Community!

Hello, again! Week 10? Alrighty then! Last week the Corps officers were on a well deserved holiday with their family, and so the Corps was running on a reduced programme, which meant we all got a week to relax and re-energize ahead of the Christmas half term, and it was beautiful! I got to spend some quality time with old friends (my bed included), cook dinner for my lovely discipler Ruth and her daughter Lucy, and I also was afforded some reflective moments, where I could just re-charge and re-connect.

Before we broke up for the holidays, both my housemate and I showed some visiting French Junior Soldiers, their chaperones and their officer, Major Florence Bruno, around Stepney Green to show them what we get up to and to give them a sense of our Corps' ministry - which naturally included finishing with tea and cakes in our living room. In return, they sang us their "Torchbearers" (Scouts) song in French and showed us a presentation of the activities at their home Corps in Nice, France, as well as giving us some tastes and smells of Provence. It was a lovely evening, they were such a blessing to us and the stories they told us about their corps were really encouraging.

Divisional Prayer Meeting

Divisional Prayer Meeting

This amazing sense of unity continued into this week because, as well as the usual programmes, I was able to attend a TELCO meeting (The East London Community Organisation - a founding chapter of London Citizens), as well as a Divisional Prayer Meeting, all on the same night! The TELCO meeting was really cool, as community action groups across Tower Hamlets gathered to discuss what we could be doing to help those within our communities who need it the most. Just seeing how much love and passion local people had for their area gave me a great deal of hope; God is working here in Tower Hamlets through all those people! We then headed off to the Divisional Prayer Meeting at Regent Hall on Oxford Street where we saw the cultures of our division unite in an evening of praise, fellowship and prayer. The flags displayed around Regent Hall served as a powerful visual tool to demonstrate quite how diverse London Central Division is, and I had no idea what half of them were! It occurs to me how overwhelmingly blessed I am to be a part of such a loving church, and indeed a wonderful wider community, who, regardless of language barriers and cultural differences, is united in such a strong sense of purpose. If this is just a glimpse of what God is doing with the Salvation Army right now, it makes me very excited!

Where are you in your journey?

As I write this I am reminded of Revelation 7:9 (NIV) which reads, 'After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands'. I think I saw a little bit of what that could be like on Wednesday and it just overwhelmed me. It was such an encouraging sight to see so many countries represented by the people of London Central Division, just beautiful. We are blessed.