… Tom who went fishing with Uncle Chris – cheers Uncle Chris.
… Sarah who got stuff ready for SPLAT, the holiday club she will be running all next week in church.
… Beth who got to play with friends
… Joe who mastered more moves on his new PS2
… me made speechless by the amazing generosity of 2 special people
… us as we spent time over a fondue here with Steve and Kerry with good wine
A good weekend on the whole for the Ryan family.
The story of my day …
I left the house and Sarah looked on in a sense of uncomfortable anguish.
‘Where are you meeting this person?’
‘Junction 7 of the M3.’
‘And then ….?’, her eyes enquired with a little concern.
‘I am following his car down country lanes to an estate were I will be meeting with a few others’
‘But you don’t know who’s estate, or where it is?’
‘mmmm no – but don’t worry – it’ll be fine!’
I got in the car and tentatively set off at 7.15am, wondering if my long held secret desire of becoming a spook was about to be fulfilled.
The 90 minute journey took 3 hours. UK drivers don’t know how to drive in rain, or in snow, or even when it’s hot! At 10.15 I drove up the slip road of junction 7 to see a shiny black Mercedes parked on the side of the road. Slowly, out stepped a guy in dark shades, long black overcoat with a slight Mediterranean look.
‘Roberto Ryan… please follow me in zis car. We will be traveling quickly down some country lanes. Please turn off your GPS as you will not be needing that.’ As he smiled, the diamond in his tooth caught the light with a blinding flash.
I felt a bead of sweat, just the one, form on my forehead before trickling down the side of my face, gulped and followed the car down the lanes.
‘What am I doing?’ I said to myself as the car sped off and I followed…..
Ok – so some of that may be exaggeration. but today I did meet up at Junction 7 and was led off into a country estate where the Warham Fellowship, a rural fresh expression of church, meets.
Today was an exciting culmination of months of talking of planning as I met with Gordon and John. The Warham Trust and YFC are trying something new – with not a little risk!! There is a desire to establish a Basingstoke YFC and so the trust has found a good salary for 2 years to employ a youth worker that will develop the youth ministry with Warham, while working with local churches to establish Basingstoke YFC. Within 2 years we would hope to see a YFC centre planted in Basingstoke.
This is a unique and incredibly exciting opportunity. To have the backing to start something like this would be a great opportunity for the right person.The advert will be in Youth Work magazine but you can see it earlier here. If interested the closing date for applications is early January!
Am I missing something here, or isn’t this between Aishah Azmi and God?
Words from my children amaze me again. Last week we were talking about this at home and one of the children said ‘Isn’t she just showing that she loves God?’
Does this prevent integration, or is it an attempt to deflect our attention from a certain foreign policy?
Today a few people got together to talk about the opportunity of the Olympics. We started to dream some dreams after hearing about how the Olympics will work in the UK.
This was quite an exciting day and, although nothing was agreed apart from meeting again with those that could not make today after having time to think about the dreams that really energised us, I came away quite excited by the possibilities this will give for collaboration.
If you look carefully I think Pete manages to get into the picture twice!
Today I have been working on my personal support – so I have been writing letters and speaking to people on the telephone.
Each British YFC staff member agrees to raise 50% of their salaries. I always find days like today hard to start but quite rewarding too. The idea behind ‘personal support’ is to free up more money for frontline mission and provide resources and support to those who are working with young people. Every penny that is given in personal support for an individual staff member, such as myself, is put towards that individual’s salary cost.
I am nearly at my 50% target and am looking for a magnificent seven …. 7 people who can help me get to the target which I am currently £100 short of per month. I am looking for 3 people to be able to give £20 per month, and 4 people to be able to give £10 per month.
Anyone fancy joining my magnificent 7?
The rewards are eternal and get to join a great mission!
If interested – lets meet over coffee!
This is a great video to use on self esteem and beauty.
It’s amazing to see what lengths are gone to in order to present an image which others want us to see and believe not just to be real, but to be what we should be aspiring to. It’s an amazing illusion, but one that can really start to mess up some peoples lives as they sart to think that this is how they should look.
Thanks Ian for drawing my attention to it.
Good day today working on strategy with Richard and Phil.
I even enjoyed the drives there and back.
It does always amaze me how much traffic is still on the road at 530 in the morning. I get tired doing this just now and again, but some people are driving at 530 every morning – what are we doing to ourselves??!! Or, as Joe says, ‘What is that all about!’
Today is a day in history
The aim is to create the biggest ever blog throughout Britain, and by taking part you can contribute to a day in history.
You can read more here.
You can add your stuff by going here.
My entry today will start with waking up at 5am and leaving the house at 5.30 to get to Coventry before a mass of traffic … (but so you don’t think I am really blog keen and sad by blogging before I leave, I have used the gimmick on Blogger which allows me to pre-date and time posts!)
Today was a day where I feel I achieved a mass of stuff.
I got to grips with some study on the Kingdom of God (my chosen assignment title) this morning before shooting off to Cambridge to have lunch with a great guy called Jim who is the new YFC director there.
I listened to Jim’s story and heard about his dreams and we bounced a few ideas around. If you are in the Cambridge area you should get in touch!
On the way to and from Cambridge I was able to have 3 long phone conversations with people in centres. These were discussions of excitement and difficulties, the nitty gritty of youth ministry. It’s easy to think youth ministry is all glamour when in fact it is a lot of hard graft and sacrifice particularly as far as social life (people socialise at the same time than young people go to youth groups etc so you miss out on the gatherings), finance (youth workers are paid less than other generally), hassles (everyone blames young people and it’s always the youth workers fault.
I was reminded today that it is a real sacrifice to be in frontline youth ministry, although I do not believe there is a better job in the world to be called to!
So, if you know a youth worker – why not encourage them today and show them how much you appreciate what they are doing.
The Shiny Headed Prophet 