centre with Emmanuel Cathedral

durban prayer autoblog 19

2008-07-20T15:00:00.001+01:00

While the newly arriving teams settle in for their coach journey to Durban, Lucy and I (and the rest of the team) will be heading off to church somewhere in Durban.

Thank God for...
- the many and varied churches in Durban. There really are hundreds of them!

Please pray for...
- us as we decide which one to visit!
- all the churches in Durban

durban prayer autoblog 18

2008-07-19T15:00:00.002+01:00

Travel day! The first 2 delegate teams fly home today, as the next 2 fly in.

Thank God for...
- in-flight movies!

Please pray for...
- Safe and straightforward travel for all those flying today
- the home-bound teams as they adjust to life back in the UK, in light of all they've seen and learnt in Durban
- good bonding for the Durban-bound teams as they start their 2 weeks together

P.S. Congratulations to Jo and Del, getting married today!

durban prayer autoblog 17

2008-07-18T15:00:00.000+01:00

After 2 weeks hard work on projects, the delegates will take a well-earned day off.

Thank God for...
- rest! He did it so we should too!

Please pray for...
- good rest for the teams
- a good day out
- space to reflect as each delegate looks back over their 2 weeks in Durban

durban prayer autoblog 16

2008-07-17T15:00:00.000+01:00

Today will be these two delegate teams' last day with their project - a funny time of mixed emotion, celebrating new friends and things achieved, but sad to be leaving and saying goodbye.

Thank God for...
- all that the delegates have achieved and given at their projects
- all that the delegates have learnt and received from God and from the people with whom they have been working

Please pray for...
- final opportunities for the delegates to pray for the people, situations, communities etc.
- good endings

durban prayer autoblog 15

2008-07-16T15:00:00.000+01:00

Most of you will have seen the news about a month ago, about the violent xenophobic attacks which started in Johannesburg and spread to other areas of South Africa, including Durban and Cape Town.

The violence has calmed down (at the time of writing) but has left many people with homes and lives to rebuild, and, for many communities, a general sense of fear.

Thank God for...
- the end of the violence

Please pray for...
- the many people and families who were affected by the attacks
- the churches in Durban and across South Africa who are ministering to their communities as they try to get their lives back to normal

durban prayer autoblog 14

2008-07-15T15:00:00.001+01:00

As the current delegate teams are nearing the end of their stay, 2 teams back in the UK are preparing to fly out, with 6 more teams behind them!

Thank God for...
- the 90 young people coming to serve this summer
- all the many people around them who are supporting them financially and prayerfully (that includes you!)

Please pray for...
- the teams in the UK who are preparing to fly this weekend

P.S. Happy birthday Jodie!

durban prayer autoblog 13

2008-07-14T15:00:00.000+01:00

At some point, Lucy and I will connect with Jean Viljoen and the Durban Intercession Group that she leads. Jean is an amazing prayer warrior who has been committed to praying for Durban and for Africa for many years. She has been extremely supportive of SITCD and the prayer team.

Thank God for...
- Jean and all the prayer she has sewn (and continues to sew) into her city and her country
- The Durban Intercession Group

Please pray for...
- the group as they continue to pray, that God would continue to inspire their prayers
- that we would be able to be a blessing to them as we join with them to pray for their city