Malmesbury Abbey Youth Groups

SKATE PARK IN MALMESBURY ABBEY - PRESS RELEASE.

As the Church of England’s Diocese of Bristol declares 2009 ‘the Year of the Child’ to mark the 30^th Anniversary of the United Nations International Year of the Child, one church in Wiltshire, Malmesbury Abbey, is responding to their challenge by running a youth event with a skateboard park inside the Abbey. The event, on Feb 18^th - 20^th 2009 is being headed up by the Rev Neill Archer and the youth team at the Abbey and also by Bristol-based Phil Williams from Christians Skaters UK, an organisation that works across the country building links between the young people of the extreme sports community and the church.

Rev Neill Archer said ‘Malmesbury Abbey is committed to young people and has employed a full-time youth worker for over 6 years, so running a youth event for two wet days in February is nothing out of the ordinary. The youth café, the live bands and the loud music, the talks on life issues won’t raise an eyebrow – but working with Christian Skaters UK is new and perhaps will be hard for some people to conceive. However I think it will be a great experience for the local skating and rollerblading community and parents will probably be pleased that their kids are hanging around in church during half term.’

The event will include beginner’s workshops, classes for girls only, competitions and demonstrations by experts. The short talks will cover issues like relationships, having a goal in life, and making good choices now for the future.

As the Church Council developed the project and it was agreed that to protect the building the abbey floor will be covered in two layers of timber and the pillars wrapped in padding. The flooring is being delivered for free by Glory Road Ministries, a network of Christian truckers across the UK.

Phil Williams commented ‘Malmesbury Abbey is an amazing venue and we’ll be bringing volunteers from across the UK to help out. We hope local skaters and their friends will get involved and we hope it makes a positive difference to young people’s lives.

Revd Neill Archer added ‘From my perspective the bottom line is that God loves young people and anything we can do that nudges our young people to realise that they are a valued and respected part of our community is helpful. I’m glad the Abbey is flexible enough to accommodate this – I wish the monks were around to see it.’

CONTACT Rev Neill Archer 01666 823126   neill@malmesburyabbey.com

Welcome back Claire.

A big hello from the team in various parts of the country!
Praise the Lord that we are all back home safely!

We cannot thank you enough for all your prayers, God has been so overwhelmingly
good to us in Costa Rica, and we have such a lot to process about everything
that happened there.

It has been such a privilege to see and join in with the worship of Jesus in a
different culture, and to see God at work in some dark places through the love
and shining light that he has placed in his followers. We have encountered God
in a new way, and have learned many, many things ˆ about God‚s heart for the
poor, about community, about joy, about our own struggles - and our hearts will
be changed forever because of it. And we trust that God has used us, and we
praise him that we do not know the full extent of this.

This is the last official prayer email you will be receiving from the team, but
if you would like further information or guidance on supporting God‚s work in
Costa Rica in prayer, financially, or if you want to go out yourself ˆ we‚d all
recommend it! ˆ then just contact anyone on the team.

And to round off this series of prayer emails, we would be delighted if you
could join in with this prayer of praise form the team:

Lord Jesus, bless Costa Rica and the work of your followers there. Continue to
pour out your love and healing upon that country. Thank you for giving us a
glimpse of your love and your will for its peoples, and for placing in our
hearts a longing to see its people made whole and your name glorified in that
nation. Father, we ask that we will never forget this place, what you are doing
here, and what you have done in our own lives in the short time that we have
been there. You are a truly awesome God and we long to follow you and see more
of you and your kingdom come on this earth.
Amen!

May God bless all of you,
Claire and the Costa Rica Team.

Just...

Update from Claire in Costa Rica.

Hola, hermanos y hermanas en Christo!

Summary
Praise God for his awesome work in the church of Avangaritos.
Pray for the love of the church to spread into the rest of the community
where there is much need.
Thank God for what he is doing in the life of each team member: we have all
been so encouraged and at the same time have had struggles, pray that we would
be aware of His work in our lives, and would work with him.

