Hope

Hello!

Well, i know its been a little while since i last posted, but whoever wrote...and i quote...."zzzzzzzzz" on my wall.....well i never!! I suspect it may have been Lisa?! Shocking!

Sorry for the lack of postage...things have been rather busy, but still, no excuse i guess! How is everyone? I hope you are all doing alright! Im coming back to the land of essex tomorrow in fact, oh wait, its today now...i should go to bed soon.

Its crazy how its easter already! I cant believe how quickly this year has gone already, I have 4 more weeks of lectures, then about 4 weeks of exams, and then it sthe summer break! How time flies! This year has been a bit insane for many reasons. The intensity of work has been a bit crazy, and the intensity of life in general has matched it. If i were to go into everything that has happened since my last post, i would be here forever and day, and you probably arent really interested, so i will highlighty one or two!

Firstly, i have been asked to be on the executive committee of the CU, under the role or Praise and Yoda co-ordinator. Whether you are familiar with starwars or not, the use of the term yoda is, im sure confusing. Basically, a yoda, in the context which i deal with is a mature student, eiether a recent graduate, a church student worker, or a 3rd year, who have experience both in life and CU, who is to support the small group leaders who run small groups in all of the individual halls of residence. I have to organise them (there is a yoda per small group) and organise people in order to facilitate the praise in teh CU meetings.
Its great to have been asked, and im already well into my time in the role. Things are going well, and it is keeping me very busy, but all is good! I will post more about the CU soon i hope, as its quite exciting whats going on! A lot of stuff is happening in manchester, which leads me nicely onto point 2!

Hope '08. This is an initiative being mainly run by the message trust (the people who do eden in manchester (what matt copsey does). It is a year long mission, in 2008, over the entire country, involving all christians, in every denomination...showing the love of Jesus to every comunity. You may have heard of city wide missions like 'Festival Manchester', or 'Soul in the City', or more close to home, 'Love Southend'....well these were social action projects majoring on one city over the time span of a few weeks. So much was accomplished in those weeks, so just imagine what can be acomplished in a year...everywhere! Imagine what it would look like if the whole church united with one purpose...no demoninational differences or exclusions. Just the people of God, being the people of God. Oh my life!!! Imagine!!!
Well, that year is 2008, and its been called hope 2008. I went to a launch event in manchester a yesterday, and it was so exciting! So much is planned already. Social action stuff, like cleaning streets, parks, running kids clubs, etc...partnering with the police, seeing stuff change! There has been a prophesy from a bunch of guys in Nigeria i think, that this next year will be a year of revival for England...and oh how we need it!
What can we do in chelmsford? In what ways can we serve the community, how can we get the youth groups out doing stuff in the surrounding estates, what events can we do in the parks, that are fun for all the family, where the gospel is preached...who can we get involved, organisation wise...lets do it! Lets see Chelmsford being transformed.
Love Southend was a year, last year where the churches really got together, and did pretty much all that. There were year long projects, and also a summer mission for a week, which was ended by a big party on the beach. During the year they had Street pastors that went out every week on a friday and saturday night, going round town all night long halping the homeless people, the people who had nowhere to go, and nobody to turn to...they were Jesus to a rejected people group. So much stuff happened that year. I know they are already planning for another similar year next time. They are right on our doorstep, why dont we do some similar stuff in chelmsford? Hope 2008 is a real opportunity to go for it...bridging the denominational gaps, and taking the love of Jesus to the streets,...im well up for it! What kind of stuff can we do?

Wow, that ended up being quite long! Sorry!

Right, im pretty tired now, so im heading to bed. I hope you are all doing well! see you soon!

Take care

Luke

Great North Run

The day of doom arrived, and went! It was a good laugh! Dad came in at 2:13, and me and charlotte both did it in 2:15....soooo close!! :-)
Oooo, was I hurting on monday, i could hardly walk!! oh well, heres a pic of the trio! It was good to see Andrew Emtige, and Alan Webb, and Tim from uni too! ooo, and Carol Vordaman! (ran past her)

Manc!!

So, i got back to uni 2 weeks ago...all is good thus far! I have moved into my new house, which is really cool. I did enjoy Oak House Halls last year, but it is so good to be in a house. I feel more settled! Im living with Ralph, Scott, Tim and Naomi who are all really really cool people! They are all involved in CU too which is cool.

