Baking and Training and Socializing, Oh My!

Yeah, that title's pretty corny.  I couldn't think of anything else.

A friend messaged me saying she wanted another blog post, and I thought to myself "what? I just published one!"  Then I realized that was almost three weeks ago.  My bad, how time flies!

I'll start where my last post left off and work forward from there. 

Saturday (9/07/2013) was quite an adventure.  Lindsey and I were tasked with baking for a community event the next day that would see over a hundred people!  Now, we both like to bake, so there wasn’t a problem there.  The kitchen in our house, however, isn’t really conducive to producing mass amounts of baked goods.  Standing in the middle, I can almost touch both walls.  My wingspan is a little over five feet; so that should give you a good idea of what I'm working with here.

It took most of the day, but we were able to get everything done (several dozen cookies, a pan of brownies, two loaves of strawberry bread, and three apple pies!).  I'd say that's quite impressive, considering that all of the recipes called for things like "150 grams" of this, or "2 liters" of that.  Stupid metric system...

Sunday (9/08/13) was the first official excursion into “church shopping.”  I really want to find a church that I can fit into well while I’m here.  Lindsey and I went to St. Katherine’s, an Anglican church in East Acton, about a five minute walk from our house.  It was very nice, but very small.  There were probably about twenty other people there, so as soon as we walked in, everyone noticed that there were new people!  The congregation was quite welcoming, and they served tea after the service (as one does in the UK).

Afterwards we had lunch with a family in the community, the Potters.  Yes, I know a British family called the Potters.  No, they’re not related to Harry.  The mom, Mercy, is in charge of making sure that the gappers are “taken care of,” so to speak.  She has been very supportive so far, and I am really looking forward to getting to know her better.  

From lunch we went to an Antioch meeting, our first event with the whole community.  The longer I am here, the more I appreciate the idea of an (international) community.  Tons and tons of things are different here, but this one is pretty much the same: a group of Christians committed to living a common way of life and supporting one another.  I was at the meeting early to help set up, and so many people came up to introduce themselves and welcome me into the group.  After the meeting there was a party at the Brothers’ house for the new gappers to get a chance to meet and chat with people.  And let me tell you, it was A LOT of people.   I felt really blessed through the whole evening as I got to  know more people.  I am really looking forward to a great year and developing good relationships with everyone in the community.  There are even a few Americans (never have I appreciated *not* hearing an accent more!).

The rest of that week involved Koinonia “classes” and training at the Kube (Koinonia’s office in central London).  The group going through this includes me and Lindsey, along with some guys who are serving as affiliates of the Servants of the Word, Pete and Ralph.  An affiliate is someone who is looking into life with the Brothers, but hasn’t yet made their life commitment.  We learned about the 30+ years of history of this outreach, why things are done certain ways, etc.  We also looked at goals for the year and how each individual will be contributing.

Wednesday (9/11/2013) night Lindsey and I were invited over to dinner with a family called the Bulls: Andrew and Angie, with kids Naomi (10), Jacob (8), Leah (5 ½), Malachi (4), and Hannah Grace (1).  I loved being around all those kids, but it really made me miss my nephews Logan (11) and Kaden (4)!.   

Logan and Kaden (with Kaden's b-day cake that Logan made!)

Andrew Bull is in charge of [youth:link]!, a group run by Antioch that serves kids ages 13-18.  I will be serving with them a little bit every week, which I am really excited about.

Friday (9/13/2013) we did our first Coffee Stall on UCL’s campus.  Basically, we set up a table and give away free coffee and tea to whoever is passing by.  The goal is to meet people (especially those new to the area), get our name out there, and serve the general public.  Except for the rain, I really enjoyed it.  

Now, if I asked you what you thought the most common question we got was, what would you say?  I was surprised by the answer.  Most people wanted to know why it was free, why we were doing something “nice.”  There were even a few who were downright suspicious, and wouldn’t take anything until they figured out exactly what we were “up to.”  It just goes to show how much this city is in need of random acts of kindness. 