Avangarutis
Wow, we´re now back in San Jose after having an amazing week and a bit working
with a rural pentecostal church in the village of Avangarutis on the gulf of
Nicoya. We have really experienced the power of God, and have all been changed
by the experience. Meeting with God has brought each of us joy and
encouaragement, but also challenges and struggles, so there is a lot to praise
and pray for. The project was to build a disabled toilet block at the church site, which was
under construction. However, much more importantly, it was about getting to
know the church, and about loving, serving, encouraging, and learning from
them.

The ongoing adventures of ASBO Jesus...

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/

Abbey Disco Party.

This Friday, 18th July, 7-9pm at Malmesbury Abbey is our 3rd annual Summer Disco Party!

It's for years 7 and 8 from Malmesbury School, and years 6 from all the local schools who are going up to Malmesbury School in September - to celebrate their move to secondary school.

There will be music, bouncy castles, party food, games and chocolate fountain. It's free admission.

This event is hosted by the Abbey's Friday night youth group which meets every friday for trips, food, games, talks, discussions, crafts, drumming, dancing, sport and more.

For more information about this disco, or about the Abbey's youth groups, contact Youth Pastor Alice Pettit, alice@malmesburyabbey.com

Tim's bike trip - stop the traffik.

Hey everyone!

Some of you might know about the Stop The Traffik global movement, which is trying to stop human trafficking throughout the world, once and for all. It’s been going for a number of years now, and has done a lot of good in a lot of places, but trafficking still happens, so STT still needs help.. My friend (Conor Bennett) and I are cycling 120 miles from Stroud (Gloucester) to the London HQ where we’ll meet the London branch for a little refreshment and to tell of some of the stories we’ve had on the way.

We hope you’ll support us both financially and in your prayers. We’ve been doing some training, but it will still be a challenge. We’re both up to it mentally, but we just pray that our bodies don’t complain at us too much!!

It’s only a month and a bit to go now, things are all falling into place. We’re setting off from Stroud on Wednesday 27th August, just hoping that the weather will be alright for us!

Contact me at: moo92@hotmail.co.uk
for more information

Much love, Tim Searle-Barnes

http://www.stopthetraffik.org/

News from Claire.

5th of July update:

Hola!
Thank you again for your prayers. We have been so privileged to see lots more
of God's work in Costa Rica over the last week, and we love to share it with
you. We've also got closer to the poverty of the shanty towns and the families
there, and long to communicate to you just how many wounds there are to be
healed here.

(Btw, this is a long one, so - wait for it - there is a SUMMARY at the bottom,
if you're outrageously busy and don't have time to read it all! BUT you know
you don't want to miss all the juicy bits though...AND one of us is bound to
quiz you when we get home!)

THINGS TO PRAISE GOD FOR:

*We have led six kids clubs this week, and have taken a bunch of kids out for
lunch and to visit a volcano, and it has been such a privilege to join in
with the work that God is doing in the lives of young people from the shanty
towns of Costa Rica. Robyn has been fantastic at heading most of the clubs up,
and we have all been involved with games, testimonies, talks, music and drama.
Some things that really stood out for us was the openness of the kids about
their desire to read the bible, to share with each other, and the friendships
there. It has been a real delight to form friendships with these young people,
and we have been so encouraged by them. A really special moment was seeing
children who rarely have full tummies saving food to take home for the their families,
when out to lunch: we really have seen the light and love of Jesus in them.

* We've all been growing in our faith, and have been sharing the journey
together. There are so many opportunities here to learn about obedience,
stepping out in faith, and God's compassion for the broken.

* Education Plus really is amazing. It is a faithful team of God's people who
know and love families in the shanty towns, and pour their hearts into
providing for them in so many different ways.

*Our language skills are definitely improving, and for many of us we are
finding that language is becoming so much less of an issue because we are
becoming more willing to give it a go and looking a bit silly - or very silly -
using actions and other methods of communication! It's been a really good
lesson in learning not to take ourselves so seriously!

*God has been keeping us all safe and well, and we are getting on really well
as a group (I think!).

