'Back to School'

So the new school term has started. For me that means that I'm back on the island and getting back into the routine of running youth groups, planning events, attending meetings and just trying my best to make a difference in the lives of the young people I work with.

For some of my friends this time of year means a new year at uni, complete with a new house and a fresh set of essay deadlines. For others it means that their kids are moving up into a new year group or starting a new school, and my Facebook news feed is littered with photos of children in school uniform. But for some people I know, the new school term means another bill to pay, because if they don't pay the school fees, then their kids will be sent home from school.

Unfortunately, for so many people around the world, education is not something that they can take for granted like we do. One of my best friends took his eldest daughter to school this week for the first time. Like many parents, he's had the experience this week of coming back for the first time to a quiet house and missing his daughter; hoping that she's getting on okay at school... but as well as that, and just like so many other parents around the world, he also is embarking on the beginning of a long season of bills and payments just to keep his little girl in school.

I know that it wont be easy for my friend, but I also believe that he'll be okay... I've seen God provide for him time and time again just at the right moment and often from the most unexpected of places. But for many others, the story isn't quite the same. According to UIS, in 2012 there were one hundred and twenty one million children of school age around the world who were not in school.

One hundred and twenty one million.

But God does provide. And often he gives us the privilege of being a part of the way that he does that. Child sponsorship gives thousands of kids around the world an opportunity that they wouldn't otherwise have - to go to school and receive an education that will empower them to have a better future.

My friend was one of the lucky few - he was able to go to school because he was sponsored through compassion as a child and now he's in a position to be able to send his own daughter to school. I asked him whether I could share his story in this blog, and this is what he had to add...

"It takes love and faith to make a difference in this world. Its not always about how rich you are or the surplus on your budget that you can give. Its a heart to help and share and love just as Christ did for us. You know it only takes you as an individual to make this world a better place for one person. It begins with you and the little you can put in - even if its only prayers; start with that and you can make a change."

So as you drive past the kids at the bus stop, or you wave your little ones off to school, or you sit and write your first essay of the new term, just take a moment to think about those who don't have the same privilege of education that we have in the UK...

And maybe take a moment to consider doing something about it?
https://my.compassionuk.org/app/sponsor/campaign/
http://www.smileinternational.org/sponsor-a-child.aspx

13 nights of camping

In the past three weeks I've spent thirteen nights in a tent, but in the few days that I spent at home last week, my parents and I had some visitors from Canada staying with us (one of whom has the same name as me!) We had fun catching up and visiting a few different people and places around the area and I enjoyed sleeping in my own bed for a couple of nights.

After our visitors left, I made my way back to Somerset for a Christian festival called Momentum. This is the same as Soul Survivor, but aimed at people in their 20s and 30s, so it meant that we didn't have the responsibility of looking after a bunch of teenagers and also everything was a lot more relevant to us. Among other things we got to take part in a massive worship evening around bonfires with Rend Collective and go to lots of interesting and challenging seminars. It was a great week spent with some brilliant people and our amazing God who as usual taught me a lot.

The Big Top at Momentum

Among many other things that God taught me this week was this...

Kneeling on the floor with memories of people that I miss so much it hurts playing in my mind, God quietly whispered to me "if you miss them this much, how much more do you think I miss you when you take yourself far from me?" 

I find it way too easy to convince myself that by being in the place God wants me to be and by doing the stuff he's asked me to do, I'm staying close to God. In reality, I need to daily make him my first priority - even over his work. Time with God is so precious and so beautiful and the only place I should want to be is in his presence.

After Momentum, I got to come home again for a few days and to spend a bit of time with my family and also with Clare which was so lovely! In a few days time I'll be heading back to the island to make a start on my second year there... I've got plenty of vision and ideas for this year, so now I just face the task of actually making it happen!

With Clare

Soul Survivor

This week we (Isle of Wight YFC) took 2 coach loads of young people from the island to a Christian festival called Soul Survivor. Call me crazy, but spending 7 nights under canvas looking after a bunch of teenagers was an absolute privilege!

At Soul Survivor, eight thousand people get together twice a day to read the bible together, pray for each other and to go absolutely crazy in celebration of God’s incredible love. As well as this, there’s loads of great teaching on different topics, and people also get involved in all kinds of crazy activities, like ‘colour chaos’, which is basically just hundreds of people throwing paint at each other all afternoon and having fun!

Among all the fun and madness, there is a lot of time that we get to just spend with God, and as usual when we make ourselves available to God, he teaches and stretches and grows us all in different ways. It’s been so great to get to pray and chat with loads of people this week about what God is doing in their lives.

