We have had tears of joy and tears sadness this week! Erin, our Australian lodger went home to Aus for good on Thursday. And we were all vey sad. Erin arrived in January. We had our Aussy friends Cameron and Leah staying with us, and they got an emergency call from home. Erin had arrived in this country and landed in a difficult spot, so Leah went over to rescue her! We got home from a day out to find a note in the kitchen, "There's and extra Aussy on your sofa! Hope that's OK!" Of course it was fine. To cut a long story short Erin ended up staying with us and has been a great blessing. She had become a part of the family really, and so it was with tears that we waved bye-bye at Heathrow on Thursday night. Joshua was especially upset and cried half the way home.
However on Tuesday we had tears of joy. We had been doing a Bible Overview at home over the last few weeks, and Erin had joined in. Looking at the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and seeing how it all fits together is really wonderful. Anyway, again cutting a long story short, Tuesday was the last one and as I chatted with Erin it was clear that she had come to trust the Lord Jesus herself. We prayed together and shared tears of joy! A real week of tears!!!
We've been blessed by an evangelistic team staying at the church this week. They helped give out some invites to our carol service which was this morning. Friends from the church in Watford also helped with some more at the market on Saturday morning. We had a good group of people this morning and a little gaggle of children too. Church continues to be promising with possibilities. There may be some harder decisions to be taken in the future, perhaps even over the next year, but the Lord shows us his love again and again. Please keep praying for us, and get in touch so we can pray for you. God bless you,
Chris
17 December 2006
11 December 2006
Where are our leaders leading us?
Last week it emerged various labor politicians have seen the fallacy of multiculturalism and are trying to rebrand it. Still calling it multicilturalism but really doing a complete u-turn towards monoculturalism. Tony Blair himself has led the way. Many people are saying, about time too. Here is my concern though. When the pendulum swings too far one way - as it clearly has in this country with the tolerance of militant groups that promote violence and mass murder - it is very hard to stop it going to far the other way. What tends to happen is people give it a little push, making it even worse! I wonder if this week Mr Blair has done exactly that. I don't remember his exact comments but it went something like this, "We will not put up with people who preach hate and stir up violence." Quite right too. "If you want to come and live in this country you have to integrate into the society. If you will not, you cannot come."
He maintains that he wants Britain to retain its multicultural status, but if you don't subscribe to that intergrated multicultural culture then you will not be tolerated. Now this is putting it stronger than the Prime Minister actually has, but not stronger than certain civil situations that are on going, including the new Sexual Orientation Regulations that the government is seeking to bring in. Let me deal with this issue on a different front though.
In various universities around the country Christian groups are being forced out because they believe homosexuality to be wrong, and aren't afraid to say so. This is labeled as homophobic and intolerant. Neither claim sticks. The Christians are not seeking to exclude homosexuals from any meeting, they are simply stating the historic and clear teaching of the world's best selling book year on year for more years than are recorded. The Christians are not saying homosexuals must stop meeting, they are more than willing to talk and debate and be friends with those of any and every sexual persuasion. Yet it is the Christians who are called intolerant, who student bodies think it it is "right" to exclude. There is no tolerance of a different culture there - the different culture and beliefs are simply considered wrong and so excluded. The Christians will not sign up to mono-multiculturalism - the unifying belief that all beliefs are valid - and so they are excluded; they are not tolerated.
The problem with Mr Blair's agenda is that it pushes us towards the situation where we will find that saying a set of beliefs is wrong or not true will not be tolerated. Literally, "If your culture won't subscribe to our culture - that all beliefs are valid - then your culture cannot be part of our culture." Or put more simply, we will only tolerate those people who agree with us; which of course is not tolerance at all. The culture that Mr Blair and many others seeks to create in this country is one where everyone agrees that there is no absolute truth, therefore everyone's beliefs are equally valid and where there is no immovable moral standard, so the law must protect everyone and attack those who hold to absolute truth and absolute moral standards, because that truth and morality makes the rest feel guilty.
The end of this road is the persecution of people who are no threat to the public, only the beliefs that public lives by. We are setting out on the road to mono-multiculturalism which ends with bigotry and persecution.
I hope my thoughts are too strong, but I fear that they aren't.
Chris
He maintains that he wants Britain to retain its multicultural status, but if you don't subscribe to that intergrated multicultural culture then you will not be tolerated. Now this is putting it stronger than the Prime Minister actually has, but not stronger than certain civil situations that are on going, including the new Sexual Orientation Regulations that the government is seeking to bring in. Let me deal with this issue on a different front though.
