A potted Summer Adventure

Easter seems a long time to leave you suspended with no information as to my goings on but here I go with a potted summary of the Summer Season.
A lot of the time I've had to work to keep the cashflow going, and even into the Autumn I find myself out of money due to big bills for my newly aquired van. It's been a season of high vehicle turnover and subsequently all the costs that are incurred, but when I went into a scrap metal merchants and found that I could possibly get half of the vehicle cost back when scapping it this way it seems it's not so bad. So with a fully functional van in my possesion I am now "A Man with a Van who Can" my slogan for the van. The previous motor I had was a Rover 216 automatic that ended up with a gearbox that didnt want to work and then a dead battery, at about six months in my possesion it was not true value for money, but it's not a thing you can correct when the dealership closes with no forwarding address. So I've got to get it disposed of this week to save any further expenses. It just happened that I drove it into the scrap metal merchants and came away with almost half of what I'd paid for the car in the first place. Is'nt God good! Things worked out even better when I get a message from Steve Lee who runs Miracle Street to advise me that an anonymous doner had sent in a sum of money for me to help with the expenses on the new van. This bought the expense of the MOT down to a minimal ammount and enabled me to pay my normal monthly bills. Is'nt God good!
Anyway less of my transport and financial problems, It's into the rest of the summers events and goings on. As you will remember I work with an organisation called Miracle Street and that has got me traveling to various events around the UK and out to Lisieux to work with a church there. Around the UK I've been to Gateshead (County Durham), Corbridge (County Durham), Swaythling (home front) and then a trip to Lisieux in France for a few days for an event that ended up being cancelled by the local government. If you would like to help the French church I would ask you to pray for the local government in Lisieux, to soften their hearts towards the church when they want to run outdoor events and to be willing to give the apropriate permissions for the running of events.

The crowd watching their kids perform

The trip to Gateshead was an interesting one and nice and easy. A Junior school was puting on a summer event and booked the small stage to create a focal point for different performaces. This meant getting to the school early, setting up and then enjoying the event with no work to do, since the school had booked someone to supply and run the PA system. The end of the day was a bit harder. Chasing the PA guy off the stage and getting packed up, then with the long trip back home. This was the worst part of the day as we didnt get back until early the following day and we had to work later as well.

The Future Coffee Shop

The next event was a trip to work in Lisieux in France helping run an event in a council run housing estate that La Source Church have run events at in the past. When we got there we found out that the church couldnt get the official permit so we ended up cutting the visit short and made the most of visiting a few places that we feel highlight our work into Normandy and beyond into Europe. During that time we went and visited a shop on the estate that the church had just bought with a view to running it as a coffee shop and study centre. As an afterthought the leaders decided to take some bits and pieces and a team and go and do an event out of the shop. This proved to be very successful and a large crowd turned out to support it. It just goes to show how thirsty the estate is for the gospel. During the event three of us thought that we could offer our services to the church and made arrangements to return later in the year to help with the conversion, this ended up being the highlight of the summer / autumn. With a Miracle Street work party taking place in September this is all that I've been up to during this Period The Autumn is proving eventful but that's all for my next post.