Triumphant Return...kinda.

I feel slightly better, less like death, more like I can actually get over this bug and I am long overdue for an update. Thankfully, my mother has taken pity on me in my time of illness and I did not have to worry about her leaving scathing messages in the comment section about how I was letting my faithful readers down. And by faithful readers I don't mean Rhys who only remembers to check my blog when he is sitting next to me in the office...that is not in any way faithful.

Anyway, I have a ton to tell you so let's start with last Sunday.

Last Sunday morning, Heidi and I volunteered in Kid's Church where we made this incredibly complicated 3D craft and ate cookies. Then we had fellowship lunch at the church, which is like a potluck that the entire church is invited to. But what was so great about this lunch was the fact that all the workers for Day of Prayer got to go first...which was me! I was so excited. We all ate and laughed and just made fun of each other until it was time to head down to Castle Square for Swansea's Global Day of Prayer. Once we got to the square, we were instructed to don day-glow neon green safety vests so that people would know who to come to in the event they thought of some pressing question. I was a steward for the day and basically handed out song books and kept an eye out for disturbances in the crowd. Before we got out of the car though everyone passed around the sunscreen so that none of our pasty skinned british friends would burn to death in the seldom seen sun. The day was gorgeous and the square was full of Christians and non-Christians alike. We had an awesome praise band that was stocked with some of Parklands finest and all of the exceedingly helpful stewards were also from Parklands. At one point they brought out signs that had the names of various towns in Wales, in both English and Welsh, and we prayed for those cities. It was just a wonderful opportunity for several churches to come together and really show their city that they cared.

Monday and Tuesday were the usual, plus we had to help get the church back in order after the Day of Prayer and we had to air out the steward vests because most of the vests were full of boy sweat and we didn't want them to mold.

Wednesday I helped Rhys do yardwork for an elderly lady in the community, she was so nice and very interested in America. Thankfully the yards here are tiny so it took us less than an hour. It was cool though because the lawn mower looked like a vaccum, so it looked like we were vaccumming up her lawn and all the daisies growing on it. After that I went with Keefe to the CU meeting at one of the local schools. CU stands for Christian Union and is one of the few Christian organizations that is run by the students in the school. Dan joined us to share about his trip to Australia and Indonesia. He went on a surfing mission trip and just returned with such a God given glow and passion about reaching young guys through surfing. It was amazing to see him speak and hear him say so many of the things I found myself telling you guys last summer when I came home. He continues to amaze me everytime I talk to him about his trip and just about how God moved in his life during the past six months. I also met the kid who runs the CU. He is still a student, but he's like a one man Christian army. He makes me reevaluate my life to see if I'm living as full stop as he is. He continually goes into places where the kids think he is weird or aren't interested in what he is saying and he just loves them, tells them the gospel and prays for them. He prays for them so much, all of them, and with such love it blows my mind. He reminds me of Paul in Phillipians, which is what I've been reading during my quiet times. Paul prays for people with such a joyful spirit and I'm so guilty of lacking that genuine joy in my prayer life and my daily interactions with people. These kids are just so in love with Jesus that they just radiate His spirit...its what I'm hoping to achieve one day.

Wednesday was also youth bible study which I enjoy every time. The kids are so great and welcoming and very funny. This past meeting they sang acoustic Britney Spears' songs. If you've never heard several Welsh teenage boys sing "Hit Me Baby One More Time" along to a single guitar, then you my friends are not living. They are hilarious.

Wednesday was about the time that I succumbed to the death flu, so I spent Thursday, which was my day off, asleep in bed attempting to overcome it. When I went to work Friday, Matt my supervisor showed up for about an hour battling some intense food poisoning or something....he used WebMD and they told him he had anthrax. I had to convince him he couldn't have anthrax, but he was so sure he was going to be dead in three days and that I had anthrax too because it was so highly contagious. Ridiculous. By the way he does not have Anthrax because he played drums in today's morning service and looked perfecty healthy, while his wife looked exasperated. That poor woman needs your prayers far more than that silly surfer boy does.

This Sunday morning I led Crash, which is the younger youth sunday school. Unfortunately, there were only six, and they were all boys, and we were discussing loneliness...can I get some sympathy here? Hardest lesson ever, but it always is with boys...anyway I made some good connections and we had a few laughs so its all good. After that we went to Student Lunch for a few hours and have just returned to rest up before going to the Sunday night youth meeting which I will update you on as soon as possible, because its going to be mucho exciting but it is still a secret. I also have pictures for Global Day of Prayer which I will post along with some shots from tonight.

Thanks to all of you who prayed during my sickness, I think I'm going to survive it.

Please Pray for:

Direction: in my life and in the lives of those I meet

Open Doors: I'm still building several relationships and prayer would be an excellent thing at this moment to help me through the frustration.

GSUS LIVE: the GSUS live trailer will be in Swansea this week and Heidi and I will be working on it all week long, you'll hear more about it later, but just pray that God will use it in powerful and lasting ways

Nathan: Heidi's brother is 16 and coming over in a few weeks to do skate ministry in England, this is his first mission trip and pray for his safety in travel and strength to undertake God's mission and just enthusiasm and joy for what he is going to be doing

RBWD: Hob - Stove