DVD launch for Christmas

See top right and click "The Story of Jesus" on YouTube.   You can listen in either English or Romani language.   It's taken a year to put these stories together as week by week I prepared a talk for our Wednesday evening meeting.  I chose Gospel events which address issues that I see the Roma here facing.  Using Mudrow and Maximov translations and then consulting the Roma themselves, we put together scripts in a dialect of Romani that most of the Roma here speak [Hunedoara region].  All twenty families will receive a DVD this Christmas.  Since they all have DVDs playing 24/7 this seemed a good medium to use to get over the Good News of Jesus.  

Life, death & growth...

 This panaramic shot gives you a glimpse of the way we are managing growth at our Wednesday meetings.   The pre-school children on the right in the cafe area - the adults on the left in the sanctuary - and meanwhile the school aged children a short distance away in another church.  Since the Roma pastors from Coventry, Nottingham and London began coming a month ago, we've grown from 40-100.  See on the left all the Roma guys who are now coming.  Two minibuses has made it possible to ferry in most of the women and children, whilst nearly all the men arrive in their cars in their own time.  The service rolls for two hours and is touching the Roma deeply.  The word is spreading and our little gadjo team does it's best to meet the growing needs.

 I can count at least 12 births in 2012.  Here you see the growth of the church paralled by the growing triplets.  A three-seater buggy came all the way from Scotland for Maria, Zara and Luca.

We've set up a monthly legal advice clinic which is now helping three families hack through the ever more baffling benefits system of the UK.

A PHD student in Roma studies will be with us all 2013.  Luton provides a clearly defined microcosm of a migrant Roma community seeking to establish itself in an EU country.  We trust the research will help be fed back into the system and help us all understand how best to respond to the issues the Roma face.

With growth comes also tragedy. One mother lost two babies.  Both died on 19 September.  One in 2010.  One in 2012.  Both of the same congenital condition.  Aged 6 months and 7 months.  Mother lost all her benefits.  The only compassion visible was in the faces of the medical team who had fought and lost both battles.

"Lord, you have made us all in your image.  We all bear your divine imprint.  You are beyond time, space, ethnicity, culture and politics.  Yet in your Son, Jesus, you penetrate our darkness, break down all the silly walls that separate us, and weep over our tribalisms and lack of vision.  For in you there is neither Roma nor Gadjo, male nor female.  Pour out you grace on us, that we might glimpse the wonder of your Kingdom breaking into the very places that seem beyond hope. Come Lord Jesus, come!"