Not my will

The newsy posts are much more fun to write. But this one really needs to be written too, because I really want to be as genuine and open with my family and friends who are far away as I am with my friends here.

God has been really dealing with my heart in the matter of my will, especially with the decisions I make about how to spend my time. Over the last few weeks, I have spent most of my free time with my friends who are community members. Not necessarily a bad thing, they are my family here.

But in doing so, I was consistently ignoring the Holy Spirit's prompting to reach out to a resident here - who happens to be a resident that I really dislike and would rather avoid at all costs. Other residents, no problem. This one person I couldn't even look in the eye.

Then, about a week ago something happened to that resident that forced me to stop ignoring God's voice. It was such a hard night, to have to really face how selfish I had been. What was worse was how indifferent I had become to my sin. Thankfully, God is so faithful to patiently wait for me to wake up - and he gave me a huge blessing in Alice, who has been dealing with almost exactly the same issue and prayed with me this week about our situations.

Please pray that God would continue to change my heart about this resident (He has already started!), and also for Alice and the residents that God has been giving her opportunities to share with. She is currently doing a bible study through John with an Asian student, and is developing a deep friendship with another resident.

Thank you, dear friends!

Impressionists, Weddings, and Sundays

This is going to be the "newsy" post (ugh, and can I say how frustrating it is to try to type quotes on a British keyboard? Their quotation marks are switched with the @ sign so you have to press shift + 2 to get quotes!). I promise that I'll also try to get a profound, thoughtful post up in the next day or so too.

I finally posted pictures from my Greenwich trip a few weeks back - I've decided that Kyeong-Ah needs to be my personal photographer on every trip, especially with all the cool special color effects she does.

On my day off this week, I went to the National Gallery of Art with Alice, Lahn (my roommate) and a cute little Hungarian community member named Reka. They had a special exhibit on Impressionists there and I got to see some of my favorite Renoirs and Monets - and discovered some new favorites by Pissaro. Very excellent way to spend a day

Yesterday was a day that we've been anticipating for the last two months - a wedding of two former community members. Szabi (a Hungarian) left before I arrived, but Rachel has been my co-worker and Portuguese tutor for the last two months. It was an absolutely gorgeous wedding, but we all breathed a huge sigh of relief when it was over. The service was chock full of community members singing, playing, praying, and speaking - in Hungarian, Portuguese, Polish, and English :) The sweetest thing was to see the parents of the bride and groom try to get to know each other with very rudimentary English. I think the only reason it worked was because they were all fluent in God's love :)

I finally figured out that life here doesn't ever fall into "normal". If we aren't experiencing a huge rush of new people for the beginning of term, then we have a third of the community gone on retreat, a wedding to arrange, worship night to organize, or new community members to induct. It definitely keeps life interesting :)

Sadly, I discovered last night that my Brazilian brothers just don't have the cultural background to truly appreciate the Princess Bride - but at least now Pedro can't go around saying "As You Wish" without knowing it's double meaning :)

This is the office where I work. Sundays are my favorite day. I spent some time in prayer in the chapel, enjoyed meals with my friends, cleaned my room (much needed, I got a call from my roommate while I was at work saying, "I couldn't believe how clean our room is!"), and planned the prayer service I am co-leading next week. After working three hours, I went to church and enjoyed a great service. Sundays always remind me how truly blessed I am.

Third Brazilian Brother . . .

This isn't so much an update on life as it is a story of one of my friends. Its a little lengthy, so only read it if you have time and want a good laugh at the end.

I'm not sure how much I've said about Leandro, but he did something last night that officially made him my third Brazilian brother (he's the one on the left in the picture).

Samuel and Pedro are of course the first two: Samuel is older than me, and usually acts like an older brother. Pedro is younger than me and usually heckles me like a younger brother. Leandro defies them both by being younger than me, but by acting more like an older brother than the other two put together.

To preface the story, you should know a couple things about Leandro. He is Brazilian, but looks Korean because his mother is Korean. He is fluent in Portuguese, Korean, and English - although it took me a couple weeks to realize that his English was so good because he speaks so rarely. Alice thought that he arrived a week after we did because she didn't notice him until then, but he had actually been here for two weeks before us. I think I heard him speak maybe a paragraph's worth of words in the first three weeks that I knew him.

Leandro spent a lot of time with us because, of course, he is Brazilian, and he is one of Pedro's roommates. But I really knew nothing about him, just enjoyed his silent company during breakfast or listened to his guitar playing during worship. When Samuel and Yeon Bin left for Italy, Leandro quickly took over their room saying it was the most peaceful place in Lee Abbey.

