I feel like I should write something, but I’m not really sure what to say. The last couple of months have been absolutely amazing. I really want to share as much of it here as I can but, as I’ve once again been slack with the updating, I’m not sure I’ll manage very well. I really want to post here more often, but I also want to do a lot of work on both the underlying structure and the visual design. I struggle prioritising the changes and then I end up not making any of them. With a little help through prayer I’m trying to discipline myself a bit better and introduce some more order to my life, so hopefully I’ll get better.

Anyway; the last few months have included: Soul in the City, Greenbelt, Vocal Training, the start of Transform, and then this weekend—my first with Martin Scott’s Company Of Prophetic People. Mainly things that I’ve already mentioned at least in passing, but none of which I’ve really expanded on. Each of those things is really deserving of it’s own entry, some more than one, but to do that would take forever so I’ll try to summarise here.

1. Soul in the City was just amazing. I was on the prayer team for Week B at the Gilwell Park camp site so I wasn’t out on projects like the majority of those present. Instead I was part of a team of four with responsibility for the 24-7 prayer venue on-site. It was an awesome privilege to take prayer requests from the hundreds of young people on site every night, made even more exciting by the way they would return night after night to tell us how prayers had been answered. And as if that wasn’t enough we had youth leaders coming by with stories of how the prayer room was getting their groups excited about prayer for the first time.
2. Greenbelt is deserving of something more than the rant about the trains that I already posted. As always there was more going on than I could possibly cover. For whatever reason I didn’t seem to make it to that many bands this year. Obviously, I saw Delirious? and quite a few other acts were pretty good, but nothing that really made me think wow! The real highlights for me were in the speaker programme—specifically Stephen Sizer, who’s book on Christian Zionism I’ll definitely be buying once it’s published, and Shane Claiborne, of The Simple Way.
3. Somewhat disappointingly, I had to leave Vocal Training early, and even more so that meant that I missed the day of teaching on prayer entirely. For those who don’t know, Vocal Training is SPEAK’s summer training event. It was great to see so many people, and to reminisce about Greenbelt with those who had been there. As a result of both conversations held there and speakers heard there I have added yet more stuff to my Amazon wish list.
4. Transform: I’ll probably manage to write more about this at some point over the next year, as it is going to be dominating my life. So far it’s been amazing, so good in fact that it was actually worth leaving Vocal Training for! It seems much longer, but we started exactly one month ago with a week away, staying at Westwood Christian Centre up in the hills near Huddersfield. The venue was beautiful, the weather was fantastic, and the teaching what I’d waited two years to hear. There are eight of us on the course from both Leeds and Bradford, with placements on a variety of projects in both cities. The longer it goes on the more I realise how little I know of the city in which I have lived for the past four years.
5. Company of Prophetic People is a training course in the prophetic which I am taking as part of my placement time on Transform. On Saturday afternoon I had my life described to me by three people who I’d just met. I feel I should have something really profound to say about my experiences over the weekend, but I can’t explain them. I’ll be doing this for the next year, so hopefully by the end I’ll have managed to put some words to the excited feeling.