Family Visit

My folks have been visiting for the past week from the States (hence the relative silence on my end). We had a really fun time - went to Brighton for a day, visited the London zoo, did a canal boat ride, and played Spades and Settlers of Catan every evening. My brothers joined our regular Saturday football crowd for a game in Regents Park, and I took them to the gym for a bit of rock climbing. A really good week, quite relaxing for me, and good to reconnect.

India v England

So I attended my first cricket match today - the last day of the 5-day Test Match between India and England. Competition-wise it wasn't the greatest day. India had managed a record 665 runs in their first innings, and England started the day needing 440 runs to win. They never really looked like they were going to get close. After losing their first two batsmen in the morning session, they looked certain to be playing for a draw (for non-cricket fans, if England can manage to not get all of their batsmen out during the day, they will draw the match, even though they have fewer runs than India).
Enjoyment-wise, though, it was a fantastic day. I took my dad who is visiting from the States, and we went with Stu and Ben from the bar across the street. The weather was gorgeous, intermittent clouds and sun, with a light breeze. We sat back with our snacks and had a great time. Now if only England can put on a better showing for the Twenty20 International series in South Africa next month.

Facebook and other ways to distance ourselves from people we're close to

So, I recently joined Facebook, mostly because all my friends are doing it. It's funny how, even after almost 30 years of life, the phrase "Everone else is doing it" still carries a lot of weight.

Anyway, I noticed upon joining that there are over 800,000 people in the "London" network. That's 10% of the population of the entire city on Facebook. Now I'll grant that some of those people probably don't live in London, but it's still an impressive number of people connecting in a virtual network that is centered around geographic proximity. Kind of strange, huh? I communicated today with a friend who lives above me (he appointed me 'Chief Spiritual Advisor' to the 55 group on Facebook). You can 'poke' people, give them gifts, everything.

Now I'll also admit that I have taken to e-mailing my wife at times, even when she's sitting right next to me. And I am known to wake up in the morning, grunt 'check your e-mail' and then roll over.

Harry Potter

Somer and I went to get the last installment of the Harry Potter series last night. The local Waterstones opened at 12:01 AM, and we arrived at 11:45 to find a line of about 200 people. By the time midnight rolled around, there were 400 people in line. We waited about an hour, and finally we were ushered into the store by a wand toting clerk. In the meantime, we had witnessed a fight between rival youth gangs, chatted with the people in line around us, kept a band that had just played a show in a local venue from cutting in line in front of us, and endured countless claims of "Harry Potter dies" from drunken young adults. Interesting night, but by the time we got home, only Somer had it in her to read the first chapter, I ended up waiting until the next morning to crack open the book.

Independence Day...revisited

Friday night we got together with two other American couples who are working with churches here in London. The pastor of the American Church in London hosted, and as he's already posted on his blog about the evening (more eloquently than I could), I'll send you over there to read about it: Psalm 68:6

Concert to end slavery

Last night, as part of our ongoing work to highlight the problems of slavery and human trafficking, we helped film some footage for Concert To End Slavery. Clicking on the link will take you to their site, where you can view the trailer. We organized a mock pub-crawl, simulating our experiences last month distributing the posters and beer mats.

Movie

Somer and I took the girls to a movie yesterday. A friend of ours had tickets to an advance screening, but it was a kids movie, so she asked if we wanted to go. The girls had a really good time and enjoyed the movie. They had face painting and balloon art in the lobby before the movie started.

Greenbelt

My co-worker and good friend Jeremy is presenting at this year's Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham. He's leading a time of worshiping Jesus with Indian music and forms. It should be really good. We're hoping to go this year, at least for part of the time. Trying to get Somer to go camping...that'll be interesting.

300

Hey, so I logged in to make my next post, and discovered that I've posted 299 times...so this is 300! Do a little happy dance with me.....c'mon, you know you want to.

There, didn't that feel good? You're smiling now, aren't you?