After all of the young people got on the coaches to go back to the island, I hung around at Soul Survivor for a while to see some friends who were arriving that afternoon to bring groups of young people for this week. It was so good to see them that I ended up pitching my tent again and staying another night! Tonight though, I am back in Basingstoke for a few days and very much looking forward to sleeping in a proper bed again!

Daydreaming

Well this week has brought me back to Basingstoke, but not before a bit of travelling around!
I've done some admin work with the Church of England in the past, and this week they offered me a bit of work in Bournemouth. Somehow I managed to complete all the work by Wednesday afternoon (even with a day off on Tuesday for a YFC social on the island)... So I've had an unexpected couple of days off this week!

I was on the island on Tuesday, so I spent the morning cleaning my room (and my car which seemed to have half a beach in it!) and packing. In the afternoon we had an end of year social event with everyone from the island YFC team plus other halves and families, complete with kayaking (and swimming for some) for those who wanted to, and a lot of food!

So after finishing work on Wednesday I headed up to Basingstoke and that's where I've been for the past few days. Its been really nice to spend time with my parents who I'm always so blessed by, and to have some chilled time to recharge a bit after a very busy month or so! Its also given me time to think though... and as usual my thoughts go in the direction of my heart and I daydream about beautiful people with beautiful hearts, in a beautiful country that is a painfully long way away.

Sometimes I ask God why I can't just go back to Uganda now? ...and he gently reminds me that his plans are SO much bigger than mine, and I can't ask or imagine what he has in store for me. For now, I have to trust that his plan is better than my own, and that what I'm doing here at the moment is important too, because the wonderful young people I'm working with right now are just as important and just as in need of the love of Jesus as the precious lives I daydream about 4000 miles away.

This coming week we (the island YFC team) are taking two coach loads of young people from the Isle of Wight to a Christian festival called Soul Survivor. I know that God will have some big plans for this week and I'm so excited not only to spend the week worshiping and having fun with thousands of other people who love Jesus, but I'm also excited to see what God will do among the young people that we have the privilege to take along.

Holiday Club

We've had a holiday club at the church that I work with on the island this week and its been brilliant. We had around 40 children who came along every morning and a fantastic team of volunteers from a selection of churches on the island who ran the club. The club was themed around 'Cops and Robbers' but we focused on the story of Joseph in the Bible. This meant that the crafts ranged from making police hats and handcuffs, to making pop up Joseph puppets falling in a well and on the last day we even made junk models of Pharaoh's palace! Of course we had a typically cheesy and tuneless theme song which we had the joy of singing twice a day... The kids all absolutely loved it and we all kept catching ourselves singing it all week!

My role was as a team leader, but I also had the task of running games every day with one of the other leaders... among other things we played 'police dog' (bull dog!) and relay races and we even managed to get 40 kids around a parachute! 

I think the biggest achievement of the week however was successfully getting all the kids to bake scones on Thursday! 

Cops and Robbers Holiday Club

Among it all though, we had the absolute privilege of getting to teach these kids about the gospel and to share with them the amazing news that God wants to be their friend, and that he made that possible through Jesus' death. God's grace never fails to blow me away, and the fact that he would chose to use someone like me with all my flaws and failures to tell these kids about him is just amazing. I couldn't have been happier on the last day to see some of the kids in my group telling God that they wanted to be his friend.

Holiday Club was over by lunch time every day, so we had the afternoons off. Clare was staying with me on the island this week which was brilliant. She came along and helped out as part of the team at Holiday Club and we spent the afternoons together; walking along the beach, swimming in the sea, eating cream teas, drinking hot chocolate and talking ... a lot! I can't thank God enough for blessing me with such a great friend!

With Clare on the beach

Uganda and Rwanda

Just over a year ago I got on a plane from Entebbe airport to return to the UK after living in Uganda during my gap year in 2012 and 2013... And now, over the past 3 weeks, I've had the incredible blessing of being able to return to Uganda. Living 4000 miles away from most of my best friends over the past year has been really difficult, but I praise God that we have been able to maintain relationships during that time and that he has provided for me to cross borders so that we could come together again. My prayer and hope is that this is just the first of many returning trips to my 'African Home'. 

I flew with Esther, but we stayed in Kampala separately with local friends. We spent the first week catching up with friends and visiting projects that I used to be a part of such as Goshem school in Kuffu where we used to live and teach, the Smile Farm, and Blessed Word of Life Church among other things. Seeing the progress in that building project was incredible and looking at the almost completed building, I felt really proud to know that I quite literally helped to lay the foundations there a couple of years ago!
Visiting Goshem was equally special, especially as the kids didn't know that we were coming back. It was great to see that many of them have now progressed to the next class and to remind them that we still think and care about them.

