Past week...and a little bit of today too :)

Oh my goodness, I don't know where to begin. Might as well talk about the Lye Christ Church I have been attending with my two GA friends (who shall remain nameless). The church is small - there are maybe 50 people in attendance on a given Sunday. The church itself feels so old upon entering - the ceiling is very high, painted black, and there is gold detailing on the cross beams.  All of the windows are stained glass pictures of Christ and his 12 disciples. The church community feels like one family. There isn't an attitude of expectation here - only one of gratitude and filled with an understanding that those who come to church come because they want to, not because they feel obligated. If you would like to pray for them, pray for the Lye community. Pray for the OM team working with the Christ Church body of believers; pray that they will be able to reach more people and tell them about the news of Jesus Christ.

While visiting the church - people stay after service for tea and coffee - there was a boy there about my age. We are going to call him Doug. Well Doug is in medical school and we got to talking about cultural stereotypes. He laughed when I asked him about the British and their tea - apparently they DO drink tea when they're upset! He affirmed it further by telling me that his mom will bring him a pot with biscuits when she knows he's upset. You can't get more British than a "cuppa" to calm down.

I unfortunately got hay fever the first few days of last week. I blame the unbelievable amount of pollen here (thanks to the rain everything is green including tree bark). I took the British equivilant of Claritin D and stuck it out. Mainly becuase the first day I got sick, we were going to go hike Marvern Hill. Since the GA teams have been dispersed across England, the only people left living on base are the ELCO students and the interns like myself. ELCO stands for the English Learning Community Outreach program. It was their outing to Marven Hill, I just tagged along because I had wanted to see the countryside :)

The view from the top of Marvern Hill!!

After we zigzagged our way back down from the hilltop, we had time to wander around Marvern. It happened to be a UK bank holiday that day, so there was a food market taking place around the base of the town's cathedral. It was mainly food and pottery being sold out of olive green tents and it seemed like the entire town was out enjoying the weather. The cathedral was huge compared to the rest of the town it was shadowed only by Marvern Hill itself. I didn't find out the age of the cathedral, but it was probably older than establishment of the USA.

This is the cathedral in Marvern, you can see the tops of the market tents in the bottom of  the picture!

Because I went and got sick, I didn't have a 'normal' first week in the office. My first week really started last thursday because while I was out of sorts with illness (I really shouldn't have pushed myself to hike Marvern Hill...but look at that view! It was totally worth it) my supervisor was also getting situated into Halesowen having just moved from London.

Here on base, every thursday is prayer night. All of the teams that are near enough to base to drive down come back for a 4 hour prayer session. On prayer nights, OM prays for the world, all of the teams stations across the globe, and any missionaries that need support with whatever. Usually there's worship of some form and then a GA team will put together different stations focused on different areas for our prayers to emphasize. Its fantastic hearing about how GOd works in people's lives. This ministry, OM, works in so many different places. It seems like as soon as I think I start to understand how God works, he keeps surprising me. If you'd like to pray for OM, pray for the missionaries out in the world facing difficulties. During the night, I had to stand on a puzzle piece that was being used to illustrate how my small, single piece of this puzzling reality matters to God. Thats a happy thought: God needs everyone to help spread his good news. No matter how small you feel, no matter how insignificant you think you are, God needs you. 

Last Saturday we went to Liverpool. It was quite a beautiful area we went to! We started the day at a beach. It stretched out as far as you could see (I'm pretty sure I saw France on the horizon but I'm directionally handicapped so it might've been Ireland...regardless THERE WAS LAND ON THE HORIZON). After about two hours at the beach, we drove to Liverpool and spent a few hours in town. I ended up in a park, walking around an art museum, in a coffee shop, and just wandering about the town centre!

This is the ELCO team and interns at the beach - you can't really read it, but the scarf being help up says Liverpool!

We do this thing every morning that's called Refocus. Generally one of the staff leads it - it's kind of like a mini bible study but with more prayer emphasis. We briefly go over all some of the things that OM does across the globe. It was such a blessing; I got to hear about this amazing OM team in Bosnia that created a children's club about 13 years ago. They didn't have the opportunity to return until this past month. Well, when they got to the same town to check out the area two women came up to where they were holding retreat. The women proceeded to say that they were the mothers of some of the kids from the came 13 years ago! It was FANTASTIC to hear how God brought those women BACK to the same team and they remembered the team. That OM team has the opportunity to bring those women to Christ!

Well that pretty much covers the past two weeks (at least the highlights). I miss you all - and if you'd like to pray, pray for OM's global outreaches!