Meeting Jesus

Hello again,

Sorry it's been a long time since my last blog - I think I've only managed the one in 2012, and look where we are! March! Springtime!

Bit of an overload on the exclamation marks there, apologies. 'Springtime' itself seems a bit of a misnomer, seeing as the weather barely got wintry all through the ostensibly cold months of the year.

Not quite out of the woods yet, as there is still time for a few frosts and a deluge of downpours - something the farmers around here are certainly hoping for. Queue copious references to hosepipes, standpipes and 1976.

In the three months (plus) since my last posts, there's been a deluge of another kind as I've got going with taking kids on sessions. Not as frantic as it will be come summertime, but there's certainly been enough to be getting on with, and a torrent of names to try and learn (before replacing them with new arrivees) as I adjust to 'real people' trusting me with my rope work or orienteering skills.

The allocation of instructors to children is still a ratio that's weighted in our favour, which has been tremendously helpful in having opportunity to chat to them. I was timetabled on a couple of archery sessions last week, but spent most of the time talking to the kids about famous people they'd like to meet or teaching them the song 'Only a Boy Called David'. Sunday School comes in helpful!

Those two groups in particular were great chances to speak a word for Jesus - He is the famous person is told them I've already met. One of the girls replied, 'What, like in the Bible?' I was so pleased to be able to tell her an emphatic 'Yes!'

Rehearsal Over

Yello,

So, three months in and Rock SAT has been scattered across the UK. It's a whole new world, to quote Aladdin, which isn't something I'm prone to do, but seems apt for the moment.

That said, I'm yet to find out exactly what my world will look like. Tomorrow at 9.00am should start de-misting the horizon. There'll be a good chunk of training still to do - really, you could say that whether I was the newbie I was in October or Chief Instructor - but sessions 'for real' will be starting soon.

I'm looking forward to actually working with the kids; it's a chance to do what I came here to do, and what I think God wants me to do during this time I'm with Rock UK. I'm not sure it will be something I will do forever, but that's why I'm glad Rock SAT is a whole two-year programme. It gives me a chance to do something valuable and worthwhile for these twenty-four months, without anchoring me in concrete to what I'm doing right now.

We'll see. Perhaps I'll fall completely in love with it all, now I've got the chance to 'go live'. I'm glad that God doesn't require me to work out the minutiae of my life right now, because - to quote the epistle of James - I don't even know what will happen tomorrow.

But thankfully, God does.