P3 class at Goshem School

After a week, an impressive number of people from Kampala traveled to Kigali in Rwanda to celebrate the wedding of Alex - the project manager of Smile Charity Uganda. I took a 12 hour bus trip with Brian; leaving Uganda for the first time in his life... It was a blessing to be able to share the experience with him and although I had been dreading such a long journey we actually had a lot of fun. We met up with friends from Kampala when we reached Kigali and a big group of us stayed at Angello's Uncle's house. We had such a brilliant time - it was nice that everyone was away from their normal work and routine so we all just enjoyed being on holiday together.

Travelling to Rwanda

With friends in Rwanda

On the Friday evening we went to a concert by a worship group from Kampala called 'VOW' (once we eventually found where it was!) It was such good fun, especially at the end when they sang a kiganda song and I got to show off my 'skills' in dancing the traditional kiganda dance (...kind of!). We also enjoyed a performance from the LT Warriors dance group.

The wedding was the next day and it was absolutely beautiful. We had fun dressing up together and then we took bodas to the wedding ... doing your hair and then getting on a motorbike (which in Kigali, involves wearing a helmet) probably isn't the best idea, but it was the only way to get there in time and was good fun!
It was so special to see Alex finally getting married and I felt so proud to be there and so happy for him. 

Alex and Beni's Wedding

The next day we attended a local church where someone kindly translated from Kinyarwanda to English and Luganda for us, and also for another visitor who spoke French... I think we counted 5 different languages that she was able to speak! Church was great fun, but I had to leave early with Marina and Brian to take Joe to the airport as he was returning to UK after almost 3 months in East Africa... it was really sad to see him go.

Angello and Brian in Kigali

Marina, Brian, Angello and I left very early on Monday morning to travel back to Kampala. Again, the journey was enjoyable and I had no trouble getting a visa at the border; the guy who served me asked how long I was staying in Uganda for and then told me that I should stay for longer so he gave me a visa for 2 months (Don't tempt me!!!)

Over the next few days we all just made the most of our time together. It was really special to spend time with Brian and Terry's daughter; Berindah who I used to look after a lot. Even after being away for a whole year of her short life, it was amazing that seemed to remember me and was incredible to see how we were able to communicate now that she can talk... she's a bright girl, so when she used a luganda word that I didn't understand she would find a way to teach me. I also got to meet her baby sister Breanna who was born in October.

With Berindah

I can't write about everything that I did because this blog would go on forever, but let me just say that this week has been absolutely beautiful and I will treasure the memories.

Its hard to describe the way that Uganda holds my heart. I was worried that this trip would be difficult because I wasn't there with Smile and because everything was so different from my gap year, but if its even possible, over the past weeks Uganda has become even more rooted in my heart. It is the home of some of my best friends, and although I have a family and a home in UK too, I'm so blessed that I also have a home in Uganda.

SPREE

With 2 days to go until I fly to Uganda, I've managed to misplace my voice...

This weekend I was at 'Spree' - an event run by Urban Saints that we took some young people to. It was brilliant and was great that as leaders we didn't have to worry about organising and  running it! We spent most of Saturday in the swimming pool, with general swimming before lunch, and water polo afterwards! The young people then took part in a massive water fight and had a go on a big outdoors water slide. It was really good to get to meet some people from different backgrounds and lots of people who had come over from the mainland (that's exciting news to islanders!) and for all of our young people to mix with other Christians their age, hear some teaching and share in worship together.

Water Polo at Spree

For the rest of the week I've been preparing to leave for Uganda for the next couple of weeks. I've trained up a couple of my helpers to lead Rock Solid whilst I'm away, and tried to get everything organised for the upcoming events that we're inviting our young people to. I also helped out at toddler group again this week (I thought I was a 'youth' worker?!) and 'all the rest' that's not really worth blogging about...

So tomorrow I leave the island ready to fly out to Uganda on Tuesday! I'm not sure yet whether I'll get a chance to write a blog whilst I'm there, but I'll make sure to take plenty of pictures. I'm so excited to see everyone that I haven't seen in over a year, to hopefully visit one of the schools that we used to teach at and to watch Alex and Beni get married. Its also a bit scary though because a lot will have changed in the past year, so I'm anxious to see how my relationships with lots of people will be different and how it will feel to be back in Uganda again. And I'm hoping that my voice will return soon! Prayer would be much appreciated for that, and for good health in general, also for safety and most importantly that God's purpose for this trip would prevail :)

Thanks :)