UK VI news......

Hi all,

We would value your prayers for all of us working for OM within the UK as in the coming months we will be facing the loss of friends and colleagues owing to the withdrawal of our overseas sponsorship licence. Please pray that in the midst of such uncertainty we will all experience God's grace, provision, stability and know His perfect will. Amen.

some of Kosova highlights.....

Chris writes: praise God for great times! We had a great time in Kosova...so many meetings and coffees and opportunities to encourage and to be encouraged...we were so blessed just by being there...sadly our time was so short and we did not get to do or see all the people and places that we wanted to...maybe with age and maturity I am more able to accept that now....next time!

But we still were able to see lots of people who were so happy to see us, join with a kids club with CEF, go to a Christian Kosovan wedding, visit and be encouraged with the new cafe opened by our church...and using some of our furniture from our cafe, visit the capital Pristina and some of The Ideas Partnership Projects, working mainly in Roma, Ashkali And Egyptian communities, seeing how they are growing including a new kindergarten, visit and be encouraged to see the drug rehab, Streha, near Gjilan in the south and how it has grown and is continuing to transform lives....and of course visit a Chelsea supporters cafe!......amongst other things!!!

We took so many pictures and hopefully you saw some of them on facebook but here are a few more:

Phew!!!......thanks so much for your support and prayers for us and for our time in Kosova.....    xx

life continues.....number 6 is lining up on the runway!!

Chris writes: so one group of ELCO students have left us and another one is already here or on their way. The new programme starts this weekend. It is such a joy to see the students leaving ELCO and going off to serve God in Birmingham, UK their home, or around the globe with OM. This will now be my 6th ELCO group and it is great to be part of this programme and to be able to train and equip, serving God in this way. Please do pray for the students both new and old.


For this programme we will not be around that much. Once the programme gets underway after one week we will be off to Kosova for two weeks...we are looking forward to this and the divine appointments we are praying for there. As the students arrive already things are starting to look differently for me with other new possibilities on the horizon.


Appreciate your prayers at this time

Thank God because He is Good!!

Chris writes....has been a busier than ever season....Christmas came and went and was fantastic to be at my parents down in Worthing for a week or so before...back here straight after for our New Years Outreach...and mission week for our students...then the end of one programme......evaluations and preparation for the new one......and we are now 4 weeks into the new programme....new and extra responsibilities for me!! Really feels like the train has begun again and now just need to keep it moving.......

We have had many blessings just lately.....words of friendship, money, visitors, new friendships, invites for meals, gifts of food..God always seems to know just what we need and when we need it...Praise God that is a testimony we all share!!

Have been struggling a bit lately with some of my old demons and habits...do I or don't I.....why not give in....why do I have to keep struggling.....must admit I came very close.....Psalm 118 from the Message summed it up for me.....felt like I was: '...right on the cliff edge and ready to fall, when God grabbed and held me....and now He's my salvation' (verses 13 & 14) and a few verses on: 'I didn't die. I lived! and now I am telling the world what God did.....' (17)

and finally verses 28 & 29: 'You're my God and I thank You. Oh my God I lift high Your praise. Thank God - He's so good. His love never quits!'

How are you doing??

"A right time to plant and another to reap...."

Chris writes: not many people realise, but yes, the words above do actually come from the Bible (Ecc 3:2 The Message)...and how true they are!! This applies to all things and especially as I was reminded recently to mission.......



I am enjoying my role heading up the ministry section of the English Language Community Outreach programme, teaching many of the future missionaries about mission, at the OM training centre in West Midlands and am currently on my 4th ELCO programme....it is the second team I have supervised in one particular church and the third team we have had actually based there. For the first two teams, nothing much seemed to be happening, we had holiday clubs for children and just a few children turned up and to me, not much fruit was showing. But just like when we plant seeds in the ground and we cannot see much happening on the surface, I was wondering if were making any impact. Now however I can see how wrong I was.


For the current team things really seem to have changed....they are running after school clubs and I can now see how wrong I was before. The first week one child turned up, but last week we had 17 children there!! What a blessing!!


But we must acknowledge and not forget the previous teams work in breaking up and preparing the ground. This work is so important in the garden and just as important in longer-term ministry. We must make a start and in the beginning be prepared to see very little fruit....but we will not see any fruit without someone doing that very important job first. And people will never realise how hard that part was. When someone looks at a beautiful rose they don't appreciate how hard it was to produce that rose they just enjoy the beautiful flower before them.

"Who despises the day of small things?".....and yes that is more wise words, from not just a good book, but the very words of God!! (Zech 4:10).

Blessings

Christmas.... Hope is coming.....The Hope is Here!!

