Midnight Bike Ride

It had just past twelve thirty. I’d left the gathering of friends before the others because I knew I’d have an early morning.

I took off down the bike path that runs along the River Taff heading towards the bay at the end of the river. I could see the buildings across the river reflected in the calm waters. The early March air chilled my face, but the exercise, as well as my thick winter coat kept me warm. You could practically smell spring in the air. Everything was silent except for the soft creaks of the bicycle, the sound of the rubber on the pavement and the occasional seagull crying out overhead. It seemed as if the whole world was asleep. It was just me, with the moon to keep me company. The moonlight shone brightly, illuminating the path around me. Farther along the river I could see the city lights shining twice over, firstly from above the waters, and secondly from beneath. I basked in the moonlight as I peddled myself closer to home and a warm bed. The thing that kept going over and over in my head as I witnessed this midnight beauty was a prayer of thanks; thanks to the One who created the earth and everything in it. I gave thanks to the Loving One who has gifted me with the blessing of experiencing His beauty.

As I finish writing this, I know that soon I will be tucked away under my covers, awaiting the sweetness of slumber. And as I drift away, I will be saying one last “thank you, Jesus” before my day comes to a close.

While it seems like Jesus was involved in very little of this, I know that without Him, I wouldn’t even be here right now. This week I’ve been reminded of everything I’ve taken for granted. Everything from people’s kindness towards me, to God providing and bringing me to Cardiff in the first place. This is an adventure I could only have dreamt of, and so many things in it were set too perfectly to have been a coincidence. I know that only the Hand of God could have orchestrated this journey so well. …and yet I found myself complaining.

Since this realization of these many blessings God has poured over me, I’ve started an experiment; a thankful heart experiment. I have set my phone’s alarm to go off every quarter hour, and when I feel the vibration, I am reminded to be grateful for what I have and to say a prayer of thanks to God. I’ve only been doing this for the past two days, but I’ve found that already I am a happier person in general.

I’d encourage you to try this experiment for yourself. See what it does for you. But more than that, say thank you to the God who gives us blessings.

Taking a "Break"

Some of us at Ignite spent this last weekend facilitating the youth part of a church's weekend away (aka  church retreat). It was a group of about 10 kids, most of whom had grown up in the church, and it was great to work with kids from a semi-similar background. It was a breeze to play games and teach lessons with them because they know how you are supposed to act in church, so we had to do hardly any crowd control. The most we had to calm down the over-enthusiastic 11 year olds!

I was in charge of the games for the weekend and I was super pumped about that! I love playing games, especially the games that can make anyone look like a buffoon (you know, typical youth group games). And this group was great because they would actually volunteer to start the games, they would bring up games they'd played in the past and enjoyed and they all actually participated! While I love the kids in TYC, they are not very good at involving themselves in anything they are not familiar with. It's a challenge just to get them to play a simple game that they already know. They typically just stay on their phones.

For each session we would start with maybe a quick game, then we'd read a portion of scripture. Then we separated the group into 2 teams and had each team reenact the Bible story we just read. We had some of them weeping at "Jesus'" feet like the sinful woman with the perfume and we had them acting out Peter walking on the water. During the latter scene the narrator read that when Peter started sinking that Jesus quickly grabbed Peter's hand and pulled him up, but the boy who was playing Jesus had this disgusted look on his face like touching "Peter's" outstretched had might get him leprosy, so he gingerly pinches "Peter's" arm with two fingers and gives it a slight pull. Not exactly like a friend helping a friend, but it was mostly for humor's sake anyways.

It was great to work with such a well behaved youth group again. It was like taking a break from the hard work we do at the TYC and the GYC. 

We are about to start off on a Bible course called Thrive that Ignite is doing. It's basically digging deeper into the Word for ourselves and not relying on the faith of our parents or church to get us through our Christian walk. This course is focused on young Christians of ages 16 to 21, and since I am still 21, I will be partaking as a student not a leader (now that's a change.).

