Tikhtak

Youthwork The Conference

  My Colleague, Mike North and I ventured down to Eastbourne recently to attend and exhibit  for CMS at the Youthwork conference. It was a good time of making networks with various groups and agencies, as well as having time to see beachy head in all its glory.

We also used the weekend to get interviews for trax 16 and make Decembers podcast there. One highlight I had was interviewing Victor from Sierra Leone. He had escaped the civil war and has now lives in the Uk working in Chatham as a youth worker. You can hear some of his story and others by clicking on this trax16 link. Otherwise check out more pics here

Les Isaac's street pastors & Peace on the streets

Today I met with Les Isaac in Brixton from the street pastors initiative to interview  for trax16. As I expected it was an inspirational time hearing about how young people's lives have been changed by Christians of all ages and walks of life just listening to them and spending time with them. Unfortunately the interview is too late to go out on Octobers trax16 but will be used as a feature on another podcast. Irfana also seized the opportunity and came along and has arranged for Les to speak at Holy Trinity Church Clapham in December. Les also mentioned a project called Peace on the streets that is happening this month as a response to recent gun and knife crime. Check out all the events in London Peace week  which include a peace rally in Hyde park on 20th September hosted by Richard Blackwell and  numerous events highlighting young peoples talent and potential.

Greenbelt 08

This year at Greenbelt the CMS youth team juggled between 3D, trax16 and Tajik break dancers. Each day we ran 3D workshops with around 40-50 young people. 3D stands for Drama, Dance and Drumming and using this medium we explored both man's and God's perspective on looking after the environment and encouraged people to engage with A Rocha. As always we got interviews with various people from around Greenbelt  ranging from Martyn Joseph and Comedian Jo Enright to authors Richard Burridge who has  just written "Imitating Jesus" and Philip Yancey. It was also good to catch young people just milling around the site and working in here with various organisations. Again the Tajik breakdancers Vito and Illios were doing their stuff, sharing testimonies and the Youth team compared their programme. Neema crafts from Tanzania in the CMS tent were an inspiration to everyone and engaged people in making paper out of elephant dung, jewelry out of glass and dancing. I think outside of the CMS programme my highlight was chilling with Irfana in the big venue Centaur listening to Aradhna, a white, traditional Indian band, while Zara danced and ran around the wide carpeted expanse. Check out flickr for more pics

Soul Survivor 08

Another year at Soul Survivor slightly left me with a "Ground Hog" feeling this year. I joined a CMS team and used the CMS stall as a launch pad to get interviews for trax16. It was incredibly wet too just to add to the drama. I have to say that Soul Survivor did have more of an urban influence to it than normal with hip hop beats and blasting out from the underground venue and more of an ethnic mix than normal with groups from other countries from Malta and Czech to South Korea, Do listen to trax16 to get a flavour of the week. Also check out some pics on flickr of my travels around the sight as well with the help of Ruth's camera work, which was to be created into a talking heads short film. Not sure if that happened?

Church response to Gun and knife crime

Here is an interview I did with Rev Andrew Brandon at the recent JEANS event in East London. Download Revandrew.mp3 (12286.0K) I asked him what the church could do practically about the current problem of gun and knife crime.

trax16 and Tajik Breakdancers at Angel Space

On Sunday Mike North and I ventured down to Rochester Cathedral to interview young people from the Rochester area at an event called Angel Space. Illyos and Vitalek, two Tajik breakdancers who are on tour with CMS over the Summer joined us and entertained everyone with their back crunching routines and a workshop for anyone who wanted to ache the next morning. It was also an opportunity for people to find out what Tajikistan and breakdancing have in common and how they have both been called into mission in this unorthodox way (excuse the pun) We will be featuring this event in trax16 next month.

trax16 is two years old

In our 25th edition of trax16, we are celebrating our second anniversary!  Join myself, Mike, and Anita as we look back over the last year, remembering the best interviews and other highlights. It’s also been a year of hearing from christian musicians, and this month we have new music from The Steels. Also check out etrax this month where we look at Paul's Urban Encounter in Athens and hear about an opportuntiy to have an Urban Encounter in Birmingham

Voices of hope from Sierra Leone

On our recent Free For All trip to Sierra Leone we took our MP3 recorders with us and interviewed Mohammed a YMCA volunteer who fled to Freetown during the civil war, children from our Free For All performance, Verity a CMS Missionary doing health work  as a physio and Zoe from the team who meets family from Sierra Leone she never knew she had. We also have footage of a trip to King Jimmy's market, a historical site where slaves were loaded on to ships 200 years ago. Check out Voices from Sierra Leone on tikhtak's youtube. You can also hear them featured on our trax16 for January. In this picture I am interviewing Mohammed, the YMCA volunteer while Anita interviews Verity. The interviews were not all carried out on the beach!

A Rocha on trax16

Yesterday I visited the A Rocha offices based in Southall. A Rocha is a word for rock in Portuguese and the organisation combines their Christian faith with having a concern for the environment. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world (Cosmos) that he gave his one and only Son."  I interviewed the UK director Dave Bookless and the education team who you can hear on February's trax16. Although it was my first visit to A Rocha in Southall  I had visited an A Rocha project near Bangalore, India, where they manage an area where elephants and human both co-habit. It has been good to see two very different  A Rocha projects at work.

Travelling with God into 2008

After spending a very enjoyable Christmas with my Mother and Father in law it was time to say goodbye. They were returning to an unstable Pakistan just two days after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Before leaving home for Heathrow we sat down to pray for the practicalities of the journey and especially being able to find transport from the airport in Lahore back to their home.  Their school minibus driver was unable to get petrol as no petrol stations were open and with all public transport being halted; there was no straightforward way home. 
With no options my wife Irfana drew our attention to her daily bible reading notes for that day 29th December as a source of encouragement:

“And the Lord said, surely I will be with you.” Judges 6 16”

We prayed together and took this verse as God’s promise that he would be with them. After a tearful farewell at the airport we parted with a little faith and apprehension. The next morning we received a phone call from them both praising God for his faithfulness. When they arrived at the airport there were some taxis still running and so they hailed one expecting to pay 4 or 5 times over the normal fare. To their surprise the taxi driver had no intention of over charging them and in fact he asked for 200 rupees less than they normally pay. They got home without any problems.

As we step into 2008, we too don’t know what lies ahead but we can all take God’s promise from Judges 6: 16 with us:  “Surely I will be with you”

(This is my latest etrax post for 2008 inspired by recent events).