I am leading the cell group in Oak House this year with a girl called Becky. We are both really excited about that this year. We have taken all the christian freshers who signed up to CU and are living in Oak House, out for a drink the other day. THey are an amazing bunch. They all seemed to get on really really well with each otehr, its so exciting!!! We had opur first official CU meeting on wednesday. It was amazing! There were soooo many poeple there, i reckon in the region of 200....hopefully the nuimbers wont drop off this year. There was an incredible presence of God there. Lat year the meetings got a bit dry, with not a great number of people there. There seemed to be a real lack of passion and enthusiasm. Almost every second and third year i have spoken to in CU has got a real expectancy about CU this year. I get butterfly's in my stomache when i think about what could happen this year. There is so so much need in manchester uni. The CU does so much stuff witnessing around campus, but there just wasnt the support last year....this year will be different i reckon!! Its well exciting! We have our first hall group meeting on tuesday, which im well looking forward to muchly!

Lectures have been going a week. This year is going to be a lot better than last year i think, course wise, although i think it will be a lot harder. I feel like last year was just an extension of Alevel maths and physics, but this year it feels like we are going to be getting on with some proper engineering stuff. The subjects seem a lot more interesting than last year. Except.....i have got to do statistics....NOT impressed at all!!! i really dont like stats. oh well!

Well yeah, so this weekend its the great north run...i havent really done a lot of training, so.....should be interetsing...hmmm. it will be good to see dad and charlotte again. its always a good weekend.

thats about it from me!

Let me know how you are all doing!! it will be good to hear from you all!

luke

since cambodia...

well, since cambodia, there has been a bit of a lul really. I went to soul survivor straight after getting back from cambodia which was cool, really good to hang out with the youth, and be a part of an amzing conference i have been to many times before. Then i went back home to having not much to do...i was doing a bit of part time work as a gardener for one of mum;s friends,...i wasnt very good at gardening :-S...and unfortunately i still had another 4 weeks of these crazy malaria tablets, which weren't too good at all. They were messing me about a bit really, but they are over with now which is good, and ill know not to go with them again in the future. It was good to be able to be a part of the first Deep Impact meeting just before i went back to uni. Its really exciting to b ein the new buliding. I hadnt had much to do with it since i have been back for the summer, which is a shame, but the place was buzzing the first meeting which was cool...loads up from discoverers...really exciting!

next post,...uni.....

Cambodia!

How cool is she!


This is in Touls lang prison. A former school that Pol Pot took over and used for interregation and murder. Thousands died here. An eye opening experiencing walking round


The church we went to first of all run a sponser a child programme called ..hmm, i cant actually remember, anyhoo....they go and visit the kids who are sponsered every week, and this is one of those such visits, THe mist rickety walk way i have ever been on...above swamps of rubbish and...well, yeh..


We visited a street kid school, and chilled out with them for the day, we did face painting :-)


We went to another church during our 3rd week, and spent the wek doing various lessony stuff with them. Here i am doing some guitar lessons...one out of tune guitar between 8 people of very differing standards! :-)


This is lucy. We were on our way to see a buddhist temple. As its the rainy season, all the rice paddy's are flooded, so we had to get a boat in about 2 foot of water over the rice to get there


We went exploring in the jungle ...barefoot...on an island off the south coast...quality fun!


This is my team!! front row.....lucy, joey, jenn, rose, miriam....beck row, jon, mat, and me! on an island on teh south coast!


me and insy winsy :-)

cambodia....the end approaches

well, its all coming to a close now, we have started with our final church now and tomorrow is our last working day! We are working at the church of christ with pastopr Maes Thavy...he is a hoot. He will just randomly start laughing, and its not even a subtle laugh...its absolutely halarious!! I am wondering how i am going to feel copming back to England where is it cooler, and things like people walking around in p'js are not the norm. We took friday afrternoon off and headed down to the coast down south, for a little break. We stopped off half way down to visit a few temples. As its the rainy season the only way to get to the temples is to takle a half an hour boat ride over the flooded rice paddy's It was incredible. You are speeding along in about 2 foot of water, with grass and trees poking out. The temples were interesting, but i much preffered the boat ride :-). When we got to kep we stayed overnight in a little place in the middle of the jungle. For the star wars fans around, it can be likened to a litte ee-wok villiage. It had little cane huts connected by wooden walkways all lit up by lanterns. It was such an amazing place. We stayed there for the night with the sound of crickets and all kinds of other animals all around. In the morning we headed by boat accross to an island with the most amazing tropical kind of beach. It had amazing sand, beautiful palm trees. We trecked bare foot for about 30 minutes through the jungle exploring. It was great!!