Thank you all so much for your prayers. Until next week...God bless!

Let the Questions Come

I spent last Sunday morning teaching Sunday school for the little ones in the church. Most of these kids' parents don't actually go to church, but they like to bring their children to Sunday school. While we aren't fans of the idea that the parents don't go to church but are almost using us as a daycare for an hour or two, we want these kids to hear about Jesus any way they can.

It was difficult to say the least. We're trying to teach the kids the "Pharaoh Pharaoh" song that they can sing as part of a presentation for their parents in a month or so. But unfortunately, if kids don't want to do something, they will not do it without a struggle. So I almost lost my voice trying to be heard over the little ones. 

When it came time to teach the lesson on Daniel and the Lions Den, some of the older kids kept interrupting me to tell me that they already knew that story. Finally I said to one of the older girls of about 9, "Since you know the story, how about you come to the front and tell it." She came up front and tried to tell the story, but as they were before, the kids were loud and not paying attention. Somehow, I managed to quiet them enough to say, "Hey! You're friend is talking up here!" I then asked her how she felt having tried to tell a story and nobody was paying attention. I made the others quiet down enough to hear her answer. "It was really annoying having people interrupt and talk over me when I'm trying to speak."

So I told the kids to be respectful towards their friend and let her tell them the story. Amazingly, they were quiet the rest of the time she was talking! It was like having her tell the teachers' side of the classroom and of the annoyance of being interrupted had finally sunk in and they were quiet the rest of the time! I only hope they will remember this later.

Last Tuesday was Pancake Day. It's also called "Fat Tuesday" in honor of everyone who eats as much as they can before they give something up for lent.

It was a good day at the office in that Gary went to the trouble of making everyone pancakes with all of the wonderful toppings such as lemon and sugar, nutella and strawberries, and of course, the ever needed syrup. 

At the GYC we had pancakes in honor of the day as well. What a mess! Imagine giving a bunch of monkeys pancakes and spray whipped cream and leaving them alone for more than 5 minutes!

But I did have one very sweet moment with this little girl. We were awaiting our turns to go down to the kitchen to make our pancakes and we were in this one room in the church where there were various bible scenes painted on the wall. She pointed to one portraying Jesus coming out of the tomb and asked, "Why is God coming out of a cave?" Seeing the opportunity to talk a bit about Jesus I start to tell her how He was killed and then 3 days later rose back to life and that's Him stepping out of His tomb.

She gets this look of understanding on her face as she says, "That's after He was thrown in the lions den." I told her that's not quite right, and that she was thinking of Daniel. I go on to point out other events in Jesus' life painted on the wall and we go backwards to the manger scene. She then asked me "Is that before His mom put Him in the basket in the river?"

Again, wrong story, but the fact that she's asking questions and wanting to sort out the stories in her head gives me hope. 

I've been praying for months that God would start to stir up questions in the kids' minds and that they would be asking questions about Him. This will open up the conversation on their terms rather than us trying to push our beliefs at them. This means that they're open to hearing the answers we so desperately want to give them.

Please pray with me that these kids would continue to ask questions about God and that He would give us wisdom on the best answers to give. Thank you so much for your prayers. We are seeing results! Amen!

A Subtle Change of Heart

Praise the Lord! He is truly doing something in the lives of some of our kids here in Tremorfa.

I'm seeing a change in one of the boys I've mentioned before who has a reputation for causing trouble. It's subtle, but it's there. Since he's been old enough to come into club, he's rarely behaved well enough to stay the whole evening. Maybe twice. But this last week he stayed the while time and was only mildly misbehaving!

