MISSION REPORTS

ICS SEASONAL CHAPLAINCY

FROM DAVID AND JENNY ROUCH

I

BY GOD’S APPOINTMENT

We were told that it’s better not to go to Es Cana on a Wednesday; “it will take you ages to get there because of the Hippy Market”.  So we planned our schedule to give the town a miss every week.  Then came the request from someone in Es Cana, “Can I see you on a Wednesday?”  So at the appointed time we battled through the traffic and arrived, only to be told “I’m sorry, but do you think that we could meet up another time?”  So we made another appointment.  Then we realised that God had another purpose for us being in Es Cana that day. We went over to the Panorama ‘just to see if there was anything going on’ and had hardy set foot in the door when we were deep in conversation with three different groups of people, who all needed to talk with us.
They say that you are never too old to learn, and God constantly has to teach this old couple that he is sovereign and we can trust him to arrange our circumstances so that we spend time with those he has chosen for us to minister to – not always the ones we think need us!  We are learning to lay our plans before him, trusting him to over-rule and get us where he wants us to be.  He is teaching us, too, not to fret when things seem to be going wrong, for those very situations often turn out to be where he is at work in ways we would never have dreamed of.
So often we want things to happen our way or in our time yet God has other plans for us.  In the Chaplaincy House is a plaque which has the quote from Jeremiah 29:11 (ANIV)   “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”.  May we all learn to trust his plans and follow his leading.  As the Bible says, ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths’  (Proverbs 3:5,6)
David & Jenny Rouch (Seasonal Chaplains)

                 24-7 IBIZA

Well, it’s raining (again!) as I write, but the summer season is officially here and for us, along with many others, that means our busiest months have arrived!
So once more, we find ourselves becoming semi-nocturnal as we walk around San Antonio at night.  We’ve loved chatting with people we remember from last year as well as meeting others here to work for their first time.  
We completed the finishing touches to our ‘local’ by the end of April, just in time! With the help of generous contributions of others – of both time and finances – we have a beautiful place that feels peaceful and pleasant to be in and it is already a popular place for workers to come in the afternoons. 
The computers are in great demand and the Nintendo wii has generated lots of fun! We are excited to see people naturally popping in and using the prayer room, pinning prayers on the wall, writing their secret 'message in a bottle' prayers to God, and just sitting and enjoying a moment of peace and quiet in what is often a hectic environment.
Our night times are increasingly busy now - initially a lot of our time was spent talking to workers, but we are starting to have more interaction with the growing number of holidaymakers. We have taken prayer requests, walked and driven drunk and vulnerable people home, intervened in aggressive situations and helped in other practical ways.  Often we come across these situations ourselves as we walk around, but we also receive calls from bar workers when they see someone that needs help.
Others will join us in our work during the summer – some for 2 weeks, others for up to 3 months.  Please continue to pray for us and all our volunteers - that we will be good news to the people that we meet and that what we say and do will truly reflect Christ’s love for people and point them towards him. 
Pray for the people we meet – there’s a lot of life, laughter and celebration, but we also meet many people who have been through sad or difficult times and need to know that there is hope.
Thanks for all your support and encouragement,
Brian, Tracy, Helen, Bruce, Ellis and Dan.
PS  If you would like to read some of the stories from our work, check Brian and Helen’s internet blogs. www.brianheasley.blogspot.com   www.hel-ann.blogspot.com 

JEANNE JARVIS

Jeanne writes:
´I am very grateful to Anita (one of the Centre team) for having been a mover and shaker in the Pure Water Project venture, a topic I mentioned in my last letter. As a result, there is increasing interest and we plan to use the 60 filters already purchased to assemble 60 units here in the office in order to regain ‘seed’ money for a larger June purchase. Bernabe (the student upstairs) will be involved in purchasing buckets locally, little by little, and assembling the units. Nathan, founder of the project, tells me he has a donor who will match $5000 dollars if we can raise that for the next purchase. I’d like to take time here to thank publicly all of those who support our work so that the team can indeed move forward, step by step, however small those steps prove to be. Agustin, Jeremiah and Anita are witnesses to the goodness of God through the generosity of people they do not know, and would want me to thank you on their behalf.
Onwards and upwards ……Yours in the good fight of faith, JEANNE  ´

CHRIS AND LINDA MUNFORD

Chris and Linda are settling into their new home in Konya-Alti and are studying Turkish for 3 or 4 hours each day. They say they are now able to speak more Turkish and are getting to know the neighbours in their street. They ask for prayer that God will protect them as they share the gospel with the neighbours and that they would know how to evangelise them.

