Harvest week at the Salvation Army in Stepney

And thus marks the end of my first "real" week at my placement Corps in Stepney Green, East London. I can hardly begin to describe it, so much has happened in such a short space of time. If I had only one word to describe this week it would be overwhelming - not in the sense of "Ahhh! I can't do this!", although there were some moments,  more overwhelming in the sense that I think I grasped just some of the importance of this next year for me, and it all kind of knocked me sideways. I'm not entirely sure how my Corps Officers keep up with themselves during the week, but I have strong suspicions it involves coffee and an IV drip, or Hermione's time-stopping pocket watch from Harry Potter, or body doubles... suggestions on a post card...

This past week I was thrown in at the deep end and I really appreciated that. Early on in the week I was blessed enough to hang out with our performing arts group, Smart Crew, and then on Tuesday I got to help lead Smarties, our after-school church club, where we made spy props like mustaches and glasses and talked about Esther Ch.4 and being spies for good in our playgrounds. It seems I also have a new nickname, kindly gifted by the younger members of Smarties. My not-so-secret spy name is now "Potty" (sound familiar, Dad?) which I'm actually feeling kind of happy about. I mean, if they give me a nickname, they like me, right? Haha! The rest of the week was spent in study, helping to prepare things for Harvest and Youth Club stuff, which included my first 1-2-1 mentoring session with one of our young people - just awesome!

The Harvest Festival on Sunday went really well, as we saw food being shared across a real cross-section of the community projects that Stepney is involved in - it was super cool! Babysong mums and toddlers, members of Smarties, members of our church, residents of Booth House Lifehouse and masters students from Queen Mary... I can't imagine a better picture of community than that, or indeed a better picture of His Kingdom. I'm still blown away that two of our two "Big Green" youth club girls showed up to help. It's amazing quite how much they seem to have grown up in a year, and we're so blessed to be able to be a part of that.

I saw a lot of God's love and provision this week in that afternoon alone, it was really quite overwhelming. God is good and He is at work here in Stepney. Much like Esther in Chapter 4, and our Smarties spies in their playground, I know we are here for such a time as this, to do good and help the people that we live alongside see the light that was already in their community - the community that we saw sharing in a meal on Sunday. I just can't get over quite how blessed I am to be surrounded by these people.