seasons changing

I am enjoying the lead up to Christmas, more this year than ever before. I'm not sure why I have changed my mind about the christmas music, the trees and the lights, normally I don't like it until a week before Christmas. It might be the "snow" or the cold or Rachels obsession with Christmas, however I am enjoying the season.

I graduated from the Internship last week, it was a great night, some of the young people came and a lot of friends were there to hear about the journey of the last two years for myself, Taryon and Rachel. It has been quite a journey and I have really appreciated how much I have experienced and learned. Thankyou for walking through life with me, for reading, emailing, talking, writing and praying.

My next steps are a bit unsure, I am looking for a job in the short term and hoping to find one that will allow me to continue doing my SVQ 3 in Playwork.

I hope you are enjoying this season as much as me. God Bless

Finishing up

So, I am now in the last month of my internship, seems like the time has flown by quickly but at the same time I have learnt a lot and been all over the place!!

I have been so blessed to have some amazing oppertunities such as:
* working with the young people at St Andrews church, geting to know them, seeing them change and being a part of their lives for a while
* travelling with the Duff family last year in Sweden and Kyrsgyzstan
* going back to Morocco
* leading a team to Orkney, great fun!
* working with the homeless and orphaned in Portugal and praying with them and for the country

God has been good to me, I am so chuffed to have seen so much, done so much, learnt so much. Now even in these last few weeks I am able to fulfill a dream to visit Aberdeen. I am going with a small team to pray and worship and spend time with Deborah and Ian, I am so excited.

Portugal and stuff

I had a very impacting time in Portugal, it is hard to explain all that we did since the main focus was prayer. We prayed for specific peaople and places and asked God what he had on his heart and did what he asked. We had done a lot of prayer and research before we went, which i really enjoyed, so we went in with a fair amount of knowledge of the status of Portugal and it's history.

So we know that people are made with a particular identity and Satan often attacks the specific things that God places in us, does this also work for a country? Can Portugals emphasis on the arts and history as discoverers be things God placed there and things that they struggle to hold onto because it is attacked? Is Scotlands struggle with violence and worthlessness a direct result of Satans attack on our creation as Warriors of Gods Kingdom?

Recently we have had a lot of teaching on the Kingdom of God, lots of us went to Dundee yesterday to hear teaching by Dr Atif, a monk who has focused a lot of his life on discovering what God means by a lot of the things he says and looking at the early church and what they practiced and why. It was very interesting and slightly confusing! We also had teaching this morning from Andy Hall on The Kingdom of God and Authority and Power used together. Food for thought, definatly. (Andy's teaching were recorded so if you want to hear them i should get the link in a while so let me know)

Lots of thoughts all over the place today!

all aboot Orkney

I'm back from Orkney with loads of great stories to tell, i will try not to bore you with them all!

The overview is that on the 27th July2008, 96 young people and about 30 leaders came together in Ayr for a week of intense dancing, drama, puppeting, face painting, kids club, evangelism and sports training. Add in quiet times, group devotions, morning worship and testimonies and evening rallies, and do it all while camping! It was a busy week with 7am wake up and 11pm lights out and 1 hour inbetween for off time and showering. I found it quite challenging to adjust to this but harder still was finding time to memorise your memory verse, practice you performance piece and come up with a team cheer! The camp was very loud and lively but we had some amazing team times, great worship and learnt lots of fun skills that we could use in Orkney. Touch The World did an excelent job of equiping us for what we would be running in Orkney.

Then on Saturday 2nd August we set out at 6am with our team of 10 (3 leaders, 7 members) towards orkney. We arrived in at about 8pm and were met by the youth worker of the Baptist church and a few others. During the week we lead church services, ran a holiday club to the theme of "down in the dumps" and held a youth evening every night called "the noise".

My highlights were

*During the noise we had a small room in the church assigned as the prayer room with 2 of our team in there each night. At the beginning of the week our team were not so excited about the prospect of an hour and a half in a prayer room, however God really spoke to us all and they got really excited about being in the prayer room. On Thursday night I went in at 9.45pm to tell the two people we had in there that they could leave and they said they wanted to stay a little longer...they stayed a total of 4 and a half hours, our God is exciting!