During that time, Alice decided that Leandro needed to open up a bit. So in that sweet and irresistable way of hers, she managed to worm a 10 minute conversation out of him - a complete miracle compared to our previous paltry attempts. I think something changed that day because I noticed a difference in Leandro. He talked to me (just one or two sentences) occasionally without me needing to take a pry-bar to his mouth. The kicker really came when Alice had to go to the hospital: both Pedro and Samuel were gone, and he more than stepped up to the plate to take care of her - getting her food from the kitchen, visiting her, and making sure that she had everything else she needed. Several days later when I was sick, he did the same for me, bringing me tea from the coffee bar and fetching some clothes from my room (since I was staying in Alice's room). Last week, he started calling me by Alice's pet name, Brittney Maria (pronounced "BrEE-chney Mar-EE-a.")

So, back to last night's story. The Brazilians were having a kind of goodbye party for Yeon Bin in his and Samuel's room. My roommate had come to me previously and asked me if it was okay for her to entertain another party of Koreans in our room. I told her it was no problem since I knew I'd be up late with the goodbye party anyway. But at about 12:30 I started to get really sleepy and pretty soon Leandro noticed. I didn't want to go back to my room because I knew that there would still be a lot of people there, so I was content to just stay in Yeon Bin's room for a while longer. I thought to myself that if there were still people in my room by 1:30 or 2, I'd just go sleep in Alice's room. But Leandro wasn't happy with the situation, and at 1:00 he looked at me and said, "Let's go kick the Koreans out of your room." I told him that it was really fine, I had told Lahn it was okay. "No, its 1:00. Time for them to leave." And with that he grabbed a gleeful Pedro (who really wanted to see Leandro yell at the Koreans in Korean) and left the room. Samuel and I followed about 20 seconds behind and by the time I got down to my room, the Koreans were filing out of my room with slightly disgruntled faces with Leandro overseeing their exodus like a bouncer.

Leandro earned a kiss on the cheek for that one - which he took with much more grace than he would have two weeks ago :)

Change of Scenery

Lee Abbey has a ground floor, five numbered floors, and a basement. I live on the 2nd floor, filled with 19 resident rooms and 3 community rooms. Its slightly isolating - most of the community live in the basement, there are only 6 community rooms scattered throughout 4 of the resident floors. The inevitable result is that I spend very, very little time in my room. I never see my roommate and we have a long-standing joke that we are strangers because we are never in our room at the same time.

This week, 10 community went on retreat to beautiful Lee Abbey Devon - vacating 10 beds, including the roommate of my dearest friend Alice (if you haven't heard me pronounce her name, its Ah-LEE-see in Portuguese). So . . . I moved down the basement for a week and had a wonderful time experiencing basement life. The only problem is that Samuel and Pedro live on the 4th and 2nd floors respectively, so it was sometimes more inconvenient than before to go wake them up for lunch (on their days off :) or grab them for a movie. But overall, I really enjoyed getting to see community members that I rarely talk to and of course LOVED to live with my dear sister . . .


Office Team! My co-workers from Denmark, Brazil, Britain, Poland, Latvia, Taiwan, South Africa, and Pennsylvania :)

Quick resident update - have had two very interesting conversations this week. Alice and I have made friends with two guys who room together, David (from Belgium) and Scott (from US). They are a hilarious pair, talking with them is like watching a sitcom. Somehow the subject of how Americans use the word "love" came up, and it was such a great opportunity to talk about the worldly idea of love versus a Christian perspective on love, and both of the guys were really intrigued. It was one of the first really deep conversations we've had, and I'm sure it won't be the last as the four of us have planned to spend all of Saturday visiting Portabello Market to buy fruit and see some art galleries.

The other conversation was with another American named Adam who is an atheist Philosophy major. We had a somewhat puzzling, but I think good, conversation about the ways to discuss faith. He had mentioned how much he loved his Philosophy of Religion class the previous day, so I was a little surprised to find that he appeared uncomfortable and a little defensive when the subject of faith came up (and in a very broad sense). But I hope that our short conversation too will lead to others in the future.

Catching up

I am so richly blessed.

I've had a very full week - we've been a little short-staffed due to people being sick or on holiday. My best friend here had to go to the hospital at 2am on Wednesday (first time I got to ride in an ambulance!) and we spent over three hours there. Thank you everyone who prayed for her, she woke up this morning with no pain at all! After catching up on missed sleep from that adventure, Pedro's parents arrived yesterday and the Brazilians (the vote is that I'm 37% Brazilian now, you can ask me later for details) took them downtown to see Tower Bridge, Millennium Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral at night.

Today I am working a morning shift and also the evening dinner hour, which makes for a long Saturday. The upside is that I have no supervisors working today, so the atmosphere in the office is very relaxed. After work, I will probably work on my "speech" for the first prayer service that I'll lead.

