Friends from Brazil and 24 hours of prayer...

I heard a joke recently. It goes like this:

Donald Rumsfeld enters the Oval office to brief the President. He says "Mr. President, I have some bad news. Today in Iraq, three Brazilan soldiers were killed." President Bush turns white as a sheet. He begins to sob, and sob. In the midst of his tears, the President is trying to find the words to describe how terrible he feels. After a few moments, he finally composes himself. After a brief moment, a puzzled look crosses his face, and he leans over to Rumsfeld and says "Exactly how many is a Brazillion?"

This past week was a tough one for me. I have been here 10 months, and somwhow I imagined that by this time I would be at ease with the pressures of leadership and the weight of responsibility. I thought that my heart for home would have lessoned, and that bonds of trust with new friends would be grounded. But some things in life don't really go as you plan, do they?

So last Wed. I was feeling fairly down. I went to go visit one of my newer friends named Guga (pronounced Googa), over at the Baptist church. Guga is from Brazil and has been in the UK for 6 years now. As we talked about the challenges of being in ministry, I gained some new perspectives.

Guga shared that for his first year here he didn't know the language, and had very few friends. He said that for the first year here, all he could do was watch and listen and learn. He had to learn the culture, the language and the way things are done. I could hear in his voice that life was a struggle in that first year.

After spending days praying and pondering my situation, I came to a point of realizing that God may have other things in mind for me, and my plans may need to take a back seat. What that all means, I don't know. I do know that with an uncertain short term future (the next 3 to 6 months) I'm once again waiting on God to give direction.

The nice thing though, is that I have some down time between now and the Big Three of summer. Our youth night on Wed. is on break for a bit, we just had our last Youth Alpha this past Sunday, so that really opens up a few nights for me. It's a welcome change of pace to say the least.

This past weekend we had a 24 hour prayer weekend. Kate (one of the DNA students) really had a heart for 24 hour prayer when she came back from a trip to Germany about 7 weeks ago. It was amazing to see her take the lead and pull together a rota to cover each hour in prayer from Friday night to Sunday morning. I can't wait to see what God does in response to the prayers this past weekend.

Please do continue to pray for me and the church here. It's been a hard few months for us as a body, and the strain is hard on everyone at the moment. I believe that God is faithful, and his Love and grace will always endure even in the toughest of circumstances. I believe that together with your continued prayers will we make it through this season of challenge and change.

I hope this entry finds you all well and enjoying life wherever you are.

Paul

Life is grand

It really is. After this past weekend of mud, paint ball and go-karts, I was feeling pretty shattered (english word for worn out, or super freakin tired like you never knew tired before). paintball and go-karts were my fav. Y'know, living in England is an amazing experience. New people, new location, new challenges. it's great when I'm actually enjoying this. Being out with the young people for lunch, playing games of pool or crazy golf (mini golf for you fellow yanks) and even going to the odd movie with friends is great. Recently I've been challenged to step even further out of my comfot zones, and start helping out with Fuel, our tuesday afternoon kids club for ages 6-9 (roughly). In the last month I've been involved with age groups from as young as 6 to 21 year old uni students. that's just one of the small steps I never really thought I'd be taking. But what if it wasn't all peachy? What if under the surface, something wasn't right. What if I told you that if I had known a year ago what it all would entail to be here, I would have said "no"? What about those days when it's stressful, I didn't get enough sleep, I miss my friends and my family back home, I'm barely making ends meet, I have not really left Bognor Regis (for extended holiday/vacation) in over six months, and underneath it all this really frustrating feeling that it's not good etiquette to tell people back home how draining it is to be in ministry! Sometimes it's hard here because I can't find people to really relate to my situation. I can't find the words to describe my challenges, fears, and the weight of responsibillity. Some days I feel I'm starting to crack... This past weekend at the motorsports day, one of the guys there was talking about how God gives life to the full. That we don't need to worry, we can give our cares and stress to God, because He cares and wants to deal with them. That's easier said than done. What about those times when life is more challenging than you feel prepared for, and you know that as passionately as you've been praying, things won't turn around over night? What then? There has to be something more. Nobody said being a Christian was easy, and I'm sure that as of right now, some of you reading this might want to jump in and say something positive, encouraging, or uplifiting. My intention isn't to aks for sympathy. Our lives can seem so much easier to someone else, and if they would just see it from our perspective, they wouldn't feel so bad....yet the challenges we face are unique to each of us.So then, what is my intention? I just want to get this off my chest. I can't do this alone. See if you can relate with any of the following I've been feeling recently: I'm too young for this, I'm not experienced enough, No matter how hard I try to stay on top of what needs to be done, there is always something more, I'm too stupid, I'm too weak, it's really hard trusting in God, No one understands me, I wanna quit and go home, If God gives life to the full, why do I feel like my life is anything but fulfilling? I miss home, and yet I know that when I see everyone again life won't be the same...The list could go on and on. Maybe this isn't new. Maybe I've always been a bit like this. I know I have a history of wearing my heart on my sleeve, so some of you might not be surprised to be reading this. So then, why stay? why endure it?Because of hope. Over the past two years or so, I've had words or impressions either in personal prayer times or where others have been praying for me that I would go through a challenging experience. More of a challenge than I expected, but that in the end God would make it more rewarding than I expected. So it's the hope that in spite of the hardship, there has to be something that God is doing in the midst of it all. Maybe even a bit ironic that while I have some areas of life that I have a hard time trusting God with, I'm still not giving up hope that He hasn't forgotten me. I knew a very good friend who once said "You have to be tenacious in pursuing God. You can't let anything of yourself get in the way of meeting with Him, and you need to do whatever it takes to keep pursuing Him". Thanks Ian :-) So there it is. My crapful rant. Such a mix of enjoyable moments (which I'm sure I'll remember for a lifetime) and stress almost enough to make me pull my hair out (speaking of, I found my first gray eyebrow the other day...I have never plucked an eyebrow before, but I thought it might be a good time to start....it really hurt!) I hope this finds you well! Paul

