A Broken Car

Our car had a major problem a couple of weeks ago, which caused us quite a bit of stress. The oil sump ruptured and our car was no longer drivable. We had to get it taken to a local garage to get it fixed, which again caused us a lot of stress as the worked dragged out over more time then we had hoped.

I ended up spending time going down and waiting to talk to the people in charge. God can be in the most interesting places though; as I was sitting waiting an older guy started to talk to me and asked me where we went when we die, if we go to another planet or something. In that moment of annoyance I had a choice to brush off the conversation with a vague answer, or to actual be real with both myself, and the guy who asked me the question. I decided to actual be real and started to talk to him about what I believe, about both Heaven and that Jesus has made us a way. We talked for only 5 or 10 minutes, but in that time God shifted something in me and the reality of what was happening with our car became very small in comparison to why this guy had asked me the question and the conversation that followed. Our car was still broken, but I knew that no matter what happened or what was going to happen, Jesus is the most important thing in my life. I know exactly where I am going at the end of my life, and a car is just a car.

The Green Land

Myself and Christy got to spend some time in Northern Ireland a couple of weeks ago in which we got to be part of over 48 people coming to know Jesus for the first time! We travelled with a team of 23 to join a team from Ivy Manchester (Phil's sending church) and were hosted by a church in Belfast called Willowfield, who are in the middle of a year of focused reaching out to their local parish community.

Over the week we did a lot of door to door visiting, as this is the main outreach for the church, from which we got to introduce the church to the local area, ask people if they have anything they need prayer for, ask who they know Jesus to be and invite them to other events the church was running. These included a wine and cheese evening, a men's health day, a women’s health day, a men's day out, healing on the streets, a "stars in their eyes evening" which was done to raise money for cancer research. We also spent some time out on the streets of the local area praying and talking to people.

It was a really amazing week, we got to see God touch so many lives during our time in Belfast. We found there to be an incredible welcome in the local area, every door we knocked on and everyone we got to speak to were open and wanting to talk. Over the week at least 48 people made a commitment to Jesus, either through the conversations that we had out in the local community, or at some of the events that people were invited too. We also got to pray for many others both on the door step and in the streets.

On one of the days that we went out I was asked to lead an evangelism session using something that we call treasure hunting. This involves spending some time praying and asking God who he wants us to go and find and what he wants us to say to them. For example, we may feel like God says go and find someone wearing a green coat who is called Jenny and tell her this. I have very rarely found the person or people that I write down on my list, but I like to go out and spend time talking to people about Jesus anyway. I was pretty blown away when after about two hours of being out on the street I sat to talk to someone at a bus stop and found that he was the person that God had talked to me about earlier and I had written on my list. I had given up trying to find this person not long after we headed out, but God knew that I would eventually meet this guy. What I had written on the paper meant a lot to him and I got to pray with him before he had to get his bus.

It sometimes felt like God was bring people to us to hear about Him. On one occasion we were out on the street going from house to house saying hi and a lady came out of one of the houses straight up to one of the team, before we had gotten to her house, and said “I want to know Jesus”. So the member of the team got to talk through with her what this meant and prayed with her in the middle of the street!

The picture below is at the edge of the parish we were working in, and is located on a divide in the city between two opposing groups. It summed up what God was saying to us as a team for the parish and the city of Belfast.

We all came back with stories of how God had said some thing or prompted us to do something and it was significant for the person we were talking with. It was an amazing time for all of us to get to experience something more of who God is and what it means to know him, and do things with him.

Just Go 2015

Just Go is a ministry that is run by YWAM in partnership with Soul Survivor. It is aimed at GCSE and A-level leavers who have an extra long summer, but not exclusive to them. Just Go aims to give them a taste for mission and an opportunity to put their faith into action in a new way. This year we had 5 teams altogether, going to Serbia, Moldova, Czech Republic, Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina. My team was made up of 6 people in total, 4 English, 1 American and 1 Canadian. We connected with a local church run by a couple (Robert and Sandrina) who have been missionaries in the country since before the war in the 90’s but were forced to flee during the conflict and returned a few years ago. They also work with a lovely English lady called Gina, she has been in the country for just over 2 years, and hosted us. 

Our team started our days with about 2 hours of worship and intercession with Gina and a couple of the other local guys. We found this so valuable as we encountered a high level of brokenness in the country and the people. The scars of the war are still very evident in the city with most of the high rise buildings still displaying bullet and shell holes. It was also the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, where over 8,000 unarmed men and boys were killed in just two days. They have created something in the city called the Sarajevo rose, which are shell marks that have been filled with red resin, this is a memorial for those who were killed. Everything we did in Bosnia came from a place of worshipping God. I was impressed at how each of the team members hearts were so hungry for God amidst the brokenness.

We heard from God to go into the city centre and ask people what their hopes for Sarajevo were. We got such a mixed response from people, some said they had no hope and just want to leave, some not really giving serious answers and others taking time to really think, mostly desiring change in politics and mindsets. We asked people to write on pieces of cardboard that we had set up and we used their responses in our times of intercession.

Our host, Gina, came to Sarajevo having heard God tell her to build a ‘mercy seat’ and take it to the people. She had a simple seat made and we got to spend a couple of  days taking it out into the city. We set it up, asking people if they wanted to come sit and receive prayer. We always started with worship wherever we set it up. On one occasion we had a guy who was a child in the war come and join us. He came from the other side of the park as we were worshipping, sat down with us and started to talk. He was desperate to find freedom, having lost family and friends, so we listened to his story and were able to share that our freedom comes from Jesus and pray for him. He left his contact details with Gina so people from the church are going to continue that journey with him.

