Nigeria-Chibok Girls: BBOG Campaigners March To Presidential Villa

Nigerian Government
Bring back all our Abducted Girls

The march in commemoration of the 2-year anniversary of the Chibok girls abduction, which started from the Unity Fountain climaxed as planned at the Presidential Villa.
That did not, however, stop the campaigners from continuing with their planned itinerary at the Presidency which ended with a press conference.

They delivered their message to the President right there.
First they asked the President to act fast to rescue the girls, some of which some parents had just identified in recent pictures on CNN.
Other major demand of the group is that government should investigate every case of kidnapping, whether or not it is related to Chibok, set up a missing persons verification bureau as well as a rehabilitation platform for victims of insurgency.


The Chairman of the Chibok community, Tsambido Hosea, asked for the establishment of a special search and rescue team with a special mandate to locate and rescue the Chibok girls.

He said that members of the community have continued to grieve over the faith of the girls and are asking the federal government to step up efforts to find them.

The campaigners said that 731 days is no joke and is too long a time for young girls to be left at the mercy of insurgents and away from home but they are not giving up until the girls are back and alive.

They insisted that government must act fast on the new information available.
One of the parents of the Chibok girls, Esther Yakubu, while berating the Police for denying them access to the Presidential Villa, said tearfully, “It is not our fault. We didn’t beg for it and we didn’t pay the Boko Haram to kidnap our girls. They did it just to fulfill their selfish interest.”

Page after page after page

Then!

Chris Bennett: The Dock project began back in 2009 and at that stage everything around here was still a building site, it was still scaffolding and big holes in the ground. But at that stage I was asked by Bishop Harold, I'm an ordained Church of Ireland Minister, and I'd been kind of looking for my next challenge and Harold suggested that the challenge might be trying to dream up and think up what might be an appropriate expression of church in the midst of the Titanic Quarter as it grew.

Now:

Chris Bennett: We have seen amazing growth in many ways but there's no doubt that The Tall Ships festival in Belfast in July certainly put us to the test. It was, in every way, a big event. Fifty ships, 50,000 visitors and, over four days, the Dock Café served 5,510 customers!

We've also just celebrated another milestone in that we have filled a complete Visitors' Book in Dock Café. It may not sound like much but, when we opened in 2012, we commissioned some lovely leather-bound visitors' - books though it seemed impossible that we would ever run out of space. Hundreds of pages, eight entries per page... there would never be that many customers through our doors, would there?

Page after page after page tells a story of visitors finding a welcome, wanderers finding a home, individuals finding friendship, busy people finding peace, stressed people finding space, sorrowful people finding a smile, sceptical people finding faith (or sometimes just some experience of God, or grace, or something divine that they can't quite put their finger on...)

The Dock charity is made up of a number of things: café, art gallery, museum and, of course, church – a church which continues to involve a team of dedicated volunteers and chaplains from across all church backgrounds, both Protestant and Catholic, who are committed to sharing every step of the journey of building community in this new part of Belfast.

We also have a prayer garden where people can rest and reflect, or talk to one of our Prayer Team. It's a little oasis of greenery and peace in the corner of The Dock Café and is open during Café hours; providing a space to reflect, read from our library of books, and maybe write a prayer and post it on the wall or in the prayer journal.

Find out more about this Fresh Expression project, read on, click here!

Carol singing at the inn!

At 6 pm I went to Stowe carol service and it was great to resource, listen to lots of different readings from the word of the Lord and pray. 

Then, at 7.30 pm, we had a totally different carol evening at the Bank House in Hixon. The pub was packed even more than usual as so many came to sing no less than twenty different carols and praise the Lord and exalt the name of Jesus above any other names. 

There was a shortage of chairs but it didn't stop us from singing heartily and joyfully, also the musicians Maureen, John and Steven were excellent. 

Have you been carolling yet, did you enjoy it? Let me know!

Against child trafficking? support TEARFUND

No more child trafficking

SPIRITUAL PASSION

At TEARFUND, we’re Christians committed to following Jesus where the need is greatest. God has called us to serve those living in poverty, regardless of race, gender, nationality or religious belief.

We know the gospel has the power to transform lives and heal communities, we see this truth in our work every day. God isn’t giving up on the poor, neither are we.
Trafficking is the fastest growing crime in the world, ravaging the lives of 1.2 million children across the world every year. That number is set to rise, unless we stop it in its tracks. The good news is: we can.

Watch this film to find out how Christians are turning the tide of trafficking in one Lao village. There is a road that leads to Thailand. To the desperate girls in this small village in Laos it can look like a tempting prospect. The idea of a better life, just over the mountains, can seem like a dream come true. But for many, it’s the beginning of a nightmare.
Nang lives with her parents and three sisters in a small village in Laos on the border of Thailand. She’s 12 years old. She has one year of school left. Even though she enjoys school, life is hard. She wants to be a nurse when she grows up but the reality is that staying in education isn’t an option for her. Her parents can’t afford it. There are some things Nang doesn’t want. She says, ‘I don’t want to be poor. Now we are very poor. I just want to stop being poor and have many things.’

Asked what her hopes are for the future, she laughs. The interpreter tells us that’s a very hard question for Laos people. Here most people have so few prospects that the possibility of something else for their lives is beyond them. They have no real hope.

And this lack of hope puts girls like Nang in serious danger.

To support TEARFUND, click on this link TEARFUND, Have a blessed week-end. 

