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Viewpoint from Wendy Bircham for 1st March 2013

 
Wendy Bircham
Licenced reader at St Andrews, Gorleston
 
 
Scooters, hot chocolate, marshmallows and God.
This is cdove lefthurch.  Not as we know it, but for many young people in our town this is how they see church,  and it seems they can't get enough of  it.
 
I’m always surprised (and delighted) at how God can use me in the most unusual places and always out of my comfort  zone, be it abroad,  preaching, or at the front of a High school assembly   talking about ant farms and God baby  as the Christmas message (which incidentally worked).
 
As I am getting  older I   find it a little stretching God’s  limits by the role I have had for the past year or so as a “doorman” for 'Identity'  the  Christian Youth  outreach  groups  here in Gorleston. A job not for the faint hearted. Now  the young people who come along  are ether sympathetic to my age, or just sorry for me when I  take their names for the registrar and  say pardon  how do you spell your name. Where have these modern names come from!!  They certainly aren’t found in my baby naming books.
 
Ruth;  'Identity's'  youth leader has some zany brilliant ways to get the Gospel message across. Like the time one evening late September  when  she thought the group could do some community outreach and do some litter picking.  “Wendy can you come and help”. "Yes, sure Ruth, I said.” Not then knowing that my job would be to  sit  in the middle of  the common  on a deck chair  manning the juice bottles and first aid box. I sat alone for  what seemed Dove rightto have been a couple of hours as dusk began to fall. Passersby were giving me a wide berth and dogs too. I think I resembled a homeless person. Thankfully  the group returned black bags full and the common free from litter for that night.
 
We are never sure who might come along to an 'Identity'  event, so one particular winter Sunday evening  we were amazed when not just one young person who hadn’t been before arrived,  but God sent us a dozen young people who had never been inside a church before.  A little thrown by the size of harvest God had sent us we trusted Him for words of wisdom and guidance. “Why not let them each take a Bible home”. said Ruth.   It was then an amazing miracle happened when  one young man opened his Bible and took out a folded piece of paper which was  tucked inside  and read the words written on it.   " Jesus is your Saviour". The colour drained from the young man’s face  and his jaw dropped to the floor. We silently praised God for His wonderful well timed intervention.
 
God is doing something new in the lives of young people in our town, it may be unconventional to many of us  but the young people are responding and meeting Jesus in unpredictable numbers. Please give our youth workers  support, encouragement, and prayer.  Isaiah 43:19.