Busy Times

hhmm... lots of things have been happening recently and I have neglected the blog! I'll try to do a quick recap:

• Spring Harvest was great! Loads of people from Enfield Baptist Church went, including 6 chalets of young people. It was a really fun time with some great speakers. Louis Giglio was speaking in Student. Evolution and he always makes lots of sense. A lot of the young people got really fired up and I am praying and working hard to help them remain fixed on God away from the joys of Skeggie!
• On that note, we had a great prayer day at church last week. One lad turned up at 7.30 am in his Easter holiday. Now that is dedication. In the evening we ran an event where young people cooked for their parents. We then got everyone together and looked at the importance of families praying together and creative ways to make it happen. We then sent families off to pray! There was some great feedback afterwards and I think it has helped some families to focus on prayer, which is fantastic and very encouraging. Has anyone else done anything like this??
• On Friday night, I went to the All Night Demo for Trade Justice in Central London. There were 15 of us from church, including 5 young people. It was a great night and it felt that we were really making our voices heard, in some cases literally with rugby horns and noisy pans. One of the highlights was an impromptu giant Hokey Cokey on Parliament Square with loads of other demonstrators. The only drawback was that everywhere was very full so we didn't get to any workshops or services. Ironically, we ended up in McDonalds at 1 in the morning cos everywhere else was full! Considering my huge dislike of the place, this was a huge sacrifice on my part. The candlelight vigils at Whitehall were pretty spectacular. It was also great to see people from different backgrounds and varying ages coming together for the same cause. There were lots of people from within the group that I was with that had never done anything like this before (myself included). Yet we all felt moved to sacrifice our sleep to make a stand. I think this is the sort of stuff that Christians should be getting in the middle of, and it was great to see Christian Aid and Tearfund (amongst others) having a prominent role.
• Passion[fruit] happened last night and that too was superb. It is the monthly youth service at Enfield Baptist Church and it has been running in its present format since September. It was great to see everything coming together and young people truthfully worshipping God. the creative ideas that come out of the planning are always cool as well. Neil spoke last night (very well - tee hee) and lots of young people responded to a challenge to live the best life possible by reading the Bible, praying, meeting with other Christians and telling others about God. Neil spoke about the importance of discipleship and being accountable to someone else and lots of people said that they wanted to get involved in this. It was really encouraging cos it is easy to respond when you are at Spring Harvest or away from home but tons harder when all your mates and even your parents are around at your home church. But to their credit, lots if young people made a public stand. Wahey!
• I am getting more volunteers! A real answer to prayer.

So, lots of good things have been happening which is great... but I am exhausted. It is good timing cos we go to New York in 3 weeks... roll on the hols!!!!