Upon comming home one of the common cerimonial rites is to catch up on everything that has happend since you were away. I find it strange how much more information you can find out actually being home rather than just hearing things over the telephone or emails.
One such conversation concerned my parents involvement with the youth group at a local church [which will have given the game/name away to many readers] and their hiring of staff. Now before I continue to state the deails they disclosed it is best to state my personal view point regard staff in the church which can pretty much be found in these series of article by my friend Andrew Brims on his blog, particularly post 2 in the series.
It has emerged that due to financial constraints brought about from the recession, in addition to the previous lack of success in finding a new full time youthworker for the 11-14year olds, the church was now going to only look for a part time worker [to join the current 2 full time paid youthworkers]. Some had registered their grievances with this decision due to the fact that there are some 120 youth listed on the registers of this churches directory, and if this was a church of this relative size they would certainly hire an administrator to assist in the running of the church. This may well be a fair point, yet as I have linked previously in this article I don't necessarily like this conclusion anyway.
The other point made was that in standard education, the best investment you can make is in smaller class sizes which I would agree with [although from a TEFL perspective a group of 3/4 can be more effective than a 1-2-1 or 1-2-2 class]. However the point I immediately thought was why don't we just get more people to volunteer (an admittedly crazy concept) as this would have this impact and if everyone took part in an aspect of the administration then it would reduce the need of another work to hopefully zero, plus having the whole church more engaged.
The response I received said a great deal to me. I was told that people just don't want to volunteer and that maybe this was why we now have to pay people to do the youthwork.
I have no doubt there is a great deal of truth in this but I think there is also a causal effect caused by hiring a youthworker as well. A few years back I spoke to a friend who was currently working as a youthworker and he said that as soon as he started to get paid the amount of volunteers at the church dropped as a result, and the same occurred again when he became full time rather than part time. This we presumed was because people thought that there was now someone being paid and so it wasn't necessary to volunteer as much.
I was worryingly reminded of the electric monk in one of the Douglas Adams books, which is there to do your spiritual thinking for you so that you don't have to and can concentrate on other things. Is this what we have started to treat youthworkers as? we pay them to teach our kids [in a separate location] so we no longer have to have spend our precious time volunteering or perhaps to make sure we get "fed" each week.
I should point out that I have a great many friends who are youthworkers who have made incredible differences in young peoples lives and I have happily given money to help them be available and free to help those that they work with so I am not taking away from the ministry of youthwork.
Monday 27 December 2010
Friday 24 December 2010
Travelling back
Well after 23hrs of travelling I have finally managed to reach my destination, New Malden. of course it wasn't as easy as that, oh no! Everything was going very well until I got to passport control and suddenly [I say suddenly after a 30 minute wait after initally handing over my passport] I was told that despite having a visa I hadn't got my passport stamped after my inital 30 days and so was asked to pay a penalty charge. A few phone calls later and at 18:40, when my plane was due to finish boarding, I was allowed to pass through passport control with a peice of paper informing me that I needed to transfer some money into an account. After then dashing through to the terminal in a frantic search to work out where my plane was, was it still there, were all the people seething at the idiot who didn't bring enough grivner to pay a bribe penality charge as he passed through passport control?
well actually everyone was stood next to the gate as the plane hadn't yet arrived. After a brief period [see an hour] in the que meeting American peace corps volunteers [apparently the Ukraine is the biggest station of peace corps in the world...who knew...well obviously they did as they told me] and a man who had been studying in the national engeners school for his Msc in Engenering, we were let on to the plane...to wait until we could depart.
All of which meant my arrival in the UK was 2hrs later than scheduled BUT I fortunately was not so late as to catch the last underground train. So after 23hr 3 trains, 1 bus, 1 plane, 1 underground train, I finally got home.
There have already been some interesting moments in the UK, such as going up to a counter and hearing someone speak in a British accent and in English [as opposed to russian/ukrainian or English with an accent] and readjusting to British prices [I had only just got use to thinking in Gryvner!] being on public transport and everyone speaking English and finally taking the dog for a walk.
well actually everyone was stood next to the gate as the plane hadn't yet arrived. After a brief period [see an hour] in the que meeting American peace corps volunteers [apparently the Ukraine is the biggest station of peace corps in the world...who knew...well obviously they did as they told me] and a man who had been studying in the national engeners school for his Msc in Engenering, we were let on to the plane...to wait until we could depart.
All of which meant my arrival in the UK was 2hrs later than scheduled BUT I fortunately was not so late as to catch the last underground train. So after 23hr 3 trains, 1 bus, 1 plane, 1 underground train, I finally got home.
There have already been some interesting moments in the UK, such as going up to a counter and hearing someone speak in a British accent and in English [as opposed to russian/ukrainian or English with an accent] and readjusting to British prices [I had only just got use to thinking in Gryvner!] being on public transport and everyone speaking English and finally taking the dog for a walk.
