Wedding and door

One thing to keep in mind when using an online service, be sure to keep a copy of your document. I have written a long post a while back and then hit the back button, only to lose all that I had written! One step forward, two steps back. Anyway, I am now using Kingsoft Office, a free alternative to Microsoft Office and it is really, exceptionally good, I recommend it and if you are looking for it, here’s a link

We did have another weekend visit to Oak Hall, that went really well - Tom, Simon and I spoke about some stories from Daniel, notably the Fiery Furnace, Hand on the wall, Lions Den. I got the lion’s share of it. The thing that amazed me is how I think my life is so busy I have no time for prayer, yet Daniel’s life (Vice Regent - probably way busier than mine) was punctuated by prayer - that in fact he would been incapable without it. It is always a great blessing to be investigating the scriptures so intensely.

We have put aside the idea of Ballet classes at Café Forever as another organisation has taken up the spot in a hall 30 meters from the Café on the same day as we had available, sponsored with funding by the council. I have to say that the teachers are really excellent and my children love the class.

We are getting a door put into Café Forever in January, I have posted about this in the past, and on facebook, it will take about a week and will give us access to the back garden from within the Café reception, which is excellent and will increase our floor area when it is warm.

City of Peace got busy October/November to host the wedding of Michelle Palani and Peter Runge. Michele is a deacon in City of Peace (though she has been away for a number of years) and much loved Café volunteer. The event was magnificent, the service being held in the beautiful Christchurch building on the Isle of Dogs. As we live in a country far from relatives we have to grab any opportunity to get our children to be flowergirls and Natalie was quick to get Michelle's approval. The reception took place in Husk (Departure) and was attended by about 100 people. So many of the church were involved from the preparation of the food to the serving of the drinks, and the decorating of the tables. A ‘church’ wedding in the UK costs about £20k, but when a church is involved, it can come down to about £1k.

And now Christmas is upon us, we have already had our Christmas tree lighting ceremony complete with decorating ginger bread houses, fake snow and bauble making. Ella has been formally recognised in the church last Sunday, and we are now preparing for our carols service next weekend. Natalie's mum is with us at the moment and enjoying the winter here and seeing her grandchildren. It is really hard being so far from family and it is at times like Christmas when it gets dark and cold that people realise how alone they are. We have remained in London over Christmas since 2008 and have invited many of the locals who have nobody, or at least nobody nearby to join us as we also have nobody nearby - then we all have somebody! Happy Christmas friends near and far!

A busy, productive, warm summer.

The kitchen work at Café Forever can be very repetitititittitive and requires somebody who has ENDurance. It is a job that takes a huge amount of internal peace because every meal is judged by the eater, and if it isn't good people will generally let their dissatisfaction be known. I have worked in the kitchen at the cafe and I know how much stress this causes because you want people to enjoy their meal, you want them to come back, you want to be considered good at your job! Andrew Dimon has done this work faithfully for 3 years and now he has moved on to youth work at his church in Watford. His enthusiasm lifted our spirits on days when we were down and so we are sad to see him go. On the positive side.... Gabby has started with us and she is already proving to be a capable and loveable member of staff - even more so because she made my favourite - Spicy minced lamb! Gabby is Hungarian and has already been asked for goulash by one of the customers, which she produced. Come in and meet her. 

There a a large number of new visitors to the Café and City of Peace, and some returning one's; J_ who has a fear of leaving the Island and is in a difficult, often violent relationship - returns now daily, K_ from the US who has arrived and is here for about 9 months, with us for Sunday service. And then we see people like B_ and A_ who we have known for a long time becoming more frequent of their visits to City of Peace, taking part in post sermon discussion. one issue that is regularly being looked at is marriage, many occasions of people struggling here. Amazingly St Lukes Shadwell is staging a marriage course at a nearby pub. I have spent considerable hours with a friend who is having a difficult time in their marraige as well as depression.

Flavour of the month!