Chris writes: Last summer I felt God was leading me into a deeper love relationship with Him. I felt I had a divine appointment and found in a bookshop an old copy of ‘The Relentless Love of Jesus’ by Brennan Manning. As a dyslexic, I am not a fast reader, but the book took me over a year to read! If you know the book and how thin it is, even to a dyslexic maybe you are amazed by this! I make no apologies. The book is so rich and deep and almost every page I found needed an equal amount of time to meditate on and chew over. So many pages have been marked and underlined, I don’t think I could lend it out or even let it out of my sight! Sorry if you were going to ask to borrow! Don’t worry I noticed you can get it on Amazon!

For the last few weeks, since the operation on my knee, I have been resting at home so had chance to finish the book!

There is so much I could share with you from the book, but as we approach Christmas, let me just share a few thoughts from the last few pages of the book where Manning talks of the: 'Crisis of Christmas'.

‘To be a Christian’ he says ‘means to stake one’s life on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ’. ‘What is our depth and quality of our passion for Jesus?’ At Christmas time it is easy for us to get sucked into all the trappings and tinsel as Christmas, for many, becomes the time to overdo and over indulge, getting ourselves into debt. Will we celebrate Christmas this year by over indulging?

He shares of a priest who visited a 16 year old girl who was dying in hospital. The girl looked into the worried and grief stricken face of the priest and said: ‘“Don't be afraid”. This is the precise meaning of Christian,’ Christmas ‘hope’ Manning says ‘when the dying can say to the living, “Don't be afraid”’. Is that the hope you have?

He says there are three ways we can commit suicide: ‘by taking my own life, letting myself die and letting myself live without hope’. He quotes Thoreau who wrote that: ‘The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation’…. ‘they still walk around……but the fire inside them has died’. Are you still alive?

He asks, if we have lost our sense of fun and enjoyment about life and are missing out on the most simplest of things. ‘Has getting serious about life meant becoming sad about life? Is living just another word for endurance?’ Have we got so ‘engrossed in our own efforts to grow in holiness’ that we are missing out on life?

He says that sometimes we, much like some of the disciples & followers, who lived and walked and learnt from Jesus for three years and still felt let down by Him say: “Messiah, you get our allegiance only when you fulfil our expectations”.

He says that ‘Christmas means that God has given us nothing less than Himself and His name is Jesus Christ’… are we ‘laid waste by one pure passion’, this should lead us to a ‘realistic assessment: anything connected with Christmas that is not centred in Christ Jesus’ is ‘empty gesturing’.

He says we must not be too preoccupied with our own purity of heart…trying to be holy...but that purity of heart means to have our gaze fixed on Jesus and Jesus alone….. To ‘admire Him, rejoice that He is what He is – your Brother, your Friend, your Lord and Saviour’.

He talks about Matthew 18:3, children know how to celebrate Christmas, and Manning says not that we have to become childish but childlike: ‘Children are our role models because they have no claim on heaven. If they are close to God Simon Tugwell says, “it is not because they are innocent, but because they are incompetent.” ‘When Jesus tells us to become like children’ he says ‘He is urging us to forget what lies behind. Children have no past.’

If we asked people in the street on Christmas eve: ‘what they most want for Christmas, how many would say, ‘I want to see Jesus’?

And finally.......

He quotes Rabbi Abraham Heschel, “Jesus Christ is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance”.

I hope these quotes will help you reflect and prepare as we approach Christmas.

Blessings

Recent trip to London: Poppies at Tower Hill

change is hard and can be painful......

Chris writes: it is hard to think that our 21 students are now settled around the world serving God...some of them at home and others on the mission field in some of the most dangerous and unsettled places in the world..to of them are in the Philippines, one is in Jordan...it seems strange to see some of their posts on facebook! Meanwhile five weeks on we have launched into a new ELCO programme and another 22 new students have joined us from the length and breadth of the world.....from Brazil,Thailand, Taiwan, Russia to name a few and even our first ever from Azerbaijan!!

I must admit I was so worried about learning their names!! Praise God I am feeling so confident after day one and am learning them quickly...now we start the process of finding out their English capabilities, putting them into church teams and the ones who want to, giving them driving tests!!

Last week was a tough week as we have finally closed the café and are selling off the items..I felt God saying it was a time for pruning....but when that happens things die before growth comes...but the death can bring mourning and grief......mine did not last long as the following day I found out at last the youth café at our Church in Gjakove has opened......growth has come!! Praise God!! ....the most exciting thing is this is not lead by us but by the locals.......please do pray for this new venture and the community it will be reaching.......please also pray that we can finish things off well with the old café too......

Have put two pictures on my facebook tonight...two very special men........men I am proud to say I had the privilege of knowing...men of God who set an example of grace and love......and so much more besides.....RIP Brother Micky and Faton!.......pray for their families and their legacies

God bless......thanks for your support and prayers