I knew it was going to be tough – even with almost tripling my portions to help me last longer on my feet all day I’m incredibly hungry! Although, I do have to confess that I succumbed slightly last night – I couldn’t sleep and was soo hungry, so I sneaked a couple of Oat cakes – nothing exciting or majorly filling, but a slip nonetheless….I don’t feel good about it!

Today was actually not too bad a day – I was extremely busy today, and it seems to have kept my mind away from focusing on being hungry. I was with Linda in the morning taking photos at the messy play classes she does at a local soft play centre. After that, now this was really hard, we went to see my nephew, Joshua, to celebrate his 4th Birthday with him – he was having a birthday party with some of his friends. It was great to see him, but so hard to resist the party food…..

It did give me a little insight into how people cope on so little food (or variety thereof). If being busy and occupied all day helps keep my mind off the hunger – would it for them too? I know a lot of the hungry people in the world have much more laborious jobs than I do, but I still wonder if the busyness is a distraction?

I think about the families I met in Israel, in the unrecognised village. They had so little, homes made of whatever the could find; no electricity; long walks for water; but everything they had, they shared with us. Their bread; their juice; their homes. It was a wonderful moment of hospitality. Something I’ve tried to engage with by making sure to always offer Linda some of my breakfast each morning (an insignificant gesture sure, but I hope my hearts in the right place….). I’m not sure there’s anything that I can do or say that will ever make the same impact that those people did on me, not a week goes by that I don’t think about them.

As well as the Rice and Beans challenge, I’m following the Tearfund Carbon Fast. Todays challenge was very relevant to the Rice and Beans challenge: read about it here.

Hows your fast going?

Peace Out

We do have a garden, but we don’t grow anything in it except grass (and weeds!). So we don’t have anything we wish to encourage to grow there. But, we are fortunate here in Aberdeen that our local council help us to recycle food waste. Next to our kitchen sink we have a wee green bin, that comes with biodegradable bags in which to put our food waste. This then goes directly into our brown wheelie bin (same bin as garden waste) to be recycled appropriately by the council. Not a new challenge for me today then, but it did make me wonder what I would do with all the food waste if I didn’t have that bin – and I probably would put it into the general rubbish. for that, I’m glad for the council scheme. I know I wouldn’t recycle anywhere near as much if they didn’t make it so easy! Hopefully, if and when we move house, we will have a similar scheme in our new place – or at the very least I will be more thoughtful about what I do with my waste and why…..

How’s your Carbon Fast going?

Peace Out

My first decision was ‘Which light Bulb?’ it took me a while to work out which light bulb would be the biggest sacrifice for me in the house. (This is probably a boring bit – sorry!). We have this up-lighter in our living room behind our sofa – I always have it turned on when I’m in, well, just because I like that wee bit extra light over the up-lighter, lamp and fairy lights that are already turned on. It’s the closest light to where I usually sit – but I can easily move if I need the light! I’ll find out over the next 40 days if I really need it or not….I’m also trying to take today’s challenge a bit further and be more disciplined with turning lights off when I leave a room – I’m not always great at remembering to do that! So, all in all, today isn’t the most challenging day (sacrificially) to start (it’s nice of Tearfund to ease us into the challenge!). But it’s still a challenging day as far as my usual behaviour goes….

Peace Out

Our first day in Karachi ended up being more touristy than we expected – our meetings for the day had to be postponed until the Friday, which gave us a chance to explore the city and orient ourselves to the culture we had just landed in. You can read more about that first day on the Church of Scotland World Mission Council Blog at www.cofswmc.wordpress.com.

Here, I’ll be sharing photos with a few stories:

The Central Brooks Memorial Church compound was our home for our time in Karachi. It was a homely wee place, with a beautiful Church in the centre of it.

Muhammed Ali Jinnah was the founding father of Pakistan, our first stop as "tourists" was to his Mausoleum. A very grand, empty building. Few people around - probrably due to the time we were there at.

Jinnah's Mausoleum is surrounded by extensive grounds, a fine place to go for a walk or grab some shade to hide from the sun!

The mausoleum has a permanent armed guard (although I"m pretty sure the 'arms' date from WWII). A mark of respect for the nations forefather.

The Mausoleum's Architecture is incredibly intricate, a very stunning building. As westerners visiting, we caused a bit of a stir - all curiosity, something we soon got used to walking around the streets!

Mohatta Palace was built by Shivratan Chandraratan Mohatta, an ambitious self-made businessman from Marwar as his summer home in 1927. The architect of the palace was Agha Ahmed Hussain. However, Mohatta could enjoy this building for only about two decades before independence of Pakistan and he left Karachi for India. He built the Palace in the tradition of stone palaces in Rajasthan, using pink Jodhpur stone in combination with the local yellow stone from Gizri.

