lettter home 2

26th October 2006


Dear All,

Amazing stuff is happening in Canada, especially within the youth group at PGCC. I don’t know where to start! I’m not going to apologise for the long update, as I need to create a full picture and Tom and I are thinking that because such amazing stuff is going to happen the devil will try and stop it, so you would love you to pray for strength for the youth and leaders.

On Friday 13th October, we had the most amazing youth group. Tom and I had planned a session on Jesus the Leader, but God scraped those plans! And came down in the most totally amazing way. Tom wrote an update on the youth blog which will make more sense then if I tried to tell you so here’s the link: http://utownchurch.com/youthblog/ Since then we have had some amazing times in Gods presence at CATCH, just allowing God to move. The youth are starting to really get it, and I’m amazed at how their prayers have changed and their increased sensitivity to the Spirit. Here’s an example of how they’ve blown me away; I received a e-mail last week asking if the youth could pray for Tom to bless and encourage him, they then went a step further and during the Campus Fire weekend, brought him cards, a cake and biscuits and set it all out!

Some of the youth attended Campus Fire; Sam, Holly, Emma, Kjell, Ken, Hannah, Simi, Cal, Milo (Saturday), with Tanis and Tom, with Kris attending on the Saturday with Joel and Liz. I was happy to see that they ‘adopted’ John Lunn – Youth Pastor of Marine View Chapel, and Jason and Ellis. The weekend was amazing, from what I can gather and in the short chats I’ve had with them, they seem to be wanting to go to the next level, so we just need ot work out how we can equip and help them in this.

I did attended Campus Fire, but I was working for the weekend, as Pais helped to run the conference. This meant I couldn’t sit in on any of the sessions or really join the worship, but let me tell every time I needed to go into the main session for work, now matter how short a time span, I came out buzzing! Something great was happening it there! I had an awesome weekend, manning the Pais stand, sorting out odd jobs and helping with hospitality – we had a huge number of well know speakers, and 2 bands that needed to be looked after. It was great to be able to serve, and we where privileged to have some amazing volunteers.

Liz is due to have her baby this weekend, so Tom’s been busy making sure I have all the youth information and access to the church. Quite scary, as I will be making sure that youth group happens etc! But really cool and important, that we can bless Tom and Liz in this time and give them family time.

Pais has been going brilliantly J Im loving it, and cant believe I’ve been here for such a short time. I feel really at home, with the team and church.



Answered prayers:
• We’ve been given some finances as a team, so we’ve been able to purchase a printer and some office supplies.
• The schools are really opening up.


We’ve had meeting with four schools and will be doing a wide range of activities. We’ve had amazing favour and the schools seem to be really on board with what we are doing.

1. Lord Byng – we’ve been asked to help set up a café area for the students to hang out at lunch times, with the aim of releasing students into leadership and running leadership workshops
2. Simon Fraser – we will be providing a lunch club for grades 6 & 7, creating a safe environment and a sense of ownership. We are going to have a meeting with the grades 6 & 7 to discuss what they would like us to provide.
3. Eric Hamber – would like us to become learning assistants as part of the volunteer programme already in place.
4. University Hill (Uhill) – we will be helping with ESL.


We have training on a Thursday morning, and so far we have covered topics such as the trinity and the 10 commandments. Here’s a interesting snippet from yesterday talk on the 10 commandments, about the misuse of God’s name. God used to be called YHWH.

YHWH – only name is 10 top words used in the OT – the rest are words like and, it etc
- appears 6,879 times

The Jews stopped using it! They avoided risk by not saying it- they where so afraid of using it wrongly that they stopped using it – they’d say adonai. They took vowels for adonai and put into YHWH which made Yahowah – Jenovah. Jenovah is nonsense! Its not Gods name, when you see LORD in your bible it should be YHWH

I’ve moved in with Kelsey, and its pretty cool! Living downtown is pretty awesome although I haven’t had much chance to maximise it, with staying in white rock for Campus Fire and my family being here this weekend. It’s a sweet apartment with some amazing views – when its not foggy! And I have access to a cinema style rooms, gym, sauna, hot tub, swimming pool etc!

Prayer points:
• Youth group – continual anointing, protection
• Tom and Liz
• Pais:Thailand – the directors flew out this week and the team follows in January.
• Amy, Denai and I
• Schools
• Where next? By January when Paul Gibbs comes out, we need to have thought and decided about staying on a second year or not. Its obliviously not a quick decision, as all sorts of things need to be though of; finances, flights etc and of course if God’s telling me to stay here,

Thanks for everying!

