Short stories from England

Well it has been a remarkable few days here already!!

Friday Jan and I had a good hour and a half to 2 hours to kill while driving to Bognor from Heathrow airport. We talked about a LOT of things and i found that jan is a movie buff kind of like myself. we share the same interests in movies and even some television. His family is quite nice (they have four children, Jamie, Megan, Johan, and Jacob) Jamie is a foster child, and a verry polite kid. Megan is 12 and in the youth group. She's quiet but seems pretty inteligent when she speaks. Johan is an avid soccer (football) player and scored the only goal in his teams 8-1 loss today. jacob is 5 years old and seems to be bent on getting the most attention (kind of like me when I was 5). I was very pleastantly surprised when Jacob asked if i would read him his bedtime story my 2nd night here.

jan is married to Lisa, a very good cook and very polite. even though i don't feel like i've connected as well with her i do get the impression that she's a bit more introverted than jan is, and it's nothing i take personally.

the church is very much like oak park (at least, op 6 years ago) they are trying to find ways of reaching out into the community and so far they have a store front called the Vineyard freetrade shop. over here the cause of free trade seems to be a valued one, so my impression is they've tapped into a growing issue among locals. On top of this, they are doing a small outreach this year to university students returning to school. I hope I can bring some outreach ideas to the table if i stay on.

jan and lisa live a very close distance to the beach. it's not the best beach i've seen, but it is nice and hard for an american like me to imagine that just across that water is france! today i went out after church with a few of the youth and Trisha, a leader and a mother of two young girls in the youth group (also along were some other kids in the youth group as well as younger siblings of said youth members). we watched people hurl themselves off the pier in a contest called the Bognor Birdman contest. if you know what the Red Bull Flutag is, then you know what this is. The only difference is that they have two days of events here and yesterday (the day we missed) was the day with the silly contraptions going off the end of the pier. Today was a bit more serious with people wanting to go for distance and longest air time.

Church is about 120 folks (including kids) on Sunday. i spoke for about 15-20 minutes on the jews crossing the sea out of slavery and into God's promises. Something that i feel God's been drawing out of me over these last two years at least. I felt that God wanted to speak to people on the challenges of leaving slavery, but the feedback i got was more than i expected. people felt deeply touched by what i had to say and said they felt a genuiness about me. i was very happy that something of my honesty and god's heart came across. i also forgot to mention that a very nice mother (jo) and a really nice older gentleman (Robin) asked if they could pray for me as worship was happening. they didn't know who i was, and didn't know that i was just wanting to know that God was with me. they had very significant words for me, and that paved the way for me to hear God say that i don't need to worry at all about anything because He's been waiting for me to get here, and that He has gone before me to prepare hearts. Dare I say it felt like God was calling this home for me?? we'll see what happens.

i then left and went and spent a bit of time with the Grapes group (the middle and high school group) and just kind of observed the different personality types in the group. it was good to see them coming into a relationship with jeusus, and i think God has more for me to say to them. I'll meet with a 20something homegroup Tuesday just to meet others my age, and then Thursday i'll see the youth again. Friday i'm going to London with some of the youth, which I am very excited about. From there i hope to hop over north to bedford and see my cousin Abi. We'll see how it all goes, but so far it's exciting. I'm a bit tired with Jetlag and a long day on my feet so I'll sign off for now. But thank you all for your prayers and I look forward to letting you know how things develop.

Oh yes, I'm trying hard not to pick up an english accent cause i feel odd speaking with one, but it is slowly happening i think. you'll just have to tell me the next time you see me. it is interesting though how american english draws words out (door, god, car, book are some that i have picked up on interms of how the english say it here) and i laugh at myself for sounding like the odd one. it's nice though to feel so comfortable thousands of miles from anything that's really famillair...oh and pardon the spelling errors. I'm tired, a bit lazy ad still jetlagged, so spelling isn't the number 1 care on my list. Till next time...