So...America

As promised, its about time I filled you in properly on all the stuff regarding my placement to the US.

On the Friday of the NSC Andy Atkins told me that the UK have agreed after all my interview and stuff to send me to Miami of Ohio next year. It's pretty exciting now I've had some time to think about it and get my brain ready for thinking about it, the opportunity is brilliant and the things that we can learn and implement for the UK ministry are endless, its a privilege to be the person who goes to do that.

I had a meeting today with Andy Atkins and Henri Duncan to discuss our expectations and try and weigh these up with the US expectations to make sure that we all know what we want, we are all in agreement here so hopefully it will fit with what the US want. I can't divulge until its sorted but a few things aren't totally clear on both sides but obviously we want this year to make a significant impact on the fulfillment of the Great Commission in the UK.

What I can say is that I will be at Miami for the next academic year working with the students to envision and recruit for international mission and specifically for the UK whilst also observing their huge ministry and picking up information on what we need to implement to help push what we do nationally to the next level.

It's exciting times...hopefully there'll be more info as and when it becomes available!

All is quiet...or is it?

Well things have been relatively quiet over the past couple of weeks and I have been lying low trying to recover from the exersion of the NSC! Very little has been happening really, at least not with me...I have been busily getting on with things in the office and am now preparing for next year's budgeting...oh what joy. Over the next month or so Martin Russell and myself are going to be off visiting all the different teams around the country, so far we have pit stops booked in London (Feb 27th), Newcastle (Mar 3rd), Edinburgh (Mar 6th), Birmingham (Mar 7th) and Liverpool (Mar 24th), we now just need to arrange a date to fly over the sea to Belfast!

On campus I have been following up with the guys since the NSC and seeing what the Lord has been teaching them on the back of it. This has been awesome. God is really doing great things at Warwick and the guys I am working with are being challenged in different areas such as doing discipleship, evangelism, world mission and committing everything to Him. We have been working through a few things to sure up what they are learning and push on to achieve what God wants to do through them in their life now and in the future. Brilliant!

In exciting news I have heard of two people who have prayed to receive Christ in the past couple of days from friends in other regions, one in Newcastle and one in Liverpool. Praise the Lord!

Last week, the astute among you will have noticed, was my birthday! I joined the rank and file of 24 year olds very quietly on the 11th and celebrated with a trip down to sunny (!) Basingstoke to watch the ice hockey...a good trip and a good birthday, Basingstoke Bison 2-3 NOTTINGHAM PANTHERS! Tonight we are having a joint birthday houseparty as my colleagues Rich and Sharon have had birthdays in the last week or so as has another friend Sarah, hopefully we'll get everyone into the house!

Last night we had our Oasis church students winter ball...seeing as that meant people "dressed up nice" I'll leave you with a photo!

I haven't forgotten the small matter of my placing in America next year and numerous people have asked why it got squished into the bottom of a post about something else...sorry...I'll rectiy that next time!

NSC pictures

Yet again blogger isn't letting me insert photos into the post about NSC so I have to do it seperately...if you haven't read it make sure you read the post below and enjoy the pictures here!

Our Warwick crew who attended the NSC!

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Main meeting

The world map covered in pledges!

From England to The Nations, Your Time, Your Place, Your Will.

Good discussion times for students!

Prayer during main meeting

Students queueing up to give feedback after the evangelism in Selly Oak!

Me and Rob, one of the students I worked with in Newcastle!

What a powerful weekend!

NSC over...NSC over...NSC over...NSC over...

Yes that's right, I am back from the NSC, I haven't imploded, screamed or broken down in tears. It worked, it happened, I now feel a little freer! By God's grace we made it through, nothing fell apart or broke and by all accounts things went smoothly, much to my delight!

What a great weekend we had. For me it was a bit of a whirlwind, no sooner had it started than it was done, doing all of the admin meant I felt pretty detached from the whole thing and I found it hard to engage but it was amazing seeing what God interact with students in a very real way and challenge them to the very essence of their life. We had 294 students and staff come along in the end after the dust had settled on Thursdays antics if cancellations and changes and everyone left feeling envisioned for what the Lord was doing.

The meetings were based on "The Spirit of Mission" and challenged people to consider what this looked like practically in their lives and what the Lord might be calling them to do about it. The talks were excellent and prompted plenty of interesting discussion amongst both staff and students.

On the Saturday afternoon I drove all the way back to Birmingham as we took 290 odd people out onto the streets of Selly Oak in Birmingham to share their faith with the students that live there. It wasn't easy, knocking on doors fills me with dread compared to other ways of doing cold contact evangelism but myself and my partner had 3 spiritual conversations over the course of the hour. People's experience's varied some having a great time and others finding it hard to find people to speak to but we are all praising God as TWO people prayed to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour during the course of the afternoon!


Saturday night was the world mission focus and unfortunately Larry who was slated to speak was sick and couldn't even be at the weekend. Thankfully David Wilson (Agape's National Director) stepped in at the last minute and gave a very challenging talk about the way the Spirit of Mission runs the whole course of history. At the end of the night people were invited to write pledges to God on post it notes and stick them on a world map on a country which the Lord was laying on their hearts. This was amazing and here are a couple of photos of it at the end, it was incredibly inspiring to read! (So blogger is doing its usual and not letting me post my pics...I'll try again later!)

A further rather good thing happened this weekend...I HAD MY YEAR IN AMERICA CONFIRMED BY ANDY ATKINS! Woooo! Yes from August I shall be heading over as planned to work on our partnership and brain picking ideas about how to implement some of the methods of running a huge student ministry back here in the UK. That's quite exciting and although its far from sorted at least its now all confirmed!

National Student Conference

The NSC starts tromorrow.

I have worked day and night on it for the last 3 days.

I want to sleep all weekend.

People are getting sickness left right and centre and dropping out who I'm having to try and replace. Some of them are men being replaced by women and vice versa...this meeses up my room allocations. This isn't fun.

My head hurts.

Please pray.