Update from August. So, though news on here has been sparse, that far from means that we as the Standford Boiler house have not been busy. A few quick updates to bring us up to speed from August.
Transit joined us starting in September and have added an enthusiastic team of Four Girls to our community. Everyone joined into helping get Carla, Charl, Gemma, and Tina settled by providing furniture, love, and space in the community. Transit also provided a day of teaching, that is held at the Boiler House, and the transit team was joined by 3 local guys (James, Jon, and Steve) from TCF church, as well as 4 other people from our community (Jon, Lois, Carolyn, Simeon). The transit girls also give a day to the Boiler House, where they have helped set up prayer rooms, serve community meals, plan community events, and helped with hospitality. They have gone on three pilgrimages this year to (Colchester, Wandsworth, and Ibiza) to learn from other Boiler House communities. The team also serves the youth with the Corringham Bar N Bus and having been inspired by that work and started street prayer walking on Friday nights; opening up their garage and offer to pray for the kids, as well teach them about prayer and tell bible stories.
In November 2008 the community in Standford was busy participating in a Week of Thanksgiving. During the week we encouraged thanksgiving to God, thanksgiving to each other, and thanksgiving to our community. It was held during the week of America's Thanksgiving day in honor of our American Transiteer. That week we participated in a prayer evening (thanks to God), planned destination dinners to host dinner in each others homes (thanks to each other), and baked cakes for people who serve our community (thanks to our community).
Over Christmas we hosted various celebrations at the Boiler House and on New Years Eve members in Community went round each others home and prayed in the New Year. February we hosted our first 24-7 Prayer week of the year. Transit, with the creative inspiration from Lisa, helped set up the prayer room for that week complete with a dream corner, floor to ceiling rock (thanx to our N. Zealand friend Mel), amazing sculpted thinking head, an outdoor labyrinth, and loads of other bits (we had a prayer tent, but due to random snow fall it did collapse... but for those who did see it, it was amazing).
The Boiler House has also had the honor of having two individual from the community commit to giving a full day at the house. Alisa and Steve each take a day a week to spend at our Boiler House. During their day at the Boiler House they would serve our community by visiting various members in our community, offering prayer support, general hospitality, house tiding, and loads more support.
There has also been lots of encouragement from Monday and Tuesday House Meals. Wendy has done an amazing job running the corporate prayer and adding lots of variety to those evenings. The community has also decided to study through the book "Celebration of Discipline" by Richard Foster and so spend every other Tuesday evening going through a chapter of that book. Thanks to the Core Team for taking the added responsibility of teaching those nights.
The Boiler House has also hosted many visitors coming from Albania, N. Zealand, Sweden, and other various parts of England. We also have done loads of other bits such as mentoring, core team meetings, prayer walking, Besome projects, etc.
This Spring we had an encouraging sending, as the Boiler House officially sent one of our own (Steve) out to Kosova to serve there for the next 3 months. It was an amazing time of stepping out as the Church and living in the promise of "God blessing us so that we can be a blessing to the nations". We also said good-bye to the other year out guys, Jon and James, as they begin their overseas-missions-part of their year out.
Off the Back of this, our community is stepping into a stage of "Getting Out". We are looking for different ways to take what we have learned over these last 7 months and take them out into the community we live in. Seeing God move in our community has been truly amazing and i look forward to sharing more of the stories with you!