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

We had a wee memorial service in Jonnie’s parents house. Jonnie and Susie had arranged the coffee table so that there were pictures of Iona, a clay imprint of her hands and feet, a lock of her hair, blankets Jonnies mum and sister had made her and some little boots and hats she’d worn. It was so sad looking at all of them arranged on the table.Thinking of all the precious memories I have of her and of all the dreams stolen away from us all for her future. Graham the minister taking the service, read out psalm 139 and a really sad winnie the pooh story, chosen because Iona had a lot of winnie the pooh stuff. He also shared some of the memories and dreams Jonnie and Susie had shared with him for today. Things such as Susie had been looking forward t taking her swimming (Susie is a great swimmer) and Jonnie taking great care and delight in washing Iona’s hair every morning and making sure it was just how she liked it. It was such alovely, but sad moment.

Then we went up to the cemetary. It was horrible weather, windy and wet. Perfect for making us feel worse than we already did! Susie carried Iona’s tiny coffin from the car to the graveside. Her and jonnie thought it was right that one of them did it, and Susie wanted to because she was the first to hold Iona and it was Susie’s arms that Iona died in. Once everyone was at the graveside, Jonnie lay a red rose on her white coffin, one of the saddest sights I’ll remember forever. Then Jonnie, his Dad, Susie’s Dad and myself lowered her gently into the grave. I wrote on Tuesday that holding after she’d passed away was the hardest thing I’d ever have to do, I was so wrong, it was so painful lowering her down, watching her tiny white coffin getting lower and lower. Although it was comforting to think that her 2 favourite teddies were in there with her, Moo, her cow and Baa, her sheep.

Graham then lead a beautiful reflection, then the undertakers covered her grave. all the family then lay flowers at her graveside, Ann and Andrew (Linda and Susies mum and dad) lay flowers in a teddy bear shape, Linda and I lay an arrangement of pink gerboras, Jonnie and Susie had put the rose on her coffin, I forget what other flowers were there.

Many of us wore pink, as that’s the color we all associate with Iona. I bought a hot pink T-shirt specially to wear for Iona, which is now going to go into Linda and I’s box of Iona memories.

It’s been such a hard day, I didn’t ever want to say goodbye to Iona. It’s quite hard already, because a few people seem to think that the funeral is the hardest part and that it all gets easier from there. It doesn’t. i miss her just as much, if not more, despite having had the funeral. I pray that time will never ease the pain of her loss, I don’t want to dwell on it forever, but I know I’m going to hurt every time I think of her, I don’t want to become accumstomed to her not being around. Her being taken from us should never feel right.

A few people have told us that there is a reason for her dying, or that good will come of it. Fair enough, maybe good will come of it, but I refuse to believe that is the reason she was born and died. Iona dying is a tragedy, an injustice. I don’t want anyone to try and explain why she’s gone, how can there be a rational reason for all of this? It sucks. I want her back, we all do.

One of Ann and Andrews friends sent an email saying that when Christ returns and the dead and raised to life, Iona’s going to come running straight for Jonnie and Susie. I don’t care what your theological insights on eschatology are, thats a beautiful picture that made us all smile.

It was so sad to see Jonnie and Susie, all the family, in so much pain today, yet amazing to see how strong Jonnie and Susie are. I don’t know how anyone can be so strong after going through all they’ve been through. I was really touched by what Avril said in her post ‘memories’. It’s nice to know that some positives can come out of such a crap situation.
One fo my friends sent me this song via facebook today; its called ‘Homesick’ by mercy me, it can be listened to here: Homesick

lyrics are:
You’re in a better place, I’ve heard a thousand times
And at least a thousand times I’ve rejoiced for you
But the reason why I’m broken, the reason why I cry
Is how long must I wait to be with you

I close my eyes and I see your face
If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place
Lord, won’t you give me strength to make it through somehow
I’ve never been more homesick than now

Help me Lord cause I don’t understand your ways
The reason why I wonder if I’ll ever know
But, even if you showed me, the hurt would be the same
Cause I’m still here so far away from home

I close my eyes and I see your face
If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place
Lord, won’t you give me strength to make it through somehow
I’ve never been more homesick than now

In Christ, there are no goodbye
And in Christ, there is no end
So I’ll hold onto Jesus with all that I have
To see you again
To see you again

And I close my eyes and I see your face
If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place
Lord, won’t you give me strength to make it through somehow
Won’t you give me strength to make it through somehow
Won’t you give me strength to make it through somehow

I’ve never been more homesick than now

I can’t listen to this song now without filling up, it will forever be one of those songs that makes me think of Iona, along with ‘In the arms of an Angel’.

We’re all still struggling with this so much, we will be for a long time, thank for for reading this and for your prayers and whatever support you have given me/the whole family. I’m still going to be writing about this so muhc. Like i said, just because we had her funeral today, this is not by any means over for any of us.
Here’s a wee picture of her:

On Tuesday, after she had passed away. The nurses made feet and handprints of Iona, they also cut a lock of her hair for Jonnie and Susie, Andrew, being great with anything to do with Graph Comm turned those precious mementos into this lovely picture:

I may be repeating myself, but I, we, all miss her so much. I wish none of us had to feel this pain and that we could just have Iona back here with us. I want to hug her and kiss her, tell her that she means the world to me. I want to see Jonnie and Susie raise her, to nurture her, see Andrew be the amazingly sweet grandad he is. I just want t see her grow up being so loved by so many people. Just one of many dreams stolen from this family when Iona died…..

‘peace’ out

Chris