It started off a very warm summer and by the school holidays Natalie had already begun her maternity leave and I began taking half days as our children and the pregnancy where a bit tiring. We went and visited the Olympic swimming pool which is now open to the public, visited Eltham palace and all sorts of close to home/hospital type of things. It is very frustrating having a 16 day late baby! In the days before Ella was born the girls where entertained by our church friends as Natalie and I were in the hospital quite a bit. It is a huge thing the way the church becomes our children grandparents, uncles, aunts -  a great opportunity for any church to show love. Colin and Daphne are two friends who have become attached to our church even though they live in Bournemouth! They kindly gave us a short holiday break shortly after Ella was born. She is now 8 weeks old and has a very loud voice on her, very cute and Lisa is besotted. For the rest of the holidays we were able to do more interesting things. My mum, uncles family and cousins came to visit us, and one day I had both my parents at my house!

We have had so many people visiting us for dinner/lunch at our house, it is a lot of fun, particularly when you get new people in (but with a new baby it is also exhausting). A friend who has been on the periphery for a while - he is sceptical about our beliefs -  finally came to visit as a result of his daughter playing at our house - he ended up staying for dinner having just dropped in to collect her - it was a great evening. The next day his best friend came to visit him and told how he had been converted to a believer after having seen people dabbling in occultic practices! Amazing orchestration of events.

Coming up:
1. We have another weekend Church visit to Oak Hall.
2. Possibility of hosting Ballet classes at Café Forever.
3. Door into the back garden in January.
4. Christmas services and events.
5. Developing our allotment and the relationships there.

Global News effects us locally

There are so many huge and depressing news stories in the world at the moment, I am sure I need not mention them all, but I do sometimes feel that my life's problems are mere trifles in comparison. 50 years ago communication was a lot harder. I wouldn't have had an audience who could read my words all around the world unless I was some sort of journalist writing for 'The Times'. Nowadays I can write and you can read in seconds of me writing, and you can send what I have written to others. This is a great big bonus for news agencies who can disseminate stories rapidly. When I worked for Sky News internet communication was in it's infancy and TV was the big channel. The challenge was to be first with the most accurate news, and I have to commend the journalists and producers who did and still do an amazing job. Problem is there are now so many different sources that there is a lot of opportunity for opinion, propaganda and lies. It can easily become confusing as to which side you should support. It is interesting how, in the Bible, a lot of the time the good guys turn out to be the bad guys and the bad guys turn out to be the good - King Cyrus of Persia, Rahab the harlot, and King Saul. All the way through the Old Testament the drive is for the promised King who will restore everything. But in the NT, we see Jesus fixing people's lives on an individual level, their personal stories are important to Him.

I am busy reading a group study book by Neil T Anderson called "Experiencing Christ Together" for couples. It is so far excellent, I purchased it in response to a number of struggling marriages in our community and a prompt from my wife who suggested that we need some form of marriage support in the church. One thing that I believe for sure is that if we lift up Jesus to those who want help, they will find it. Family is a beautiful thing and I hope that we can rescue some.

At Café Forever we were looking for a replacement for Andrew who will be leaving us at the end of August, and were found by a lady by the name of Gabriella, from Hungary, who is transferring to us from Café Eterno. She will be starting on the 6th August. She seems like somebody with a lot of character and enthusiasm. We have been told that the doorway into the garden is being put on hold - it may be coming at the end of the year. We have been asking for a door for a long time. I continue to hope that it will come this year. Meanwhile we have tidied up the garden and I have planted a little grass. I do not have the energy to cement the area, nor the time available and I figured it was the easiest thing to do.

