Contentment

Yesterday afternoon I had to take the boys shirt shopping for a wedding on Friday and walking round Doncaster the contrast with Romania couldn't be clearer.

We have so much
Everywhere you looked their was stuff, DVD's. books, CD's, toiletries, coffee shops, mobile phone stores, food outlets, clothes shops and so on. And yet as I watched those going from one shop to another there were very few smiles.

Contentment
We have so much and yet we are not content, that's partly because advertising is designed to make us discontent - to create a need that isn't really there. Its also because we have come to think of non-essentials as needs. In Romania it was fascinating to see how content the young people were with very simple food - not a Coke, Sprite or Fanta in sight! - but also with a very simple life.

The challenge over the next couple of weeks is to think about how this should change me - how much have I bought into the consumer culture, my living may be simpler than some others but it is not simple. What would it mean to make it so? How will it effect my decisions over a new mobile phone as my contract runs out, over our holiday which starts on Monday, and so on.

Back

I'm back from 2 weeks in Romania running camps for children and teens. It has been a great two weeks in which God has answered prayer, spoken through his word, and proven his goodness and the effectiveness of the gospel in saving sinners and bridging cultural barriers.

I'll blog more on the trip itself later in the week, but this is just a quick note to say thank you for all the prayers which our great God dutifully answered to his glory and purposes.

Prayer Request

In less than three weeks I will be in Romania it was with some concern that I saw this this morninghttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/10500356.stm. There has been serious flooding in Romania, the worst anyone there can remember. The stream in Bicaz, where we are going, looks more like the river Thames. Michael the trip leader also says it has really badly hit the area we are going to. No one in the churches was hurt but one family lost their business - it was washed away. The camp centre is OK but apparently quite muddy! So please pray that it dries out and that things get cleaned up OK. Also let's pray that the government are able to repair the roads sufficiently so we can get through without too much trouble.