London Day 3 - LCM Summer School including Webber Street

This day was one of those which I call my 2 Corinthians 12:9 days – days I’m feeling very unwell, but unable to give in to it, because I have got something important to do and hoping that God gives me enough strength to cope. And this was going to be a particularly long day…

Of course it started with summer school again. Robert Prendergast of the LCM training team managed to lead us through 1 Corinthians 5-7 in one hour. He put it all under the title “Sex & The City”, but his sermon was much more interesting than the first episode of the series of the same title (the only episode of it I ever watched) ;)

After the break we split up and while Helen Thorne (also of the training team) talked to the other group about sexual abuse, our group learned about mental illness from missionary Martin Street. Hermann and I chose this topic, because we were able to relate to it much more. It was not just a lecture, but the participants were asked to contribute to it. Of course mental illness is a broad topic, but we still learned how to reach out to people with any kind of mental health issue.

In the afternoon we visited Webber Street, LCM’s day centre for homeless people. We heard about what they were offering to the homeless people, like breakfast, showers, clean clothes and someone to talk to. We also heard about the kinds of people coming to the centre. What I found most interesting was that there are people from Eastern Europe who are working in London, but deliberately living on the streets to save more money which they can send or take home. Later we took a tour in the house and were shown the different facilities.

After the official part was over, we met with Petra Zimmermann who works for LCM at Webber Street and in the Covent Garden area. She showed us into the staff rooms where we sat for hours drinking tea and talking about all kinds of topics. Two years ago we had briefly met her in the (now closed) Café Eterno at Covent Garden and she and I were in contact via Facebook. It was great to finally “really” meet her :)

In the evening Hermann and I had to go to Paddington Station again where we finally got a replacement for the defective mobile wifi device. We were back in our Walthamstow flat about 9:30 p.m. and I was grateful that God had helped me “survive” and I had even been able to enjoy most of it, despite my body acting up in different kinds of ways during the day.

More on this third day of summer school can be found on the LCM blog.

London 2014 Day 2 – London City Mission Summer School

On this day migraine hit me again, but I was determined to attend the one day of the five day summer school at London City Mission we had booked. Thank God, it eased a little later in the day.

In the morning we were told a lot about mission in a diverse megacity like London and I was able to meet some of the people I previously knew only via Twitter, Facebook or LCM publications.

In the afternoon the group travelled to the Isle of Dogs where LCM runs Café Forever and where we were shown around the neighbourhood and the special diversity in this place was explained to us. Among other places we were taken to the Mudchute Park where on a farm the city’s children are introduced to country life and real farm animals. It was a lot of information to take in on one day – though not too much – and a lot for us to think and talk about among ourselves later.

In the late afternoon Hermann and I left the Isle of Dogs with the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) where we were able to sit in front (it doesn’t have a driver for this part of the way). We changed to the Underground at Canary Wharf but stayed there a little while to take photos as we didn’t feel like returning to the flat yet. After all, that is one of the great things in London – you don’t have to catch a particular train or bus as there is usually one every few minutes.

Would Jesus have used Social Networks?

This question is difficult if not impossible to answer and so people like to answer this question according to their own preferences. I don’t know the answer either, but it is still funny to see what could have happened if social networks had already been there 2000 years ago :)

Slow Blogging

As you have probably noticed, I’m not blogging very much at the moment. This is for two reasons: firstly it is summer and at this time of year I usually am not so much in the mood for blogging; secondly I’m just writing my first novel and that takes a lot of time and creativity, of course. So I will reduce my blogging. I will just post when there is something new I feel like writing about. Please be patient with me. In case you are looking for me you can still find me on Twitter and Facebook ;)

Between the Holidays...

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas time :)

During the past weeks I have been a lazy blogger, as I must admit – apart from posting the Advent Calendar songs and occasional comments in your blogs. Of course I also posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Our house is now online for sale and so we are expecting a very busy and exciting year 2010!

Time Flies!

It has been already one week since I posted here – I can hardly believe it! Where did time go? However, it is still summer here, even though officially it’s autumn, so I have an excuse ;)

It is certainly not Twitter which keeps me from blogging, even though it is very interesting, especially to follow some tweets of organizations, etc. It is very different from Facebook where I usually only accept people as “friends” who I know at least from somewhere else in the virtual world. Also I found many people there who I knew from the past and some who I thought about often and wondered what had become of them. On Twitter I did not find many people I know, but there it is not important. I use it primarily to get information and as it takes only minutes to read through all this and “filter” the interesting tweets it is very convenient and takes much less time than I had thought.

Tweet Tweet

Since Tuesday afternoon Yaris is not our only pet any more – we have now also got two budgies named Fitzwilliam Darcy and Henry Tilney. They are very beautiful little birds, but they like to quarrel a bit from time to time ;)

The second new thing is that after thinking a while about it I have now got a Twitter account. I was just curious how it worked and I’m not sure yet what exactly will become of it, but I will certainly not spend a lot of time tweeting. I still prefer Facebook and blogging, although I’m a little lazy even with that at the moment – I guess it will get better once the weather gets ugly ;)