Our latest newsletter/support request....

children at a village where Love 'N Care
work in Madagascar

Dear Blog followers, we are sure that many of you who follow this blog will also be included on our emailing lists, however if you haven't read our latest emailed newsletter then please go ahead and continue reading.

Lots has happened since we last sent our email about our trip to Madagascar, firstly we have been blessed with funds to pay for the expensive flights to Antananarivo and secondly we have also bought, insured and taxed a little car which will enable us to travel about in England both before and after our trip.

our new run a round!

The guys on the ground in Madagascar have also been in touch and we just wanted to encourage you with their thoughts about us returning to share with them, its wonderful to know that they are excited about our return and what follows is some of their words which we hope will encourage you to support us as we seek to support them!

'Greetings from MADAGASCAR'

'We are so thrilled to have heard that Tim and Maz are coming here in Madagascar to serve with us in Love-N-Care next year'.

The email goes to on say that they:-

children thanking God for their food
at the Bethany school

 'believe that the skills (we) have developed during (our) time in South Africa will be great assets for Madagascar'.

One of the young men who attended our Sports Outreach training in 2014 continues with some encouragement saying:-

'it will be an opportunity to continue the training you stared with us here about sports and see what is working and what needs improving'

Madagascar
(twice the size of Great Britain)
sits in the Indian ocean
off the east coast of Africa

Our friend Theo, who works along side the Project Directors Cho and Deborah, continues with some words that make us feel very humbled but is exactly what we are feeling too:-

'I'm so thankful to Our Lord for your coming here I believe you are an answer to our prayers, you know when you shared about your training in emerging leaders I said to myself, yes Lord my country needs this ........but for this to come we need you both to come (and share this with us)'

The ending to the email is what we are seeking to do and reads:-

the young leaders who we shared our
sports outreach training with in May 2014

'Thank you for coming and your willingness to pour out yourselves and serve my country'

With our regular support from ThembalitshaUK ending last June we have had no regular income since then, therefore we are still a very long way from the amount that we need to ensure that this trip will be a success.

thanks Mr Nam for the use of
the photothat he took whilst out
visiting Love N Care Ministries 

As highlighted above we have had funds come through to pay for our flights and we are extremely thankful to those of you who have already given.

For those still considering supporting us for what we believe will be both a pivotal trip for us and the people of Madagascar then either click on this link to give online or please write a comment below or find us on Facebook to find out the best ways to give.

Grey Days......but bright futures...(another poem)

we'd forgotten how grey the English autumn days can be, it seems like we haven't seen the sun in weeks and this can be rather depressing. it got me (Tim) thinking about living life in the sun, actually living life to the full and how so many people seem to be living their lives like a 'grey day' without fulfilling all the potential in their lives. 

often people have been held back, mainly by the culture they've grown up in or in social circumstances that have never allowed them to express themselves to the full or allowed them to move beyond the mainstream and those are hard walls to break down. I totally understand that and I also understand some of our life choices have led us to what are now difficult situations to break out of.

anways that said I do believe that there is a life worth living that is oft different to those that we are currently living out and this led me to write this short poem, which is sort of a work in progress but I hope it gives you some idea of where my thoughts have been going.

Poem ;- Grey People


'People living in colours of grey, when above the clouds its a beautiful day,

Lives that have never full begun, not having experienced the brightness of sun,

Seeing the world with monochrome vision, the colour all drained with no definition,

Wandering round with eyes half open, with youthful dreams unfulfilled and broken,

If only our teachers had seen more potential, with classes of children this is so essential,

What of the life of rainbow filled light? with the future ahead all shinning and bright?

It's time to step out with no hesitation, onto a path that leads beyond other peoples expectation,

Don't wait for someone to say its OK, dream big!, this is your life create your own gig today.

There are colours out there that look a bit bright, but don't worry I know they won't bite,

So don't miss out on your bright tomorrow, by following a path that only leads to more sorrow.

The End!

books, books, podcasts and more books

we were chatting with a friend the other day, who just so happens to read this blog, and she asked about the books that we were reading. she had noticed the list changing and increasing to the right hand side of the page and was intrigued about our reading list and which books we liked, why we picked them and which ones we would recommend for her to read.

well we just thought that there might be a few more of you out there in internet land who would also like to know what we have been reading, why and which ones have really inspired us over the last nine months, (and which ones we would suggest you avoid). we have also included some 'podcasts' which have also been helpful, along with a daily email devotion which we would recommend to everybody but more of that later.

before we start however can we add that we are no experts, our thoughts are based on things we have found helpful, or not, and given that both our schooling was undertaken at state secondary schools in the 1970's and 1980's (in Buckinghamshire which still had/has Grammar schools) our initial exposure to literature had been quite limited. that said since we've been married our love of reading has expanded and we both really really enjoy exploring new genre some of which will be seen in our choices of reading during this sabbatical time.