The cost of gold

Ever wonder what it takes to make a gold ring? Last night I discovered that the process of extracting 10 grams of gold from the earth produces on average 3 tons of toxic waste, including chemicals like mercury and cyanide. To give you an idea, my wedding band weighs 8 grams...so that's 4,800 pounds of toxic waste to make my ring.
I was at a gathering of entrepreneurs at a small pub on the Thames. One of the presenters at the evening was Greg Valerio from Cred Jewellery. They have managed to produce one of the world's only ethical lines of gold and platinum jewellery. They are able to trace the gold they sell directly back to the mine that produced it, and can demonstrate that all parties involved - miners, the environment, and the craftsmen - have been treated in a just and equitable way. They are working to implement practices that would allow them to sell fairly traded diamonds as well (currently they sell conflict-free diamonds, mostly from Canada, but these are still not fairly traded).
Just to give one example of the inequity in the diamond trade, Greg told of a diamond miner in Africa who mined an 8-carat red diamond. He was paid $2000 for the diamond. When that diamond was sold in New York later that year, it fetched a price of $200,000,000. Now, $2000 may be more than enough to live on for an entire year in his country, but is it really equitable that the miner only received .001% of the final sales value of his product?
So what am I, a church-planter, doing at an entrepreneurial gather, and why am I going on and on about fine jewelery? Well, I was at the gathering for the sake of meeting people who are starting new initiatives, hoping to get ideas, make connections...all in an effort to clarify the vision for new churches here. And as for ethical jewelery, I care about it because God cares. God hates it when people destroy his planet. He hates it when the poor are exploited and patronized by the rich. And he hates it when global economic structures that maintain poverty go unchallenged. We shouldn't merely sit back and wish children weren't forced to work in mines, we should do something about it. Cred is doing something about it.

The cost of living...

While it might cost you an arm and a leg to live in New York City, you'll have to throw in your nose and a pair of ears if you want to survive in London. That's according to the most recent cost of living report from Mercer Human Resources. Well, not really - they simply say that London is the second most expensive city in the world for expats, behind Moscow. Glad to know that, though it still doesn't help me afford that $7 cup of iced coffee.
I've got to get back to helping my daughter learn to add using counting stones, mostly so that when she grows up she'll be able to know how much she can't afford to live in London!!

Waffles

It's waffle morning at our house! One of our friends said she had never had a waffle before, so we decided to rectify the situation. Somer made a huge batch, and we were expecting several friends. A couple texted to say they weren't feeling well, but the one who had never had one before still came. We had multiple toppings: strawberries, powdered sugar, maple syrup. Awesome.

Camden Green Festival

The Camden Green Fair was today at Regents Park. We took the girls after church and met up with our teammates. The girls rode the planet-friendly go carts (i.e. carts that were pulled by humans) and we watched a sheep get sheered at the local city farm exhibit. The weather's been really nice the last few days, and it's amazing to see how many people turn out to sit in the park and soak in a few rays.

Jesus is Lord

I spoke today at the afternoon service at Bethel in Dagenham. When we were here two years ago we helped out at Bethel; it was a nice return for us. Everyone was excited to see the girls and how much they had grown. We arrived in time for the usual pre-service lunch: fish 'n' chips.
I shared about our life and ministry, and spoke from Romans 10:9 about the centrality of the claim 'Jesus is Lord' to the Christian faith.
I'm workin' on a sore throat, so I'm going to cut this post short and go to bed.

Mind Body Spirit Festival

The Mind Body Spirit Festival opened today in Victoria. Some friends had a booth, so I went to see what they were up to, and to check out the rest of the festival.
They were giving "Life Readings" - small quotes from the Bible in a big bowl. People would come and pick out one of the cards, and then they'd have someone read the quote to them and talk about what it might mean for their life.
There was another group of Jesus followers there, called Dekhomai. They had lots of interesting things, including giving free foot massages (yeck...and yet also pretty cool). There was a stack of cards called The Jesus Deck, from which visitors could pick a card. Each card displays a picture of an event in the life/ministry of Jesus, and visitors were encouraged to think about how that particular story might impact their life.
When I told the rest of my team about it, they suggested that we think about using the Jesus Deck. It's surprisingly well-done: think artist on an acid trip reading the gospels and you'd be pretty close to the artwork for each card (Satan tempting Jesus is bright pink and has well-cut pecs, for example) Seems like a really cool way to get people thinking about Jesus in the context of their own life life.
I also wandered around to other stalls - picked up some info on Reiki healing, as I have a friend who does it - and watched as someone sat two inches from a massive gong while having it struck repeatedly (gong therapy, apparently).

