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