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.