MERCY TRUCKS

Mercy Trucks are now working to finish the construction of a health centre in Gabu, Guinea Bissau. With the equipment Roy took out in the latest truck, they will be able to set up a malaria testing laboratory and treatment clinic there. Over the next few weeks they will welcome more volunteers arriving from Holland and America who will be working on the projects already underway as well as initiating some new ones. They have been busy working on a number of other schemes including improving water facilities and agricultural development. Mercy Trucks will be communicating with the UNDP to try and seek help in providing water and electricity for the schools and the new health centre in Gabu. AIDS is spreading rapidly in Guinea Bissau and if they can find the necessary funds they hope to be able to include an HIV testing and treatment facility for the Eastern region next year.
In Sri Lanka, since their tsunami work of helping to build houses and the causeway, the focus is now on community development.
In the Ukraine more dentists and dental facilities are required. The teams there have been doing great work providing dental care and prayer to many street children, prisons and orphanages all over the Ukraine. Catherine hopes to go out there later this year.
The training ship will be visiting Ibiza in May and again in October this year.

MAN AT THE BACK

(Or sometimes two-thirds down the left hand side)

Hello! How are you? I´m fine thank you, and you? Not so bad thanks. How’s work? Boring as ever! And yours? Same here. Nice weather for the time of year! Yeah, they’ve given out rain for next week. They haven’t have they? Miserable b***** weather ! And the price of lemons is going up in Tesco as well. Ooohhh! Scandalous, what is this country coming to? I remember when it was all fields and everything was in black and white...blah, blah, blah.
I know this is perhaps not an ordinary conversation you might have in the street with people but it can be just as tedious. Sometimes I want to give a sincere reply to the question of how I am. Perhaps I could say that I am extremely happy and grateful considering that my eternal soul has been saved from damnation by the grace of God, but I don’t. Instead I go into auto-pilot with a pre-programmed set of responses designed to get me through the day without being labelled as a fanatical loony. Sometimes, however, I am faced with genuine enquiries about how my life is really going. To Christians I respond that sometimes I feel far away from God, purposely seeking sympathy and pity for my poor spiritual state. And to non-Christians I reply that I am always jolly happy since I am a Christian, which is an untruth. The latter response derives from a desire not to show any weakness in my faith as not to awake any doubtful suspicions of my doubting nature. Yes, you guessed it, I am a chronic hypocrite. But unlike most hypocrites I am aware of my state and fully intend to address it within the near future. I would like to take this opportunity to begin here. Firstly, as a redeemed soul I have full permission to boldly approach the throne of grace (Heb 4:16). I have no business dancing with self-pity if I am permitted to boldly go before God. Secondly, neither am I commanded to be a phoney in front of the heathen hoards. My testimony before non-believers rests entirely on my trust in the Word. The afflictions of the righteous are many, but the Lord delivers him from them all. They may not see me prancing around with joy but they will notice my steadfastness, my perseverance and my endurance on the Way.
P.S. I would dearly like to expand on this topic but space and time have conspired against me once more. For further discussion see Man at the back.