*On the last Sunday we did a presentation for the church about the Holiday Club and throughout the service 5 or 6 of the children we had had at the holiday club came to sit with us. They were so excited about what they had learned and all the kids songs and dances we had done, it was great to see them all up performing the "flabbergasted" dance, and especially children who wouldnt normally go to church.

Quite a long update but a wonderful time. Also the picture is our team plus some of our friends from Orkney, Allison Graham, Amy Graham and Cameron Stout who kindly drove us to the boat at 5am!

Xplore

The Seamill Centre Xplore department is in full swing! For the summer all the interns are involved with Xplore, i will be the only one going to Orkney, everyone else is going to Hong Kong and China. In Hong Kong they will attend gateway camp and in China they will be working with handicapped people in a school and wokplace set up for people with disabilities. This is all govenment approved work.

The group going to Hong Kong and China will be 16 people all together, many of these are young Scots from 14-18years old. They will be coming to the Seamill Centre on Sat morning to do 4 days of training before going. I will be involved in the training days which will be some cultural training, some teaching on love, some worship together and some building team. Please pray for the whole team as we meet togeher on Saturday and begin this adventure.

Xplore Orkney

Orkney is a go'er!! I have been starting to wonder and worry a little about whether the TTW Ministy got my application and still wanted me to go to Orkney. I emailed my friend who first asked if i would be willing to lead and she said she would get in touch with people in the office...weeks later i emailed again and then finally yesterday i got a letter from them. I read through the mass amounts of information they sent me and though i like that i am now informed i think i enjoyed the blissful ignorance.

The camp will be from the 26th July - 11th Augwith one week in Ayr and one week in Orkney. The have a packed schedule with a lot of strict policies, that should be interesting!! It will be a big shock to go from working with primarily non-christian or non-churched young people to being with Christian young people, people might listen to what i say!!

While in Orkney we will be partnering with a church there and helping with their kids club and youth ministry which i think will be a lot of fun. I don't know what sized team we will have, in total between various different outreach locations TTW has 96 young people going this summer. Please pray with me that God would change the lives of all the young people involved and the people we meet, God is moving in the youth of Scotland and I am excited to be involved.

ally xxx

If you wish to contribute towards the cost of my trip please send cheques payable to Youth With A Mission Scotland to 9 Glenbryde Road, West Kilbride, KA23 9NJ.

lots of wee updates

* I have applied to be an Assistant Leader on an outreach to Orkney this summer with Touch the World Ministries UK. If you would like information about TTW please feel free to look at the website at http://www.touchtheworlduk.org/

* Things seem to be going ok without Blair, I miss having him as my leader as he was very good but Rahel and I seem to be copng so far and the leders at the base and the church hav been very supportive which we really appreciate.

* The Leadership Development Course is still running at the base, it is a 6 week course and we have people from all over here. The base is very busy which has been stressfull with noise levels, cooking quantities and cleaning buteverything seems to be in order. I have befriended one couple who have a 6 month baby boy. They are French and Nigerian and their son is beautiful, i have enoyed playing with him during lunch and dinner!

* Last weekend i travelled to somewhere in the middle of nowhere, an hour from Aberdeen to "nanny" for Deborah and Ian Matchett, i spent a wonderful weekend looking after baby Zoe, who is now 7 and a half months and VERY energetic. This is a picture of her in the bath, she loves the bath.

* This week Rachel and i will spend two days at a Youth Workers retreat in Perth run by SCYWF (Scottish Christian Youth Work Forum). This will be a time to come together with other youth workers, pray together, worship together and relax together, im looking forward to it.

* And to end a busy week next Sunday (25th May) is my 21st Birthday, which I am excited about, and is also the night of a Youth Band Prise night which I am sure ill be a wonderful time to be led by the youth in worship. Hope to see people there.

Thats all for now. God Bless