Tuesday 7 December 2010
It ended with a hug
Today another teacher left the school, this time taking her 1 and a bit year old son with her. Having grown close to both of them over the last 3 months saying good bye was very hard, and made much harder by the fact that Brazil [where they are from] isn't exactly the closest of places to either the UK or the Ukraine.
I didn't really get to say a proper goodbye as when I believed at the time I had to rush over to the school and teach a one to one lesson [in actually fact the student had cancelled but the message didn't travel through in time] and so I had to leave with a rushed good bye and so long.
Thankfully in this modern age with have such wonderful things as Skype that mean that no matter where people are in the world, we can stay in contact but I know it won't be the same. I had grown to enjoy our regular post teaching meals, chats and running around chasing a little child up and down the house [by this I mean I loved them straight away and loved them even more by the end rather than hated them at first and was reluctantly converted]. I know that nothing will be quite like them, even if they are also enjoyable.
As I did finally say goodbye I had, what had been severely missing during my time in Dnipro. A good, long, all enveloping hug. I realised how much I missed those true heartfelt moments when you bring someone tight to you and don't let go. All of a sudden problems don't seam so bad, worries can fade away and it feels safe just to be yourself. I am certain the world would be a better place if people gave more hugs.
Final thoughts
I didn't really get to say a proper goodbye as when I believed at the time I had to rush over to the school and teach a one to one lesson [in actually fact the student had cancelled but the message didn't travel through in time] and so I had to leave with a rushed good bye and so long.
Thankfully in this modern age with have such wonderful things as Skype that mean that no matter where people are in the world, we can stay in contact but I know it won't be the same. I had grown to enjoy our regular post teaching meals, chats and running around chasing a little child up and down the house [by this I mean I loved them straight away and loved them even more by the end rather than hated them at first and was reluctantly converted]. I know that nothing will be quite like them, even if they are also enjoyable.
As I did finally say goodbye I had, what had been severely missing during my time in Dnipro. A good, long, all enveloping hug. I realised how much I missed those true heartfelt moments when you bring someone tight to you and don't let go. All of a sudden problems don't seam so bad, worries can fade away and it feels safe just to be yourself. I am certain the world would be a better place if people gave more hugs.
Final thoughts
Thursday 2 December 2010
Past, Present or Future orientated people
A little video about the differences between past, present and future orientated people. [with cool animations by RSA animate]
Wednesday 1 December 2010
Fasting: a few thoughts on my faults
I have often wondered about the spiritual discipline of fasting, and when I say wondered I usually mean realised I should do it more and then quickly made up reasons why I shouldn't or other things to think about so that I don't have to go without food or something else.
Every now and again someone comes up to me and tells me what a huge difference they have seen in their life since they have fasted, or I hear a sermon/ read an article about it and I the train of thinking starts. “Of course I should fast, I know that it something I should do, I know it goes along with prayer and I believe that it will be a good thing to do. BUT...” the train of thinking starts “I'm still underweight, I should wait till I'm gaining weight again/I can't do it on Monday, I need to fast in secret and on Monday everyone will know I'm fasting...so I should...oh I’ll work out when to fast later [later never comes]./ oh no! I've eaten a tiny amount of food! That's ruined today’s fast. I'll just have to cancel today’s and start again next week (repeat ad nausium until I have forgotten that it's even a day of fasting)/
I think one of the main problems for me with fasting is that it is so contrary to what culture tells me about food and what I want to believe about food. See although I am usually under what is a healthy weight for my height, I LOVE food. I enjoy all different types of food and tastes and I think the saying “the way to a man's heart is through his stomach” was written about me. So the idea of choosing not to eat really doesn't sit well with me. Having said this I know that we actually don't need 3 meals a day, and that you can easily go for a day without eating and feel no side effects what-so-ever [apart from some bad breath].
I sometimes use the excuses that I have a bad memory and keep forgetting that I am fasting...and it can kind of work for the morning when I have just woken up and slip into auto-eat mode but certainly not during the day. At this point when I Feel hungry I know it is because I haven't eaten and I know this is because I am fasting. Yet despite this I still find myself accidentally breaking my fasts.
If you had read my post about date night then maybe you can see the similarities here. Maybe I’ve been thinking too much about how I feel and about how I am tired/hungry and want some quick relief rather than about spending time thinking/concentrating on God. Maybe [probably] I have become to infected with worldly thinking that OF COURSE I should have three meals a day. Most probably I know that God will still be there if I choose not to carry out on what I decided upon. Really it is a case of taking grace for granted and not appreciating how good it is to spend time with God. When ever I do fast I feel the difference and I am so glad that I did, and yet next week the same old excuses rear their heads out of the ground.
I don't know if you feel the same but it does seam that the modern church really doesn't fast at the moment. Maybe this is my own blind experience but I hear so few sermons on fasting that It really surprises me. Admittedly Jesus and Paul talk about other things more but still how often do you hear fasting mentioned at church.
For further reading on reasons to fast etc see the links bellow. [most nicked from this post]
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