We had a sort of game night where we brought out a number of board games to play with the kids. This boy picked out the game Frustration, and seeing that he was the one who wanted to sit still and play a game, I was quick to jump in. So me, this one boy, and one other boy sat and played the whole game together. This boy kept wanting to roll the dice until he got the numbers he wanted, but aside from that, he behaved almost perfectly. There was no bad language and no physical roughness, which left the boy as just that: a little boy who wanted to win the game he was playing. I could see him for how young he truly is. I am enormously happy that he felt comfortable enough to set aside his "bad boy" reputation and just be himself that night. That is God answering our many prayers towards this boy already. Keep praying that God would continue to break down these walls and bring up questions in this boy's mind about God Himself.

And mentoring!!! We did our first round of mentoring last week. We met our mentees and played some get to know you games. I won't share too much simply to protect privacy. But the fact that we made it in and can start bringing Jesus into the school is fantastic! We may not even be able to talk about Jesus, but we can be Jesus to these kids and to the community.

God is so good. Thank you so much for all of your prayers. God is definitely working. Keep it up!

P.S. This is the same boy I went on about in "The Challenges" post! I'm so excited!

A Chat at the "Nail Salon"

So praise the Lord! We are going into the local high school this Friday to bring Jesus in and start mentoring! The enemy tried to stop us and not let us in, but God has overcome and we are going in! Please be praying for the team as we prepare and then go in, and also pray that God would already be working in the hearts and minds of these children beforehand. We know that the kids we will be working with will have been referred to us for a reason; maybe they are at risk of dropping out or they are just known for misbehaving. Regardless of what the reason is, these kids need Jesus.

In the gospels we see that Jesus often hung out and made friends with the not-so-popular people. Why? Why not with the church goers and the religious people? From His own words He explains that it's because, "Healthy people don't need a doctor, sick people do." Jesus doesn't need to introduce Himself to church people because church people already know about Him. It's those who would not go to church or don't know about Him and His incredible love for us who we need to share Jesus with. And we think that if Jesus were here today, He would be in the schools, sharing His love.

 Both youth clubs went really well this week. At GYC the group was relatively calm, but on top of that, I was able to sit with a few of the girls and have some conversations with them.This was the first time in quite a while that I've been able to do that. I love learning more and more about the individuals rather than just thinking of them all as a group. 

And later in the evening, one of the girls brought her nail polish out and she was doing a bunch of people's fingernails. So I had her do mine while we chatted a bit. Then she noticed the ring I always wear on my ring finger. She asked if I had a husband, and when I told her no, she asked why I would wear a ring on my wedding finger if I'm not married. This opened up the conversation to talk about my purity ring, and why I wear it. I think it's an American thing to wear one, but I started telling her how it was my promise to not have sex before getting married. She was thoroughly surprised and repeated what I said just to make sure she had heard me right.

I took this chance to tell her that every time you sleep with someone you are giving away a piece of your heart. And if you sleep around with multiple people before getting married, you won't have nearly as much of your heart to give to your husband who you will hopefully spend the rest of your life with. I told her that I've decided to not sleep with anyone until I'm married so I can give all of my heart to my husband. She was still surprised and seemed to ponder the idea a while afterwards.

I know the idea of waiting until marriage is not a very popular idea in today's society, but I still believe that that was God's original plan for us when He started the world with one man and one woman. I hope that by telling girls about this choice, the choice to wait, it will save them some heartache down the road.

This has still been a difficult week for me, just in that I had news that I grandfather was sent to the hospital a few days ago, but I believe that he is doing better now, so thank you to everyone who prayed for his recovery. It helped immensely. 

God bless

A Challenging Week

TYC went great this week. I spoke this week on the story of Jesus and the adulterer, where He said, “If you haven’t sinned you can throw the first stone.” I was anticipating a lot of talking and interruptions, so I planned a rather short talk, figuring it would spread longer. But the kids were relatively silent! I got through the talk and still had time to explain a little bit more about how Jesus loves the person, He just hates the sin; how Jesus didn’t come to condemn but to save! I was quite blown away by how attentive they were being and how involved they were in the story. I’m really praying that God will continue to bring up questions in their minds about Him. Questions that we know He can answer.

