Getting The Full Attention of a Room Full of 15 Year olds

This is my day nine post for the "31 days of blogging in October" challenge.  I am blogging 31 days of Children's Ministry.  To find links to all the other days (as they get posted) go to DAY 1.

Last week I did 3 assemblies for Operation Christmas Child at a local secondary school.  It is the 4th year and I didn't know how to make this assembly different than the previous years.  In the end a teaching assistant at a local primary school came to the rescue when he wrote a shoebox rap for us.  A group of children at the secondary school performed it as a poem to camera and I was able to share this with the whole school.

On Thursday I was to have only the year 11 group in for assembly.  As the oldest students in school, I wanted to change the assembly up a bit to give them a bit more of an age appropriate challenge to get involved.  As they were entering the room I got an indication of how tough some of them were going to be as an audience when I heard one girl say to another "Oh no, it's her again."

So I ran through all the stuff about how to pack a shoebox and what to put it in and then I said this:

I understand that You are all looking forward this year.  Planning your futures, looking forward to college or even thinking about university eventually.  And I understand that a project like this might seem far removed from your lives, but I want you to put yourself in the place of a group of young people who received shoeboxes from us a few years ago.

I want you to imagine that you are your age and living in a large polluted industrial city in Eastern Europe.  You have no family left, for whatever reason, except maybe a younger brother or sister you have to look after.  You're homeless so you sleep on the streets, finding whatever shelter you can.  You beg during the day for food or money or maybe pick up some casual jobs that are messy and dirty and pay a pittance.

Then things begin to change in that city and gangs of adults decide they are going to "clean up the streets" and now armed and violent gangs are on the streets at night and you don't know if you will wake up in the morning.  So, you make the only decision you can and that is to sleep in the sewers.  You find a manhole cover, open it up and climb down into the sewers.  You find a dry ledge above the water line and that is where you will sleep from now on.

Because that is a group of young people who received shoeboxes from us a few years ago.  Young people who don't have a bright future to look forward to.  Young people just like you who have no hope, who think they are forgotten, who think that no one cares.  And your gift, your shoebox, can communicate to them that someone, somewhere around the world knows about them, knows and has not forgotten, and cares.  You have the opportunity to send that message with a simple gift.

And I tell you, the whole room, every single one of them was quiet and thinking, I had their full attention, not a one was fidgeting, not a one was talking, not a one was ignoring me, every single one of them heard that story and listened.

Young people are not uncaring, they do want to help, they just need things presented to them in a way that they can relate to!

Come back later in the month for the story I finished my assemblies with this year, about how these gifts might not be to people you will NEVER meet and why it's important to include a photograph in your shoebox.


You can check out the sites I link up to over in my sidebar. Before you go, why not check out my recipes index page, or my craft projects index page, I am sure you will find something there to interest you.

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Operation Christmas Child

This is my day three post for the "31 days of blogging in October" challenge.  I am blogging 31 days of Children's Ministry.  To find links to all the other days (as they get posted) go to DAY 1.

I have been involved with Operation Christmas Child in some way since my boys were young and first started at nursery school.  The school they went to collected boxes and we began to get involved.  As they got older and I learnt more about the programme I got more involved.

Eventually I got involved in the first shoebox checking warehouse here in our town.

Where we filled a container lorry with boxes to be sent to Kyrgyzstan.

But that year, after much fundraising and some wonderful help from my church I was able to travel to distribute shoeboxes in Belarus where I met lots of wonderful people.  We visited churches, schools, boarding schools, children homes, the edge of the Chernobyl dead zone and an old village babushka lady, living all by herself in a house with only cold running running water, an outside toilet, wood fires for which she had to chop all her own wood and in an area that has snow on the ground for at last 3 months of the year.  

Unfortunately, at the time of that trip I was dealing with undiagnosed sleep apnoea so I didn't get to absorb as much of the atmosphere as I would have liked and I really do want to go back one day.  Having said that, there are some specific memories that stand out and I will finish with one of those today.  

We were in a school, distributing boxes to children at the end of their school day.  One boy opened his box to find 3 bars of chocolate sitting right in the top of his box.  Now if you know anything about packing a shoebox you will know that while sweets (candy) are encouraged, chocolate is not, but here they were, 3 bars of chocolate.  He held one out to me and I assumed he wanted me to open it for him.  There were no translators in the room and neither of us shared a language, but as I began to unwrap it to offer it back to him he stopped me and made it quite clear that he wanted me to have that bar of chocolate.  I seem to remember it taking me well over 6 months to even consider opening that bar of chocolate let alone eating it and when I did I savoured every taste like no other bar of chocolate I have ever eaten.