Towards the end of school term I went on a trip with the nursery class to 'Old Macdonalds Farm'. The excitement of a 4 year old getting on a bus and going to the top floor is such a great thing to witness, I had the charge of Lisa and a friends daughter - they both sang all the way there. It was a stifling hot day and many of the children fell asleep on the bus on the way back. It is a great opportunity to get to know the parents and teachers better. I chatted with Lisa's teacher, Amanda on the way back. She is a believer who has been on a mission trip to Kenya, and has worked for Café Eterno and Departure and knows Lynne Van Der Meer! It is great to know that this lady will be educating my daughter for another year. I also took Hannah to her sports day and came second in the fathers race, only being beaten by her teacher! These events are so great to attend and it is so good that my work allows it. I only wish more dad's would be able to do the same.

Tough topic for Henk

Another combined church fun day this time organised by St Luke's Milwall. 2 days before Tom's wife gave birth and so I took his children with mine so that their parents could get some rest. It was a lot of fun and there was a huge variety of things to do such as, a massive Jenga tower, a bouncy castle dragon, water balloon volleyball and free food! The sunday was a joint church service where Henk Bouma gave a sermon on Caleb's inheritance - a difficult topic given world events.

The school holidays are upon us and already there are a number of children who are wandering around with nothing to do but mischief. It is really difficult to live in the inner city as a child. When I grew up we had a huge walled back garden with a swimming pool. We were able to play safely and invite our friends around to join us and make noise and nobody was bothered. If you live in an apartment open spaces are at a premium, quite often guarded by the biggest bully which leaves you with choices - don't go, or go, join the bullies gang, or go and challenge the bully. It's really tough for these kids and so often they avoid the normal places and end up in other places, perhaps where they are not wanted. As they come without their parents they tend to repeat the process wherever they are, establishing their own gang that protects the little spot of terrafirma. One case of parental neglect I would not be able to share as the child is then put at risk, but we will try to get involved and encourage that child and their parents. We do have the benefit of the local park- St Johns Park café is managed by a team from Café Forever, and there are activities there throughout the summer - we believe Jesus needs to be in the park. Some parents can be too protective, preventing their children from going outside. This is also not very good because they need the fresh air, they need to play with others and how much good can you learn from an Xbox? I think mostly they fear damage to their reputation rather then the safety of their children.

At the moment we are awaiting our 3rd child, she is now 8 days overdue. The other two were also late and so we aren't surprised. The problem is that I cannot make any serious appointments with anyone - I have to largely do what I can day by day, which is a little frustrating, and it is also very uncomfortable for Natalie.

We must not become fixated on the world and it's problems, God isn't, we can lift up our prayers about the struggling marriage next door just as much as we can pray for the people of Mosul. The demands of news agencies to focus our attention on certain parts of the world is quite new, but everyone of us lives in a neighbourhood. Quite often the thrust of these stories is to get us to hate a certain group in our community, yet they may be as divorced from that as we are. If we take our eyes off loving our neighbours and ignore their needs because we are fixated on some story on the other side of the globe we are missing the point.

Diverscity

May began, as usual with our church weekend away, which I believe to have been one of the best ever! A highlight was having both Hannah and Lisa braving the stage to perform in the talent show, and Lisa getting a joint first place, Hannah's lot getting second! Ok, ok, so it's not Britain's Got Talent standards (sometimes it's better) but it takes a bit of guts to get up in front of 40 people and perform. Lisa and Tatiana did some jazz dancing (they repeated the routine they do every Thursday) and Hannah was a dying girl in a funny play.

A Garden in total submission!

Then back to Café Forever and Tom, Bill, Anna and I began the project of removing the shed from the garden - Bill and Anna now have the bits of the shed in their allotment. Before pulling the shed down the contents needed to be extracted and what a lot of stuff there was. Some of it was actually quite useful - a strimmer, a wallpaper remover, a clip on lamp, about 30meters of electrical cabling, lots of tarpaulins and many other bits of things and canisters etc... Individually they are useful but in the shed they became a problem because you never knew what was in the shed. I used the shed as an illustration in a talk I gave to a group of churches in Torquay. Jesus says we must lose our life if we are to save it - now I think it is a bit like this shed - it has some useful bits inside it and so we could justify many times the reasons for keeping the shed, but we were never able to do anything with the shed because it was all so tangled up with the useless and the messy and the broken within. The only solution was to get rid of everything and start fresh. The contents and the shed is now gone. We now have a massive empty space in the back garden at Café Forever, which, I believe in the very near future, will be developed into a wonderful outdoor space with a door leading out from the Café. The same can be true for our lives, God can do so much with us if we are prepared to give Him everything - to lose our lives to Him.

