Got in at about 1.30am last night - took us nearly 3 hours to get from here to central London - and that was going the recommended route, avoiding the roads that would simply be one long crawl. We could have got most of the way to Manchester in that time. The groups' schedule was, as Hanna put it at 9.30am, messy... so by the time that we arrived at the Highbury Centre, they had only just finished eating and had made it to Victoria tube station! So we had time to kill waiting.
I read about Gerald Coates and decided he's a pretty amazing man of God, and read about other bits and pieces such as God healing and how He answers prayers but just quite often not the way we expect. The article I read told of a guy who came forward for prayer for healing of his terminal cancer. He was touched by God in an awesome way, and was saved and baptised by the following week. He died the following year - God hadn't healed his cancer, but He had healed his heart.
Then the guys finally arrived - they had all run from Highbury&Islington tube station - it's a 15 minute walk to the Highbury Centre - so Anssi and Kimmo were the first in, hugs all round - yes it was worth the wait! It was so great to see all our old friends, the language barrier was still there although it hardly mattered, I've forgotten most of my Finnish but I was able to follow bits and pieces. Arto is determined that I should learn the language again. I don't think he's going to let Anssi correspond with us in English! Charles is great as ever, he still writes his sermons in English and after a year and a half he still doesn't seem to realise that things like "fascinates and assassinates" (in reference to sin) is just lost on an audience that doesn't speak English! It makes him him really, I suppose.
We sat in on their bible study, they were looking at denying your self (Mat 16?). It made me think. It's all very well to deny your self, to say a big fat NO when your self wants to do things that are not in line with the Word of God, but what do you do instead? I remember being taught to "align your self with the Will and Word of God" and somehow that seems far more conducive to actually getting somewhere than simply saying no to all these things that you shouldn't do. Of course there's a balance that needs to be struck, you do need to say no to all these bad things, but then, if you have aligned your self with the Will of God, surely these things just won't be a temptation any more? Or at the very least, they'll be a lot easier to overcome - after all, we are Overcomers.
Afterwards most of them went to bed - they got in and got to bed at near to 2am in the morning, and then to have a full day of walking around London and getting back to the Centre at 9pm, it was a long day for them. So by 10pm, most of them were falling asleep on their feet (don't forget their bodies are still on Finnish time so it was midnight for them already!) and we stayed up chatting to Mika and Hanna, Tuulija, Arto and Anssi. Hanna is still poorly, she's been bedridden with flu and had recovered enough to fly to England but is still coughing lots and lots. Hope she gets better soon. We talked about houses and it turns out Kimmo might be working for Omatalo so Anssi is going to find out. Hanna scoured their website for me but couldn't find anything about them exporting, or even any way of contacting them to ask! So it's not just me... But we'll see. Anssi has offered his help in building too, I think! I wasn't listening to that conversation, so I will have to check, but perhaps.... anyway, that's for the future. Got to find the church body that God wants to join us to here, and then I'm sure we'll see doors opening for us with regard to land and importing the house that we want etc etc.
Arto is a pilot so he was interested to hear that we were (hopefully) going to go to an airshow today, I've just looked on their website and it looks amazing! I hope we get there - Steve's still asleep bless him, and It's gone 11 already - the displays started at 11am and go on until 5pm. It's on again tomorrow so we might catch some more tomorrow afternoon as well.
And, they've recorded a CD! The project started to raise money to build a church building in Lahore, Pakistan, and they've recorded a full CD of songs and sold loads in Finland and in Canada (where Mika and Hanna have been for 3 months) and raised enough to build the church building. Incredible! So I must get a copy of this CD. They recorded most of it actually in the church in Iisalmi, using the equipment that Steve helped them buy and set up, and I've heard a couple of the tracks and they're pretty good! I'm impressed! Tuulija, the "quiet one", has written a song and it's really beautiful. And they've been blessed with a very good cellist who was with them for a few months, just long enough to record the songs.
People are moving on though. Eila, Katja's mum, has sold her house in the country (the house we considered buying if we moved to Finland!) and moved to Lahti (pretty long way off), and Tuulija has moved to someplace about 50km outside of Helsinki, to go to Bible School, which has songwriting as part of its course. Katja didn't come on the trip but she's back in Oulu now, she's got maybe 4 or 5 years on her course so she'll be there a while. But since Eila has moved away from Iisalmi, I wonder if she'll really have much reason to visit there any more.
I really pray that God helps these young people to come out of themselves. I pray that He puts something on their heart to see the place where they live won for Jesus. I wonder what it is that they want, whether they have any particular desire on their hearts. I wonder what God is teaching them at the moment, I wonder what journey He's taking them on.......
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