It's in the little things...

It's the young girl who's so excited to be going on her school SU weekend, after her saying at the beginning of the year that she "doesn't go to SU, because she doesn't believe in God".  
It's being able to hang out with a girl and provide a distraction for her when she's struggling with trying to do the right thing and her friends are pulling her in the wrong direction.
It's our Romania team raising over £1000 over our massive (£3,400) target.
It's the guy who was the first person to offer to pray for me when I was feeling down, and then got his mentor (my team mate) to come pray with him for me.
It's the primary school kids who get excited when they walk into the hall and realise we're taking assembly today, and the happy whispers of "Pais team! Pais team!" that go around the hall.
It's the young people who just drop into the office when they're in town to ask us questions about faith, or even just to hang around and spend time with us.
It's the guy who came along to our week-long prayer space at his school and let us pray with him and his friends, then started coming to the lunch club and after-school course about exploring faith, and is now being mentored by one of the team.
It's being able to take 2 young girls to 'Beautiful' weekend and helping them learn more about how much God loves and cherishes them.
It's being a part of Exodus' Saturday night events all year and meeting all the amazing young volunteers who have a massive heart for God.
It's the fact that in just 5 days I'll be taking 9 young people to Romania to work in the local community and show God's love.


It's been a roller-coaster year that's had its ups and downs, but you know what they say about roller-coasters... it's not about getting to the end, but enjoying the journey! It's the little things like this that have made this year so worth it. I've had a lot of fun, made amazing friends and learnt a lot... but most of all I know that God has worked through me, and used us as a team to bless others in so many ways. And in return he has blessed us abundantly.

A blast from the past!

Today I got an email from myself that I wrote a year ago and sent on futureme.org. It was so weird thinking back to where I was a year ago writing it and where I am now. I didn't write a lot but made me feel slightly emotional reflecting on where God has brought me in the last year. Here's some of the email...

"I wonder where you are right now reading this... because now, 07/05/11, I have no idea where I'm going to be in a year. I keep trying to trust that God has a plan and he knows what I'm going to be doing, but it's so hard not knowing! Since the PGCE and Pais fell through I haven't even thought about it. I really thought God wanted me to do Pais. I hope things have panned out right and that you have learnt to trust and obey God in everything. I don't really know what else to say, except I'm sorry for messing up your degree! I've just given our dissertation in and I know it was terrible :( I hope the essays and exam went a lot better!"

Right now, on 07/05/12, I again have no idea where I'm going to be in a year but it's so encouraging to look back on that and remember how God was at work and how his plans came into action. The reason I thought Pais had fallen through was because I found out I couldn't go to do Pais in Texas. I was so confused and upset about that, but it must have been at some time in just the next 3 weeks after writing this that God brought a girl called Kelli McFarlane to me and we got chatting about Pais:Ireland. I just remember wondering why I hadn't thought of it before and next thing I knew I was applying! Now here I am, a year later, living in Northern Ireland and currently in the car on our way to the Pais:Ireland retreat in Newcastle, County Down. This email came at the perfect time to remind me to keep relying on God's plan and trusting in him!

And the other funny part about the email... I didn't mess up my degree!! The dissertation wasn't great, but not as bad as I thought and some of those last essays and exams were my best in the whole 3 years of uni! I somehow managed to get a 2:1 in my degree and graduation day was full of pride, relief and thankfulness to God for getting me through!!

P.S. I think futureme.org is amazing and I'll definitely be sending myself another email soon!! I recommend giving a go!

...and here's a wee graduation picture for you!

Swapping Passion...

Back in February the team and I went to Burnley, England to the Swap conference. Swap is run by Pais and aims to allow Pais apprentices, schools workers and youth workers to come together to share ideas and experiences. We had four days of teaching from the Global Director and Founder, Paul Gibbs, as well as other Pais directors and partners, and collaboration with each other. We spent the week sleeping in a local church along with all of the Pais:GB teams and I absolutely loved the community we had there and the opportunity to get to know each other. The Pais:Germany teams were also there at the conference and it was amazing to see so many people all working to advance the Kingdom of God.  Sometimes I get bogged down in the day to day work, especially when we're in the office, so it really helped me to step back and see the bigger picture. Talking to the other Pais people about how we came to join Pais helped me to remember why I did and how God brought me here. I'll be honest, I went with low expectations and wasn't really excited, but I actually think that helped because it meant the week was always going to surpass my expectations - and surprise me it did! I had a fun week where I learnt a lot and made some great friends! I then went off to Manchester for the weekend to meet up with some friends from uni and church there, before flying back to NI.