You can check out the sites I link up to over in my sidebar. Before you go, why not check out my recipes index page, or my craft projects index page, I am sure you will find something there to interest you.

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Helping 2 Charities in 1

If you have been around my blog over the last couple of weeks you will know that I was planning on donating my hair.  I made an art journal page based on that, I showed you how to prepare a photo for trying out different hair styles, showed you how to use the best website for that and then showed you a few that I wanted to choose from.

Well, the deed is done!  My hair is gone!

Before and after photos.  I am on the left.

WHY?  Because it was time.  It only took me 2 years to grow my hair from shoulder length to where it is in that top picture and it was just time for me to do this.  My friend in the pictures decided to join me.

WHO?  We donated our hair to a UK charity called The Little Princess Trust, here is a video about what they do:

We were also sponsored to do so for another charity that is dear to our hearts. Calla was established to confront and disrupt human trafficking in all its forms. Their specific purpose is to combat internal trafficking of children and young people for sexual exploitation.

Calla aims to

• Raise awareness of the existence of internal human trafficking by working with all forms of the media at local and national level
• Access and host affordable specific training for all working on the front line
• Support victims and their families, to see a restoration of dignity and self worth

One of their tag lines is Information, Support and training for CHANGE, and if you spend any time talking to the Calla team about their aims, the topic of it being TIME FOR CHANGE will come up.

Since we were both making a big change to our hair and both feeling that it was TIME FOR CHANGE, we felt that Calla was an obvious choice to receive the funds raised in sponsorship for cutting our hair this much.

WAS IT A SHOCK?  I'll let another photo speak for itself on that one.

HAVE I GOT USED TO IT?  Yes, absolutely, this is not the first time I have had hair this short and I am more than OK with it.  Everything related to my hair is so much quicker now, washing, drying, brushing, everything just takes seconds!  Well, except the drying, that takes a bit longer, but still nothing compared to what it was taking before.

WILL I GROW IT BACK?  Probably, yes, although maybe not straight away.  I might take a few months to enjoy the short hair.

WILL I DO IT AGAIN?  A number of people have asked me that already and it was only 2 days ago that I did this.  I don't know.  I am certainly capable of growing my hair to a similar length again.  Since it is shorter now than when I started growing it before it would probably take me about 2 1/2 years to get it to the same length again.  So, it's not an impossibility at all.  I doubt I would make such a big deal of it if I were to do it again, don't want people getting too used to the idea,  "Oh she's cutting her again and wants more sponsor money off us."  In short, I honestly don't know but I certainly haven't ruled it out.

HOW MUCH DID WE RAISE?  We raised a total of over £100 with funds still coming in, for Calla.

You can check out the sites I link up to over in my sidebar. Before you go, why not check out my recipes index page, or my craft projects index page, I am sure you will find something there to interest you.

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Romania Part 2

Yesterday I told you how I ended up going to Romania and shared some photos of the sewing classes that I ran while I was there.  The awesome thing about the classes and craft materials is that the ministry has two long term volunteers with them at the moment and one of them was a seamstress in one of the main opera houses in France before she came to the ministry.  I think the sewing classes will be safe in Clotilde's hands!

Today I want to show you a few photos from the Gypsy quarter and explain conditions a little.
Families in the gypsy quarter do have houses, but they are basic.  Thankfully, the ministry has been able to work with the families over the years they have been there, to build new houses, so they have gone from this:

to this:

or from this:

to this:

You can see the difference this is making.  The houses are basic, do not have running water, there is a communal well in the gypsy quarter and the homes have outdoor latrine pits.  They do have electricity and I was amazed at how nice some of the homes were despite their tough circumstances.

Talmid ministries provide clothes and food packages where necessary as well as providing a sponsorship scheme that allows the children to go to school.  Schooling in Romania is officially free, but the children once they reach secondary school have to travel on the school bus and this has to be paid for by parents.  This help does not stop when the children finish compulsory school age, and there is the opportunity to also sponsor young adults who wish to continue on to university.  The ministry also provides packages of materials for school, without which the children would not be able to complete their classes.

Here are some photos from some of the lighter moments of our trip, from turtle releasing to some delightful tourist spots.

The turtle had been given to the family but was actually a variety of turtle that is native to the waterways of Romania, so once it was healed up from some wounds, we took a trip out to release it.  

The little house where we stayed.

Rifka the husky.  Not at all scary but quite noisy!

