7am Had a prayer time with the guys in our Tranent Church flat blessing the church in Tranent.
8am Men's Breakfast. Talked to a friend about how we could use the bus in his area of Dumbiedykes and decided to do a video project on the bus between 6 and 7pm on Thursdays. A little bit of a scary because I don't know the kids and it is a rough area.
12.30pm Lunchtime SU club for P5,6,7 that a few of my friends and I do. We had 28 children in the hall this week. I used a great kids programme built around the new Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe film. It's Fantastic! Very hard to find on the web. This is it: http://www.outreach.com/print/articlef.asp?article_name=p-narniacurriculumpdf&sid=43F11D803E17F
We played Narnia tig. They love it. We watched the clip of Aslan being killed. Then we had a talk about Jesus dying for us and for the first time we prayed and said sorry for the bad things we had done and asked to feel Gods love. This is nearly the end of our “Meet the Real Lion” Narnia series. The kids are loving it. About 1/5 of them haven't seen the film. It was great, the boys don't giggle thinking the praying is silly. They quietly closed their eyes and repeated the prayer I led them in. It really felt like they meant it and were reaching out for God. I felt a bit choked up actually. Had the headmistress in checking out what we do for a short while- a bit scary- even though she is totally behind us and is fantastic.
1.30pm Went home and updated our GenerationX (The Name of my children's cell)“Bus Passes”. They really help me remember the kids names and I have been flicking through them and pray for them when I see their faces. The effort is paying off. Hard work though.
2.30pm I went to see my pal who has created a board game and played it. I can now see why he likes it so much because it is very good. Kind of like souped up risk but quicker- a good thing.
4 pm I went to the bus and got it out the compound and belted over to the road (47 MPH down the bypass) outside StonyHill community centre and got there just in time for 4.30. There were about 15 kids standing their waiting. When they saw the bus they said “ is that our bus?” because it looked so scabby! They had only seen it in the dark. The inside is finished but the outside isn't, so it looks pretty old and scabby.
We played Narnia tig with them. I follow the same program as the SU club. Watched the film in the cinema. Its great to see them sprawled out over all the beanbags in the top floor den watching the film on the massive screen with the volume on loud.
The programme has this cool game where there are 20 cards rolled up in balloons. They burst them get the card and match it with someone else. 10 cards map out the story of Narnia and then another 10 map out the corresponding story in the real world: Alsan Lord; Jesus Lord, Edmund tempted;we tempted, Witch lied;Devil lied, Edmund had to Die;we have to die, Aslan swapped with him;Jesus swaps with us, Alan rose;Jesus rose, Alan freed statues;Jesus frees us, Aslan destroy evil, Jesus destroy evil, Aslan crowns;Jesus crowns us etc
Brilliant! Really helps the kids get the progression and relate to it.
We had a lot of questions about “is Jesus the only way?”. It's really hard to be unequivocal and still stay focused on the point that Gods love is for us. The best bit though was this: I said “well, lets pray and speak to God and see what he does”. So we closed our eyes and I led them in a prayer that kind of went “ God we want to know you. We want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We don't just want to believe what Darius says just because he says it(a little surprised laughter), we want to know it from you. Please help us know you.” Lots of them prayed it out. A few giggles from some embarrassed boys but on the whole they stayed focused on God. Then we had a bit of time where they were quiet and waited for God to touch them. He did, I knew he would. His answerer to all our questions is simply: Him. I asked for a show of hands of those who felt something happen. Its amazing what can happen in just one minute of prayer. Unfortunately I didn't have time to ask them all what happened. I asked a new kid what he felt. He said “I felt sparkly inside”. I think that is just about the best description of how I feel when I feel God touch me. Fantastic. We made a real breakthrough. We've gone from the “I'm going to teach you something” stage to the “Now you know enough to discuss, lets talk about it” stage.
Well after that, filled the bus up. 100 litres of fuel! £90. Takes a while.
That evening I parked it up in Macmerry and chilled out with a pal on the bus and talked about life the universe and everything. This time was the highlight of the day. He's not a Christian but simply wants to live life deliberately and not just drift along. We talk about getting in the “Zone” a lot. (That place in sport where everything just seems to flow and go well and time slows down.) We have a time where its kind of like a conversation club. We both just talk about life but drill down through the superficial to the deep issues of life like trust and love, how is it in the real world not just in theory. It's a place for me where I can share my faith with someone in a casual deep way without feeling that I need to fix up my friend and sort him out. Its like he's on his way and so am I and lets trust God to guide us. The bus really swayed around a lot in the high wind. It was like being on a boat. I'm glad we paid 4k to put the heating in. It was worth it. The night was cold and it rumbled on on low keeping us comfortable. Noisy though. With hind sight I might have put it in the back of the bus out the way.
Locked the bus up at 12.20am and went home.
One and a half years of dreaming about using a bus like this for outreach is starting to come to pass. Thanks God.
I'll tell you how next week goes.
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