My Holiday
My very generous and loving Mother took me to
Egypt for one week as my birthday present. We stayed in a beautiful hotel in
Sharm El Sheikh and spent a good amount of time relaxing and sunning ourselves
by the pool. However, even in Egypt on holiday, it quickly became evident that
God desired to use us to spread the gospel and to show His love to Muslims and
Christians alike. We had many opportunities to speak to people about our faith
and to spend time listening to people sharing stories of their lives. The Holy
Spirit clearly paved a way for us to have open conversations and to build
friendships which we have continued whilst at home in England. There were three
particular Muslim men with whom we made friendships and who were clearly inspired
by our words and lives. They are Mohamed, Saleh and Karim. My Mum and I continue
to pray for them, that God would challenge them and reveal Himself to them. It
would be great if you could join us in praying for them too, that the Lord
would lead them to salvation for His glory!
Girlz Group
So last month, I left you with the news that
Kelly (PCSO) and I would be taking the girls from Girlz Group at Orchard, to Pizza
Hut. This was a very successful trip and the girls stuffed themselves with
pizza, pasta, salad and garlic bread which was all paid for by the school. It
was great to see the girls outside of the school context and they were
certainly more relaxed with each other and with us. A couple of them started to
open up about boyfriends they currently have, which gave us a very good insight
into their self worth and their relationships with other people. We were able
to offer some very practical advice to them about relationships. Some concerns
were raised around one girl in particular who told us she was going to meet her
new, older boyfriend for the second time, but was going alone. We advised her
to take a friend with her and Kelly was able to pass this information on to
appropriate mentors within the school for further guidance from them. This will
also be an issue I am able to continue speaking with them about, by building it
into future sessions I have with them. Praise God that these girls feel
comfortable enough to share with us information about such delicate issues and
that I have an opportunity to advise them and pray for them on these things!
· Please
pray that this openness continues and that the girls are willing to listen to
and accept the advice they hear.
·
Please
pray for protection for these vulnerable girls from relationships or situations
that will be damaging to them.
· Pray
that each of these girls becomes fully aware of how precious they are to God
and how much they are worth.
Girls' Lunch Club
Unfortunately, as Kelly has been out of the
country since I came back from Egypt, the lunch time girls club with members of GIRLZ Group has only ran
once. There were some problems with trying to find a space in which to run the
group and these were not resolved before Kelly left for her holiday. So for
now, the lunch club has been postponed until after Easter when things should be
back to normal.
· Please
pray for the girls over the Easter holidays, that they will somehow come in
contact with what Easter really means.
·
Pray
that the momentum of relationship building will not be lost while we are not
meeting with the girls.
The Word
This month, I have also started as a leader at
The Word, the Sunday morning youth group. I will be leading the session for one
week in every four and I will also be responsible for planning each term’s
overall theme or topic for the Bible teaching. Ben Whitnall and Ian Powell are
also leaders and we met last week to discuss possible changes and developments
for The Word. One of the decisions we made was that for the First Sunday
monthly services at Ebe, the young people will remain in the service with the
rest of the congregation. We will be encouraging them to sit together and to
actively participate in worship, as well as encouraging them to pray for and
minister to each other when they want to respond to the speaker’s message or to
the worship. You may even see the young people involved with some aspect of the
service like; being in the worship team, doing the technical support or doing
something to contribute to the content of the service. We’re very excited about
seeing our young people integrate more into church on Sunday mornings and we
want to encourage you to make them feel at home and welcome and to even find
out more about them as individuals by having a conversation with them during
coffee! The coming term’s theme for the Bible teaching is yet to be decided,
but we have some very interesting discussion topics raised by the young people
themselves including; the relevance of the Bible today, homosexuality and why
men should be the head over a woman… just a little challenging then!!
·
Please
pray for divine guidance on what topics we should be teaching from the Bible
each term.
·
Pray
that we as leaders will be passionate about teaching from the Bible and that we
are able to be role models who inspire the young people to see the Bible as a
fresh and exciting guide book which brings us life and growth.
· Please
pray for the 30 young people we have attending The Word, that they will each
have personal encounters with the living God and that their relationships with
Him will become strong and everlasting.
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