One of the churches in Sibiu.  If you ever get the chance to go to Romania as a tourist, you really should go to the art museum in Sibiu, it's INCREDIBLE!

This was on our final day, back in Cluj Napoca.  Another must visit if you go to Romania as a tourist.  The Botanical Gardens.  Such a beautiful site, I could happily spend hours and hours there, with my journal and a pen!

Will I go back?  Maybe not, but I will continue to send craft materials that are needed for the classes.
Did I gain from this trip?  ABSOLUTELY.  I learnt a lot, about myself, about the way I react to situations, about what I can achieve and do that I never thought possible.  I also gained new depth to my relationship with God.  I am glad I went to Romania, and I hope that you have enjoyed hearing about my trip and seeing some of the photos.

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Romania

At the end of August this year I travelled to Romania for 2 1/2 weeks.  There are lots of beautiful places to visit in Romania (and I shall give you tips for a couple to check out if ever you go at the end of this post) but I was not there or a holiday.  Neither was I there on business, although there were business men on our flight.  No I was there to teach and to help.

Over the last few years I have been putting photos of my sewing projects on facebook.  Shopping bags, handbags, microwave wheat bags and so on.  The church that I attend has links with a ministry in Romania that works mainly with the local Roma gypsy population, Talmid.  I have members of that ministry as friends on facebook and one of them suggested in passing that I come over to teach the gypsy women some projects that they would be able to sell.  I wasn't sure if she was serious or not at first, but it turned out she was and so a friend and I launched into a fundraising campaign which finally resulted in our trip, accompanied by a whole case full of craft supplies which we had also bought with the money raised.

YES, I literally filled that case and realised I could not fit that quilting ruler in it.  So I bought a bigger case which enabled me to take all the craft supplies, 3 folders of printed out projects for them to try after we had finished our trip AND some clothes.  Thankfully September in Romania is still quite warm so we needed no thick chunky clothes.

I do however have a CPAP machine due to Sleep apnoea and had to find space for that in my hand luggage.  We were flying with a budget airline so an extra bag would have cost us dearly.

We arrived in Cluj Napoca pretty much on schedule and had an adventurous drive crammed into the back of a car full of laughter and silliness on the way back to Romosel.

The following video is from the first walk around of someone else who visited the same project as us.







We settled in at our little home for 2 1/2 weeks and each day would walk from there to the house that the ministry is based at.  The weather was hot and dry.  I think it only rained once the whole time we were there and we only needed jackets on a handful of evenings.
We soon got to work sorting through the fabric that had been donated in recent shipments that the ministry regularly receive from other European nations.

From that we worked out what we would do in each of the 6 sewing classes we would be doing.  Over the 6 classes, we made various fabric flowers, did some silk painting and made 2 different designs of bags.  We started with hand sewing and finished the 2nd week using 2 of the sewing machines that had also been donated.
Here are a few of my favourite photos from the classes:

The lady in the top photo only came to two of the classes but she was so lovely.  I told her (through our translator) that she could teach me to sew because she obviously knew a lot more than I did and she shrugged and told me no.  I don't believe her!
And that last photo is my favourite.  We were only allowing the girls 13 years or older to come into class once we had the sewing machines out and this girl was pleading with me to let her make something.  The look on my face, does not depict some of the hard moments of this trip but does depict the joy of teaching and being around those girls when they were focused and enjoying what they were doing and creating and learning.  
Come back tomorrow for more photos from the Gypsy quarter and the places we visited while we were in Romania

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Away From the Shire

In about 3 hours I will be leaving the Shire for a few weeks.

I am heading down to Luton airport today because we have an early flight tomorrow morning.
While we're on the subject of Luton Airport, does anyone remember the Campari adverts?  You'll have to excuse the sound quality, it was the best version I could find.

Tomorrow morning we have to be up early and at the airport for 5:45am.  Flight leaves at 7:45am local time.  We will arrive in Romania at 12:35pm local time there.  3 hour flight with a two hour time difference.

I'll be back on Sunday 18th September, again very early.  In fact our morning flight FROM Romania is a 6am flight!!!!!! That means we have to be at the airport for 4am!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Good grief.

You might be wondering why I am not afraid to mention online that I will be away.  You may be worried about security of the house and so on.  That's simple!  The rest of my family is staying at home.  This is a trip I am making without my husband and without my children.  I am going with a friend from church.

I don't know if Romania is considered much of a holiday (vacation) spot these days, although it's coastline certainly was in the past, because I went there with my family as a child.  THAT was a bit of an adventure, but those are stories for another day!