anyway....i need to go now! Hopeyou are all well, and im sure ill see most of you when i get back on thursday!!

luke

Cambodia! - week 2

hey everyone!! time for another update! We have spent this last week working with another church called the 'Followers of Jesus Church'...to the point i guess!
This church is a lot smaller than the last, but is still doing some cool stuff in the community! They have a street kids school a little bit outside of Phnom Penh the capitol. It is a free school, and there, kids who would otherwise have no chance at an educatiion get one for free. They get washed, cuts seen to, hair washed and de-liced. Its great! Their playground is just one bigh sand pit. The kids loved to play. We played football, catch, made paper aeroplanes, painted their faces, and loads more. We visited them for two mornings. Yesterday we visited the church's orphanage, and did roughly the same thing.
We went to Phnom Penh university to do some cold conmtact evangelism. It was an amazing day. We had to go through the exit, one by one, staggering it so that we wouldnt get noticed. How someone who is roughly 3 foot taller than the tallest cambodian, white with ginger hair cannot get noticerd, i really done quite understand, but there we go....we spent the day going round in pairs just walking up to people talking to them about general stuff, then telling them about Jesus. We invited loads to come to the church's youth party which is tonight, so hopefully we'll see some of them there...they seemed really open to it all. Mid afternoon, we were talking to some people, and a guard appeared ..we got aksed to leave..."we're not allowed to talk about Jesus" So...the whole day was rather exciting.
We went to the high school on morning and hung out there. We played some volleyball. It was soo hot, but well fun. It was teh school vacation, but it seemed to be the place to hang out as it was packed!
In cambodia it is the rainy season. We had our first experience of Cambodian monsoon rain the other day...its amazing! It started to thunder and lighten last time i was in the internet cafe...we waited but it didnt let up. Wehn we went outside, the roads were literally rivers, and we waded our way home through about 5 inches of rain. The church almost got flooded. It was about 10 at night and we just hung outside in the rain, it was soo much fun!!! One of our cambodian friends was out there too, he had got stranded at church. We all had a go at driving his moped....it was more like jet ski. Great fun!
On thursday afternoon we went to the killiong fields. An experience i dont want to forget, but i dont want to remember too vividly either. We gained an idea of what happened a week ago when we visited the old khemer rouge prison. I wasnt expecting what i saw, so it really hit me hard. Going to the killing fields i could try and prepare myself. Walking around, reading stories about what went on, seeing the holes that were once mass graves, and other more horrific things than that, you have to almost detatch yourself from the reality of it to get around the whole thing. One of teh girls has a book about the pol pot era and the khemer rouge. Some of the things i have read i think will stickj with me forever. I honestly cannot imagine how any human being, let alone teenagers can be so sadistic for such an extended period of time. It is sickening,...there are no words to say about it to truely sum up the gruesomeness and extent of what went on. It has effected the country massively and it will take a long time to recover.
That is about it for whats been going on...next week we are working with pastor sammy and his church, although we still have many friends and links with the original church we stayed at, so we see them a lot in our free time, as the place we are staying is just accross the road.

So far i have eaten some interesting things....we are still waiting for an opportunity to try spider and cricket :-)

Hope you are all good!

See you in a couple of weeks!

