Children Worldwide - Blog

Wow – it’s a long time since we updated our blog!

So what we’ve been up to?

All age services, training events, assemblies, meetings, more meetings, lectures, travelling, more assemblies, even more meetings, tons of paper work, E-mails, phone calls, skype calls, some more assemblies, paperwork, and yet more meetings…… The list goes on! We even managed to have a couple days in Falmouth with Steve’s oldest son Peter – which was brilliant.

We spent a great day yesterday with our Latvian friend Karlis. Karlis is part of our children worldwide team in Latvia. He’s always fun to be around as well as being a blessing and an encouragement to us. He’s visiting Leicester for just a week, meeting up with friends and having some rest.

This weekend we will be in Wales doing Christmas ‘services’ with a lovely church we haven’t worked with before. With all our correspondence in planning this, we can tell that we will be very at home with them. We are really looking forward to it!

We drive back on Sunday night, and then drive down to Horsham on Monday ready for a board meeting in the evening. We will be doing various other things whilst we are down there, coming home on Thursday – which just happens to the Kay’s birthday!

Our biggest prayer request moment is for wisdom, grace, peace and safety. We have many decisions to make, and many people to help/mentor….. as well as a lot more travelling to do.

Now….I better update the diary!

Hi and welcome to the new Morgan-Gurr Blog/website.

All the old postings have been transferred across, complete with comments, by our lovely hosting person - Peter Sharp (Thanks - Pete!) and Kay is currently getting to grips with the new way of blogging!

The new bits are: A diary page, a more detailed page about us (Taken from the very old website - if you can remember back that far!), and a page about Fibromyalgia and MPS…..that’s there so we don’t have to keep explaining what’s wrong with Kay!

The Pages coming in the future are: Steve’s new songs to listen to and request copies if you want them, Articles on kids work and pages about the research Kay is doing in various areas of Kids work.

Why not set up a feed so any updates are automatically emailed to you - that way you won’t miss out on any news.

Enjoy!

We’re back in England, catching up with emails and letters….and a mountain of washing and ironing!

The holiday was just what we needed - quiet, peaceful and unhurried.

The holiday company we used was part of XL and went bust half way through our first week - because our holiday had started and the company was ATOL covered, it meant we could stay on, and through the kindness of the Greeks (especially the owner of our apartment) we could stay in our accommodation, even though the owner wasn’t being paid for it!
Our flight had been upgraded to a Thomas cook flight weeks before we left, which meant we had no worries about the flight home either.

Whilst away, Kay listened to “The Shack” on audio book. She loved it and can highly recommend it! It’s one that hasn’t been to every one’s theological taste….but then it is a novel, not a theology book! Check out the web site http://www.theshackbook.com/ for more info and reviews.

The photos below are of our favourite kitten who lived at our apartments and the other one, just a couple of the enormous cakes we consumed whilst there! If you’re on face book, there are more photos on Kay’s profile.

Here we are at Dalesdown with lovely campers and very nice leaders!

Kay’s job is easy - everyone is so happy there is very little for her to do in her role as house parent to the leaders, so she’s being Steve’s beautiful assistant and camp photographer!

Steve is leading worship and doing some puppetry. Jim Bailey has been awesome with the kids - winning the children over instantly - even the boys, and getting some good solid truths over to them in a fun (actually hilarious!) way. The Spicy Camels have made just one appearance and were very politically incorrect - as usual!

Today - Steve Legg is doing a “set” for the kids….and has just arrived, so guess where we’re off to now……!