This trip is being made for other reasons than a holiday (vacation).  We are going to visit a family from Belgium who now live in Romania working with the poor Gypsy communities in a fairly rural area.  The ministry is called Talmid and is based in the heart of Transylvania, in the mountain village of Romosel.

They are involved in a lot of different projects with the gypsy community, one of which is a ladies sewing class.  Earlier this year I had been posting photos on Facebook of some of the sewing projects I had been undertaking, and was asked if I would come over and teach the ladies sewing class some projects that they could then sell at local markets.  So that is what we are doing.  My friend is going to be doing some silk painting with them and I am going to be doing some sewing and other fabric projects with them.  Hopefully we will be able to combine the two into some cushions or wall hangings.

I have put together some files of projects I have found from around the internet.  I have set them out with plenty of photos, and then the English instructions on one side of the page, with plenty of space for a translation into Romanian on the other side of the page.  There are far more projects that we can undertake in the time we have with the ladies, so this will leave them with a whole set of projects that they can then work on after we have come home.

We have raised funds for this trip through sponsorship from our church, Springfield Christian Fellowship, and through other fundraising events, such as cake sales and car boot sales, as well as sales through my Etsy shop, and donations from internet friends.  Those funds are paying for all travel expenses as well as for a whole load of craft materials which we have bought and are taking with us.  And I do mean a LOT!  There is not all that much room in my case for clothes, which is not all that bad, since the weather will be hot while we are there.  Not hot by the standards of some of my friends in America, but hot by our standards here in the UK.  Still, I am glad we avoided going in July or August, because that is exceptionally hot.  A forecast taken a couple of days ago, is below, but you should be able to see a more up to date forecast at the top of this blog, although I am not sure how accurate that forecast is.

There will also be time to take part in other ministries that the family are involved in, and amongst other things we definitely hope to do some baking!  I do hope I have enough time to take lots of photos, particularly of the ladies sewing class, but don't know if I will be too busy actually teaching and helping to remember to take the photos.

I'll write more when I get back, but in the meantime, if you want to read about typical Romanian party food, you should check out this blog that I discovered, just this week.

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Romania

Yesterday I mentioned that I will be making a mission trip to Romania in September and I promised more details.  Well, here you go . . .

Our church has contacts with a Christian ministry called Talmid in rural Romania.  The following is taken directly from their website.

The communist ideology and dictatorial regimes after the Second World War left their mark on the Eastern part of Europe. Especially Romania changed in less than forty years from a prosperous country into a nation where hunger, sickness and fear dominate. Talmid Ministries was founded to reach out to the material needs of a destitute population, but even more important to bring the Good News of Jesus where it was almost shut out for decades.

The inspirers and co-founders of Talmid Ministries are Dirk and Nicole Weyts. Dirk graduated as an officer of the land-forces. Nicole is a junior-high school language teacher. In 1996, they started organising relief transports to the ravaged Romania. In the year 2000 they moved with their three daughters Shari, Jana and Amy to the heart of Transylvania and live there amongst the local population in the mountain village Romoşel.

Talmid Ministries distributes clothes, food, school supplies and medication to the poorest families. By means of the sponsoring program, widows, families and students are helped financially. The school project provides the bus ticket or the school costs for approx. Hundred students, when their family is too poor to pay for that.

Besides the practical aid, much attention is given to spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ. Seminars, teachings, youth meetings, women's gatherings are provided to the local churches, regardless their denomination.

Talmid Ministries founded the Christian Center Speranţa (hope) in the gipsy area of Romos. Children are helped with their school work, childrens' afternoons are organized and different courses take place such as English, computer, sewing, creative work, etc.

The house of the family Weyts in Romoşel is a refuge and a place of 'shalom' for young people, who stay there for a shorter or longer time, to live together with a Christian family, help in the ministry and get immersed into the reality of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The objectives of Talmid Ministries can be summarized as follows:

1. Practical help to needing people, especially gypsies
2. Providing spiritual help to the local churches
3. Spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ and disciple believers, by immersing them into the Reality of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit

The motivation for this work we find in the gospel of Matthew:
“Therefore, go and make people from all nations into my disciples, immersing them into the Reality of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
(Matt. 28:19, Complete Jewish Bible)

You can see I have highlighted the one word up there.  Sewing!  Nicole has asked me to visit and teach the ladies some projects that they can then sell at the local markets.  This is a very exciting adventure for me.  Right back at the beginning of this year God spoke to me about this year being a year of New Things and I had a gut level feeling that one of those things would be teaching, so when Nicole made a comment on my facebook that maybe I could do this I jumped at the chance.