Fuuuuuuuuun Day.

We also had a team from Boston out here in the beginning of June who put on a wonderful fun day in St John's park. I was only able to attend for a very short time but I think it is the biggest fun day I have ever seen, and certainly by what I have heard from other parents, very successful.

Last night Natalie and I went to a leaving do for some friends who have been with us for a long time. They aren't moving all that far away, Tunbridge Wells, but it is sad to see them go as we really love them. Ivonne, Devim, Melissa and Lara, if God wills we will be visiting you soon. I had an interesting discussion with Devim, one that left me thinking. We had been speaking about the benefits of life on the Isle of Dogs - Devim was saying how much he loved the diversity and freedom that that diversity brings. We spoke about how certain parts of the world there's so much tension caused by racial and ethnic divisions and how wonderful it is that London overcomes it. For a moment an old voice came to mind, an unfriendly one, a nationalistic one, that said it doesn't like the influx of people that displace and churn up the community. But today, on reflection, I really appreciate the volume of different cultures that surround us, the ability that Londoners have to welcome one another - all recognising that here everyone is foreign, and everyone is in need of a little grace. Perhaps it is a plan of God, to turn over the rough ground, to break up the hard, entrenched nationalistic community. Devim, I agree with you, London is wonderful.

Pointless existence

Ted Baker Shirt

I often get leaflets and magazines through my door for humanitarian aid and wonderful organisations that are doing things for suffering people all over the world. I wish I could work for them but my CV is no good. I would like to work for them because I am distressed with the people they are looking after and I recognize their hunger and need and identify with their weakness, their powerlessness. Today I was in Ted Baker shop in Canary Wharf and looked at a simple short sleeved button shirt - the price tag was £75! I hope that that is shocking to you. If it is not, know this... for the price of 2 Ted Baker shirts your money could keep 4 young girls from being trafficked in Laos through TEARFUND

TEARFUND

Who is the most influential person you know? Could it be David Cameron, Barrack Obama, Bill Gates? Most of us know OF these people and have heard a bit about them, but what would it be like to actually KNOW them, like a friend? Imagine you could, as a friend of Barrack Obama, through him persuade the change in US foreign policy that would affect the protection of thousands of children in South Sudan! That must be a really amazing position to be in. Powerful. Secure. Purposeful. A while back I ran an April Fools Day image that I photoshopped to look like Prince William walked with me on the Isle of Dogs outside Café Forever ... as if - I did manage to trick a number of people. 

'Genuine' image

I think it must be amazing to work alongside such movers and shakers, but I don't see them as having ultimate authority. As I read the bible I see more and more of little, insignificant people being really important to God. These insignificant types become, through a relationship with God, more and more significant and their lives more and more purposeful. For example, a few names - Gideon, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Esther, Ruth, Ezekiel, Jeremiah. In fact almost all of them began insignificant in the eyes of men - just look at how Moses started out and what Pharoah thought of the Jews when he was born!

I recognized the power of God when I turned 30. At that time I was working for Sky News and earning a lot of money and then blowing it regularly on alcohol, drugs, holidays, and preening my feathers. It was a purposeless existence. I was however aware of an imbalance between rich and poor, between races and classes of people, and a rapid decline in the state of our world in general, and it bothered me. I saw the problem but I couldn't see a solution. Love always seemed like something you fell into with a girl. Love was a very strange concept to me - I needed it and thought I had the ability to give it, but looking back I know that all I could give was pain.

