Into the Autumn we fall!

Welsh Waterfall

The summer holidays were really busy for the Bellinger family. I booked a property in Wales before summer so that we could go and get some R&R in the mountains. I also remembered I had a friend who had moved to Cardiff and wondered if he felt like a house swap! It's a bit of an unusual idea but I messaged him. He agreed to the plan (house swapping is not for the fainthearted however - we had to do a lot of tidying up beforehand). So now we had two dates in Wales. One of the highlights being a number of beautiful waterfalls we visited,  and watching Typhoons fly-by at Machloop. Besides the Wales trips we also visited Broadstairs for a week and Natalie and the girls also did the Longbarn trip! I was kind of glad when the holidays were over, we had a very busy summer!

The new term was the start for Hannah at Canary Wharf Secondary School and time will tell how well she fits in there; not being inside secondary school systems before except when we were children the institution is very  different to primary. One of the challenges these new year 7's face is mingling ith year 10' and 11's who are watching 16/18 rated films and thinking and talking about more adult content. This is a complicated issue for the children and parents. In my schooling we didn't go into secondary until we were turning 13 years old but these children are going in at age 11. It may be the school or it may be a general thing of secondary but Hannah is finding the way that her peers and the staff are responding quite shocking. The children spend a lot of time on their phones, there's a lot of gossiping and unwholesome talk from years 7's.

In Café Forever we have settled down somewhat, though it is quite a long process of getting new workers to adopt the café into themselves.We had a ministry review in October where the director of mission and others came to understand the work that we do so that they were better able to assess our alignmet with the mission strategy and see if we need adjustment. We don't yet know how this will go,but we believe wholeheartedly that  we are providing a unique service in the area, and that at it's core we are sharing the good news of salvation in Christ.

Bouncing youth group 

City of Peace, our church appointed Hannah Luke as a youth worker in December last year and now we are seeing huge growth in it's youth ministry, for which we are massively grateful, especially in these times of transition between primary and secondary school. There are discussion for the children on confidence,bullying, and self-respect to name a few. In the half-term I joined the youth group who got together for a trampolining session at Zap Space in Stratford. We took about 19 kids with us who all seemed to have a great time. I never think about how the exercise is going to affect me afterwards, always feeling at the time that I'm still a youth myself.

Light party

The same youth group put on a helloween alternative 'Light Party' on 31st October at Café Forever that was very well attended, with two of the young leaders giving a brief message on why physical and spiritual light are so important to us. They lit up a candle and passed the flame from one candle to another but showed that a fake candle with a battery in it was unable to do the same - they encouraging us to be real about our relationships with each other and with Christ. So please, in all these issues, think about us as we continue to bring light into this corner of London.