Outreach musings...

Last week I was having a funny week. The life of a DTS staffer is a funny one, in some ways, it feels like I shouldn't feel busy or complain about a busy life. There aren't many things I'd like to do more than spend my days with these 12 people who have come here to Belfast in search of God and to discover what it means to be a follower of Him.

But particularly around this time of year, things get pretty busy... At the minute, I'm trying to do a few things at once, finish the lecture phase of the DTS well, start to think about next years DTS (which, I recently was asked to lead...and said yes...but that's another story for another day!), and all of this while having this trip to Rwanda and Burundi to plan for (never mind PACK for....i haven't even THOUGHT about that yet...)

A few weeks ago I found myself getting pretty overwhelmed by a lot of things, particularly the idea of this outreach. While talking to a friend, I came up with a bit of an analogy for it.

It's almost like the plans for outreach are like a big plate of spaghetti, everything that we need to do, all our contacts and the plans that we have are all sitting here in front of me, but sometimes it feels like when I sit down to look at it, like it's just a big plate of spaghetti, everything is overlapping and pretty overwhelming...I'm not sure if I'm making sense! I think what i need to do is take this plate of spaghetti one strand at a time, but sometimes it can be difficult to not look at the big picture when everything needs sorted!

Things have been going well since I had this revelation...the spaghetti seems to be somewhat unravelling, but there's always room for more!

As such, I'd really appreciate it if you would be able to pray, here's a few points that would help to direct your prayers:

• Praise God for the things that have come together already and that we have a place to stay and ministries to work with for a lot of our time away
  
• Pray that the rest of the time we have unfilled would fill up, that i would effectively communicate with our contacts and be able to fit all these pieces together
• That I wouldn't be overwhelmed by this big plate of spaghetti!
• Bonding for our team as we prepare to head off

Thanks a lot! Your prayers are very much appreciated!