School Report: St Eds, day/2

An extraordinary day... more than 250 students visited the prayer room today. And here are a few pics (I'll upload the lot at the end of the week).

A few of the team blu-tacked some of the post-it prayers back onto the World Wall. The world map was completely buried under a blizzard of post-it notes... I don't think I've ever seen so many different countries prayed for in a prayer room... Afghanistan and China and Sierre Leone and Britain and America and Ghana and Iraq and Pakistan and Iran, etc. Who says young people only care about themselves and their world? ;o)

And one of many prayers for God to do something in Iran. It's not hard to 'Amen' these prayers right now.

The Prayer Chair. A simple idea we borrowed from somewhere else. A chair. And an invitation for any student to come and sit on it and receive prayer from one of the team. Throughout the RS lessons, and the various break times, students came and asked for prayer.

I remember noticing one girl sitting on the Prayer Chair, surrounded by her friends who were all holding hands while our team member prayed for her... gently and simply. It was a very special moment.

A post-it prayer from the Prayer Wall. We don't know what the "hard stuff" is that this student wrote about, but we know that Father God reads and hears every single prayer.

The Be Forgiven area. Here the students were encouraged to think about people they might need to forgive - people who'd hurt or disappointed them - and to 'let go' by writing something on a piece of cardboard and pegging it onto the hanging strings (see top photo).

Among the many meaningful and moving prayers of forgiveness (which I've decided not to post here), we found this humourous one... forgiveness for poor spelling. Ha ha.

We were amazed at the numbers of 'sorry' prayers being pegged onto the strings in the Be Sorry area. And the honesty of them. Especially as most of these were written while friends were in the room with them, or even standing beside them. Students said sorry for anger and hatred, for giving up on God, for lust and lack of self control, for selfishness and arguing... and for "not caring anymore"...

Finally, I just like this photo. Some of the World Wall prayers in the foreground, and our mannequin, 'Richard', in the background. I'll tell you about 'Richard' tomorrow.

Please keep praying for us, for Holy Spirit to guide us as we guide these young people. And please pray for 'B'... she wrote a brutally honest prayer, and the team have been calling on God to hear her and answer her...

"Try to help me understand why you are here, and why you don't listen to me whenever I ask for you to make things better. Please understand... I know I have abandoned you."

Comments

[andrea]

WOW!

[Joe]

Awesome Phil ! This is so inspiring!

Our week at 'Bishops College' is going really well...everyone wants the prayer room to stay open as a permenant space. updates here if you want to read:

www.roadtoknowwhere.blogspot.com

We prayed this morning and welcomed God again into our space, and realised - no, in fact he's welcoming us...

Exciting stuff. God Bless you!

[toggers]

joe, thanks so much. i just read ur blog - fascinating stories from a very different group. bless you guys! :o)