Well it seems that the sunshine from last week was short lived, but that hasn't stopped too much here. I've had all the usual activities and meetings, and I'm still enjoying the novelty of having no essays to write!
We were planning a scavenger hunt on Thursday with my Rock Solid youth group and another local youth group. Despite the forecast, I was feeling relatively hopeful until I looked out the window about an hour before we were due to start and saw a huge black cloud stretching as far as I could see! We decided to postpone the scavenger hunt but we joined up with Newport Rock Solid to play some games together instead.
This Friday we held a youth event called Catalyst which was themed around peer pressure. It was our first Friday event in almost a month so it was great to get together again with the team and loads of young people to worship God.
I read a brilliant article today called "The wrong way to approach the poor". It's something I totally agree with, and something I wish I was a lot better at. Truly helping people takes humility and a willingness to make yourself vulnerable to people. The moment when we can really start to make a difference to people is when we stop defining people by the poverty they are living in, and start opening ourselves up to individuals as equals and as friends with whom we can work together to make a difference.
I'm not just thinking of overseas "mission work" though, I see the same thing in my work with young people here. You stand very little chance of making any change in a young person's life unless you're willing to build relationships. As a Christian, the main thing that I am called to do is to love. Now, love demands personal investment, but it also makes a big difference. So if we ever want to make any real difference to anyone, we have to be willing to make it personal. Treating someone as a statistic is never going to amount to much, but get involved in their life, and you might just get to be a part of something spectacular.
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