The Palace is a beautiful building, as you would expect from a Palace in this area of the world. When we visited there was an exhibition displaying the work of Asim Butt, a local artist.

The streets of Karachi were interesting to drive through. From this sculpture of the word "Allah" to donkeys, intricately decorated buses and Transvestities, you could never be sure what you would see next!

Fiona had a bit of a soft spot for the donkeys we saw, so this photo goes out to her! We spent a lot of time driving around, so numerous photos were taken from moving vehicles - not so easy! Combine the speed, jolting and the reflections coming off the inside of the glass (In Karachi we were advised to always keep out windows up) and any photo that came out vaguely in focus and without a reflection was a huge success!

During rush hour, quite a few motorcyclists and cyclists would use the pavement instead of trying to weave through the traffic!

Delivery options for white goods are slightly different in Pakistan! Riding a bike also requires much more determination, bravery and balance!

This was one of the sadder things we saw whilst out and about in Karachi. We were just leaving a fairtrade shop and I spotted 2 boys, perhaps 8-12 years old, going through a rubbish pile for whatever they could use. :-/

Peace Out

Holy Trinity Cathedral - as most Cathedrals are, is an impressive building. We never went inside (or up the tower as I like to do). But it does give an impressive welcome to the compound as you enter the gate and look up the avenue towards it.

The Bishops Residence - another beautiful building. A warm welcome inside too. There are diocesan offices in the house as well as the Bishop and family. It transpired that I already knew the Bishops daughter and son-in-law from the conference in Nepal last year!

Rev Fiona Gardner, Bishop Saddiq Daniel, Sandy Sneddon and Chris Hoskins

Suniya and Serena-Zoe James - Suniya is one of the friends I made at the SACYN conference in MAY 2010, she also attended the Church of Scotland National Youth Assembly last September.

Bishop Danie took us on a tour of the compound - showing us the various buildings and resources in the compound

IBTIDA means “New Start” and the project works with people who have abused and become addicted to drugs attempts to give the clients just that – a new start in their lives.

Through a process of cold turkey, prayer and counselling, support over a period of several months, 40%-45% of the people who come to IBTIDA stay clean or reduce their dependency to less harmful substances.

Just across the wall from the Bishops Residence lies Trinity Girls School. The Principal, Mrs Irene Pearl, took great pride in telling us about the school and showing us around.

The girls in the school were delighted to see Fiona. In no time at all she was surrounded by a massive throng of pupils, all wanting to say hello and shake her hand.

As with everywhere else in Pakistan, the kids were wonderfully curious!

Instead of playground footie, they were playing playground cricket here! A chair instead of wickets!

We visited the Seminary in the Holy Trinity Compound, it has limited resources and a small staff, but its dedicated

Peace Out!

The theme of the Assembly this year was “Love life”, with John Bell being the main speaker. From all accounts John spoke very well – passionate and challenging, over the weekend. When I was there on Monday he was speaking about the importance of recieving blessings from other people alongside the importancd of giving blessings to them. He illustrated this with stories about people he has met over his life that have enriched his life, even when he initially thought they had nothing to give. Now, usually I don’t find myself in agreement with some of John’s approach to Theology, but on Monday I found myself agreeing with him, more than that, I found myself really resonating with what he was saying. It started me thinking about my time at the Youth Assembly over the last 11 years and how it has blessed me through the people that I was often there to serve; about the times when I took part in summer mission and how they people I met more often than not blessed me more than I felt I blessed them; about the hospitality I was shown when I visited an unrecognised Arab village in Israel, visiting a community who had very little, were severely oppressed, yet still gave everything they had to the 11 white people who were visiting them.

There was only one debate on Monday at the assembly, a debate talking about marriage. It was really interesting to listen to the groups as I was walking around taking photos, hearing how each group had picked up on different aspects if the material. Some were delving deeply into Theology of marrisge and looking at what the New Testament had to say about it; some were exploring current cultural approaches to marriage, asking questions such as “Is more emphasis
put on the wedding than on the actual marriage?” and “Is marriage as important to society as it used to be?”; other groups were exploring issues around divorce and remarriage, during the ‘blether’ where they had recieved some background information about the subject they were also asked some specific questions about Marriage and how the Church relates to it, one of the questions being “should the Church develop a liturgy of divorce?” The reasoning behind this being that an earlier survey of young people had brought back the suggestion that a service marking a divorce may help children and young people (and the adults) to cope with thr break up a marrige better. It was a really interesting debate, I’m sure the final deliverance will appear on the COSY blog soon!