Like I said, I made some great friends at Swap and one of these was a guy called Luke. Soon after we got back he started telling me about a worship night he was planning in his home church in Oswestry. I realised it was going to be during the Easter holidays when I would be back in the Rhondda so I decided to drive to Oswestry and go to 'Passion Pais'. It was lovely to see some of the people from the GB teams again and we had a lot of fun! The worship evening was amazing, the band played really well and Dan brought an inspiring message about letting God's light shine! I then stayed overnight with a family from the church, and the next morning at church I took Sunday school with 2 of the guys on Pais:GB. While we were upstairs, Pete Baker, the GB national director, preached at the Sunday service and the worship band played again. I heard some fantastic reports afterwards about how it had gone and many people from the church were asking Luke if they could get an Oswestry Pais team!

It continues to amaze me the amount of people I meet in my life! I love that God has blessed me with the ability to make friends easily and am so grateful for the people he continues to put around me. The only downside to it is missing people... I miss my friends in Texas, my uni friends, my Audacious friends... so so much and it's so hard not knowing when I'll next see them. That's not including my family and friends at home in Wales who I get to see every couple of months and still miss regularly. This is why I LOVE Facebook!! (and blogging/email/the internet in general!). I get to keep in touch with people I meet, even those who I'm not sure if I'll ever meet again and especially fellow missionaries. I met this one girl in Texas, just by coincidence, who is a missionary in Africa and somehow ended up on her mailing list (probably through Facebook friendship). I haven't actually spoke to her since we met and will probably never see her again, but I enjoy getting her email updates, seeing the work she's doing and being able to pray for her! This post has gone off on a complete tangent, but I guess what I'm trying to say is... if you're reading this, then thank you. Thank you for caring about what I'm up to, thank you for supporting me and thank you for praying with me!!

Two lovely views at two lovely weekends

A few weeks ago I had the amazing privilege of waking up to 2 amazing views and these are my favourite photos from each. From countryside to seaside in a week (not forgetting I then went back to the valleys a week later!) sometimes I'm just reminded to step back and thank God for this crazy life he's given me!

Two residentials in as many weekends! First I took my Romania team to Carrowmena, just a short drive south of here. The team has come together amazingly, after lots of fuss and both gaining and losing members. Just that weekend we were welcoming yet another member into our team and the lovely Nicole fitted right in and completed our little puzzle. We now have 8 girls and 1 guy on the team and we're all really excited for what the next 4 months will bring! We took them away on residential to get to know each other better and spend some time hanging out and having fun. It was so great to just be in the middle of the countryside where there was a lovely sense of peace over the team, and we were really fortunate with the weather so got to go out on a walk. We had a great weekend full of banter, laughs, sunshine and God and it started to feel like we're a family :)
The following weekend I went to a conference for teenage girls in Whitepark Bay. It's called Beautiful weekend and is run by an organisation called The Big House who specialise in helping teenagers with self-esteem problems, eating disorders, depression, self-harm etc. I took 2 girls along (1 from youth club, 1 from church) as it seemed like a really good chance for them to really find out who they are in God, that He made them beautiful and loves them unconditionally. It was a fabulous weekend in an absolutely gorgeous spot right next to the beach! The views were perfect for admiring God's great creation and letting His presence move among us. The team were fantastic, openly sharing their testimonies with the girls and using practical things to help them release the negative thoughts and feelings. I was so grateful for the ways in which they poured into my girls and showed them so much love and I'm so happy to say they both got a lot out of it! One had been struggling a lot recently with feeling unworthy of God's love and had a great breakthrough where she let Him back in and accepted His mercy and grace, and the other made a decision to follow God for the first time and told me she felt like she'd been lost but was now found!

Weekends like these remind me of how lucky I am and how thankful I should be for the privilege of pouring into young people's lives. My prayer for the next few months is that God would continue to use me and I'd see more young people come to know God, to know who they really are to God and to deepen their relationship with him further. I pray that God would give me the words, boldness and love for the people I meet, and I ask that you would join with me in prayer :)