GYC was not nearly as successful, sadly. We’ve been having trouble with them constantly interrupting and talking over each other and us leaders, so I developed a game that would have only a few people able to talk, and getting them to use teamwork. Unfortunately, so many of the children had been misbehaving and loud that we couldn’t even give them all the instructions for the game. So the game flopped, and what was even more of a disappointment was the fact that nobody got the moral of the games. They  didn’t get to the place of understanding the value of their words and how difficult it can be not being able to talk. So I'm praying they will soon understand, despite this past week.

There was one boy in particular who was causing a lot of trouble.He would sneak off whenever he could, and basically reek havoc at every opportunity. But what has bothered me most about his behavior is the things that come out of his mouth. He is not especially cruel to others with his words, but he is able to turn even the most innocent action, word, or toy into some sexual innuendo. While I know the mind of a teenaged/preteenaged boy is not always clean, the way he brings stuff up makes me wonder what has he seen in his short life that he can relate nearly everything back to something sexual? I've tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention before, and he goes on to whine in a joking tone, "She touched me!" This boy is also a loudly proclaimed atheist. Please pray with me that God would do a work in his heart, and help help him through whatever he is dealing with. 

I have heard a lot of bad news this week and it was really starting to get me down. But then I have to remind myself that I don't have to constantly be carrying other people's burdens around, but that I can just give them to God to take care of. I have a hard time remembering that all the time.

Some good news though: Some of you may have heard, but the high school we were meant to go into to start mentoring some kids had shut it's doors to us a few weeks ago, but they called this week and said we can go in after all!!! Praise the Lord!!

Thank you so much for your prayers. They are much appreciated.

Prayer Spaces

What a week! On Wednesday and Friday some of us from Ignite joined a lady in running “Prayer Spaces” in one of the local schools. Basically we set up different places around this chapel where the kids can interact with different forms of prayer.

In one section we had a bunch of newspaper clippings glued to large pieces of cardboard and we let the kids read the headlines and write their thoughts and prayers on the subjects beside the clippings. It was very insightful as to the innocence of children. A lot of them wrote things such as “that’s not fair!” or “those people shouldn't
 have died”. 

We had a section where they could write down what they were thankful for, and while some of the answers were really silly, some were quite heartfelt. We had them write them on pieces of cardboard and pin them up on the hanging threads, creating a really cool effect.

We had places for them to imagine what they would do if they were to make a new world; what they would keep of our world and what they would do away with. Most said they would keep "Love" and "Kindness" and "Family". And when they wrote what they would do away with a lot of the kids said "Terrorism" or "hatred". 

You'll notice one child wrote that what they would want to keep from our world is "beds". Yes, I would like to keep those, too!

We had a space to write their cares and worries down, then they’d drop them in a box to symbolize giving them to God. Then we had a place with this tall bubble machine that lit up with different colors and sent bubbles continually upwards. With this we had the children write down their prayers and stick them to the tube as a symbol of their prayers going up to Heaven.








 
And one of the most popular spaces had a shredder in it. Here they could write down something they were sorry for and then stick it in the shredder to let God get rid of it. A lot of them said they felt relieved with it, while others said it was just plain fun to shred things. I found one little boy about to put the picture he drew of his sister down the shredder! Not quite what we were going for.

In both youth clubs we had our first week back, and both went really well! I tried introducing a “Question Ball” game where we had loads of questions written on a beach ball which (supposedly) would be tossed and whichever question your thumb lands on, you answer. Well, in GYC we only got one or two people to answer questions before they got bored and started kicking the ball around and we had fun just playing with the ball in the end. In TYC we had a spontaneous dance party and we acted out a few scenes of the Lion King!

All in all it was a great week. Thank you so much for your prayers and support for this mission. I am blown away by your generosity! We are seeing God work with these kids in the prayer spaces as well as in the youth clubs. God is good!