God bless

Rosie Honeywell
Intern
Pais::Canada
Westside team

sorry

sorry for the fact that its been ages since i posted!

Ive been really busy with one thing after another; showing tom vancouver/hanging out and then helping run campus fire - a conference- this weekend, i havent ha dmuch chance to update, especailyl as kelesys doesnt have wirelss internet and you all know how i am on pcs. also my family arrive in vancouver on thurs so...

short update:

* youth group on the friday 13th was awesome! God totally changed our plans and we had an awesome time, we over ran for over an hr and yeah check out the youth blog.. linked off www.pgcc.org

* campus fire was amazing, my youth group attended and tom's being getting e-mails from parents! they kids wanted to bless tom and did so in the way of a cake, biscuts and a card! totally awesome moment! i cant waited to be updated fully on all that happened, as i was involved in the running of the conference. i met some awesome people at the conference, speakers and and the like but also we had soem pretty cool volunteers.

* doors are opening like crazy into schools and amazing meetings are happening. watch this space we will soon be on campus!

* tom came over for a week, so we got to hang out, meet rose, see my youth group and a fairly typical church service. He also managed to serve the pais team in the form of spray painting signs for Campus Fire and freeing up me and Rose to do other tasks - which wherent handed out :( lol

* ive got to hang out with kelesy - i moved while tom was here, last sunday to a condo on the 15th floor, in an amazing postition with awesome views on david lam park. i have access to a gym, pool, squash courts, 2 cinema style rooms, hot tub, sauna. rose needs to come visit pretty soon! im only here for a few weeks, so really should make the most of it. its pretty cool being with soemone young and weve had some pretty cool chats.

its getting cooler here but its ok :)

Jim

spot the random people from back home and look out in future blogs for updates and different people!

It was an exciting weekend because i got to speak to Jim on webcam!! How awesome is that!! However I will now start at the start of a beautiful long lazy thanksgiving weekend!

Bits of news I've accidently missed out through being to busy!!
* I had dinner with the Colby's - lovely family, whose cat is adorable. Cal's awesome and goes to youth group. I also babysat them, and had fun playing games.
* I lead a bible study in purity which was pretty cool
* A black and white cat jumped out of the bushes at me on the way to PGCC and gave me a look, an then started following me then stopped and watched me walk to church!
* I attened worship invasion which was pretty cool and an awesome time of intercessory prayer also

Rhiannon and Dom; cool ickle brother and sister who send sweet messages! They make me chuckle and this photo captures them at their best! The photo was taken by Becky my oldest sister.. whose soon to make the family bigger.. Welcome Colin!! more on them other time. Anyhows i look forward to showing these ickle 2 (and the rest of the crew) around my new home, when they come to visit, they will love it, almost as much as I do, and I bet Rhiannon cant wait to meet Joel.
* Ive been having awesome awesome prayer sessions!! so cool
* We nearly have our Pais uniform.. bring on jeans.
* Where On Earth - Sam, Johnny, Tom and Luke 'released' their music to the world.. sssh I already had it lol! They are some of the most amazing friends ever, and Im blessed to have these guys in my life! Their music is rocking so check out www.whereonearth.net or www.myspace.com/whereonearthband and listen to some of the tunes!


On Friday we had youth group, where I did a little bit on worship and then we worshiped in various ways - singing, building blocks, arts and crafts, brainstorming. We had some really cool stuff, check out the PGCC and Utown youth blog..http://utownchurch.com/youthblog/

Saturday started off okay because I got a lie-in, however they first thing i did was listen to the Saints lose! Not impresses, but then Tim and Melissa came round for pancakes so I cheered up slightly! I then went to metro-town with ROSE!! and we investigated sim cards - it costs a ton to activate the stupid things!! I then went to Rose's where we mad some canadian potato things and had a bit of online fun - you'll know when you become a recipent of certain e-mails possibly that youve caught me and rose together! I had my first ever canadian dinner (well... ill come to that later) of sasuages, pasta, courgettes and salad. We then ate sweets while watching a dodgy film... not bad dodgy just no plot and rather boring! We then saw a racoon - check out our joint blog.


