London City Mission 2011 – Slideshow

Below is a slideshow that recaps our short-term missions trip to London, where we partnered with the London City Mission and Cafe Forever.

Thank you for your support!

London City Mission 2011 Team Update – July 13

Hello LCM Prayer Team!

Well we made it to London safely! The past two days have been very full and challenging, but very exciting and rewarding. We have been working with the LCM staff running Cafe Forever.

Café Forever is a project within LCM that reaches out to the community in the “Isle of Dogs” in East London. They sell hot food and drinks, but their primary focus is bringing the community together and forming relationships with them. Yesterday (Tuesday) Tom Carpenter, the team leader at Cafe Forever, gave us a tour of the cafe and the Isle of Dogs and gave us an overview of the philosophy and strategy behind Cafe Forever. After that we helped out the LCM staff with their “Project 400,” a Bible distribution program in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the English translation of the Bible. Most of us went door-to-door on different streets near the cafe asking if they’d like a free NIV Bible, children’s Bible, and/or “Jesus” film, while the rest delivered Bibles to people who had already expressed interest. Some people blatantly rejected us, but we were still able to have a lot of very good conversations about the Bible and Christianity. We found that many people were happy to just talk to us, even though some had clear problems with the idea of Christianity or religion in general. Overall, it was a very encouraging day, and we are inspired to do something similar in our own city of Boston.

Today (Wednesday) we visited a large mosque in the East End of London, where over 5,000 Muslims worship each week.

It was very enlightening for all of us since none of us had ever been to a mosque. We learned a lot about the way in which Muslims worship and a bit about the Bengali people and the tensions between the Sylheti (religious) and non-religious groups. After some delicious “beigels,” we went back to Cafe Forever. Half of us did some more Bible distribution again while the rest of us worked at the smaller cafe under Cafe Forever in the nearby park to play with the local children.

In addition to the Bible distribution and working at the cafe, we have been planning a community outreach event with the rest of the LCM staff. “Fun Day” is an annual Cafe Forever event where hundreds of local children come to the park to play games and do crafts so the LCM staff can form relationships with the children and their parents. This is a very important event because it will bring together children from communities that are very divided because of class and cultural differences. This event will take place this Friday.

Please continue to pray for us as we work with Cafe Forever. Pray that we may work diligently and effectively, allowing God to turn hearts towards Christ. We especially need prayer for the upcoming Fun Day.

Until our next update, cheers!

-Your LCM Team

London City Mission Team 2011 – Prayer Requests

Our team of 6 is ready to depart to London this Monday!  Our 2011 team members who will partner with the London City Mission are:

Tim Chang
Hobin Chi
Edgar Huerta
Andrew Kerhoulas
Joanna Lee
Shinyoung Lee

We will be arriving in London on Monday, 7/11 and we will return to Boston on Sunday, 7/17.

Please remember us in prayer in the following ways:

Pray for strong team unity.  We have participated in 5 training sessions and have hung out on a number of occasions, but due to different summer schedules, our team has not had many chances to be together as a complete unit.  Team unity is vitally important for any short-term missions trip, so we ask you to pray for us that we would be patient with one another and learn to work well together as we serve in London.

Pray for a humble and servant heart as we serve the people in London.  One of the primary purposes of any short-term missions trip is to serve the already existing missionaries and indigenous leaders to where we are going.  And so the only agenda we are bringing is one of service and flexibility; to do the will of the staff in London.

Pray that we would all grow a stronger sense of God’s mission throughout the world.  Another purpose of any short-term missions trip is that the participant who goes may gain a broader vision of global missions.  Pray that we would all see and experience that the advancement of the gospel is happening all over the world and not just in the US.  Pray that as we see the gospel going out in London, that this would encourage us to be supporting the work of global missions to the nations.

Pray that we would not leave our experiences in London but that we’ll be able to bring them back and encourage others about the trip, but more importantly to become more missional here in Boston.  Pray for us, that by participating in missional work in another world-class city like London, that we would grow a stronger desire for missions to happen in Boston.