My Slum Survivor experience

Many thanks and loads of gratitude for your prayers over this past month!

This past weekend we held our first Slum Survivor event. We partnered with some of the youth form a local church (Yapton free church) and on Friday afternoon we met up to start work on building our slums. The weather wasn't perfect, but it could have been a lot worse!

Soul Action (a partner project by Tearfund and Soul Survivor) have done a remarkable job in spreading the word about the poor living in slums. According to UN figures, 1 billion people currently live in slums around the world. They also project that if nothing is done to relieve the situation, that number could double by 2030. Throughout the Bible God speaks of His heart for the poor and that we as Christians are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus in reaching out to them. When Paul first set out on his journey form Jerusalem, he says that the disciples were pleased to send him and that all they asked him to do was to remember the poor. His response "The very thing I was eager to do" has been very inspiring to me as I have worked on this project with the young people.

The weekend felt very long, and there was a lot of ground to cover in the various ways we were challenged to remember the poor. The only food we could eat during meal times was rice and chickpeas. Very often people living in slums do not have enough money to maintain a healthy diet. Compared to how much money is spent in western society on McDonald's and other easy food options, it was a very sobering experience for me.

Another thing slum dwellers have to live with is the uncertainty that at any time their home may be demolished. Most slum communities are not legally allowed by local governments, so if they decide to build a mall for example, they will go in with bulldozers unannounced and start crushing the slums. Slum residents have only minutes to gather their few belongings and run. To simulate this, we had the pastor from yapton and the pastor from Vineyard come by and decide which slums at random to demolish. We all had 3 minutes to clear our belongings out before they started. As we waited in a concealed area away from the slums, I was a bit more nervous than I thought I would be. When we came back we found that one of the girls and one of the guys slums had been completely taken down, and the guys slum that was torn down was mine! We rebuilt it a little better and got on with the rest of the weekend.

Our youth really took the weekend to heart, and they even said that next year they wouldn't mind it to be a bit more challenging! Most of them said it really felt like camping, and they felt that more could be done to simulate the real slum experience. Oh, and as far as money raised, as of Sunday it looked like we hit at least the £ 800 mark, or about $1600. Money is still being sorted, so it may be that we end closer to the $2000 mark. For a weekend, that's not bad at all!

Sunday morning I shared at church for a few minutes on how the weekend went. In spite of being tired and not being very clean, I felt very inspired to share how much I admired the young people for taking on the challenge, and what the Bible has to say about the poor. A lot of people gave very good feedback, and overall I am very pleased with the seeds that were planted this weekend.

As we move on from this experience, we could use your prayers. Please pray that God continues to water the seeds that were planted this weekend and that the fruit that we're already starting to see would be protected.

Thank you again for your prayers! Without you prayers I am very convinced that this weekend would not have been the same.

God bless,
Paul

Taking steps...

I love books. I wish I had more time to read these days, cause sometimes there's nothing like sitting down to read a really good book.

There's a lot that makes a book stand out from the rest. The characters are relatable, and easy to understand, no matter how complex the story becomes. A great book will make you laugh, cry and experience a whole range of human emotion before the last chapter. A great book gives twists and turns that you didn't see coming. Characters you love suddenly die, other characters find redemption, and sometimes the bad guys get away, just like in real life. What makes a great book great is that it causes us to pause and really think about our own short exsistence on this planet. Great books contain love, heartache, defeat and triumph, and when you finally put the book down you know that on some level, you've been changed.

That was my experience the first time I read the Lord Of The Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien when I was 17. I had the unfortunate accident of dislocating my knee, and my doctor signed me off work for two weeks to let the swelling go down. To pass the time my dad and I would spend evenings after dinner to read the trilogy out loud to each other, each taking a chapter in turn. Never before had I been drawn in by such a great story, and few books since have reached that standard in my opinion. The story is dynamic, and I love the way events flowed from one chapter to the next.

And funny enough, life is like a great book. Each year is filled with hopes and dreams and some years we find that our hopes and dreams are met beyond what we thought, and some years we find that it's just like reading a difficult chapter in a great book.

I'm looking at my life now, and in an odd way I'm happy with where I am. I'm in a difficult chapter, but as with a great book, things have a way of getting better. And from a Christian standpoint, I know how the book ends.