Tory Minister Baroness Warsi warns persecution threatens the Christian way of life

Baroness Warsi, the Minister for Faith and Communities, said Christians were being driven out of countries such as Syria and Iraq where the religion first took root.The peer, Britain’s first female Muslim Cabinet minister, raised her concerns in a speech at Georgetown University in Washington DC.Earlier, she said countries such as Pakistan should do more to “set the tone” for tolerance of minorities.Lady Warsi told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m concerned that the birthplace of Christianity, the parts of the world where Christianity first spread, is now seeing large sections of the community leaving and those remaining feeling persecuted.“There are huge advantages to having pluralistic societies – everything from the economy to the way people develop educationally, and therefore we all have an interest in making sure that Christian communities do continue to feel that they belong and are not persecuted.”
She said she had already had “very frank conversations” with ministers in Pakistan, telling them that senior politicians have a “duty” to speak out against persecution.

Source :  http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/443369/Minister-Baroness-Warsi-warns-persecution-threatens-the-Christian-way-of-life

God's dream

God’s Dream

A Sermon delivered by Desmond Tutu at the Chapel of King's College, London (Sunday 22 February 2004):

In St. John's Gospel our Lord says the highest title he can give his disciples is to call them friends. Therefore what he says to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection stands out prominently. And he's talking about people, one of whom betrayed him, another denied him not once but twice, and they all deserted him, like craven cowards and were now skulking behind closed doors.

We would have understood perfectly had he been thoroughly miffed with them and spoken dismissively and even derisively of them. Well, what happens? It would have been startling to have called them his disciples after what they had done. And quite mind-boggling even to have called them friends. Well, he decided to knock us over with a feather.

Just listen to what he says to Mary Magdalene: "Go to my brothers and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father. To my God and your God."

Now that really is quite unbelievable. This craven despicable lot - my brothers indeed! But clearly Jesus meant this to be taken seriously. That we, his followers, belong in one family - God's family. Is there anything else in the bible that seems to support this assertion?

This Jesus came - not to an ideal world - but came to a world that was polarised, fractured, divided. Divided into hostile and often alienated groupings. There were the much hated occupying Romans, resented by the subject natives, and Jews did not share a cup with the Samaritans. The Jewish community of His day was stratified, fragmented. There were the Sadducees and Pharisees, the zealots and the collaborating tax collectors. There were the rich, the poor, male, female, young, old - and there was a sharp divide between Jew and Gentile, represented by a wall of partition in the temple precincts to go beyond which spelt death for the Gentile unbeliever.

And people saw a veritable miracle happening before their very eyes with the advent of the new community of the followers of Jesus. They saw those who were formerly alienated and hostile flocking into this new fellowship. And they marvelled and remarked "How these Christians love one another."

It would have been revolutionary for a slave to have been accepted as the equal of his former master. But no, they were not just equals - no, they were brothers. They were sisters in one family. An equal you can acknowledge once and forever after ignore. You can't do that with your sister or brother.

You don't choose who your relative will be. Sometimes we wish we could, given just how difficult some of them can be. Well, we don't always know what they think of us! No - we don't choose our family members. They are God's gift to us, as we are to them.

Do you recall when Saul went to Damascus to arrest Christians there and was blinded? And the Lord asked Ananias to go to Saul's lodgings to pray for him to have his sight restored. Do you recall Ananias quite flabbergasted telling the omniscient Lord "Lord, do you know this man? He has been harassing your people and came here to arrest us. No, Lord, you can't be serious." Well Ananias went, and when he arrived said about this persecutor of the Christian community "Brother Saul".

Yes, I believe the words of the Lord to Mary Magdalene to be his most radical utterance. We are family - all of us. We belong in God's family. There are no outsiders. All are insiders.

When Jesus spoke of being lifted up on the cross he said "I, if I be lifted up will draw.." - he didn't say "I will draw some" - he said "I, if I be lifted up will draw ALL - draw all to me to hold them" all of us drawn into the divine embrace that excludes no-one - black, yellow, white, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, male, female, young, old, gay, lesbian, so-called straight - yes it IS radical. All, all, ALL belong - Arafat, Sharon, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Tony Blair, Palestinian, Israeli, Jew, Arab, Protestant, Catholic - all, ALL, all belong in this family.

And in a healthy family the rule is from each according to their ability, for each according to their need. And so if we are serious about being family we would not spend obscene amounts on budgets of death and destruction, when we know a small fraction of those budgets would enable our sisters and brothers - members of our family - God's family, God's children - EVERYWHERE - they would have enough to eat, clean water to drink, adequate health care, education.

Go and tell my brothers. Go and tell my family. We are all, all family God's family. The human family.

Stop at 6 pm every Tuesday

and pray for your

Children

Schools &

Community

This idea was conceived and developed by my friend Jen whom I met at Cliff Bible College at the beginning of September. Join us then here or type https://twitter.com/Pray_at_6

Blessings. N.

Not ashamed of the cross

Last week, I received three postcards to support Shirley. I will send them to David Cameron, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. I think that we should have total freedom to wear a cross if we wish to therefore I support Not ashamed of the cross, an initiative led by Christian Concern..for the benefit of church and nation.
If you want to find out more, click here. http://notashamed.org.uk/.
I quote:
The high visibility of the campaign should also give rise to many opportunities to explain to others why Jesus is such good news for individuals and for our society. We hope that wearing the distinctive Not Ashamed logo, backed by the national profile will help in this. We’d love to hear encouraging stories – contact us here
Also on the same website, you can read, listen and watch Christians who are hugely involved in serving their communities, fuelled by their faith in Jesus Christ. Listen to Jonathan Bellamy who founded Cross Rhythms, a local radio.

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May the Lord bless you. Yours in Christ. N.