Day Off?

Today I had the day off, since I worked the weekend. I had it all planned out. I was going to visit the garden center for a few things, do a little trimming on my bonsai, maybe read or blog a bit.
But instead of all that, I washed the windows.

All day.

Washing windows.

I managed to get hold of a squeegee from the bar across the street, which helped. The insides weren't so bad, but to do the outsides I had to open the windows all the way and lean out with one hand. Somer preferred to not be around while I hung out the window.

Not the 'day off' I had in mind.

Weekend Roundup

The distribution on Saturday went really well. Most places were more than happy to take the materials. I was really surprised...I expected to get more 'no's than we got.
The service at Church on the Corner went really well on Sunday. We didn't have musicians, so we did more of a meditative worship time. We included "minute of silence", which the girls love, before the children left for their class. The sermon was about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and it just so happened that the two-year lectionary we use as a team had Matthew 10:24-33 as one of the readings for Sunday. The passage begins by saying that a disciple is not above his master, which fit really well with the theme. So we read the passage a few times and allowed it to lead us as we went through times of confession and prayer for the persecuted church. Good stuff.
Sunday ended with a few hours at "Ain't Nothin' But" jazz cafe to watch a friend play in a jam session. It was incredible. My friend is an awesome guitarist, and they had the craziest drummer - he reminded us of 'scat-cat' from the Aristocats.

Day of Prayer

One Wednesday a month our team spends the day in prayer. We also fast to make room in our lives for prayer (you'd be surprised how much of your day is consumed by preparing, eating, and cleaning up food), and to connect our bodies to the sense of urgent need we feel for God.

We spent the morning yesterday at our house, and had a really great time. One of the specific things we prayed about is how to be involved in working for justice in Camden. To guide our praying, we read through several passages of the Bible where God demonstrates his love for justice and declares freedom to the oppressed. Isaiah 61, Luke 4, James 1. Awesome stuff.

Then in the afternoon we headed over to the team leader's house. Using the Lord's Prayer as a guide, we prayed for everyone we know in Camden, for our supporters back in the States, and for the other workers with our mission.

London Churches Football Tournament

The tournament today was amazing. I left our building at 8:30 with four others for the walk up to Regents' park. It was cloudy and cold, with occasional drizzle...perfect football weather. We started well, stealing a goal in our first match to win 1-0. From there, it started to go downhill. We were soundly beaten in the second game 2-0, and lost the next one 2-1, losing in the last minute on a mental lapse after playing a hard draw for most of the game. We pulled it back in the last one, though, dominating play and winning 1-0.
We finished 'league play' with six points, which was good enough for third place in our league and a spot in the runners-up knock-out phase.
We won our first knock-out match 1-0, again dominating play for most of the game. We continued to control play, and spent almost the entire length of our quarterfinal match in the opponents' half. We could not, however, manage to get the ball into the net. So it went to penalties, and we lost 3-2 on penalties.
Everyone had a great time...some of us (including the guy who missed the last penalty) were relieved to be finished. We were worn out and ready to head home. Thanks to Church on the Corner to putting this on. Well done, guys! And thanks to the gang from 55 for being such an awesome team.

The Greatest Gift

Yes, we know the greatest gift is the one you give, not the one you get...but this one that I received ranks right up there.
My parents got me a subscription to Jeroboam's Cheese Club for my birthday back in January. The latest installment of God's gift to our taste buds arrived on Thursday. A Blue, a Gruyere, and two soft goats cheeses. Two of them are made from unpasteurized milk, a delight that you my American readers may not have tasted, since all cheese sold in the US must be made with pasteurized milk.
My neighbor Paul is a big wine buff with a large cellar of Reds, so we'll be getting together sometime this weekend to share the delights of vineyard and dairy.