Endure Fort» Friends

Diocese of Karachi; A Photo Essay

Chris — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:23:59 +0000

Whilst in Karachi, we spent a substantial amount of time visiting with the Diocese of Karachi. Including their Cathedral compound, their seminary, Girls school and Drug Rehab centre.

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!

General Assembly, Day1 so far!

Chris Hoskins — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:24:51 +0000

We’re approaching the end of the first day of proceedings at the 2009 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Been quite a good day so far! Very Rev David Lunan was a great Moderator, so far Right Rev Bill Hewitt looks like being the best Moderator I’ve seen at Assembly ever! He Rocks!! He knows exactly whats going on and what should go on, he’s direct, doesn’t let people witter on unnecesarily!
Every year I’ve been at GA Bill Hewitt has had an official role, and I commented to him last year that, if I were to come back this year, it would be weird him not being involved, so I’m ecstatic that he’s the Mod! When he was convenor of the business committee he was just as efficient, it’ll be a great year of mod-ship!
As always, the worship was fantastic, I love the sound of almost 1000 voices singing unaccompanied!
I’m never a fan of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the event, but it is almost nice, in a weird way!
Most of this morning was taken up by ceremony, or by some of the arrangements for the business of assembly, there was some controversy about exactly how things will happen in what order on Saturday night, but not as controversial as Saturday will be!
Council of assembly was quite interesting. I took some notes, I figured if you wanted more than my take on a few things you could check out the news feed, webcast or minutes!!
We’ve been promised that the website is under review and should be improved within the next year. What that actually means is anyones guess! I’ll believe it when I see it! Just call me Thomas!!!
THere was a lot of debate around the issue of the governance of the Church of Scotland Councils and committees from a charity trustee point of view. Dr Alison Elliot and Rev Bryan Kerr spoke some good sense into the debate and Dr Elliot had a counter motion passed asking for some time to allow the Church to review the issue properly. It did amuse me that, in true Church of Scotland style, a committee was appointed to review a part of another committees report! Awesome!!
I love the people you meet at GA, such a mix! So far I’ve met my old P4 teacher(who still calls me ‘Christopher’), a random group of schoolkids and Teachers from Portlethen staying in the same hotel as us, 3 of my ex-ministers from Falkirk, many many old friends, 1 future colleague, and old BB officer and a few people who’ve inspired me over the years!!
Let me share some of the comedy moments that we always look out for!
First person to forget their card and leave it in the mic machine: Dr Allison Elliot
First person to be ‘buzzed’ in warning that they are in danger of speaking to long(too much?): Bryan Kerr
And Allison Elliot had a cracking quote: ‘this assembly is reeking of charity trustees’! Fantastic!
Looking forward to prepping for the church and society debate tonight, should be interesting, myself and some of the people I’m friends with helped to put together part of the church and society debate, the report titled ‘growing up in Scotland’. Will be interesting to see how that goes across……

Adventure Ahead!!!

Chris Hoskins — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:53:07 +0000

So tonights the last internet access I expect to have until Friday 29th November. I’ll still be able to text updates to facebook and twitter, so keep an eye on what the 12 of us are upto on there. I can’t wait for this trip, it’s gonna be so awesome, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of blogging material after it!

Linda seems to be getting on well in NYC, she was a wee bit apprehensive at first, but she’s definetly getting into it, she was enjoying hot pretzels in the Rockefeller centre the last I heard…..

I’ve had a pretty good 2 days. Got lots of reading and thinking done, some of the results can be found on my ministry blog. Was through in Falkirk today meeting my Mum and my good buddy Yin for lunch. Also bumped into a few old high school friends and was reminded why I didn’t really miss Falkirk( the 2 are not connected!).

I’ve been doing a lot of rethinking recently about my priorities and my character I’m just not who I’d like to be. So I’ve decided to work on building my character. Don’t ask me how,I don’t know exactly. One thing I really want to change, is to become a stronger person in debates/hard conversation/meetings. Too often Ilet my self be intimidated by other who seem to be confident. I need to believe that I have good, valid things to say too. I think I care too much about how others percive me and how much they like me. I don’t give them, or me, enough credit to trust that people will still like me even if I do disagree with them…..

It’ll be interesting to see how Israel changes my thinking and my perspective…..definetly exciting times ahead!!!!

Peace Out

Se you in 10 days

Chris

Lonely……….

Chris Hoskins — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:01:44 +0000

Yep, I’m lonely, at least I will be for the next 18 hours or so. Linda’s away to New York with uni for the week. Although, I’m away to Israel for a week as of Thursday, so I can’t really complain! I’m off down to Edinburgh tomorrow though for meetings in Edinburgh and Glasgow throughout the start of the week.

I’m expecting Israel to be awesome. I have no doubts it’ll be a life changing experience. But you’ll plenty about that once I get back!

Got a few things I want to get off ma chest before i head off to Israel on Thursday. Firslty, the observant amongst you will notice the wee RSS feed at the side of this post. This is a link to my new blog , no, I’m not discontinuing this blog. My new blog is dedicated to blogging about ministry, youth ministry in particular. It’ll still come up here, but I’d rather have space dedicated to it rather than have my ministry musings mixed up in amongst everything else. Even though thats the natural state from where they come, it helps me to keep them “clear” of my other muddles.

The second thing is an apology to many of you! Since Linda and I came to Aberdeen we’ve struggled to meet and connect with others our age, maybe even others in general. Linda’s very close to her family and I was very close to many friends. all of whom are in the central belt. this has le to us feeling a wee bit lonely and sorry for ourselves at times. My way of dealing with this has been to bury myself away and as a result i’ve been quite pants at keeping in touch! i’m only realising recently that this has been my reaction. So my profuse apologies to anyone I’ve lessened contact with, it’s really nothing personal, I just haven’t dealt with things the best I could have! I aim to change that now I’ve realised my reactions though!

I’m currently researching my next essay for uni. It’s based around the theme of “groups” or more specifically. “How can blogging and social networking technology such as facebook and twitter aid groups of youth minstry practitioners build a sharing and support network”. i’m quite excited about it, should be fun to research and write!

I took some of the Portlethen Youth group to Souled Out tonight. Was an awesome event. Origin were leading the praise, a mixture of new and old, all with their own individual twist to them. The young folks weren’t crazy about the speakers (a timing issue, not a content one). But they loved the music style. they all said i can quote them as saying that they would much rather that style on a sunday morning!

Reckoned I’ve rambled enough for just now, i’m sure i’ll be back on before thursday though!

Peace Out

Chris

Moving On?

Chris Hoskins — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:41:38 +0000

Well, its been a whole month since i last ventured on here, not because I had nothing to say, i just didn’t know what to say.

I’ve though of loads of things to say and talk about on here, but it just didn’t feel right. I wrote so much about Iona on here, it felt wierd to think about writing anything else.

We still miss Iona, that’ll never go away, I honestly don’t know how Jonnie and Susie are coping being back in Inverness, I’d hate to be so far from family and old friends after going through what they’ve been through.

I guess i just needed to come back on here and write sometihng to break that barrier, I won’t forget Iona, ever, I can’t. She’s been such a huge part of this year for the family. Check that, she’s been such a huge part of this family. period.