New Life

If you've followed our prayer updates over the past year (or even less), you might have noticed that once a month we meet with a church plant in Deptford (East London) to invest in their teenagers. The faith community consists of Chinese from North Vietnam who have immigrated to London. Their teenagers (mostly pre-teens) are second and even third generation in the UK. So, in reality, they are as much Londoners as they are of their parents cultural background, if not more. When we met them, they had little to no knowledge of Jesus or the God of the Bible. The understanding that they did have came primarily from film and TV. It has been an interesting road.

Each time we have met with them, we have shared a different aspect of God's nature and the human condition. Over the past few months, we have moved closer and closer to the resolution of a holy God with self-centered men - Jesus, the Christ. Today, Angie shared her experience with Jesus and I told of God's sacrificial love for us, His enemies, through the story of the peace child (http://www.newhope.bc.ca/97-12-21.htm). In the end, we had each of them close their eyes. Then we asked them to raise their hand if they wanted to make a decision to follow Jesus today. I had a sense that that one or two of them had been wrestling with God over the past few months. I expected that we might get one, maybe two reluctant hands.

With their eyes closed, without seeing what the person next to them was doing, ALL FIVE enthusiastically raised a hand. There was nothing subtle about any of their decisions. They were confident! And now, these five Chinese-British teenagers have made a confident decision to follow Jesus. It's still a bit surreal, but SO exciting. Thank you for every one of you who has prayed for us and for the teenagers of London. The hope of Christ is being made known to the nations.

Bonfires and Mustaches

So Wednesday November 5th was Guy Fawkes Night (also called Bonfire Night) in England. Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of English Roman Catholic revolutionaries who planned to carry out the Gunpowder Plot. The Gunpowder Plot was the failed assassination attempt against King James I of England and VI of Scotland. The plot intended to kill the king, his family, and most of the Protestant aristocracy in a single attack by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening on 5 November 1605. The plot was foiled shortly before its intended completion, as Fawkes was captured while guarding the gunpowder on that dark night in November. (taken from Wikipedia). So originally the idea was to make an effigy of Guy Fawkes and burn it, but now most people just make a bonfire. Since Guy Fawkes was on a weekday this year many people celebrated this weekend. Last night we went to our first Bonfire Night. We were here last year at this time, but were still settling in and didn't really know any British people yet. So we had a really good time watching the bonfire and the fireworks and eating good food (including my fun autumn cookies) and spending time with friends. At the end of the night we decided that it's basically like our 4th of July celebration, but with a bonfire. Here is a picture of my fun cookies:


On a totally separate note, we were talking to the teenagers of the family who we have gotten to know and they told us about a very interesting phenomenon. I'll preface by saying that sponsorship is a very big deal in this country. I've never seen so many adverts for sponsorship of all kinds of things. So our friends were telling us about a very interesting thing being sponsored at their high school: mustaches. That's right, mustaches. They call this month "Movember" (mo being short for mustache). The kids said it was kind of creepy seeing all their male teachers growing mustaches. Apparently the men get sponsored with the purpose of raising awareness for men's health. Find out more at www.movember.com