A Week In Bow

It has been a busy year so far with the team I am helping to lead here at Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in Harpenden. We have Just got back from spending a week in an area of London called Bow (famous for the Bow Bells). We went to help a local church, All Hallows Bow (AHB-www.allhallowsbow.org.uk), to run a number of activities during the Olympics to help them build relationships with the local community. We also got to spend time in Stratford, close to the Olympic venues sharing faith with the different people we met.

We spent most of our time helping to run a café, showing the Olympics for the local community. We got to have a number of really good conversations with people, seeing them come day after day. One or two of them even came along to join us on Sunday for the service. We also went round the local area talking with the people who live locally, and even getting to pray for people. Amir, one of the guys who was with us got to pray for healing for a man with terrible knees, to the point he could not walk more than to the park bench outside his house and back each day. After talking and praying with this man, he saw a big change in his knees physically, and the man was able to walk without pain. We also got to run sport with the local kids, especially football, which they all really enjoyed. Loads of people ended up joining us in the café after we met them in the local area and talked and prayed with them.

We were also treated to some amazing views of London from people who lived close to the church we were staying in.

It was a really good way to finish off this part of the DTS (Discipleship Training School) that I have been helping to run this year. God has been so amazingly faithful in providing finances and other logistics to enable everyone who came to complete the whole school.

Tent City

Here at YWAM (Youth With A Mission) in Harpenden we are having a very busy summer. The campus I am working on at the moment is hosting a great deal of YWAM Internationals summer outreaches for the Olympic season. This basically means that over the whole summer we will be seeing over 2000 people pass through the gates of the property as we go and share who God is with the people we meet, especially in London, and pray for them.

We have had to set up what we call a tent city on the back field attached to the property to accommodate all the extra people. It has been a lot of fun so far, and we are only half way through everything that is happening.

It has been a real privilege to be able to hear all that God has been doing during this summer to date, with several hundred people committing their lives to Christ and even more asking for pray and seeing God answer. From healings of all sorts of injury and illness, to stories of provision of travel and daily needs, to God opening a way for things to happen when nothing seemed possible. We are so excited to see what else God is going to do this summer, and so blessed to be apart of it.

The Circuit Riders

My team and me spent the last couple of weeks involved with a school here called ‘The Circuit Riders’. This was a two-week course aimed at greater freedom in Christ and intentional evangelism (www.ywamharpenden.org/training/circuitriders). We had about 200 people join us here in Harpenden for this, which was pretty intense. We spent time in worship and intercession everyday, as well as receiving teaching focusing on our relationship and identity in Christ. We also went into Harpenden, Luton and St Albans to offer prayer and talk to people about God and life.

I really enjoyed the two weeks and felt like I gained a much better understanding of what my faith means to me and why I do what I do. We had a really great time, and were challenged a lot in whom we are.

Our times out in the different towns were also amazing. I got to have a number of really good conversations with people about what it means to live a life after Jesus, and to pray for a number of people. I am not sure that the area really knows what hit it, with over 200 young people dividing between the three locations and sharing the love of Christ in each different place over the two weeks. God was amazing over the time and we ended up seeing over 70 healings (from sprained ankles, to a lady who was partially sighted getting full sight back). We also had 129 people invite Christ to be their saviour over the two weeks.

I am sure it will be one of those times that I remember, and I know it has helped to give me a push into more of seeing God’s kingdom come.

A Week of Transformation

My DTS (Discipleship Training School) team and I spent our final week of our outreach working in an area of Bolton called Daubhill with a ministry called PFJ (Passion For Jesus). We spent this week on a plot of land, which used to be a community Garden, but has not been touched for a number of years, meaning it was massively overgrown and full of rubbish. It took us three days to clear the weeds and rubbish, trimming all the hedges, cutting the grass, tiding up the rose garden and replanting the old flowerbed, to transform it into an area for playing and enjoying. The other encouraging thing is that the church which is next to the plot of land were wanting to take on the responsibility of maintaining the land, they just needed a bit of help to get it going.

It was really nice for the team to be able to do something practical, something in which you can see visible results happen in the time we had available. Especially as this was the final week of our time as a team, so to achieve something together was really valuable.

The local community were also really enthusiastic about it, they would come and talk with us as we worked, making sure we were kept well hydrated and fed. One woman who has lived in the are all here life (nearly 80 years) said she has watched the area go downhill over the last 10-15 years, and it is just amazing to see something positive happening. It is also such a blessing that such a diverse team, from so many places would be willing to come and do something like we did.

