Malmesbury Abbey Youth Groups

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.

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.

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.

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.

'It's all so quiet - Shhh, Shhh'!

If you don't know, Claire is a member of the Abbey and was in Pipeline and a great small group leader at Friday Nights. She will soon be off to Costa Rica and has agreed to keep us up to date with how it all goes. So, what has she been up to this week...?

CLAIRE:
Well, this week has been packed with fundraising events. On Wednesday our team put on a cakestall at
our C.U meeting, and we sold lots of lovely cakes and raised about £160.

Then last night I organised a concert, with performances from three team members, and other friends
of mine. The programme included three contrasting piano solos, a beautiful traditional Indian song, a
folk tune on the accordian, some Damien Rice, a jazz version of the hymn 'as the deer' and a hiphop
song one of our team wrote about how he became a Christian. I think it worked, somehow! Although
not many people came - which I was quite disappointed at considering the work I'd put into organising
it - we did raise about £70 and more people were able to find out what we were doing.

And today is the first of two days of a sponsored silence I'm doing. It's so fustrating not being able to
communicate, and tomorrow at midnight I am planning to burn the whiteboard I am resorting to in
order to communicate!

It's all been a bit hectic, and has kinda taken over from University work, which is going to be a bit of a
problem this week! Also I've found a real tendency to slip into thinking that if I just DO enough stuff, I'll
have enough money and everything will be ok. What I need to be remembering is that God is an
awesome provider and HE is the one who will make everything alright. A week tomorrow I will be on
my way to Costa Rica!

This week's mission: learn some Latin American Spanish!

www.justgiving.com/clairealexandragardner

Claire's trip to Costa Rica.

Claire’s summer trip to Costa Rica!

I’m off to Costa Rica next month (23rd June - 31st July)! It all came about because two of my friends from the Christian Union at my University in Oxford decided to plan a trip to Costa Rica (it’s in Central America – I had to look it up on a map!). There is now a group of eight of us going and we are becoming increasingly excited!

The trip will be divided into two parts: the first 2 week project is with a charity called Education Plus which works with kids from a shanty town who are at risk from becoming street children. The second 3 week project is with Latin Link, but it’s annoyingly vague – basically we will be working with a local church and building something!

Yesterday our team met up with the founder of Education Plus and one of the Costa Rican youth workers Jan Carlos (I love that name!) and we had an opportunity to hear about the work that they do and see some photos of the shanty town and the kids we will be working with. It made it all a lot more real, and some of the stories about the lives that the children live were really upsetting, so it made us all a lot more aware of how much need there is, and we all want to go right now!

There is a lot to sort out before we go though: jabs, buying kit, but the most important one at the moment is fundraising, as I have to find over £2000. My latest fundraising idea is a sponsored 48 hour silence, which for me will be quite a task! If you would like to sponsor me then that would be great, there are details of how to do that below. We have really seen peoples’ generosity so far, and we trust that God will provide the rest of the money for our trip.

All in all, I want to go to Costa Rica because we are told to love the poor as God does. I am hoping that seeing the poverty and brokenness of the communities in Costa Rica will not only be an opportunity to share something of God’s love, but will transform my heart into one that is more concerned with filling the needs of people back over here.

Here is a final thought from who I think is one of the coolest ladies in history:

‘It is very fashionable to talk about poverty. Unfortunately, it is less fashionable to talk with the poor.’ (Mother Teresa)

Please do get in touch, I love to talk about all things!
Email: claire.gardner@chch.ox.ac.uk
Sponsor me online: www.justgiving.co.uk/clairealexandragardner