Heres a pic of my gorgeous amazing Jen!! I miss her tons!! She is truly inspiring and going to lead such an amazing life! She really rocks this world, and I dont know where I would be without her smiling cheery face and amazing hugs!! Keep going gal I love you!!

Sunday started with Tom telling me my hair was fine, but me finding out when I got to Utown that it was infact a mess. Utown was cool, and we did 'youth' where we sat in a hallway and discussed highs, lows and random facts then prayed. I then had Swiss Chalet Thanskgiving dinner and got to chill with the youth and play some card games which was cool. After the youth section Tom said to the youth that he had been silly and forgotten to arrange for me to have a thanksgiving dinner so if anyone had a spare place could they invite me lol. so Sam went to his dad (which is another awesome fact, sam goes to youth and attends a different church, but helped lead Utown on worship on his bass on sunday!) and said can we have rosie over for dinner, when his dad had been feeling all service like he should invite me other, so of course I acepted the invite. Then Tom came bounding over and he had gotten me another invite but it was all cool because Liz, Joel and Tom went and had yummy food.



Sam is an amazing buddy who can me laugh and cry all in one go! I wouldnt be where I am today without him, and for that I am extermely grateful. Yeah Sam, your one rocking, amazing, awe inpsiring, beautiful, funny, ambitious lad. Cheers for the great years of friendship, I hope there are many more. My life wouldnt be the same without you.

On Monday I had a nice lie in, and got to speak to Jim (n Mum and Dad and Luce) over webcam before heading over to Sam, Mike, Darlene and Peter's for thanksgiving. They had a cat!! We had turkey, cranberry sauce, yams, some potato things that where yummy, cabbage rolls, beans, and yummy pumpkin pie and apple pie goodness(such a rose word!).


the truly amazing mush!! She is such an awesome buddy, remember her in your prayers!! Mush is the coolest Christian of the school lot and my awesome faith camp buddy! I love you tons :)

Today was campus fire day and it was mad!! I spray painted signs, and made name badges and did all sorts of funny things!!

Tomorrow I go to my first ever PGCC and Utown staff meeting with Tom, which should be cool.

At the end of the week, I move in with Kelesy, which although Im sure is going to be awesome, I am actually feeling quite sad about leaving the Sopwiths, who have been amazing. And I will really miss Joel, Kipper, Bob, Bath time and playing cars! I will have to take him to the park and to the sea to bop! Liz and Tom have been superstars in putting up with me, and I will really miss them, especially the laughs... if only we had pictures of us all on the floor with icecream buckets on our heads thanks to Joel! truely amusing.. but I reckon you had to be there! Yeah here at the Sopwiths feels like home :)

letter home

ok i wrote this before the news about the schoools but still:


28th September 2006

Dear Friends.

As you know I am in Vancouver, Canada, working with the PAIS (www.paisproject.com) for a year, while also working with Point Grey Community Church -PGCC- (www.pgcc.org) and their church plant Utown.

As you know I went to Dallas, Texas, for my Pais training, where we trained with the USA teams also. We covered topics such as ministry essentials and kingdom principles. I was truly bless by the family I was staying with and while in Texas, I know God really worked in my life. After two weeks training in Texas the Canadian department flew to Vancouver to do an extra weeks cultural training.

Pais’ aim is ‘missionaries making missionaries’ and to build bridge between the schools and the churches. I am part of a pioneer team to the Westside, which means that we haven’t gone into school yet unlike the other two teams in Vancouver. My team leader Amy and team member Denai, are great to work with and im really excited about what we can offer to schools. At the moment we have had a little trouble getting in contact with the schools, as the people we need to talk to are busy. We managed to get in contact with one school – University hill, however they have no space for us to help them with after-school clubs, but they are interested in the team tutoring the young people.

Pais goes into the schools offering a variety of different resources each school can tap into; assemblies on moral standards, healthy lifestyles, CAPP, and self confidence. We also provide things like sports clubs, workshops, lunch clubs, tutoring, homework classes, mentoring and anything the school would like us to get involved in.

As a pioneer team, we have no resources and no money, so we are relying on donations, if and when they come in. This means we have no office supplies – paper, pens, cardboard, paints, printer -, and basically are in need of money to buy the resources so we can be professional when we go into schools. We would also love regular support, of even small amounts per month, manage our money and be able to be consistent in what we are providing.