Every morning, Mon-Sat, we meet in the chapel at 7:30 for "morning prayers" which is really just a short worship service. Community members take it in turn to lead the service, balancing out to about one per month. New community members who are still working on their English are usually paired up with a more senior community member for the first few months. Apparently my English is more than adequate, though, because I'm the only new person to go by myself. I prefer it that way, I've always been better at individual projects than group projects :)

The morning prayer service is half an hour and usually consists of singing one or two praise songs, the "speech" (which is the term everyone here uses for the exposition), and intercessory prayers. These last two weeks we've been going through Mark, and my passage is when Jesus calms the storm out on the lake. I'm excited about preparing the service because its such a good passage to talk about, but I'm a little disappointed because I happen to be doing my prayers during Rest Week, which means that the service is at 2pm and is only 20 minutes long instead of 30. I'll just have to be succinct for once.

Next week is Rest Week because about 10 staff members are going to Lee Abbey Devon on retreat. If you work here for one year, you get an all-expense paid retreat at this beautiful conference ground in Devon. I'll probably get to go in March, they don't usually send new people right away because its meant to be something to refresh you after working for a while. I'm having a hard time imagining what it will be like to have 10 of my brothers and sisters gone - its been odd enough with only 3 gone these past eight days.

Pray requests for the week:
1. Second meeting of Alpha course on Monday evening (mid-morning for you Yanks)
Please pray that God would draw the residents who need to hear about Jesus's Resurrection to the meeting - especially for Kevin, a resident who came last week.

2. Rest Week - that all of the community would benefit from rest week and that the staffers leaving for Devon would have a safe and refreshing trip. ALSO - pray that the remaining staff stays healthy as we will be working on a skeleton crew as it is.

3. Opportunities with residents - please pray that I would use my breaks, meal times, and evenings at the coffee bar to further develop the friendships I've started with residents. Pray that God would give me opportunities (as he has already been doing this week) to discuss meaningful subjects rather than staying with the shallow "How was school?"

Thank you so much, my friends!!!

Two Events

The latest installment of Lee Abbey news . . .

Friday night was our big Welcome event - the Formal Dinner. It is the most "posh" event we put on. The entire staff worked all week (and ALL day on Friday) to prepare fully "laid-up" tables (candles and all), serve sherry and juice in the lounge, play waiter/waitress for each table, and finally clean up the whole thing at the end of the night. And we did it all in our nicest clothes! I think the residents really enjoyed the evening - especially the team presentations that we gave. The Kitchen team was by far the best and had the whole crowd in stitches. It was a lot of fun to see everyone all dressed up and get a chance to really mingle with the residents. But it was also a huge relief to get it over with.


From left: myself, Leandro, Alice, and Pedro - all Brazilians! :)

After getting some much needed sleep this weekend, we had our first Alpha course meeting last night. It was not really what I expected at all. There were about 12 staff members who came as leaders or assistant leaders, as the Warden's wife wanted to prepare for two groups. However, we only had three residents come and she still split us up into two groups, and even then she moved people around so that the staff members who had been talking to the residents ended up in a discussion group with a different person than they had been connecting with. So, I led discussion with 6 Christian staffers and a resident who ended up already being a Christian. It was a great discussion, but it tended to balance precariously on just being a Christian debate rather than a real Alpha discussion. But, I suppose that's just where we all were at the time, and I got to meet a resident that I've never talked to before (who coincidently has Aspberger's Syndrome). The other group had two non-Christians in it, and I think their discussion went really well, so I count that in God's book the evening was a success. Plus, I get the opportunity to buy all of Nicky Gumbel's books for £2 each! What a steal . . .

Thank you so much for praying for Alpha, and continue to pray that residents who wanted to come but forgot or were too shy would be drawn next week.

Now, I am going to go enjoy my day off! It will probably include guitar practice as I need to keep A, D, E, and C in my memory for more than one day . . .

Endurance running

Today at church, the guest speaker began with Phil 3:7-14, and Paul's picture of running a race really resonated with me. Especially since I'm currently exhausted.

My life is filled to the brim right now with people - and I wouldn't have it any other way. But I'm beginning to feel the wear of living out of balance. I spend almost 99% of my time around people and very little quiet time with just myself and God. And I'm also struggling to balance the amount of time I spend with community members versus the time I spend with residents.

Its good to be reminded that Paul didn't paint a picture of us sprinting and then dropping to the side of the track in exhaustion. I think I've been trying to sprint this week, letting my naturally social personality say yes to everything instead of scheduling in rest and renewal. Which has in turn affected who I want to spend time with: it is much harder to pour out into residents when I am getting low.

But . . .

Praise be to our God who is faithful! He always provides a fresh Word for me when I stop to listen, as he did today at church. This coming week is Welcomes Week, when Lee Abbey hosts several events intended to help the new residents get to know each other and the community members. It will be busy at work, and it will be busy "off work" during these evening mixers.

Please pray for me and with me in two areas:

1 - that I would seek God's face first of all this week.

2 - that God would give me the energy and the attitude to reach out to the residents this week.

I am so blessed by you!!!

Oh yes, this picture of one of my close Brazilian friends, Alice, and myself is hot off the presses today.