FUNDING OUR CHURCH
ADRIAN IRELAND

Plato said that it talks; Saint Paul wrote that love of it is the root of all evil and Abba sang that those who have it should “fool around and have a ball”. Whatever: money is an indispensable part of our lives and it is a necessity in oiling the wheels of the Church.
I would hazard that it was a whip-round amongst the apostles that paid the bill for the last supper and the requirement of the Church to be funded is an ongoing reality. It has long been on my mind that a lot of this burden of funding, with relation to our Church here in Ibiza and Formentera, is borne on rather few shoulders, particularly the broad ones of our sainted treasurer and the fragrant Mary Ann of the Prada handbags and the Jimmy Choo shoes. So I decided to look back and see how, historically, the Church has raised money through the ages.
Whilst acknowledging the value of fetes, dances, car boot sales and whist drives, I felt that the past might well provide some guidance for us.

PEW RENTS: These were charges levied on people – normally the nobility and gentry – who wanted exclusive seating where they would not have to mingle with the peasantry and risk catching dropsy, bubonic plague and other unpleasant afflictions. The rented pews would be kept locked and often sported a coat of arms. A good enough wheeze to raise some readies but no use to us as we don’t own a church nor frankly do I see much demand for this privilege if we did.

SALE OF INDULGENCES: This was a more controversial scheme and one which Martin Luther opposed violently. He was, of course, subsequently excommunicated and initiated the process which became the Reformation. The sales were a good money-spinner for the Church. Essentially they involved the purchase of absolution for a sin that had yet to be committed. The tariffs of course varied in proportion to the nature of the intended offence so that it was a sight pricier to murder some body and to commit adultery than merely to covet your neighbour’s donkey or do a spot of dead heading on the Sabbath. Again a good wheeze, capitalizing on man’s frailties, but unlikely to appeal to our beloved incumbent.

MORTON´S FORK: This was a well known method of taxation to fund King Henry VII and his Government.. It was the brainchild of John Morton who was his chancellor.  Morton was also Archbishop of Canterbury and the ruse was originally used to raise money for the Church. What happened was that the victim would be appraised as to his life style. If he did himself well and lived fairly high off the hog it was maintained that he was therefore a man of means and could easily afford to make a contribution to the diocese. If, on the other hand, he lived frugally then obviously he had large savings and thus was equally able to pay. This is slightly more akin to tithing but I fear that we would baulk at the mediaeval severity of the punishments inflicted on those who did not comply. So if you see Bob or Sally approaching your house unannounced there’s no need to hide the Renoir.

This has not got us very far so don’t rest on you laurels yet, Sally and Mary Ann, but I will keep on thinking.

MISSIONS
ICS
TUI THOMSON REVISITED

'Pray for us also, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ.' Colossians 4:3 (RSV).
SEASONAL CHAPLAIN COLIN PONTIN TELLS OF THE OUTREACH IN IBIZA.

