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’ve spoken to quite a few people over the last few weeks who’ve been talking about what they’re giving up for lent. It was very easy to talk to people about what they’re giving up, but conversations seemed to flounder when we started talking about why?. So what does lent mean to you, why do you do, or not do, anything during lent?

What is lent traditionally? It seems to be an ever changing concept, originally it merely was used as a word for the spring season. Over the centuries it has morphed into the concept of a time of preperation – through prayer, penitance, self-denial and self-sacrifice – leading up to Easter and the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Sounds very noble and worthy, what does it involve really though? What does it mean to me personally? To you?

For me, its about renewal, a time to set aside everything I’ve failed at over the last year and focus on bringing myself back to God and my relationship with him. And its not just about my failings, its about looking at all the things that have been good and bad over the last year. Making an attempt to see God in everything thats happened. Sometimes its easy. Its easy to see where God was in things like Youth Assembly, its very easy to see where God was in the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Its hard to see where God was/is in some of the struggles at Portlethen Church. Its incredibly hard to see where God was/is throughout Iona’s suffering and death and the continued suffering thats come out of that.

Reflection, thats a key word for me at this time of year. Reflecting over the last year and how I’ve got through it. Another key word is Renewal. My relationship with God as really floundered over the last few years. I hate that. I find prayer, both speaking to god and listening to him, nigh on impossible most days. I struggle to have any regular, quality time exploring Gods word. I want to use this period, where the whole Church is focusing on preperation, on spending time reflecting and renwing myself; spiritually, emotionally and physically.

So what am I doing for lent? I’m concentrating on developing faithful practice in my life. Faithful practice in my prayer life, my Bible study habits and my attitudes towards things in life. I’m also follwing to other lenten practices suggested by two of my friends: Journey to Jerusalem is a program of reflection developed by Christian Aid, to help us reflect throughout our Lenten journey, but trying to avoid the often selfish habits of self-reflection. By doing this, I hope to be able to connect more with the challenges our world faces and how we should be responding as Christians. By following this, I hope to keep myself real and not retreat back into myself as I reflect, I have a bad habit of retreating into myself during hard times, I want to move away from that. Thanks to Stewart Culter for pointing me towards this! The other Lenten practice I was pointed towards is the Blood:Water mission. A challenge to only drink water during Lent, and use what you saved on not buying other drinks to help projects in Africa. Seems a great idea to me! Thanks to Laura for pointing me towards it.

Please share any Lenten journeys you are undergoing yourself, shared stories during a period like this can only serve to encourage and inspire us all on our own journeys. After all, faith is both individual and corporate. To grow, we must share our individual experiences with each other.

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

Iona’s being brought through to Penicuik by the undertaker today. She’ll be staying across the road from where Jonnie and Susie are staying. They’re planning to stay down here in Penicuik for the next month or so, maybe stay with us in Aberdeen for a wee while. I just can’t imagine how hard its going to be for them going home to Inverness. These next few days are going to be so hard for them, Though it has been lovely seeing the family come together to support each other through it all.

Thank you for all your prayers and messages off support, they mean so much. We’ve all been so touched by it. Our phones have barely stopped ringing and our inboxes and facebook accounts are overflowing with messages of support.

I recieved one really lovely message reflecting on how my Tag cloud reflects where Iona is, with God………

I just can’t express how we feel just now, utterly devastated, yet buoyed at the same time.

Peace out

Chris

Maybe I can get some of the words out……..

I say it’s wierd, because I expect things with Iona to dominate my thoughts, and most days they do. I was speaking to Linda the other day, and realised I haven’t told Iona that I love her, I’m just so desperate to see her again so I can tell her, I don’t know why I haven’t……

….But some days other stuff works its way into my thoughts. Thoughts about other aspects of God, sports, work, Linda, sports, Linda, family, Canada…….

…….I miss sports. I used to be really active, rugby, football, American Football. It was a huge part of my life,  a huge part that I miss and just can’t fit into my life anymore I miss the camaraderie, the buzz, the physicality of it all. Some days I feel quite lost in everything thats going on, I used to feel that way at High School a lot, sports always made sense of it. 11 (or 15) guys, all striving for the same goal, the same victory, the same purpose. It was awesome, it still is. It was all so much simpler, when you have the ball in your hands, you’re in control, you call the shots. Even when you didn’t have the ball you had a certain amount of control over the game. I miss that too.

I’m not really sure why i’m writing all this, I just had an urge to write something somewhere, this seemed the obvious place.

Cheers for reading,

peace out

Keep praying for Iona

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.