Paintballs, mud, and Jet skies!

Yeah, those are fun.
Tomorrow some of the men from my church are going on a day away to a place called Life Discovery. It's a Chrisitan based event where guys get to have fun doing a load of stuff (4X4's go carts, jetsskies and paintball to name a few of the day's activities). The main goal of the day is actually for non-believers, to show that we are Church go-ers, but we aren't afraid to take risks and have fun.

I'm excited. In spite of my knee probably making me a darn good target in paintball (ok, more of a target than usual :-) I think the day will be a load of fun and good bonding time as well.
Other than that the big news is all the planning for the big three events of summer: New Wine, Soul Survivor and YOB camp.

New Wine: This is a family oriented week away.A number of people/ familes from church are going to this event. It's loaded with guest speakers and christian artist and fun stuff for the whole family. I signed up to serve on the Youth team, but as of this entry I haven't offically heard if I'm on or not :-) We'll see how that unfolds...

Soul Survivor: I might have mentioned this before, but Soul Survivor is the big youth event of the summer. 5 churches here are going, and a good chunk of my time these last few weeks has been preparing for this one. We had a great meeting last thursday of the youth leaders in Bognor, and we came away very excited about meeting more regularly to encourage and support each other in our shared call as youth leaders in this community. We have about 8 -10 young people going from Vineyard, and they are all very excited over what God has done in years past. I'm very excited to see the relationships and faith rise from this experience.

YOB camp: This is Youth Of Bognor Camp. Young people ages 8-12 will be away for this week to learn about God in a fun and active environment. We had a leaders meeting a few weeks ago and it was a great time to talk and share about the expectations and plans for this event. I hope that by this one I won't be too worn out, as we are leaving for YOB camp two days after I get back from Soul Survivor!

The weather here has been rain, rain, rain and more rain. Today is the sunniest it's been in over a week and a half. Our church camping last weekend was canceled due to rain :-( and there has been a lot of flooding up in the north regions of the country (suddenly people realize it's not a smart idea to build houses in flood plains). I've been wearing jeans and long sleeves these past few days, and it's JULY! It's supposed to be warm! Oh well....that's england for you! I'm sure you all back in Chicago are enjoying the summer heat...

The universtiy students have all gone home for the summer, so socially things are kind of slowing down. It does give me a great chance though to spend more time with the youth, and this has been really wonderful. Yesterday was the second week of meeting for lunch and a chat, and we look forward to more times to talk, pray and socialize.

Not everything has been peachy though. We've had our times of trials (leaders stepping out of leadership) and dealing with the fallout has been very difficult for a lot of us. Stress and rough nights of sleep have been common for a few of us as we are growing in new areas of following God. This church may be a world away from most of you reading this, but as part of Christ's body we need all the prayer we can get. The road has not been easy by any means and behind the smiling pictures and happy faces has been intense trials and at times a severe longing for home. But God has been so good, and the stories of His faithfulness are sure to be what I remember for years to come.

Till next time,

~Paul