Connecting in Lent

Last night was the first session of Connect, a lent course for young people that we are running jointly with the local Catholic church. We have an after school cafe on a Wednesday and some people hung around after that for some food. Others turned up at 530pm to have the wonderful lasagne prepared by a lovely lady in the church. At 6.30pm, some others came and we ran a session on prayer. It involved Nooma, balloons, paint, a shredder, newspapers, journals and ummm... prayer. It was also exciting as 2 of the young people from church were involved in planning and leading it and they were amazing! There were close to 20 people there and according to a mum of a girl from the Catholic church, she had a great time and turned off the TV when she got home to tell her dad all about it. Not sure he was too pleased as he was watching the football.

It was wonderful for a few reasons. Firstly, I have wanted to build on the after school cafe for a while and think that sharing food is so important. I'd love to do this regularly, where the church is open into the evening and young people can come to the cafe, or for dinner, or for a discussion/reflection group.... or all 3. Last night suggested that it might work! It was also wonderful to work with a church with such different traditions and it be such a success! Christian unity, yay!

On a personal note, it has been a funny old week and I was encouraged by last night for lots of reasons and think God had designed that. Looking forward to next week...

I am also excited as I am having a couple of informal gatherings in a couple of weeks, getting together adults that will hopefully be part of 1-1 discipleship with young people. This is something that has been on my heart forever and I am really pleased it is moving forward. All in God's time...