luke

Hey from Cambodia

Hey everyone! im in an internet cafe again, so i will need to make this a quick one! Things here are really amazing! Life is so crazy!
Going from the airport to our apartment on the first night we got here, we were riding on the back of a pick up through the streets of Phnom Penh, the sights we saw were incredible. The roads are insane! Like for instance, a family of 4 on a moped riding with no lights in the night, down the wrong side of a dual carriage way. There are no rules here, its quality! The heat is crazy, like ive never experienced, and its constantly humid as its the rainy season, so we are constantly sticky, but thats something that we have got used to now. The food is amazing! Weve had a variety of Thai, cambodian, chinese and a little western too. Eating out is a lot cheaper than in England. All 8 of us can go out, and be satisfied for about 35 american dollars.
The cjurcj we are based at is called new life fellowshi, and its just amazing. It does everything, meeting so many of the needs out here. It is lively and very hillsongý style in the worship. There is a massive need in cambodia. The atrocities carried out by the Khemer Rouge, and Pol Pot are still very close to the hearts of the people out here. Their lives are still very much affected by it all. 50% of the populatiopn are under the age of 18 due to the genocide, and there are little skilled people like doctors etc as they were the people who were wiped out. The church aims to meet the needs of the poeple, and id say they do it rather successfully. They hold English classes, which hold a huge amount of weight. They hold classes in basic helth care, and micro-enterprise, to help people get started with their own businesses. They run a child sponsership program called Children at Risk which is amazing. It funds the kids to go to school, provides a uniform, food, and tesches them, or a family member a skill to use to get money for tyhe family. for example, we went into the slums to visit some of the kids on the programs, they are so cool!! One we saw... her mum was taught how to sow, and the church bought her a sewing machine so she could support her family. The program aims to run for no longer than 3 years with each child, so the emphasis is on helping them to support themselves.
A few days ago we visited the church orphanage. Words cant describe what emotions you go though when you hear about the child who has been holding your hand for the entire morning witnessed his mum murder his dad becuase the physical abuse he gave her got too much. His mum is now in prison so the boy now has no-one. Other stories are just as bad. With many of the kids, they dont know english, but communication is never a problem. All they want to do is to hug you, or hold your hand, or jump on your back.The only response you can give is just to love them. I cant descibe it, but that day at the orphanage has affected me in a way i dont think ive ever experienced before, and may never do again.
Im running out of time, but we are working with another church this week, which is a lot smaller, but our schedule is just as packed. It includes a visit to the killing fields on thursday, which i am not looking forward to.

I hope you are all doing well back in England! Let me know of any news!

So, until i find another internet cafe!! jon rhiab sur!

Luke

A WEDDING?!?...oo how exciting!

Well, i have to start by apologise. Considering it was only 6 posts ago that alastair and vicky got engaged, my posting irregularity has finally become clear for all to see....oh well.

Saturday 24th June was the day, and i have to say it was an amazing day! The wedding was at 2pm, so we had a good chance to chill out and relax before we had to get ready. We were in a b&b about 15 mins away from the church and vicky's house (which are about 200m from each other) in a small place called Sion Mills near Strabane for those who know Northern Ireland. The surroundings are staggeringly beautiful! I was so surprised, i must admit i wasnt aware that it was such an amazing place.

I was best man, and Charlotte and Vicky's sister Catherine was bridesmaids. There was a large possy from imperial college as thats where they both went/go. The day started off with charlotte making her way to vicky's house for a hair appointment...at 7am!! hehe!!! whilst the rest of the house slspt on. Those remaining went and had a leisurly full english northern irish breakfast at the b&b where my nan, aunt, uncles and cousins were, which was nice. We then found a chemist as i was suffering terribly with hayfever, and could harldly talk.



When we were back at the b&b where our family was staying, al, mum and dad went for a walk while i went over and finished off my speech.

Then we got ready, and headed off in the car to the church...



The service was very cool!
When vicky and her enterage emerged, i was choked, they looked absolutely stunning, vicky and the bridesmaids too. Its quite weird being best man, i havent got a clue whats its like to be the groom in that position, so cool! One of their friends from imperial spoke on love (bit of a strange topic for a wedding, but there you go!) and he was excellent. we sang a few hymns. When it came to the vows they had memorised them, which was cool, so there was no repeating after the vicar. I had a scare of two with regards to the rings. What i was unaware of when i put them in my pocket, vicky's ring fit exactly inside alastairs it was that much smaller, so when i reached into my pocket, i could only feel one ring.....ARGHHHH!!! but all was ok... phew!

anyway, the rest of the day was amazing! I had so much fun! everyone else did too, there was such a great atmosphere the whole day, it was amazing!...so happy

so...here are some photos for you...


nan, dad and mum, al and vicky, and avril (vicky's mum)


Charlotte, Vicky and Catherine


catherine and me


Alastair and vicky ready to go to the reception

holidaying in northern ireland

the view at 10:30 pm from our b&b....cool eh!


carrick-a-ride (rope bridge)



random rocks



charlotte looking very contemplative at giants causeway



giants causeway - my unc and aunt, john and christine, then stacy (cousins gf) then my cousin alan



a random deserted beach somewhere....me, and alan and gemma, my cousins