I am now, I believe, through my time I spend with people on the Isle of Dogs, in church, and in the community, converting people from an ideology of selfishness to selflessness - to learn to love people properly. I am not in anyway qualified to do this having been a selfish man all of my life. I do however know somebody who does know absolutely every aspect of love. Hopefully those I spend time with will in turn learn to love their neighbour as themselves. I guess I am, in some way, working to relieving the suffering of people in other parts of the world too. God doesn't need movers and shakers, he needs obedient servants.

I don't work - ever!

Last week was an extraordinary week in that I was mostly out of Café Forever. On Tuesday mornings Tom works with a group called Ambassadors Football that has started a dad's football team with Cubitt Town Junior School. Although my children attend another nearby school I am a kind of proxy dad to many of the kids at Cubitt Town (maybe poxy). Last year Tom asked me if I wanted to join them for a tournament - they needed a goal keeper. Having never played goal keeper before and having not played football in 30 years I agreed. Needless to say our first tournament wasn't any form of domination by us. However I did save a number of goals and wasn't all that bad. On Thursday we had another tournament and it went really a lot better. We lost 3, drew 3 and won 1. They still allow me to be goalie. It is a lot of fun and I spend most of my time begging for mercy. It is in my mind so far the best cross cultural work I have been involved in - the relationships build really fast and the players are very mixed nationalities and faiths.

Pharoah means 'Great House'

what could this be?

About 6 years ago Alan Black organised a visit to the British Museum to find artifacts that relate to the bible with Day One and I enjoyed it so much that I had booked another visit - on Friday we met up with a man called Ian Cooper who provided the tour. I cannot say how highly I recommend it. Stunning depth to your bible knowledge. He started off by talking about a Frenchman called Layard who was one of the first serious Archaeologists; it seems as though with the advent of evolutionist theory a drive began to search for archaeological evidence to support the bible stories. Layard dug up Nineveh after his bible interest in it. He dug up some huge winged lion bird sculpture things and the interior of his palace walls, carved in stone, the details of the battle for Lachish. He then showed us some sculptures of various pharoahs and gave us some details on them. The one picture is 3 figureheads of one - in all likelihood the one who interacted with Joseph. Big ears and a small mouth indicate somebody who had to do a lot of listening to counsel of others and not a lot of eating - he also had 7 years of famine and 7 years of abundance. We also heard about Hatshepsut who was probably the daughter of Pharoah who 'drew out' Moses from the water. It is a really amazing tour - we even got to see this Gold and Lapis-Lazuli sculpture of an amazing story in the bible, the one where Abraham goes up a mountain to sacrifice his son and finds a ram in a thicket. It is thousands of years old, from Ur of the Chaldeans. A beautiful piece of art and history. Book a tour with them!

A very mild winter, but wet

For those of you who live in North America, and northern USA and some parts of Siberia I send my heartfelt and warmest greetings I can find. I know how long a winter can feel, but this year we have had it good -  a lot of people would with every reason say this was their worst British winter ever as their house was flooded and they ate their Christmas dinner by candlelight, but for us on the Isle of Dogs it has been quite sublime. There where some wet days and lots of winds causing it to rain in our children's bedroom (NB not drip). But we have forgotten that mostly as the weather is exceptional. We have already had a number of BBQ's, particularly one notable one on the beach with Alexandra and Nestla and family. The Belingers have been for their first 2014 visit to Leeds Castle - I am sure we'll do it again and last weekend we visited Paradise Wildlife Park which is really probably the best value for money day out with the kids I have had. I am sure in school holidays the value drops somewhat as I imagine it is flooded. A small group of us- the Peters' and Carpenters joined us, the kids played together so that we could relax and enjoy the sunshine.  We are now looking forward to Easter - the Church will put on the traditional egg hunt in St Johns park nearby on the Saturday and on Sunday there is an Easter brunch in St Johns hall. Tom and others are busy handing out flyers in an attempt to get locals in to hear the story of Jesus' victory over death. Tom likes to make the most of these festivals - an opportunity to invite people to a meal and a message and we hope that people who have questions get answers. A Chinese lady asked me at the girls ballet class how she can get belief. She said that she had a church come to visit her at her parents home in China and that they were all about money, but since moving to UK she has found a culture of Christianity among the residents. Although I find that surprising I addressed her issue. She believed she need to be a believer in order to attend church. I told her that for us you couldn't be further from the truth, that you should come as a person who wants to know more and see if you find it. It is interesting - so often I have an idea of how people think and perceive things, I have an idea of what they know - but then I find I am faaaarrrr away. PP4US