We also spent the evenings in a couple of the local parks with a slack line, uni-cycle, and other items of sporting equipment. This was a really great chance to meet more people from the community and just have a bit of fun.

For me the week was not just about making a nice green space for the community to enjoy, it was also about being able to help bring a bit of joy and hope to an area of the city that has slowly been neglected. These people as much as anyone else deserves something to brighten up there summer!

Liverpool Connection!

Me and the team I am leading at the moment spent Friday June 8^th in Liverpool. We ended up making a random connection with another group from Youth With A Mission that had come over from Boston. When I first said Hi to them they were amazed, as they had met one of the other outreach teams that the current Discipleship Training School I am helping to lead sent out in Glasgow. So to meet us was crazy, especially as it was all unplanned, God is so funny like that. I met them because I had left the rest of the team to take a walk with God to encourage people as I went. Walking round the city centre, going left where he told me and right where he told me, talking to people as I went and eventually God lead me straight to this other team.

While I was talking to one of the guys two skater kids came past us and we got talking. I found out that the guy I was talking with (Matt) had been talking with them a bit yesterday. This conversation really broke my heart and challenged me greatly; it started off with the older of the two (who was around 16) saying that he would rather believe in science than God, which is where the conversation had ended the other day. The only problem with this is that I am a trained scientist (I did a marine Biology Degree) which meant that the defense he was trying to use about science fell down. Then I felt God tell me he does not feel loved, so I asked him if this was true and he just said yes, in an almost defeated way, and almost started crying. So I got to tell him how when I met God properly for the first time 5/6 years ago I was filled with an overwhelming sense of being fully loved, like I had never felt before. This brought back all the emotions for me too. We got to talk about this for a bit longer at which point his mate who had listened said he thought that maybe this was a good thing, maybe they should meet God themselves. I had to run at this point as my team were leaving, so I left them with Matt and another guy to talk about what this meant, saying yes to God, saying yes to Jesus.

The whole thing brought me back to that place of such thankfulness for the fact that God loves me, and everyone else for that matter, no matter how much we may have messed things up. And how much it breaks my heart to know that others do not feel loved at all, it makes me angry that people do not know this, that the world has lied to them, telling them that they are not loved, or valued, that they have no hope. It was one of those moments that brought into sharp focus the reason for why I do what I do, why I listen to God and follow what he is saying.

Spreading Hope in Stockport

I spent the day spreading hope in Stockport with my team and Stockport family church (www.stockportfamilychurch.org.uk) on Thursday (June7th).

We spent some time praying before we went and asking God for words of encouragement to put in a big box for people to come and take from. We also spent some time praying about the weather, as it was supposed to rain for the whole day, when we got into Stockport the rain stopped and did not start again until we left, which was amazing, God is so good.

When we arrived we started with worship (a guitar) and continued this for the whole time we were out. We also set up a question board for people to come and write on and headed out with a video camera to ask people what hope is.

It was such a fun day, the worship was very significant, as people would come and stop and then start asking us why we were around, as did the question board. It was a really great time of being able to answer questions about hope and God, and bless people, some of them even asked about coming to church to find out more. One of my favorite stories came from one of the guys on the team who had gone out with the encouragement box; they managed to stop a guy who travels around on a mobility scooter. This guy looks like a pirate with a bandana on his head and he asked if he could take three notes to which they said yes. After he read them he started asking about whom God is and about where the church was as all the notes had been very specific and significant to him. The funny thing about this is I had managed to give him a note the week before when we just came to pray round Stockport to see what God wanted to do.

The video camera was a lot fun, most people told us that hope was looking forward to better in the future. One woman even told us that hope was what she had found when she met Jesus the year before. It is amazing to see God at work in people, and to go and be apart of that is so exciting.

The Flame Passes...

As we all know, I hope, the Olympic flame is passing round the UK at the moment on a tour prior to the opening ceremony in July.

The team I am leading at the moment happened to be in Bolton when the flame was coming through. Since this DTS (Discipleship Training School) is a UK focused one due to this being the Olympic year, we thought it would be really cool to go and see the flame and pray for the place and the Olympics at the same time. So we headed down to Bolton town centre an hour or so before the flame was due to pass through the town centre and spent time praying and speaking out scripture to bless the people. It was a really big party atmosphere, and it was really amazing to be a presence of God in that place.

 

It was one of those ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ situations, I am probably never going to see the flame again like this, so it was really amazing to be able to join in the celebration, but also to be able to pray for it as well as I know prayer makes such a difference.