In various universities around the country Christian groups are being forced out because they believe homosexuality to be wrong, and aren't afraid to say so. This is labeled as homophobic and intolerant. Neither claim sticks. The Christians are not seeking to exclude homosexuals from any meeting, they are simply stating the historic and clear teaching of the world's best selling book year on year for more years than are recorded. The Christians are not saying homosexuals must stop meeting, they are more than willing to talk and debate and be friends with those of any and every sexual persuasion. Yet it is the Christians who are called intolerant, who student bodies think it it is "right" to exclude. There is no tolerance of a different culture there - the different culture and beliefs are simply considered wrong and so excluded. The Christians will not sign up to mono-multiculturalism - the unifying belief that all beliefs are valid - and so they are excluded; they are not tolerated.
The problem with Mr Blair's agenda is that it pushes us towards the situation where we will find that saying a set of beliefs is wrong or not true will not be tolerated. Literally, "If your culture won't subscribe to our culture - that all beliefs are valid - then your culture cannot be part of our culture." Or put more simply, we will only tolerate those people who agree with us; which of course is not tolerance at all. The culture that Mr Blair and many others seeks to create in this country is one where everyone agrees that there is no absolute truth, therefore everyone's beliefs are equally valid and where there is no immovable moral standard, so the law must protect everyone and attack those who hold to absolute truth and absolute moral standards, because that truth and morality makes the rest feel guilty.
The end of this road is the persecution of people who are no threat to the public, only the beliefs that public lives by. We are setting out on the road to mono-multiculturalism which ends with bigotry and persecution.
I hope my thoughts are too strong, but I fear that they aren't.
Chris
22 November 2006
A long time ago, in a land far away .....
A long time ago - well 7 years ago, I went to a land far away - Latvia. It was at the end of my year working with UCCF. Myself and some students from the LSE went on a mission trip to Riga, the capital of Latvia to help kick start the Latvian version of UCCF. It was a very eventful trip, ask me about it some time. But I am telling you now because on that trip was Andre Mediros!
Who's Andre Mediros you might ask... ?
The link for this post is our church website. It went live a couple of weeks ago, even though it needs a few finishing touches. Our first feed back came last week asking a few details about the church as this couple, who had just arrived back from the USA wanted to visit!
What do these two stories have in common. The name at the bottom of the email from our website was... Andre Mediros. There can't be too many people with that name, thought I. And indeed I may well have been right. It was, totally by coincidence (if you believ in that kind of thing,) the very same Andre Mediros that had travelled to Latvia. It was a real joy to see him again and meet his wife Christine (brought up in Malaysia - Helen's mum's home).
Pray that the Lord would send us more workers and that people like Andre and Christine would feel the Lord's hand encouraging them to stay and join our slowly growing work. (And have a quick look at the website!)
God bless,
Chris H
Who's Andre Mediros you might ask... ?
The link for this post is our church website. It went live a couple of weeks ago, even though it needs a few finishing touches. Our first feed back came last week asking a few details about the church as this couple, who had just arrived back from the USA wanted to visit!
What do these two stories have in common. The name at the bottom of the email from our website was... Andre Mediros. There can't be too many people with that name, thought I. And indeed I may well have been right. It was, totally by coincidence (if you believ in that kind of thing,) the very same Andre Mediros that had travelled to Latvia. It was a real joy to see him again and meet his wife Christine (brought up in Malaysia - Helen's mum's home).
Pray that the Lord would send us more workers and that people like Andre and Christine would feel the Lord's hand encouraging them to stay and join our slowly growing work. (And have a quick look at the website!)
God bless,
Chris H
15 November 2006
Half Term Holiday
Chris had a week off during the half term which meant being able to go out and lots of fun things with boys. In fact we spent very little time at home at all and were quite exhausted by the end of it. The boys had a trip to the zoo while mummy had some girlie chill out time raiding charity shops and having a coffee.
We got to see friends that we haven't seen for a while and the boys bedroom got an underwater themed make over.
We also got to see nieces and had a trip out to the bowling ally which was great fun once we managed to convince the car that it was locked and didn't have to set of it's alarm!
Reuben is starting to become quite a chatterbox as he continually wants to try out his new vocabulary on us while Joshua is slowly starting to be able to concentrate a bit longer on activities - which will help as he starts school in January.
Chris has been ill on and off for the last 3 weeks, and what with the darker evenings and the hour change has been feeling quite drained and tired.
We got to see friends that we haven't seen for a while and the boys bedroom got an underwater themed make over.
We also got to see nieces and had a trip out to the bowling ally which was great fun once we managed to convince the car that it was locked and didn't have to set of it's alarm!
Reuben is starting to become quite a chatterbox as he continually wants to try out his new vocabulary on us while Joshua is slowly starting to be able to concentrate a bit longer on activities - which will help as he starts school in January.
Chris has been ill on and off for the last 3 weeks, and what with the darker evenings and the hour change has been feeling quite drained and tired.
Reuben's favourite game
Reuben has a new favourite game. It's called "Where's my hand?!" He puts his hand in his pocket and says, "Where's my hand?" (kind of). Then he pulls it out and declares with joy, as if you're very surprised, "There it is!"
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