There aren’t many
excuses for not blogging when one should be, but one good excuse, if there were
any, would be a lack of computer. And
that is mine.
Upon driving today
in Belfast, I
realized that I liked life without a computer.
It was much simpler. It made
writing letters seem like the obvious choice.
Now I’m not too sure. (But I’ll
keep writing letters, until I find a font that matches my handwriting.)
We played a “game”
in college called “Life without TV.” We
did it for fun, I remember, one semester in the Pea Pod. We played so many games during Life Without
TV. Was it during that time we
discovered how fun it was to run from one living room to the other, flying
hands-then-head first through a hula hoop? Landing in a big pile of couch
cushions? Big spaghetti dinners? “Study” days before Christmas break?
The last blog I
wrote was about FWD—Faith With Deeds, an initiative that we were involved with
in different parts of the Shankill.
Instead of working
backwards, trying to fill in all the details of the past few months, I’m just
going to start from right now.
We’ve started
working in the Breakfast Club in the local primary school every day. Lidia and I agree…it’s always a bit of a
shock when the alarm goes earlier on those mornings, but once we’re in the
cafeteria, buttering toast, playing games with the kids—we think, I wish I was
on the rota to do this every day! We’ve
been having 15-20 kids each day.
Tomorrow I set off
for Spain,
for a few days with a group called the New Teams Network. I like that it’s not a committee or a club,
just an “anyone’s welcome” group of people who will share tales and ideas and
struggles we’ve had about starting new teams in Western Europe with YWAM.
Why new teams? In YWAM around the globe, there is a current
push to move new pioneering ministries from big bases in rural places (great
retreat centres, though) to simple, small (maybe) communities of YWAMers who
move into cities to serve local church, bring new vision, and to send out
missionaries. Some call this church
planting…this could get tricky, because then we ask—Is YWAM a church? What is church? And…then this blog would either be way too
long, or very, very short: “I don’t
know.”
Either way, this is
the push. This is the new thing.
The next time I’ll
write, I’ll share more about YWAM Ireland’s idea of doing new teams in Ireland. It has something to do with nomads.
(It’s nice to be
back.)
| 