* The wonderful hospitality that we have received from the local families we
have been staying with, and the friendships being formed there.

Abbey Barn Dance.

THE ABBEY BARN DANCE.
Come and join us for a fun family barn dance in the Abbey this Friday June 27th
7 – 10pm. Dance to the Packhorse band, bring a plate of savoury finger food to share and your own alcohol. Puddings and squash provided. Tickets £7 Adult £3 Child (5 – 17) available from the Abbey bookshop. Proceeds to Abbey Youthwork. See you there!!

www.malmesburyabbey.com

Claire's trip to Costa Rica - and off she goes... !

YOUTH BLOG UPDATE - Only 10 days to go!

This week has been a very exciting one in terms of preparation (although the learning Spanish hasn’t really happened...!)

Firstly, we received some more specific project details from Latin Link about what we’ll be getting up to with them. The highlight for me is that we’re going to be working with an indigenous community of the Bribi tribe, who are not only an almost completely unwesternised people group, but they have had very little contact with the rest of Costa Rica, to whom they are known as ‘the hidden people’. This isolation means they have a really rich Latin American culture, but at the expense of poor health care and education. Apparently it is only in the last few years that the Bible has begun to be translated into their language, so it is an exciting time there. We will be involved in a construction project and will be supporting a local indigenous church there – although I’m not sure how!

Secondly, everyone has been allocated roles on the team, and I’m chuffed with my roles as ‘report writer’ and ‘main devotions co-ordinator’. As report writer I’ll be in charge of putting together a group diary to track our adventures and what God’s been teaching us and how we’ve been seeing him working throughout our time in Costa Rica. It also means that I’ll be sending back weekly emails to Latin Link when we’re on their projects, and this will go on a blog on their website. As main devotions co-ordinator I will be deciding how we shall study the Bible and build each other up in our faith while we’re there, which is a massive task, and I would love it if you could pray for me and for the team as we meet together each day.

And thirdly, we had a group team meeting for the first time, as Becky doesn’t live in Oxford like the rest of us, she travelled up especially, and we had a great time having fun, planning, and praying together. What is really special is that everyone is committed to this project and we share the same desire of wanting to go and just love people, and hope that God will change our hearts into more loving ones in the process. It’s really just been a good week: people continue to be astoudingly generous with their money, I’ve had my last injection, and sun cream is buy one get one free in Boots!

Ciao!

BLOG POST: ONE DAY TO GO!

It's been a crazy week which has looked a bit like this: Oxford --> Malmesbury -
-> Oxford --> Belfast --> Oxford --> Swindon, and tomorrow is the day that I
fly for the more exciting destination of Costa Rica!

The team went to Belfast on Friday and Saturday for a training session, and we
had a great time hanging out together, getting to know each other better, and
praying together. We also thought about just why we're going to Costa Rica and
how to make sure we keep fixed of being Christ-like in all that we do; how as
individuals we should relate to each other as a team, and how as a team we
should relate to the Latin American communities that we meet. Living in close
proximity to the same 7 people for 5 1/2 weeks is going to be a real challenge,
and we are expecting God to teach us a lot about ourselves, each other, and
about sacrificial love for one another.

We also spent some time becoming more familiar with Latin American culture, for
a better understanding of its people. One thing that particuluarly struck me
was their completely different approach to time. An example of this is that if -
on the way to church - the pastor met someone who he hadn't seen for a long
time - who perhaps had stopped coming to church - he would stop and talk to
them, even if it made him extremely late for the church service he was supposed
to be leading. This is because in Latin America people are considered more
important than events. This is an attitude that I think I could benefit from
taking on board a little bit.

So with great excitement, and a little bit of nervousness about what I may have
forgotten, I write from England for the last time in six weeks!

I would love it if you could pray for:

* a safe and straight forward flight and arrival at the Educacion Plus office
tomorrow.

* that I would pick up more Spanish easily and be able to communicative
sufficiently

* to place all my trust in God, and open all of myself up to be used by him,
even when it's scary

Thank you so much for your prayers, they are worth so much.