This week was international students welcome week for Sheffield and the churches of the area. Many of the international students who will be taking courses in the fall arrived this week in order to take English courses to improve their language skills for their upcoming courses. This provided us with a brilliant opportunity to...
I have two very exciting bits of information to share with you all. The first is that we received notification last week that our entire team is 100% fully supported! $53,419 has been raised thanks to your generosity and has been used for the glory of God through giving (1 Chronicles 29:9), partnership (Ecclesiastes 4:9; John17:21), receiving (James 1:17), and the gospel being shared (Romans 10:11-15; Philemon 6). On behalf of our team, we are so grateful...
Since the last blog post, our team has spent two more days in Ireland before returning to Sheffield in time to attend church at The Crowded House. We have one more week of travel ahead of us, as we will be traveling to Leeds for a campus evaluation on Tuesday and to London for holiday fromThursday to Saturday.
The last two days of Ireland were incredible...
As The University of Sheffield finished exams last Friday, our team is slowly transitioning our focus from English students to international students. This past week has been making final follow-ups with the English students who will be heading home for their summer.
Birmingham:
Monday of this week...
Ezekiel 37:1-6
The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered...
“So we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” ~1 Hebrews 13:6
It’s been exactly two weeks since God brought us safely to Sheffield’s rainy doorstep. (However, like Chris said, it has been rather fair weather much of the time we’ve been here.) Many of us feel as if we have been here much longer than two weeks...
Our first full week in the city has been a whirlwind so far! Despite the many blisters we've acquired from walking, EVERYWHERE, and recovering from jet lag and culture shock (its remarkable how different the culture is here), I believe that our strength as individuals and as a team is only growing stronger as we've been diving into ministry this week and deepening our dependence on God and each other. The Lord has already provided in so many ways. As this is the first week I'll give you readers a breakdown of our schedule and highlights from the week!
Monday we started...
We made it. Sheffield, United Kingdom. As I type that, it still feels a little surreal. God has been faithful through the last 5 months since our first team meeting in late December. I am blown away by the amount of generous people He has provided who have committed to pray and/or give financially in order to make this trip happen. If you are reading this...
The United Kingdom is a very strategic region with regards to reaching the world. According to Joshua Project, there are 8% evangelical Christians, but pastors in the UK that the CCP team has been in contact with say that is an incredibly generous estimate. In reality, a better estimate would be less than 1% evangelical Christian.
The United Kingdom is strategic because it is seen to serve as a gateway into many other places in the world, such as the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia.
What will we be doing all summer?
Maura Bickner
School/Year/Major: University of Sioux Falls, Senior, Business & Accounting
What are you most excited about for your trip to the UK?: I just want to meet these Sheffield students already! And also get a feel for if Sheffield could be a place that I might want to go long term if the expansion goes through.
