Monthly Archives: December 2008

Don’t worry, I’m not going to do a blog about a rather tired old classic Christmas tune and how it has spoken to me about God. It just seemed an appropriate title for today’s blog.

Tomorrow, after our final Secret Agents club of the term, I will be making my way back up the A34…and I am SO excited about it!! I am so ready for a proper 2 week break; where I get to do no work; not have to go back early for a meeting; and really just spend time with all you lovely , lovely guys In MK.

So Tomorrow marks that I have been here in Weston a full term now. That is completely nuts!! It honestly seemed like yesterday that I  moved down here, and this whole surreal, challenging, wonderful year began!! But it wasn’t yesterday, it was three and a half months ago…and the time has just gone like that (imagine me clicking my fingers here)!! But, I guess, in another way, So much has happened that it could almost be longer than three and a half months. Lots of people have said to me “oh, you’re so grown up now” and at first I couldn’t see it at all. But I was talking to my Pastoral Carer on Saturday and I have started to see that perhaps I have had to grow up quite a bit in my time here. Simply because I had to to survive in a place like this! I guess I have seen, first hand, a little of what my young people have to do. Put childish ways aside to be able to cope with the harsh reality of life on this estate.  

I was thinking on Sunday about what can sum up this whole term. What has made this term a success? What has happened to make me want to come back in January? What has changed that has suddenly meant that I’m no longer feeling unfulfilled?

Cos while all those things are awesome, and I’m so glad that’s how I’m feeling now, I was confused as to if it was just a time thing. That being here three months is how long it takes for things to click and to properly fit in. Or if it something had actually happened to make things change.

And it hit me, on Sunday evening, that something really amazing had happened and I hadn’t even noticed….

If you cast your mind back to my blog about “the soul being healed by being with children”, I talked about a little girl in my year 3 class who had real anger issues and I went and talked to her when she’d legged it out of class. Well, since then, to my knowledge, Megan has carried on doing really well with controlling her temper and she has continued to be one of my favourite children to work with. Last Monday I told the class that it was the Secret Agents Christmas special on Saturday and that we really needed some more people to be in our nativity on Sunday too. Megan seemed interested, so I gave her all the details. However, working in Weston, you learn to take interest with a pinch of salt and expect no one to turn up even if they have been given all the details a hundred times!!

Megan did turn up on Saturday… she also turned up on Sunday.

She wasn’t already on our books, which means that in all the clubs we do she’d not been along to any.  Apart from the termly assemblies we do in her school, the church had not yet made contact with her. Megan has now, not only, come along to one of our clubs and seen the fun that we have; but she has been to a church service….probably for the first time in her life.

I thank God that I felt inexplicably prompted to tell the kids about the weekends activities (having never made any announcements about what we were doing at WCYP in Year 3 before) because if I hadn’t said anything Megan wouldn’t have made that step forward.

It makes me want to grin like a mad thing, jump about a bit,cry and endlessly just say “thank you” to God all at the same time when I think about it. Because of what I said, a completely unchurched child has come on to our radar and what’s more, has come to church!!

Because of this. All because of one, wonderful 8 year old girl my term has been a success. I can say without a doubt that through God’s strength, relying entirely on him, I have made a difference here.

And I can not wait to come back and make two more terms worth of difference!!

Thank you, Lord. Thank you for the shining light moments, for the gems, for the moments where it is so obvious that you are here in this estate and working in the kid’s lives. I pray for more of your strength, Lord, fill me up entirely…cos I have seen that things CAN change through you!!!

Lex xx

The quote that entitles this post came from a 5 year old that comes along to our weekly Secret Agents Club. It was another moment that brought me very close to tears and broke my heart for this little guy and his 8 year old brother.  They had turned up at the club the week before too and had been a bit late being picked up by someone who could have been anyone from an older brother to their mum’s new bloke. This week though it got to half an hour after the club had finished and they were still about waiting to be picked up, and they didn’t really know who it was that was supposed to be picking them up either. We tried their mum’s phone, no answer. We tried their someone Else’s phone, no answer. It was 6:00, already very dark and this 5  & 8 year old were completely prepared to walk home on their own; I’ve come to not be shocked by things like this anymore in Weston…it’s just the way things are. But what happened next really affected me.

Phil said that he’d give them a lift and I went along in the car too. They live down in one of the really big tower blocks by the shore,  and as we drove it became clear that it was highly doubtful that their mum was in because she was shopping in town; but still we thought it was worth a try. So we pulled up and they hopped out and stood ringing their buzzer for a few minutes with no answer so they came running back and said that Mummy was, as we guessed, not in.

They then told us that “James”, who i am presuming is the guy that had picked them up the week before, was round at a friend’s house and that they could be taken there. So we drove back through the estate to this guy’s house, just before we pulled up outside was when he came out with the title’s of today’s post. Nobody said anything in reply, but I think we were all silently hoping that the lights were on. They were on, and again they hopped out of the car and ran to this house, they banged on the door for a bit, and it was a real “please be in, please be in, please be in” moment. The older one then started yelling at the upstairs window at which point his brother had discovered that the front door was actually unlocked… with that they ran in and disappeared.

We don’t actually know if “James” was there or not, I’m really praying that he was and that those little guys journey home was done for that night.

That moment when they were banging on the front door was the closest I’ve come to a “You’re not safe. I want to take you home and make you safe” moment. And I really doubt that it will be the last time I have one of those moments.

It affected me as much in the way I wanted to reach out to these boys as in the way that I learnt something from them too.

It was clearly not the first time that they had been in a situation like this because they were completely unfazed by it all; and sadly we all know that it isn’t gonna be the last time either. And yet, this little 5 year old still manages to come out with something that shows he believes in them, and doesn’t doubt them at all.  Despite the fact that he was left to find his own way home and effectively forgotten, he didn’t doubt his mum loved him or would be there for him in time in any way. It never once crossed his mind that he could be alone and unloved, it was just that he hadn’t found where the person that loved him was yet. And that spoke to me so much about my relationship with My Father God.

In times when I feel like a tiny forgotten child on a cold dark night, left to find my own way home, it is so easy to get angry and God and blame him for seeming invisible and distant. But I want to be able to live, learning from Thursday’s experience, to have the faith in My Heavenly Father’s undying love to believe that he is there somewhere. To have the faith to carry on searching and seeking. The faith to know that when I find the house with the lights on, it means that he’s home and that I’m safe.

Father, I pray, give me the simple faith of  a 5 year old,

Lex xx