Desparate Measures

"Whatever you do, do it with all your heart,
as unto the Lord and not to people"

 "We'll do anything to pay the rent!  Even move the vicar's grand-piano! And sort his garden!"

"Sar sogodi tume keren,
keren les lachi ilesa,
sar le Jesusoske
na sar le manushenge!"
Col 3:23

Pressure is building to pay the rent.  The guys will turn their hands to anything.  We set up a car wash near the pub near my church you can see above.  The only people that came were from the church.  It's so hard to find work when half of Luton is doing the same.

"You came seeking prosperity and are finding God!"

In the space of one week so much has happened, it's hard to keep up with what God is doing.  Last night at our third meeting Stevo challenged the Roma: "you may have come all the way from Romania to seek economic prosperity, but I believe you have been brought here to find God."   Towards the end of the service, he asked us all, "how do you know when the Holy Spirit has come? When the children start to weep."   That is just what had happened.  The day before some of us were praying together for one Roma lad's knee that he injured six months ago and has caused him constant pain and taken him off school.  At the service I asked him how the knee was now.  All the pain and swelling had gone.  Earlier in the week we were praying at another home.  One Roma woman who had recently been through a traumatic personal experience was visibly filled with the Spirit before our eyes.  She had been unable to speak and had frozen over emotionally.  She began to smile, and to speak again.  I was amazed at how instantly the change had come over her.  On the same occasion another Roma woman I had not met before shared the dream she had had the night before.  "I saw fire coming down from heaven to earth, and then a white horse appear."  When I told her this image was in the Bible she was amazed.  Revelation 19:11-18 makes clear that the white horse represents the judgment that Jesus brings to earth.  Nothing could have spoken more clearly into the situation going on in the community at this time.  There is a sense of awe in some of the Roma at what they are seeing God do in their midst.  They are beginning to see the extreme financial problems they face against the backdrop of a God who wants to touch first and foremost their hearts with his love.  But there has been a breakthrough on the material front too.  We have been battling away for over a year to get benefits for one widow.  She has just received her first payment. Without that she and her four children would have been evicted.  God has been at work on another front too.  At our meeting last night the local health councellor came along.  The guys gathered around him as he took a lung pollution reading on the Roma lady who is on the stop smoking programme.  "Your lungs had been full of pollution.  Look now, they are completely clear!"  The councellor advised others: "you need God's help to do this, not just the patches!"  This was interesting.  He is a Hindu. There is common ground we can share.  To grow our Roma church further one thing we need is more cars to bring the families in.  Or a bus!

What is success?

English Lessons - to get work in England! 

What is the measure of success in Christian mission?  The temptation is to do what the world does.  Count numbers.  Count smiley faces. Have an impressive story to pass on to others.   What impresses me most about Jesus' mission isn't about outward signs of success.  What is most attractive and compelling is the fact that he hung in with people however dysfunctional they were. "He loved them to the end." As I reflect on our fledgling Roma Church here in Luton, I realise that the greatest triumph is always to stay on course, even when the whole world seems to be falling apart around you.  Yesterday's second gathering was like this.  But amidst the chaos some beautiful things were germinating.  It would be easy to miss them. 

English Lessons - for fun! 

See here our first English lessons in our Roma church.  Richard has them eating out of his hand.  See also Ramona above teaching the adults English.  "Do you have any work for me to do?"  They need to know how to say things like this if they are going to hack it in England.  Using "gadjikanes" (Romanian, the second language of the Romanian Roma)  she is able to quickly get them speaking grammatical English. 
Meanwhile, during our worship we introduced the first of what will be 33 bible stories.  These cover the whole story of salvation from Genesis to Revelation, are only 3- 4 minutes long.  Developed for use with unreached people groups, the idea is to communicate the biblical message in the simplest and most memorable form possible. A few days earlier I had worked on the first story with a Roma mother and her two sons.  It took about and hour to make a rough translation into the actual dialect of Romani they speak.  This is an important point, as both vocab and grammar vary quite a lot from both Kalderash translations I am using.  But God seems to delight in entering into human limitations and forging something new.  My Romani and their English are both rudimentary and we are stretched to the limits.   But having read the story at our second gathering yesterday (see below), I invited them first to have a go at telling the story themselves in their words.  There's a lot of work to be done here, but what they pick out is always illuminating.  The joy at the dawn of creation - beauty emerging out of nothing-  the sadness that some of the angels chose to fall from glory -the first signs of disfunction in an otherwise perfect creation order.   I try to glimpse where we might be when a body of Roma here can tell the story of salvation in their own words using these simple stories.  The vision is important.  But infinitely more important is the question "what is success?"  Jesus alone embodies the answer.  "Whilst we were still sinners he died for us".   

This story is true. It was in the beginning. 

kade istoria si cheches. Sas ando gor.

There was noone on earth, 

but we know the truth through God's prophet.

Nas les khonik pe puv, numa ame jenas o chachimos lesko profeto.

In the beginning when there was nothing

there was only God.

Ando gor kana nas kanch, sas numa o del.

At that time only God existed.

Ando kado timpo  existilas numa o del

He was with together with his angels

Wo sas peske injerensa

The angels gave glory to God

Le injeri del gloria le develes

and helped him in his work

Hai ajutil le ande leski buchi

the angels sang joyfully

Le injeri gilabenas bokorime

God made the world as he wished

O del kerke la lumia sar wo kamle

(let me know if you would like the whole story!)

Luton Roma Church is Born!

Pastor Stevo & I pray for the Luton Roma

This evening 25 Luton Roma were joined by 20 Roma from London Gypsy Church and 10 non-Roma from Luton in Oakdale Methodist Church.  Having shared a meal, Pastor Stevo's amazing team led us in worship.  It was wonderful to have them with us at the launch of Luton Roma Church.  "Seek first the Kingdom of God" and life in abundance will flow from that.  The powerful sounds of our worship flowed out the broken window of the church as the call from the local Minaret was declining.  A new church has sprung to live in the heart of Islamic Luton.  It's members?  The poorest of the poor of bottom of the heap Luton.  On the brink of eviction, a Roma widow received her pin number for a post office account.  Will the benefits come in time?  If they come at all it will be a miracle.  "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven".  Indeed, as  pastor Stevo reminded us, wealth does not promise peace of heart or absence of cares.  This week we were all blessed by bi-lingual preaching.  Next week I'll have to keep the show on the road!  Stevo's London team will lead us every fortnight.  Every Wednesday there will be Food/English lessons/Worship.  Holistic mission proceeds from a desire to bless every area of life.  Heaven and earth kiss when we see the Kingdom advance....

Easter Sunday Baptism

"And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." (Acts 2:47)
 "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over the ninety-nine righteous people who do not need to repent!"  (Luke 15:7)

For one Roma mother  of six children, widowed five years ago, there was great rejoicing as a her dream of being baptised was finally realised on Easter Sunday.          

Days later our weekly fellowship grew as more began to turn their back on smoking and seek the power of God in their weakness.   18 of us gathered in a tiny room to pray, to laugh, to celebrate, to weep.  We went out into the back garden and tried to find some treasure hidden in the ground, "the Kingdom of Heaven" which when found is worth selling everything for.  We came back inside to pray in the Kingdom into each of our lives and recognise that even in poverty, love is more important than money, freedom more important than homes, and a community of love more important than nuclear families.  Even in the most desparate circumstances the risen Jesus makes himself present.

Next week we begin in Luton Roma Church on the corner...