The end of Week 1

Well it is officially the end of Week 1. Unlike normal places in the world Warwick University thinks the solar calender is a tad over-rated so numbers its weeks of term. Where everyone else runs by dates Warwick students run by saying "Wednesday Week 2" instead of 5th October, weird huh!? Anyway, with that in mind we are now at the end of "Week1".

Its been a fun week all things considered and very busy, I find myself really tired now and I think the travelling to and from campus is taking more out of me than I expected. We have spent most of our time doing short surveys to collect data on how importantly people view spiritual issues, over the week we have done over 1,500 of these! There are three "yes, no or maybe" questions one of which is "Would you like the opportunity to meet up and discuss spiritual things?", anyone who ticks "yes" and leaves contact details we are going to get in touch with over the next few weeks and try and see them to discuss Jesus. We think there are around 100-200 who have left details and ticked yes so ourselves and the students will be busy over the next few weeks!

The first two CU meetings of term were this week as well and I went out to those, one was an intro and the other was entitled "Star Wars and Jesus". They were great fun and many new people came along with some non-Christians.

This week I have been getting together with some guys to talk about discipleship which was brilliant. I am going to be working with at least two guys, Steve and Dom, and hopefully one or two more. I am going to work through a book called Fuel and the Flame with Steve and probably with Dom too, which is all about gospel sharing on campus and living your life for Jesus as a student. Its fast becoming a vital tool in the Agape armoury!

Today to end the week we had an event outside on the Piazza (see photo) with a Christian band called Dweeb. They played some very energetic music and two students gave their testimonies whilst a member of the CU committee explained a bit about the CU and the gospel. It was really good and there were a lot of people watching. While it was going on Rich and I went around on the steps meeting people and doing some "long" surveys to have gospel conversations. We had a good time and met some good people with interesting views but no one we spoke to was very receptive to the gospel. Martin though had a really good conversation with some guys! Praise the Lord! The CU have worked really hard this week to have a high profile and get to know new students and spread the gospel wide on campus, its been great to see them step out and put on so many things, they are finishing tomorrow with a BBQ and sports afternoon.

Please pray for the continuing good relations at Warwick, working with the CU has been brilliant and they have been so welcoming, we are so encouraged by our partnership with UCCF. The students are so eager to be involved and see the campus changed...three students have already paid and booked up for the National Student Conference which isn't until February, they just want to take every opportunity to learn and practicllay do evangelism! We are still wanting to see every student have the opportunity to respond to Jesus this year, there are a mere 15,500 students to get to!

Thanks for your continued prayers for the ministry we are a part of, I truly believe we are on the verge of seeing God do something really amazing at Warwick University! I leave you with a verse from Chris Tomlin's song "Not to Us", because its all about Jesus!

the cross before me the world behind,
no turning back, raise the banner high,
it's not for me, it's all for YOU,
let the heavens shake and split the sky,
let the people clap their hands and cry,
it's not for us, it's all for YOU.

Casualty

Today I have spent 4 hours in Casualty with Pete my housemate. Like I said before he came back from holiday in Niger feeling ill and having been to the doctor was told to contact them on Monday but to go to the tropical dieases hospital if it got worse. Today it got worse as I came home to find him in a heap on the sofa semi conscious with the fire blazing! I was going to take him to the hospital but he couldn't even get to the car so he had an ambulance!

We ended up sat down there all afternoon while they did various tests on his blood thankfully they found that he DOESN'T have Malaria which is a great relief but aren't sure what it is, probably an African virus. He is feeling a lot better thankfully but still not right. He has to go to the doctor on Monday when he should get full blood test results from the tropical diseases centre which may shed more light on it. In the mean time he's worn out and just able to sit around. Please continue to pray for him.

I had a really fun day off...honest.

Lets go Warwick, lets go!

So here we are at the start of term all ready to get going and students arriving over this weekend. Today we had a meeting with as many students as we could get together at 2pm on a Thursday to discuss plans for Freshers week and plans for the year. We had a great time and there are plenty of ideas flying around of things to be doing on campus over the coming few months...all very exciting they are too! Over the past week or so Martin has drawn up a "strategic plan" for our team of events and ideas along with a model suggesting we can reach 12,000 of Warwick's students if all our events ran perfectly and attracted different people (i.e. its a simplistic model!). The hardest thing for us in this is that Warwick has 15,500 students and we are not willing to accept that we are going to "miss" 3,500 students this year, our goal is to give every student at Warwick an opportunity to respond to Jesus THIS YEAR.

So all of next week we will be out and about on campus doing short 30 second surveys to collect information and get contacts of interested people. The idea is simple, give people three tick boxes to find out their spiritual interest and get contact details and then follow up anyone who expresses some interest. Simple huh?! I printed up 1,000 of these but I may end up doing more as we, along with the students, go out to meet as many people as possible next week!

Please pray for us as we meet the new students next week, it will be hectic and long hours but really important. There is plenty of awful stuff that goes along with the start of university life so please pray that we would be salt and light and Chrisitians all over the country would be the same on their respective campuses.

In other news Peter is back from his holiday in Niger and isn't very well...please pray that its just a cold and not some dodgy African disease, he has to go back to the doctor in the morning for more checks.

Thank you for praying for Rich and Lucy, Rich is now much better and should be able to be home soon. After all the initial worry it was not his kidney that failed but an appendix problem which has now been resolved, the kidney is still working Ok but was affected by the problem which caused the worry. Praise the Lord!

The internet here is still playing up but it now looks like our wireless network is dying a slow death, we seem to be Ok when plugging up to the modem so at least access is available.

Thanks for your support, I hope all newsletters arrived Ok and you are well, its all go, but please drop me a line!

Technical gremlins...