more ramblings before we go any further, just to put things into context. the initial six months of our sabbatical were very structured, we were really keen to make the best use of the time we had been given, not only were we keen to travel, but we were very keen to take time to reflect on the past six years, have some restoration time and also expand our thoughts and ideas, therefore our initial reading list reflected that.

you will see the list of books that we have been reading on the right hand side of this page, those that we read first are at the bottom of the list, with the newer books being towards the top of the list. we have taken the time to highlight which ones we have completed by marking them so.

it's really hard to know where to start and how we are going to do this but we suppose you've got to start somewhere so the first book that jumps out at us as we survey the list is a title by Brian McClaren called 'A new kind of Christian', we read this together in Grenada, the weather was perfect and our long summer was still ahead of us. we had known of Brians' work before we had moved to South Africa but had struggled to find it too endearing to us as we served right at the 'coal face'. Brian's style comes across as written by an upper to middle class middle aged American sipping coffee in the local cafe, therefore it was with some trepidation that we had taken the leap to read this book together. however we really loved the book, the way in which Brian connected some wider thoughts around 'church' and 'organised religion' and bought it together in a fictional story, the main dialogue and story line revolved around a pastor and a 'thinker' which was great. we took a lot out of the book and much of our further 'spiritual' reading was taken along the same lines.

what lines we hear you cry, well this is quite hard to put into words without people thinking that we've gone totally off the rails, but lines around a God who might just want to be known to all mankind, all mankind would include those we have often considered 'in' and those we often consider 'out'. further reading around this can be found in a daily email by Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk who is very hot on the topic of 'dualistic thinking'. it would be wrong of us to try to capture what he has to say about this here and any how it would take another two or three blog post to do do that. just to say that we would recommend signing up for his daily email which looks into the way in which the church has somewhat taken Jesus' teachings and made the hoops of 'getting in' little smaller and the outworking of the 'gospel' less important than Jesus originally had showed us.

another author on the list is a guy called Robert Farrar Capon, who has written three fantastic books on the gospels found in the bible, Robert seeks to expand and explore what Jesus 'the Christ', really really meant when he shared his 'parables' with those around him two thousand years ago and whether you consider yourself as a person of faith or not we would challenge you to read these books which basically talk about God's grace towards all men (who he created) and which were written and published in the 1980's but have been somewhat lost (or never recommended to us!).

on a less spiritual but never the less totally fascinating read was the book that told the story of a young american athlete who took part in the 1938 Olympics in Germany, during the war was called up to the american air-force and after being shot down was shipwrecked and then captured by the Japaneses, the book, 'Unbroken' by Laura Hillenbrand, which has also been made into a film which isn't a patch on the book, with it's edge of your seat style following one man's life as he endured torture and almost starvation at the hands of his captors. the fact that it's a true story has meant that this is included in our must reads.

we have both been reading the Bible for over forty years but we'd never really looked at the history and origins of this incredible book. Alexander Shaia's Heart and Mind looks at why the gospels were written, who they were written to and how we can apply their teaching in our lives in the 21st century. this book as a must read for those of you who are living Christ centered lives and we would wholeheartedly recommend it to you.

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one other topic we had never looked at were other religions and their holy books but encouraged by Brain McClaren and further podcasts by Rob Bell (an oft criticised pastor) (infact Alexander Shaia shared about his book on one of those Robcasts), we were keen to look at the possibility of God being seen and showing himself to other people groups around the world, rather that just the Jews and or first century Christians. this type of thinking might be seen as a little 'off the wall' however we are finding it hard to dismiss what these thinkers are saying.

in fact Tim has taken time to read the great Hindu classic the bhagavad gita which for those who haven't read it includes dialogue between Prince Arjuna and Lord Krishna (seen as a god in Hindu tradition) as he explains about the way we should live and love here on earth. the book captures the essence of 'selfless action' so brilliantly lived out by Gandi in more recent times and reflects lots of our Christian views from an 'eastern cultural understanding' of God as his love for man, whom he ultimately created, each in his own image.

we have both enjoyed reading some lighter books, not in the literal sense of the word!, Tim thoroughly enjoyed reading Micheal Palins 'Travelling to work', Alice in Wonderland was also something that we'd never fully read and what with Tims love of travel and history there have been books about the history of England, the invasion of Grenada and more recently the siege of Malta in the second world war.

Maz' individual lists all seem to be quite hardcore but she assures me that she has enjoyed her times and has fully explored the new world of Podcasts with regular times of encouragement and entertainment by listening to those.

so really that was short and sweet after all but with all we have said the bible has continued to be a place of solace and although our minds are being expanded by other reading it is still a source of encouragement as we step into the new season of our lives. you'll have seen that we're never gonna make itinerary critics but we hope that this short post might have given you some insight into what we have been enjoying during our reflective time out.