I found a photo of the Sewing class on their website:

So, you can see, they already have some sewing skills, this trip is not about teaching them to sew, but about teaching them to take what they know and make it into saleable projects.  I'm going to take with me a file of projects, far more than we can get through in the 2 1/2 weeks I will be there, that I can leave with them, with clearly set out instructions.  I will lay the pages out with English instructions on one half of the page and leave plenty of space for them to translate into Romanian.  The point about teaching them saleable projects is that it enables them to support themselves and fight their own way out of poverty.

Two of us are making this trip, myself and another lady from my church, who has visited this ministry before.  We have to raise the funds to make the trip.  Travel costs are probably going to come to around £340 for the two of us.  Ideally we want to raise all that and more.  So I have asked all my facebook friends to donate towards the trip.  If everyone I know on facebook donated just £3.50 we would cover those expenses and more!

I have also set up an Etsy shop where I am selling products that I have made, with all profits going towards the trip.  Once we have covered the expenses involved in getting there, any more that we raise will go towards buying craft supplies for the women, as they are incredibly difficult to get hold of where they are.  The name of my Etsy Shop is Aisling Beatha, which is Gaelic for a Vision of Life.  It is properly pronounced Ashling Bey-ha but to be honest I never seem to remember that.

I promise to take lots of photos while I am there and write all about it here on my blog when I return.

If anyone is interested in donating towards this trip, please get in touch.

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Off on a Trip

Don't worry it is perfectly safe for me to say I'm off on a trip online because hubby and teen son are both staying home.

I'm heading off for two nights alone.
One of the things I do in life is talks and presentations for Samaritans Purse, particularly Operation Christmas Child, and particularly in schools.
There is a town about 90 minutes from here that I have gone to for the last 3 years to do talks at schools in the area.  Because it is a bit of a journey I get them all over and done with in a matter of 2 or 3 days and the last 2 years have taken the opportunity to stay over and get a little retreat time.  That's where I will be for the next couple of days.

So I'll head over there this afternoon and find the Bed and Breakfast I'm staying at, because this year I'm staying somewhere I haven't stayed before.  Then tomorrow I have talks at three different schools and on Thursday at two different schools.  The rest of my time is my own.

I'm taking with me my bible, journal, bible study homework and pen.
And I am taking a bag with me that includes some art journaling supplies I can use on the go.
I'll make another post before I leave, with photos of what art journal supplies I am taking.

The only part of the trip I don't look forward to is eating out alone, it always feels a little weird to me, so I will have to have a root around my bookcases for something fun and fluff to read during my meals.  If you were eating out alone what would you take to fill the time?

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What i Learned This Week

What did I learn this week?

This week I have learned that just because something is a GOOD thing to be involved in, to be doing, that that does not automatically mean that YOU should be the person doing it. I have been passionately involved in Operation Christmas child and other Samaritan's Purse projects for a long time, been a registered volunteer for 4 years, been involved in the local area committee for 2 years.

When the lorry leaves at the end of this week, taking our boxes to Kyrgzstan, I will be walking away from our area committee. That does NOT mean I will also be walking away from Samaritan's Purse necessarily, that is a decision for a later time. It's STILL something I am keen about and thing is an excellent charity with excellent goals and projects, particularly the newer projects that are beginning to come through. BUT after this year I will not be on area committee, I will not be manning shifts in charge of the warehouse, or involved in the organisation of that.

There are people who are going to be surprised by this, there are people who are going to be disappointed or even angry at this news, but i have to do what is right for me, what I believe god is calling me to, and this is not a running away from something, but a running to a wider future, with other things to be involved in. I am NOT super woman and I cannot DO everything that people would like me to do.

If you want to participate in What I Learned this Week, head over to the website by clicking on the image at the top of this post.

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What I Learned This Week

What did I learn this week?

I learned that sometimes the best thing to say in a situation is nothing.

This last week I went to do a talk about Clean Water Projects in Africa for a women's group. After I had finished talking, one of the ladies, in fact, the most elderly lady in the room, starting going on about how these African countries should stop relying on us for help and should just build a dam, because then they would have enough water.

I mean, seriously, there are SO MANY THINGS WRONG WITH THAT STATEMENT!
There were all sorts of things running through my head and I couldn't put anything coherent together, so I just let the leader of the group "rescue" me at that point.

Thinking about it afterwards, there were things I could have said, BUT I truly don't think any of them would have made her question her belief at all and that I did the best thing, SAY NOTHING!

If you want to participate in What I Learned this Week, head over to the website by clicking on the image at the top of this post.

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