I just wanted to let you know I have technical gremlins in my internet connection right now and with a housemate and account holder in Africa this is not a good recipe for getting it fixed (it also means I am still sat in the office at 7.20pm!). Apologies if updates and email are sporadic, I hope to have it fixed by the end of next week. If you need to contact me urgently the phone is the only safe bet until then.

Just to update you Rich is apparently a little better and is out of intensive care, please continue to pray for him and Lucy this improvement would continue, for him to gain strength and once again for another new kidney.

***URGENT PRAYER REQUEST***

Hi,

Please pray for my friend Rich Dobson, some of you may well know him. Rich has had kidney problems for a long time but a year or so ago had a successful kidney transplant. I found out tonight that this kidney has failed and Rich is in intensive care in hospital in Newcastle. Please pray for him urgently and for his wife Lucy, they only got married this summer and I had the privilege of going to the wedding the weekend before flying out to the States.

Thank you.

Getting back to work...

I now feel properly settled back in Birmingham having been back for just over a week, I'm living alone again for the moment as Pete is off in Niger, Africa on holiday with his girlfriend Jo, he's assured me he isn't in the dangerous parts!

After having a few days off I got myself back into the office at the start of this week to trawl through everything in my in-tray and inbox and do all the jobs that have sat there for the past two months while I've been away! Thankfully the accounts department have managed to do lots of the accounts from the summer project trips so I am just mopping up to make sure everything is documented. I would like to say all the nasty international tax problems are sorted too but I'd be lying...that is still sat on my desk!

I also got a bit of time with Martin Russell with whom I now form the Student Ministry Operations Dream Team! We are meeting on Wednesday to try and iron out the way forward and what we need to develop to help everyone be effective! This is a lovely picture of us on the left from when we were at staff conference. It will be interesting working with Martin, even though its sad to see Chip move to Newcastle, Martin is great so I'm looking forward to it.

Yesterday we had our first "Team Warwick" meeting...well at least those of us here in Birmingham. It was good to get together and spend a bit of time studying the Bible, praying and thinking about how this year will look. We made a note of all the things we need to fit in in preparation for putting them on the calender on Monday.

Following that I finally wrote my summer newsletter recounting everything that has been going on...I hope to get it in the post in the next couple of days.

This Sunday I am speaking at Yardley Wood Baptist Church with Martin Riddall my Warwick team leader for the students who are going to university in a few weeks. I am going to be saying a little bit about being a student at university and interview Ben, one of our key students from Warwcik, about his experiences. We have a 25 minute slot so hopefully it will be helpful for them, please pray that it would go well.

Also pray for Brittney one of our Liverpool short term team, she is stuck in America as she was on standby for a flight and didn't get on it so pray she wouldn't be too frustrated and would get over here soon!

Hopefully that newsletter will be on you doormat fairly soon. God Bless

Do I know this place?

I am in a very strange place.

It looks a lot like somewhere I used to live, but I'm struggling to connect all the dots. The odd thing is, everything I own is here too...oh thats right, I do live here, I just haven't seen it in two months!

Yes I am home, back in Birmingham for real, no more conferences or trips, no more galavanting and travelling, just me, Birmingham and a new term! Hurrah! So what's been going on...

I have had a mixed time up in Nottingham during conference season, the first conference was Okish but the second was pretty good. For the first half we had summer school of Biblical studies which was interesting. We had Tony Watkins from the Damaris Trust speak to us on apologetics and using the media in evangelism. It was interesting but I found it quite hard because it wasn't really Biblical studies, it was rooted in the Bible but I didn't feel like we had enough Bible content. Still it was interesting and we had various short assignments to do along with a longer one which I wrote on the balance in the Bible between engaging with culture and pursuing personal holiness. My conclusion? That we are called to engage with culture whilst pursuing holiness so far as we are not compromising, they are not however mutually exclusive.

It was great to be with all the staff from all the ministries all around the country, so encouraging to hear ministry stories and just be together fellowshiping.

At the end of that time the staff of the campus ministry stayed around whilst everyone else headed out and back home. I actually headed out too and drove to Keswick to the wedding of my good friends Zac and Sarah, it was a great day apart from lots of people getting parking tickets because the bride was so late (people were sneaking out to add time to their tickets!). We all had fun but it was a long way to go, I drove for 10 hours and 500 miles over the weekend!

Back at conference we had great fun together just the student ministry. We are like one big family and everyone gets on really well so it was great. We had plenty of free time and also some excellent sessions from various staff, I had the privilege off giving a devotional one morning on what it means to be grown by God, looking mainly at John 15. I found it really hard going preparing but it went really well and lots of people gave good feedback, one quote I had was...

"That was the best talk I have ever heard you give."

So that was nice!

We also had good time in our teams and it was great to get together with the all singing all dancing and brand spanking new "Team Warwick". We have a great fun team and it will be nice to work with Richard and Sharon Boothroyd again as they move here from Newcastle where I was on a team with them, I used to live with Richard too before they got married! We have our first staff meeting on Monday.



Team Warwick:- Martin Riddall, me, Richard Boothroyd, Sharon Boothroyd, Peter Turnill, Polly Turnill, Martin Russell and Rachel Riddall.

In other exciting news I have a new boss, Martin Russell. Since Chip has moved to Newcastle everything has been a bit up in the air but Martin is the new Director of Operations for the student ministry. For many years he has worked with Discovery, the schools ministry, for a long time as the director, but with recent changes he has moved to the student ministry with his wife Fran and we will now be working together which will be fun...its a big relief too!

I have a couple of days rest now to try and gather my thoughts from the summer and then start tapping keys to write a newsletter...which will probably be a giant edition! As for now though...I'm just delighted to finally be back settled at home!