FOOD

The new idea to start midweek is to start having meals with the youth and their friends. Very simple, many other places already do it, not exactly visionary, but I am quite excited about it.

It is the simplist of things, cooking simple pot meals one evening a week with the young people from our church, with their friends, with those we come into contact with on the weekends through the YC, and those we come into contact with through other things we do with sport and school and just eating with them. Get to know people, get to know what is going on in peoples lives, be family.

It is something that is dying out with many families, sharing and eating together, it is something we try hard as a family to do, we don't always do it, but we try. As a church family, we want to be there and share and be an ear, be interested and make an effort and maybe, without judging, be a family in a place where family is not always evident or able.

Jesus ate with people a lot, it was important to Him, it should be important to me.

Clever With Time

I am going to have to be more and more careful with my time, there are new things I want to start and things I want to be more involved in, I am now a father of 4 and I want to be there and give my children and wife the time the deserve.

I have bought a diary, I am now for the first time, one of those blokes who walks around with a diary in my hands, making notes and saying things like ' I can't do then, it will have to be..' and ' I'll see if I can fit you in'. I have not actually said either of these things yet, but I may have to.

It is good to be busy and I will not be complaining about it, it is also good to rest, I am not going to complain about that either, it is important to have balance and be clever with my time.

I will be starting the Youth Cafe up again on Friday, although I will be taking a back seat more and more and it will begin to be run by the older youth, I am only attending 5 times before Christmas, I will be on the end of the phone on the other occasions. I want to spend some time getting a new widweek project up and running, I will explain more on another occasion. Because of this I will be stepping back from Sunday evening stuff, so Tanya and I have a definite night for ourselves.

Tanya and I really want to start pushing for street pastors in Diss, this is already starting to show some encouraging signs.
Something else that takes up time, yet something I am very pleased about, are more oppurtunities to speak, there are also some learning oppurtunities and some community work to be getting on with.

I really want to enjoy being busy, to do so, I need to be more organised and put the right things first. Time will tell.

Back Again

I am back, broadband sorted, thanks to the lovely people at BT, I got a nice package, which is cheaper than virgins and I get BT vision, which I have to be careful does not become my new idol, TV on demand is wonderful and addictive. I also get ESPN, which means that on Saturday I was able to watch Liverpool beating West Ham.

As mentioned in my last post, I am now a father of 4, although we have changed the spelling of her name, it is now Vitoria Arianna. She is great, healthy and the best sleeper yet, Tanya is doing good, we are both tired and trying to be aware we are both tired, which is hard, I was a bit of an angry man a couple of weeks a go, I am getting over myself.

The other kids are doing good, although Morgan has had a rough start at school, things are starting to settle down, with his inclusion in the rugby team and some other activities helping. He did have a great and busy summer, which I was really thankful to God for, he needed it, he now has to stay focused. Mason is doing good, in a new football team, mentioned in the newspaper last week, so we are very proud. We are trying to deal with some issues with our boys at the moment, which is challenging, just trying to get them to think more and to be more positive in everything. Turaya is great, enjoying playschool, although the first week of our new arrival, she was very emotional, now she is back enjoying herself.

We should be moving soon and there are lots of things to start, as always, especially if you work with youth, September is busy and the time to start new things, I will share more another time.

We are still without a car, although we have the use of one most of the time, I do have a concern that one family is helping all the time, and we do need something more permanent and bigger, we will keep praying.

I do feel on the brink of once more breaking through, of taking another step up. After being pruned back for so long, I feel shoots starting to grow.

Vitoria Ariana Heasley

I am happy to announce the birth of my daughter Vitoria Ariana Heasley, yesterday, the 26th of August at 1:26 am, she weighed 6 pounds and 13 ounces. Mother and baby are home and all are well. God is good.

Shut Down

I am afraid that being bankrupt means that Virgin Media will not allow you broadband, I will have to move to Sky or something like it that do allow bankrupts broadband, but for now and the foreseeable future, I am offline.

Things are good, God is working, be back soon, probably with a new family member, due 24th by the way. I'll let you know. Bye.

Street Pastoring again

Street Pastoring is something I really enjoy and am comfortable doing, I understand it is not everyones cup of tea, it is mine, I have been recently leading teams, which is something new and something which I am growing into and enjoying as well.

Last week I was out in Norwich city centre, it was a night of finding people on the floor, drunk, beaten, drugged or one guy had seemingly been stabbed, this is not always what nights are like, but this night was and what amazed me, was not the people we were finding, it was the passers by. As Christians, we are generally accused of being judgemental, in fact, during the day there had been a gay pride march, and as a team going out, we thought we were going to get it in the neck for being so judgemental ( were we judging?), we didn't, we only had some very positive remarks from the gay community. In general though, someone was on the floor, we would get people walking up to tell us, they deserved it, calling names, making really stupid comments and of course, when there were girls on the floor, there were blokes who wanted to come over and sneek a peek, there is nothing like an unconscious girl puking on the floor and several blokes hanging around to see if their boobs pop out or what knickers she is wearing.

As street pastors, we get a very positive reaction on the streets, but people rarely have something positive to or helpful to say to those we are helping, I say rarely, but last Saturday there was a passing fella who really took charge in the stabbing incident and when we were helping a spiked young lady, another girl came up offering to help, saying that we had helped her in the same way. I suppose in general I was just a bit shocked at peoples negativity and judgementalism, especially, as I have said, it is what Christians are constantly accused of.

There was also a young lady who we helped, who had been let down by the 'system', it has really started me thinking, I will explain more on another occasion.

Momentum

I feel a need to write and get a momentum about it, there are several things hapeening with me at the moment, several things I think God is saying to me, and just some stories I want to share, but in a nice way, I have not had the chance to sit down and write, this is my first attempt at getting up to date and I have lots of other things to get up to date with, it can be hard to get into a routine during the summer holidays, especially as I am still unemployed and the childen are off, routines go out the window.

I notice I have mentioned, but not really explained, the 2 cars I currently have use of. As a bankrupt, my car has been taken away from me, if I manage to buy another car, while I am still undischarged, or get given a car to own, it can be taken from me as an asset. At the moment, one friend is on a 5 week honeymoon, so we have a huge people carrier to use and another friend has just left her car at ours everytime she is not using it. So, we have had one car taken away, we now have 2 to use. God is good, so is His family. We have also had some great gifts from different people.

It was my first time speaking at DC3 on Sunday, I enjoyed it and have been quite self critical and will look forward to speaking again and growing in it, I was very nervous, I may post it, but if you can't wait, I am not going to do a link to it, but it is available at DC3's website under resources.

I am writing some other things down to remind myself now, just that I was street pastoring and I do feel God is again speaking about family, community and systems. I must keep up.