We appear to have adopted a frog! A regular visitor to our rather leaky garage he sits by the bucket that catches the drips. We have named him Phineas!
He seems more than happy for us to be around in the garage and has been known to hop up to Kay when she’s been putting the washing in the washing machine.
On the whole he seems a rather friendly frog.
Off to Dalesdown on Saturday for the children’s camp there. Steve will be leading the worship and Kay will be house parent for the leaders. We’ll be letting our house sitters know they need to look out for Phineas

Two weeks are over…and we survived….just!
Week one was the week for our younger campers….even younger than usual as we invited specific 8 year olds (who were nearly nine) to fill some of the gaps we had- it’s unusual to have gaps on this camp!
Great fun was had by all, the food was excellent as usual (Thankyou Audrey!) We didn’t drown anyone in the pool, the rope swing was well used, the horses were ridden everyday (Thanks Tina and team) and the zip slide encountered no “incidents”! And the fun didn’t end there.
There was then the addition of “The Log” – no ordinary log…it was huge and provided a focal point for the campers to sit on and chill. (Photo below)
The leaders were fantastic – hardworking and fun, and well as a Godly example to the kids
The teaching went down very well – we taught in the morning and an assortment of folk taught in the evening.
The biggest fun memories from week one…so many to chose from, but one would be Kay getting the giggles half way through the story on the final morning (It was Steve’s fault – his acting was just a little too convincing!)
The other photo below was from the camp fire – it looks huge and the kids look close – but photos can be deceptive…..the children were very safe!

Week two was very different – especially for us. We didn’t have a specific role, so spent a lot of time praying, chatting to kids and leaders and generally trying to care and support where needed.
Again – much fun was had by all, and most of the info above is again true! These older campers also have two trips out – one to Rutland water to do team building water activities, and one to Drayton Manor.
As week one, the campers made the most of all the facilities and had a lot of fun (looking at some of their face book comments, they had a LOT of fun!)
The teaching was from Philippians in the morning and looked at some of the subjects kids wrestle with in the evening.
Memorable fun moments were – a strong gust of wind lifting the bouncy castle complete with blower – Audrey saved the day by unplugging it very quickly! (For those worried about health and safety - It was lunchtime and no kids on it – if kids had been on it, it wouldn’t have lifted!)
The other moment was waking up to sheep in the field – opening the caravan door and finding them blocking the way!
Thanks for praying

Wow - it’s a long time since the last update!

We’ve had lots of meetings, paperwork and planning over the last few weeks. Most of the meetings were just too complicated to report on! 

Yesterday Kay was at a meeting in London with Spring Harvest looking at the way we help children with Special needs - it was a good meeting!

The rest of this week is a mix of things…..risk assessment and special needs care plans ready for the camps, along with preparing the teaching for week one. We are helping with the “impact” week on the Hamilton Estate here in Leicester, organised by Hope Hamilton Church. We are helping with the Kids Zone mornings by doing the story/meeting bit at the end of each morning on Thursday and Friday.

This evening was the final set up for camp - which starts on Sunday. All the tents went up in record time….photos below! We had a huge team of people from the church there working really hard to make the site habitable and safe. It was getting dark when we left and people were still there cleaning and clearing - amazing!

We had a lovely time with the children at Pilgrim Hall this weekend - the photos are their attempt to “create” using playdough as we looked at how God created the world and everything in it.

On Monday we went to the launch of the new ‘Children and Schools Work’ option for those studying for a BA at Moorlands College (Christchurch). It was great to share with them in that. Do go to the Moorlands web site and scroll to the bottom of the page for more information

Yesterday was our management meeting - a good time of discussion, planning, praying, drinking tea and coffee and eating!

This week brings more paperwork and meetings, including our council of Reference meeting tonight!
On Saturday Kay will be at a Training day in Kings Lynn doing a session on children with special needs in the church.

From September everything will be changing for The Walls….

Dave has now officially resigned from The Bridge in Salisbury and will be available to work more locally in schools and churches, some dates are already in the diary; he’s also hoping to enable links and exchanges with Latvia, particularly as Riga & Salisbury cathedrals are twinned.

Sue’s childminding will be full time from September taking care of a total of six children during each week….but not all at the same time!

Tim hopes to have reached the dizzy heights of 6th form….as long as all the GCSE study has been successful.

And finally, Pete hopes to have Bass guitar lessons in preference to trumpet - though we hope he’ll manage to keep up both….no not at the same time!!

BUT….Praise God that He never changes - He is the same yesterday, today and forever - He is mighty and awesome!