A New Chapter...

Next week I begin the next part of my adventure, with nearly 50 interns arriving to work at the Urban Promise summer camps. This is particularly exciting for me as I have volunteered to go to a City called Trenton in New Jersey, where they are starting up a brand new summer camp this year. (Click here for more info on Trenton).

I will going there with my buddy Kumar and some other Interns. I feel that this will be a really fun time, but I also feel that this will be a time that I will be able to be challenged, and possibly help me grow.

This move will only be temporary, as I will be returning to Camden in August to start another Year Internship at the camp that I have been working at this.

I ask that you all continue to support me, that your keep me in your prayers. And if you feel called to support my work here in the USA financially,  then please go to https://www.servicenetwork.com/olg/upusa-f/Sponsor.asp and select my name from the drop down menu.

The only true disability is a crushed spirit

I know that this video is kinda long but it is incredibly inspirational to me and to the work that I am doing out in America.  If you don't have the time to watch it all then please watch from 14.38

Camp Faith 2010/11

Here is a movie I made of the previous year working at Camp Faith. Hope you enjoy it

If a picture paints a thousand words...

Prophets of a future that is not our own

I have been prompted many times in the last weeks and months about how whatever we do, we cannot do it in our own power, and that it is detrimental to the world around us when we take God out of the equation and try and manage our surroundings in our own way.

A friend sent me this quote by Oscar Romero, and I found it extremely inspiring:

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts: it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is the Lord's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No sermon says all that should be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. That is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted knowing they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that affects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very, very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own."

The question is, can we manage to set aside our need for control and look beyond ourselves and to a future that is not our own?

Chasing Shadows

I have just been struck about how much I chase shadows.

I don't mean this literally. But in the fact that I am constantly chasing the good things that God places around me. This could be a Job, or friends or countless other things.

I remember somebody once telling me that in our relationship with God, he is our only light source, and that the things he gives us, be it relationships, jobs, talents etc. are the shadows produced when his light hits us. If we chase after these shadows then we are fruitlessly walking with our backs turned from the Light source, and in the end the shadows become less and less defined.

The only way to attain the things we want is to turn our backs on them. To fix our gaze to the light source, and only when we are running towards this do the 'shadows' become more defined.

More of a suburban dullness than an Urban Adventure

I'm sorry for not blogging recently but I've been a bit preoccupied.

At the moment I am not in the USA, but in the UK. This is a result of having to wait for a new visa. Admittedly this last couple of weeks has been a real struggle, going from doing really exciting work in a really interesting city in the USA to doing 'donkey' work back at my old job in grey old England is enough to make pretty much anyone feel down, frustrated and fed up.

It's not that I don't like England, I do, but when you know that your called to be somewhere to do something and you can't get there it is frustrating.

I have wondered where God is in all of this waiting, because he could fix this in an instance, but the lack of progress leads me to believe that there is more that meets the eye, that God isn't being vindictive or ignorant but that he is trying to teach me.

I realised that the most frustrating thing is having no control over what is not happening. This isn't a new. I struggle a lot with not feeling that in someway i can influence what is occurring, and maybe this is God telling me that I need to release control, to trust him. That's what the writer of Proverbs says, that we need to place our trust into Gods hands, and not put our faith into our own understanding, not depending on our own strength but Gods. Maybe this is what God is trying teach me.