Tikhtak

Pakistani talkie

Irfana bought me an MP3 player for Christmas and I have decided to put it to use. I asked Irfana what her faith means to her, click here to hear Irfana on faith

Norwich Cathedral and Free 4 All encouragements

Yesterday I visited with Anita Norwich Cathedral and met with Saul Penfold, the Education officer for the cathedral. For the first part of our time we spoke about Crystal Palaces (He's an Eagle fan) fortunes in the championship and whether Wimbledon might get back into the league. It was also interesting to learn about Thomas Buxton and his work with the Quakers in Norfolk to abolish the slave  trade. In fact after Wilberforce stood down in 1825 Buxton took up the fight in the commons. I also discovered that Admiral Nelson was a Norfolk boy so we have lots to connect with in our Free 4 All project. WE are beginning to get towards the end of our first round of visits to book up cathedrals and we are looking at about 4 more to make the total 25. It has been really encouraging how keen everybody has been about the project, but especially to see God working.  Here are some of the ways:

• Manchester Cathedral is keen to involve pupils from the highly acclaimed Chethams School of Music to provide us with musicians for our project in Manchester.

• Bristol Cathedral is enthusiastic about local media involvement, including asking local television to run a feature on the project.

• Derby Cathedral has taken the initiative in approaching the City Council to explore how Derby might do something on a city-wide scale.

• Portsmouth Cathedral is excited about developing potential links with the Maritime Museum.

• Chester Cathedral is talking about marking the event as a Diocese with a special service.

• Liverpool Cathedral has kindly offered us a fantastic set of “sails” – actually from their bookshop which is being renovated, which will make a superb centrepiece for our mobile set!

• Chichester Diocese have said: “Please don’t come for a week – come for two!” We hope to do one week in Chichester Cathedral serving one side of the Diocese, and one week at Worth Abbey to work with schools from the other side. Through Chichester, we are also exploring the possibility of running the project for a week in Freetown Cathedral.

Week at work

I started off the week at the Mission partners in training week in Witchcroft. Interesting name for the Southwark Diocese retreat centre. It was very useful to think of ways that the Youth and Children's team could connect with Mission Partners going out all over the world and how we could work together in sharing training material and resources. On Wednesday it was another cathedral visit to Chester and the events manager was able to book out a week for 2007. On Friday we visited  Chelmsford to look at the cathedral there, but perhaps the highlight of the week was our visit to meet Mark Payne, who leads the chichester diocesan schools links scheme with Sierra Leone and   Ali Campbell. We talked about possible venues for the cathedral tour and came up with both the cathedral and Worth Abbey, where the TV programme the monestry was filmed. Mark also excitedly talked about the prospect of taking the "Free 4 all" project of Freetown. (The underlined part means nothing I just can't get rid of it)

CMS Youth and children's projects

I am now back into my second week at work and I am feeling a buzz in the air. Today I met with the youth and children's team and marketing to talk about raising money for the work we do to support our various projects and ministries. It is exciting to see some of the projects we are planning and how they are gaining momentum. The "Free for All" schools/Cathedral project is being taken up by Cathedrals all over the country, where in 07 we will work with up to 100 school children a day over a week running drama workshops to perform a 500 cast performance at the end of the week to friends, family and the local community and all this in a Cathedral. It's aim will be to allow young people to celebrate and commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the salve trade bill, championed by William Wilberforce 200 years ago. It now looks like it will get it's first outing at Spring Harvest at each venue at Easter 06. We also hope to show it at Greenbelt in the summer and then at Clapham Holy Trinity Church in October 06. The other project we have on the go at the moment is the launch of a Youth Pod cast, which will go out on the CMS website to connect with young people and leaders throughout the country and excite them in their mission. We are trying to think of possible names, so feel free to post any ideas. My team mate Mike North is leading this project and has written stuff on his blog about it and other things we are planning for 06.

Our own row in Church

Here we are in Holy Trinity on our first Sunday in England and we had our own reserved row at church. After a Clapham Christmas we hired a minibus and travelled up to Shropshire for New Year. We saw both the sites of London and Shropshire and saw both places through North American and Pakistani eyes. Check out a few pictures in the family visit gallery