And that brings me to this week!  Continuing on my journey of church shopping, I went with Lindsey to a Salvation Army core in Notting Hill.  Yes, that’s a church.  A lot of people don’t realize that the Salvation Army is more than just a network of thrift shops and social outreaches.  It started as a church and then spread into doing good for the public.  You can learn more about it here.  I liked it, but I don’t think I’ll be going again.  I think Lindsey and I brought the average age of those attending down by about fifty years.  But again, everyone was very welcoming, and we had tea after the service.

 The majority of this week has been more training and team building exercises.  I’ve gotten to meet a few different Koinonia students who have come as well!  Yesterday (Wednesday) was especially awesome.  We talked about the power of intercessory prayer and prayer walks and heard stories from people about times when prayer walks were really effective.  In a nutshell, a prayer walk is going through a specific place (i.e. ULU, the building that houses the Kube) and praying over different areas.  It's a way to bless the space and bring the Lord's presence.  We did prayer walks for ULU, and around the UCL campus. 

I went to dinner with Lindsey, Niamh, Lucy, and Finja.  Who are these people, you ask?  Well, Lindsey you already know is one of my fellow gappers.  Niamh works for Kairos and Koinonia, and is one of my supervisors for the year.  Lucy is a student about to start her third and final year at university and with Koinonia.  Finja is also a third-year student, and she will be living in household with Lindsey and I.  She arrived late Tuesday night, and I'm excited to have another person in our house.  Eventually, there will be five of us.  The fourth girl, another student called Miriam, arrives sometime today.  The fifth girl is the other gapper, Sawsan, coming from Lebanon in the beginning of October.

Anyway, dinner was a lot of fun, and afterwards we went to a worship event at Lucy's church, St. Mary's.  I really got a lot out of it, and I think I'd like to go back for a service some Sunday.  Plus, to get there, we had to take the tube to Baker St, which is famous for its connections to Sherlock Holmes.  When we got off the train, this image was all over the station:

And I do mean ALL over.

Well, I think that's sufficient to catch you up on my goings-on.  I would like to wish a very happy birthday to my big sister, Sarah.  Sarah, I hope you have a wonderful day, and thanks for always being my go-to person for freak outs good and bad : )

Then

And now

Here are a few things that I wanted to mention, but couldn’t find a way of slipping in organically:

1. All of my websites automatically re-direct to “.co.uk” instead of “.com”.  Sometimes cool, sometimes annoying.

2.  I have discovered the challenges of doing laundry without a dryer in a country where it rains all the time.  Thankfully, our house just got a dryer, so it shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

3. "Posh" is quickly becoming my new favorite word.  It means a mixture of upscale and classy.  "That part of the city is so posh."

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful weekend : )

<3 Molly

"Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel." ~ Philippians 1:27

Adventures in Belfast

Greetings!

Happy September, Labor Day, back to school, etc.  I hope the start of the football season has everyone excited!  I know I'm going to find it difficult to keep up with everything in a land where 'football' actually means 'soccer,' but I am up to the challenge!  And if you're not a football fan, well... here's a kitten:

meow

Last week I journeyed to Belfast, Northern Ireland for a Kairos training conference called Student Worker Outreach Training (SWOT).  There's lots to tell, but first... getting there.  Lindsey, Joe, and I flew from the London Gatwick airport, which is an hour from where the bus picks up.  From there, the flight to Belfast is just over an hour, plus twenty minutes from the airport to the conference location via bus and a bit of walking.  All in all, the trip should take a few hours.  Should...  Unfortunately, we had a lot of trouble finding the bus stop once we got off the tube.  We eventually figured it out, but just as we were approaching the stop, the 6:45 bus was pulling away (we originally planned to catch the one at 6:30), and the driver didn't stop.  The buses are supposed to come about every 10 minutes, but due to an accident on the highway, the next bus didn't get there until 7:20.  We made it to the airport by 8:40, but our flight was at 8:50.  Needless to say, we didn't make it.  Thankfully, there was another flight available that day... 6 hours later.