One of the things I loved about visiting this assembly was the number of people I recognised, it really wasn’t that big a percentage of the number of people there. I thought that was awesome! Yeah, it was great to see old friends, people I haven’t seen in ages when I went, but it was just as awesome to see more youth and young adults engaging with the wider Church, the more diverse the attendance at the NYA is, the better for the wider Church!

My role on Monday was to take some photos of the day, capturing some of the moments that could be used for publicity for the event. I was able to get a number of good photos, which will be appearing on here, the COSY blog, the COSY flickr page and a few other places soon, I was very aware that I was starting my visual story telling of the weekend at the end of the event. They may be good photos, the may provide a visual narrative to some of Mondays goings on, but they are missing the wider narrative and context of the entire weekend, so I can’t wait to see the photos appearing from others who were there for the whole weekend, or perhaps just for small parts of te weekend.

I’m going to leave my ramblings there for the time being, save to provide some links for you to better explore things around the Church of Scotland National Youth assembly:
For the COSY blog visit: www.cosyblog.wordpress.com
For the COSY Twitter account: www.twitter.com/#!/cosy_nya
For the COSY Flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/cosyblog

Enjoy exploring these pages!

Peace Out

I’m really looking forward to the day, I haven’t been to the Youth Assembly since 2009, after which I became too old to go as a delegate. I do miss the asembly, it’s been a huge part of my life for the last 11 years. My first experience at the assembly was in April 2000, when I was 16. It was at this assembly that I decided that I wanted to follow Jesus and gave my life to him. Since then I have seen many changes in the structure, focus and feel of the assembly. I’ve met more people than I can remember, made some amazing friends, experienced things I could never had imagined, had so many incredible experiences it would take ages to list the all, let alone describe them!

I’m glad that I can use my skills and now my business to give back to the assembly. Although most, if not all, of the people who were involved when I first went are no longer involved, the event still means a lot to me. I know firsthand what involvement in the event and this community can be, can mean when you become a part of it.

One thing I love each time I go back to the assembly, whether for a weekend or a day, is the number of people I don’t know. Although the assembly has a group of dedicated attendees, it also has a healthy rate of turnover. It needs to, if it didn’t, the assemblym the community, would soon stagnate and wither.

Once I’m back in Aberdeen, I’ll post a few sample pictures up here from the day, along with a few links to other blogs etc that are talking about the assembly.

Peace Out

Peace Out

Chris

I’m not sure where it came from, but I started thinking about the film ‘I, robot’ with Will Smith. He’s a detective who has to piece together an investigation into a mans death at the hands of a robot by following clues from a holograph that is programmed to answers questions. Whenever Spooner(Smith) gets on the right thought process the holograph does a very frustrating thing. It says ‘That detective, is the right question’ then powers off with a smirk!
Do you ever feel that God is sometimes like this? He pushed us to be constantly thinking and questioning, then when we start asking the right questions, he seems to smile and take a step back as we begin to wrestle with various questions?
Just a late night thought.
Peace out
Chris

But a subject seems to have presented itself over the last 24hours. My niece, Iona Fraser.Those of you close to me know whats been going on with her. She was born this year on the 12th of August. Diagnosed 2 days later with a heart condition ( her Aorta was too narrow) so she was flown from Inverness to Yorkhill in Glasgow for specialist treatment. Since then its been a rollercoaster with her. Some days she’s doing well, other days she’s not so great. It’s been a real struggle fro the whole family, especially Jonnie and Susie (obviously!).

In a wierd way though, it’s been amazing to see how stongly Jonnie and Susie have bonded as a couple. Where they find their strength I don’t know(well, I do, but you know what i mean!). It’s been incredible watching them grow into such amazingly strong parents in such a strong space of time. I also can’t believe how much love I can have for her, I’ve only known her 5 weeks, most of which I haven’t been able to see her, but my love for her is so much I feel like I’m going to burst. I don’t know how Jonnie and Susie don’t explode with love for her, I just can’t imagine the love they must be feeling towards her!

The other thing is how we all view God in this. We’ve all been angry with him, confused why he’s letting this happen. I think Susie summed it up best. “It’s amazing how you can be so angry at God, but feel so close to him at the same time”. And it’s so true. Obviously Jonnie and Susie feel all these things to a stronger degree than the rest of us. We all want God to work in a more obvious way, in the way we want. We know in our head that he’s in control, but it’s hard to accept that when things are so bad.

I just hope this is all over soon and Jonnie and Susie can take Iona home for the first time. It breaks my heart to see them suffering so muhc, to see Iona constantly hooked up to machines. If you’re reading this and you’re a Christian, pray!!Please!!!

Edit: My favourite moment when I saw her today was being able to give her a wee goodbye kiss. As an Unlce all I want to do is play with her and cuddle her and bond with her, its lovely to be able to do that to a limited extent.