If you feel you would like to support what my Pais team and I are doing this year, please contact me and let me know. This can be through finances, or prayer support. If you would like to support the team in prayer, let me know your e-mail address and I can send you prayer requests and updates.

Pais is helping organise a conference called Campus Fire, and it is aimed at equipping high school student to effectively minister to their peers, through leading lunchtime clubs. It’s a great chance to explore different areas that arise when arranging an event, and im also looking forward to being a PA to some guest speaker during the weekend.

At PGCC everyone has been really welcoming and I can’t wait to be part of what God has to do it the church over the year. Im working in Tom Sopwith, the youth pastor, and he’s an amazing British man, who’s had lots of involvement in Soul Survivor before coming to Canada. Tanis and Kris, help run the youth group with Tom and myself, and together I think we can do a great job in moving the young people on. Having Tanis and Kris means that we can spilt the children into groups and have bible study aimed at their level, then get them to tell the rest of the group what they found out, giving the kids more confidence in speaking in front of their peers. We have three youth events throughout the week:
• CATCH – Christ At The Centre Here-, which is aimed at the young people who really want to seek God and debate in-depth on the topics covered. This is from 5.30pm-7pm on a Wednesday night.
• ENJOY – 7pm – 9.30pm on a Wednesday night. The church is open for young people to come and use the facilities available, for example a band comes to practise (some of the members are in youth group, others are non-Christians), the xbox comes out, and people use the internet, make web pages, play board games and basically do what they want to do. The young people also know that it is a safe environment to bring non-Christian friends.
• OTT – On These Two – is like a ‘normal’ youth group. The young people have time to play basketball across the street, play xbox, eat food and play board games, before we have bible study, worship and prayer. OTT happens on a Friday night between 6.45pm and 9.15pm.

I have had some issues with accommodation, as what Tom had planned fell through for various reasons. So I am staying with Tom and Liz (the youth pastor and his wife), on a sofa bed in Joel’s play room. I love living there as it has help me and tom get to know each other and Tom and Liz are really hospitable. Joel is nearly two, so I have lots of fun playing with him and I made his birthday cake into Bob the Builder. However Liz is heavily pregnant and is due to give birth on Joel’s birthday in late October. Thanks to all those who have been praying about my accommodation, your prayers have been answered! On Tuesday night I found out that I have a place to live for the year, with a couple called Ann and Dennis. I will move in after I have spent nearly a month living downtown with a young woman called Kelsey in a condo. (I go to Kelsey’s on the 15th October)

I have made good friends with Rose, a girl on PAIS but on a different team, and we try and spend some time together socialising during the week, although at the moment we live quite far from each other, so it can be difficult.

The weather here has been amazing, we have only had a little rain, and I’ve managed to get some wonderful, beautiful, awe-inspiring looks at the city and the mountains surrounding, which has helped enlarge the vision God has given me and increase the love for the area in which I live.

I have managed to fit in some sightseeing things such as lynn valley, deep cove, whistler, grouse mountain and gas town. Although I hope to do more of that as I become more settled and when the family comes out to visit in October we hope to go whale watching.

Prayer requests:
• Team finances
• Schools
• Youth group
• Campus Fire www.campusfire.com

God bless

Rosie Honeywell

P.S If you would like to follow my year in Vancouver, with more regular weekly updates and photos please look at: www.jimsrosie.blogspot.com
P.S.S if you would like to receive prayer updates please contact me at: rosiehoneywell@hotmail.com

UPDATE!!!

wooo!!

today has been ace! a quick update on the schools front:

* Amy and Jade have a meeting at 1pm on wed 11th oct at Eric Hamber!
* Amy and Tom have a meeting with Lord Byng in 2 weeks!!

How awesome is that!!! :)

Good News!!

Good News on the Schools front:

* Eric Hamber High School - would like us to mentor their Christian students, working with YFC - Youth For Christ
* Uhill High School - recieved an information pack, then phoned wanting to know more and will phone hopefully next week to arrnage a meeting.
* Simon Fraser Elementary - recieved a information pack and seemed really exicted, and they think we have a lot to offer them.
* Lord Byng High School - as I am writting this my team leader is on the phone, trying to establish a connection and hopefully arranging to send out a schools pack.

Please countine to pray for increased opportunities to get into schools and provide a service, and finances for the team.

Thank you

God bless