It wasn't all bad though!  The airport had a chapel that we decided to visit since we had so much time to kill.  We chatted with the Chaplain for awhile about why we were headed to Belfast, he did a short homily for us, and we prayed with him as well.  The whole thing was really great, and a testament to how the Lord can bring good out of a bad situation : )  Plus, I got to experience the joys of sprinting through an airport.

Fast forward many hours, a bus, and more confused walking around later, and we finally made it to our destination.  SWOT is a conference put on by Kairos to educate and equip student missionaries.  The theme this time was "vision," focusing on what the goals are for our university outreaches, and why they are important.  There were about thirty people in total from outreaches in London (England), Dublin (Republic of Ireland), Belfast (Northern Ireland), Glasgow (Scotland), Leuven (Belgium), and Munich (Germany).

  

I could describe in vivid detail everything that we talked about, but then you'd be here all day.  So, in the interest of time, I shall just say that it was ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!  Seriously.  I got to hang out with awesome people and learn a ton about the way things work on this side of the pond.  Quite different from what I'm used to, I must say.  The outreaches here are smaller, younger, and face different challenges than the ones in the States.  For example: most students get finish university in three years, which means that there is a much higher turnaround rate for students.  I remember my fourth year at UofM as a time where I really delved into UCO, so I can see how only having three years per student would be difficult.  But I rejoice in the differences, in the challenges that these outreaches face in such a secular culture; it's why I'm here.

Unfortunately, there wasn't really time to sight see in Belfast, but I did get to see bits of the city here and there.  We were staying nears Queens University, which is beautiful.  And I did get to go to a proper pub, which was awesome.

Queen's University

Getting back to London on Monday was no problem at all, except that I was running on about 3 hours of sleep (everyone was hanging out on our last night together and no one wanted to go to bed, so we didn't...). On Tuesday, Ralph, an affiliate of the Servants of the Word, took Lindsey, myself, and another guy called Bobby sightseeing.  This time we went to Greenwich, a district in the south east part of London that's famous for the Prime Meridian running through it.  The world's clock is based around Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).  To the folks in the US eastern time zone, you are at GMT -5, meaning that you're 5 hours behind me.  GMT is used as the standard for measuring time around the world.  So basically, we went to the center of time ; )

In addition to the meridian, there are a lot of museums and things to see in Greenwich.  We went to the Maritime Museum, and explored the campus of the Old Royal Naval College.  They also have a planetarium up on a hill, which gives an excellent view of the southern part of London.

View of Canary Wharf from across the Thames

Lindsey and I in the Greenwich Welcome Center.  I'm wearing an admiral's cap, if you were wondering.

Old Royal Naval College

View of London from the planetarium

Yesterday we went to the Union for the University of London, which houses Koinonia's office (which we call "the Kube").  All the furniture had been pushed to one side of the room for cleaning, so we spent a few hours getting everything set back up for the coming school year.  The Kube serves as an office space for the Koinonia staff, as well as a place for students to hang out or each lunch on campus.  The University of London (UCL) is on the northern side of the city, right next to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

All in all, it's been a good week.  Every day I'm surprised by something new or odd.  For instance, there are some very interesting potato chip flavors here (well, technically they're called "crisps," but I've always been a bit of a rebel).  In addition to your staples, there's also "smoky bacon," "steak," "roast chicken," "prawn cocktail," "pickled onion," "tomato ketchup," and "Worcester sauce."  I'll admit that I haven't been brave enough to try some of these... yet.

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to contact me or post a comment with questions, comments, concerns, puns, etc.  I'm always in the market for a good joke; the cheesier, the better!

<3 Molly

"We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.  If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."  ~ Romans 14:7-8