Post BBQ beach antics A Fire engine with slide at Paradise Park

Lookout for the small print.

In February the London City Mission Support Centre called the managers of catering centres in for a meeting to discuss the new regulations that will be enforced in December this year. The summary of the law is that we will have to give an account of the ingredients of our food to our customers and find a way in doing that. It is quite exasperating when you begin to think about it and it has caused some of us sleepless nights. I looked at our menu boards and thought of the possibility of writing the ingredients in very small text with a marker pen underneath each item. But the problem is what would happen when the ingredients change? I had used a DYMO when I was young and started to look for something like that - I eventually found a solution a Brother label maker that prints thermally onto removable sticking tapes! I am quite pleased at the result. Virginia and family came to London, her husband Lars was working at the winter olympics and she decided that they should come and visit us for a month. It was great fun having them here and so nice to get to know the littlest one better. They played together almost daily. There's also the pancake day party which was well attended - this year we had it in St Johns community centre - I don't think it was as good as the previous year - the café is a better venue even if it is smaller. Then towards the middle of March a team of helpers came to visit from Redeemer, New York. They helped Tom and the other volunteers distribute flyers and visit doors as well as painting some local residents interior, and redecorating the interior of Café Forever. We now have a new coat of paint and together with the new menu boards look a notch up!

Maxi visits us painting café

Dec, Jan!

Christmas Lunch

Packed service

Guess what these are!

At the end of every year a large number of people from City of Peace church go on holiday - there's a couple of public holidays and added with annual leave and weekends, you can get to far flung destinations to see relatives for a good long time. We would love to do a Christmas trip but the airlines know the market and so their prices to South Africa are way beyond a family of 4. Next year we will be 5! If you did not yet know, our 3rd child is due towards the end of July. This leaves City of Peace church rather empty from about the 18th of December until the 2nd week in January. Café Forever comes to a close around the 18th and there's a chance to do some maintenance, also the Bellingers tend to be putting in a lot of time with friends. We had a marvellous Christmas party - a total of 8 adults and 4 children - Natalie did well through her morning sickness; I tidied a number of rooms in the café and Ec2it, a small computer support team in London helped us get our system switched over to Windows 7 - I highly recommend them for price, efficiency, friendliness and quality. With the change in operating system all the staff needed to be instructed on the new software and there have been a number of teething problems. I think now we have largely ironed out the problems except for one PC that nobody knows how to fix. Without divine intervention we may have to replace it!

At the end of January we were joined by two volunteers, Emily from USA and Hannah from Jersey. They have got very involved in our work and are good support as well as being able to enjoy the craic. They have also been able to go on short trips to Ireland, Scotland etc... I think it is a good experience for them, a great opportunity to find out a bit about yourself and others.

In December a young girl visited the café. It was a surprise because I knew her, she had been coming to the café and church when she attended school next door, about 5 years ago. She would shout and swear and was very angry when she visited and often got banned. Now she has a little boy who she brought to show us. She said that she wanted to attend the Friday morning bible study with the women and added that she always felt that City of Peace was a safe place and that she could come here anytime. Awesome! According to Natalie she is at almost all of the bible studies and is getting on fine with the group!