During our time we did quite a bit of work in the parks with local kids, making balloon models and face painting, etc. as well as doing some litter picking. These gave us such great opportunities to have conversations with parents, to bring joy and help the  church build relationships in the community. We all got very good at making balloon animals over our time, but we had to be careful of how much we verbally shared with the kids because there is a law in Bosnia against evangelising minors, so we did the best we could to show the love of Christ through our actions. We also led the Sunday service, sharing testimonies of where we have seen God move in our lives and others lives. At the end of the service we were able to pray for the people in the church.

Over the last couple of years the church and others in the country have been working on something really exciting, the first Christian Bosnian film. The film ‘Sabina K’ follows the story of a muslim woman who becomes pregnant and shortly after her fiancee leaves her. She then loses her job, her home and her family disown her. It follows her journey of growing in hopelessness until she tries to commit suicide twice. The second time she has an encounter with Jesus and her life turns around. It is such a powerful story, first because it is true, and second it deals with taboo subjects in the country and displays so well the contrast of the hope of Jesus to the hopelessness that many people feel. The film was accepted into the Sarajevo Film Festival, one of the biggest festivals in the calendar and not easy to get into, at which it will be premiering in August. We were able to preview the film, which is amazing and very high quality, and features a number of the most famous actors in the country. The church want to be able to use this as an evangelism tool, to show it to small groups then spend time asking questions afterwards, the film is really well set up for this. We were all greatly impacted by it and it opened up our eyes to more of what was going on around us in Sarajevo.

All in all the team was amazing, and the trip was life changing. We got to see God do so much and had the opportunity to come along side long term missionaries in the nation, to help and encourage them in what they are doing. God has certainly used this trip to challenge my heart on how I look and interact with people in hopeless situations. Thank you for helping me be able to invest in others lives and to share the hope and love of Jesus. 

Prejudicial

We took a group to Brighton last week to spend some time sharing with others who Jesus is. We spent time before we went praying and asking God what it was we should be doing for the afternoon. We felt He was asking us to go and say sorry to people for how the church has hurt them over the years! So we got ourselves some cardboard to make signs on which we wrote ‘Sorry for (insert here what we feel God is saying)’.

As we asked God what to write one of the things that someone felt was that we needed to say sorry for being prejudicial. This in itself generated some discussion within our group, some of us thought that this word was a bit odd and that we should come up with a different word instead, such as sorry for judging you. After a bit of talking (and willingness to lay down our own opinions) we decided that we should just write prejudicial. After all if we say we trust God and believe that He knows more than we do, who are we to change what he says.

We were all blown away by what happened. As soon as we got out on the street 2 people approached the couple with the prejudicial sign and spent the whole of the rest of the time talking about where they had been hurt by the church and talking about whom Jesus is. The only reason that they came was because the sign said prejudicial.

For me it was a moment of God showing me that actually He does know what is He is doing.  That I would much rather do what he is asking, than filtering it through what I think would be a good way to do things. It is a constant Journey of allowing God to teach us, I want to be able to represent him well in this world and I am only going to be able to do this if I am willing to do as He is asking. It was also a moment of being able to ask myself how I am leading others, am I going to tell them what to do, or am I going to encourage them to do what they feel God is saying?

God is pretty amazing, He knows deeply who we all are and what is going on, and knows where it is we need to be met. This was just another moment where I saw God meet someone in the pain they had experienced and brought healing to it. It is an incredibly humbling thing that God brings us into this process, that he reaches out through us, and wants us to be involved in reaching out to others.

A Family Gathering

I got to be part of a great family reunion over the first weekend of May, one which ha not happened in 21 years! YWAM (youth with a mission) from all parts of the UK got together to hear from God together and from each other. It was great to get to hear what God is doing through YWAM in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England, and to get to catch up with friends from all these different places. It got me excited for what God is doing across these islands and that I get to be apart of it.

We felt God talk to us about being family, with each other and with those we meet, the biggest question was about how well we love each other, and how well we love the people we meet everyday. Certainly a really good challenge and a really great reminder as to why I am doing what I do.

All in all we were a family gathering of over 550 people from over 40 different nations, which was amazing, I love being part of such a large and diverse family such as YWAM. We spent time together worshiping, praying for the British Isles and Europe, hearing teaching, and getting to fellowship together. Which are all really important as YWAM is held together by its values, not a central office, so gathering together is really important for us.

I greatly enjoy gathering together, and really look forward to what this next year brings.

Buckets of Love

Here at Holmsted we are continually looking for ways to be able to express something of God to the people we meet when we go out. We often spend time asking God what he wants to say to people and how he wants us to express this.

So this is what Christy did with a few others from here at Holmsted and they felt God say to them ‘Buckets of Love’. What they did was to fill buckets with statements of truth, such as ‘you are wonderfully made’, ‘You are precious and honoured’ etc.

We went to Brighton and set ourselves up on the seafront close to the pier and had a giant red heart to help get peoples attention and we also had a guitar so we could have live music going on as well. We spent the afternoon engaging people as they passed by giving out these statements. We had a great range of responses from people politely declining to people taking and saying thanks, to people stopping to talk for a while about what was written on the paper. We had a lot of fun; we even had a guy come and dance with us after taking and reading one of the notes.

 

The conversations we had with people ranged from a thank you to some significant conversations about who God is. I know we brightened up a number of people’s days as people left smiling. I really like the gentleness of God to take truth and use it to touch who someone is deep down. It certainly encourages me every time I get to be a part of this.