After weeks of praying over my situation and my future, I've come to see that if I stay in England, it would be to please others. I would probably find some work (if I got the visa to do so) where I wouldn't be very passionate, and I would probably define my success by how others thought of me. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened since my arrival. It's kind of hard to keep going as well when you feel that hope has proven as good as wishful thinking. I need to get my sense of hope and direction back, and the only safe place I know of is with people back in Oak Park.

I love the people here. It has been a real hard year of growth for everyone, and yet my heart is calling me home. After the ups and downs of this year I feel I need a safe famillair place to recharge and "de-brief" as one of my friends here put it (I wanted to get rid of baggage this year, not pick up more of it! :-)

Change is happening left and right these days. We have two new DNA students, both very different from the one's we had last year, so they should be able to branch out in new areas as well as help lead some more "solid" aspects of church life. The youth are soon to be taking on a new leader, as over these past few weeks one of the other leaders in the church as stepped in to build a core youth leadership team.

I will continue to play out my role until December when I return home. In that time we've got one last major event called Slum Survivor (Soulaction.org to find out more) which is a weekend designed to build faith and raise awareness of the 1 billion people living in slums around the world. We're doing that at the end of this month, and we are very excited at the potential.

Leaving here is not easy, and I know some here won't like it. But it's the end of a chapter for me, and I think signs are pointing to moving on. So many wonderful memories I'll take with me, and I hope I can return again to Bognor and have the experiences here that I wish I could have had this year.

Thanks for reading, and all your support :-)

Till next time,
~Paul

The challenge of taking risks

John Wimber once said faith is spelled R-I-S-K. The Bible tells us faith a substance that is unseen (Heb. 11) and that for believers it is impossible to walk the jouorney without it. Faith sometimes means taking a step and then knowing that you're on solid ground. The journey of faith looks different for each one of us, but I think some of the lessons learned are the same all around.

When God speaks, it's a good thing to listen and follow as best as you can. The amount of grace that God must have for us is really staggering sometimes to think about. In basic terms in a relationship with Jesus it's you (in your weak human state) and it's Jesus (totally perfect). The lessons I've learned this year have come mostly through finding out how NOT to do things. On the one hand there is God who has called me here and has a plan and a purpose for me, but the other hand there's me and try as hard as I might I have my failures and I feel at times like I'm stumbling through this journey. In the midst of feeling like a failure, I find there's so much grace to carry me through (though I admit I don't always see that grace right away and thus make the choice to deal with my percieved failures in a spiritually unhealthy way).

Let me explain what I mean:
At about the half way point through my internship at Vineyard Oak Park, I took a short survey that helped me map out (or understand) my work personality, or how I approach my job. The thing I remember the most was that I'm a minimal risk taker. I gather as much info as I can before I make a calculated decision how to proceed to A. find the best outcome and B. keep everyone happy. I won't take on a task that I think I won't be able to finish. Some people flourish with ideas for projects and that's where they thrive. Others thrive on the execution of plans or ideas and they love to take on a challenge. I thrive on a job well done. When I finish a task I like to stand back and know that it's been finished to everyone's liking.

When I first arrived here in England I had the confidence (over confidence, maybe?) to take on the task of leading the youth. I thought that with my two years intense training and four total years of serving the youth in Oak Park, God was calling me on to the lofty heights of REAL ministry ;-)

In the this year there have been more challenges than I expected. There are probably a number of reasons why things didn't go the way we hoped. But in some ways, that's life. You try some things and some things work, others don't. I think because of my work personality, I am taking this a bit more personal than I should be.

So what's next? I feel I've poured my best into this year and right now I'm pretty worn out. This past sunday I didn't want to be at church. I somehow got through it (even getting through the youth class was rough). I still feel that I have a calling in ministry, and I really want to pursue that. But how do I keep pursuing something when I feel I can't even function well in my current role?

Thats the downswing of the circle I feel I'm running in. Some days I'm rather excited at the idea of moving on to other things and I see that God may be calling me out of here sooner than I expected. But all in all I still don't know where I'll be after January.

So that's my life as of now. What a year it's been. Please do keep praying for me and that I would keep going with whatever God has in store.

Till next time :-)
Paul