When, after more than twenty years, TUI's arrangement for ICS seasonal chaplains to be part of Thomson 'Young at Heart' Holidays in the Mediterranean ended, it seemed that such outreach would also cease. Then, out of the blue, a request came from the Ibiza chaplaincy for help in extending the work of the church among summer tourists.
Ibiza, far from being the media stereotype of a hedonistic playground for hippies, drunks and junkies, is in fact a very lovely island with a huge appeal, catering for thousands of summer holidaymakers. There is, of course, the downside of this, centred on the town of San Antonio and parts of Ibiza Town, and a great Christian work under the name of 24/7 (supported by the local church) seeks to meet these very special needs. However, we were asked to work in the resorts of Santa Eulalia, Es Cana and Cala Llonga on the east side of the island among more typical holidaymakers: old and young, singles and families, with all the joys and sorrows of people everywhere, who, contrary to what the travel agents would tell us, carry their burdens and problems with them. Our brief was to develop the Christian work in these areas: begun by the local church and congre­gation but unable to be developed through lack of time or resource.
At the beginning of the season our first priority was to recommence a Songs of Praise service previously held in one of the local Thomson Gold hotels and to introduce a similar service at another hotel in the nearby town of Santa Eulalia, these services to be a stepping-stone to a wider ministry.
Bob Short, the Ibiza chaplain, had already established good relationships with the hotel management and staff, and the Thomson representatives, who invited us to the Welcome Meetings for new intakes of guests. The meetings, four times a week in each hotel, allowed us to meet the guests on a one-to-one basis. This was excellent for pro­moting the services, raising the profile of the chaplaincy team and emphasising our availability, either direct or through the Thomson reps.
To raise the profile of the chaplains in the town we all made a point of being out in the resorts and having a coffee in the cafes along the promenades, where dog-collars and official badges were a novelty for the crowds enjoying their full English breakfast! Many interesting conversations arose during these times, plus quite a bit of barracking.
The hotels were keen to promote one of Bob's ideas: the possibility of offering holidaymakers services of blessing for special occasions including the renewal of wedding vows. During the season we helped celebrate Golden and Silver Weddings, birthdays and anniversaries and also a baptism: often in the hotel grounds witnessed by the crowds around the swimming pools or in the lounges. Those involved, and their friends, were much impressed by the availability of the services in the hotels and the presence of a chaplain to conduct them. Some have kept in touch with the chaplains after what had obviously proved to be a memorable moment for them during their holiday.
Through the generosity of the local Roman Catholic Church, with whom the Anglicans there have excellent relations, the Chapel in Es Cana had been made available for an Anglican service each Sunday morning. This proved very popular with Christians of all denominations.
All the chaplains received many comments from people attending the services, especially Songs of Praise, saying that they had been touched by God in special ways, with spiritual needs met, encouragement brought in facing personal problems, and 'lost' faith re-established (perhaps 'mislaid' would be a better word!). We ourselves were encouraged in turn by some 'God-incidences': ourselves and other people being in the right place at the right time for God to meet very personal needs.
One day, for example, as I left the hotel in Ibiza a gentle­man in the foyer approached me, telling me with tears running down his cheeks that his wife was suffering from terminal cancer but they had wanted to come away for one more time together, possibly the last. We were able to pray together. He told me that whilst they had a faith they went through times of great depression and one such time was the previous Sunday. On their way to the dining room they had passed our little group celebrating a Songs of Praise service in the lounge. I sometimes play pieces of music which I think will have a universal appeal: all sorts of people pass by and who knows what may touch them! On this occasion I was playing, though my computer, Aled Jones singing ‘I’ll raise you up’, which is not a hymn but has very strong Christian message:

When I am down and oh my soul's so weary,
When troubles come and my heart burdened be,
You raise me up so I can stand on mountains,
You raise me up to walk on stormy seas.
I am strong when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up to more than I can be.

My friend said, ‘Listening to that song we felt that God had spoken to us: we went on our way greatly comforted.’
Whilst mainly ministering to Christian holidaymakers, we encountered the real needs of those of different faiths and some apparently of none; many seemed encouraged by their contact with a Christian presence. Friendships were formed, Christian literature was distributed, and specific needs in people's lives were addressed.
The presence and activities of a seasonal chaplain are quickly becoming an accepted part of hotel life and there is potential for this to expand as staff and reps see that seasonal chaplains are not there just to hold Songs of Praise on Sundays but to assist with the needs of all. Sunday morning services at the chapel in Es Cana have also become estab­lished and appreciated in the town.
Following this first stage of ministry in 2007 we felt that there was much on which to build. Ibiza attracts some two million visitors each summer, approximately one quarter of whom are British. Good relationships with the permanent English-speaking congregation will continue to be vital so that the seasonal work on Ibiza is seen an integral part of their wider church ministry.

So, as we go forward this season please pray:
 

• for Bob and Clare Short, their team and congregation in their work among resident English-speaking people;
• for the work of 24/7 among young clubbers in San Antonio;
• for the seasonal chaplains' work among holidaymakers until October: three couples, each for eight weeks

This was 1st printed in the ICS News and Prayer Diary in September 2008

LETTERS

Thank you for all your Christmas letters and info. We moved from Horsham in November to a large house (Rickmansworth, Herts) with 2 sets of stairs but we had to have a large garage for a great deal of my daughter’s furniture and for a small amount of mine. The dog Jasper has to go through my bedroom to get into the garden.
Thank everyone for all their messages…My walking is not good as I have to sit down most of the time, and my body and hands are constantly shaking. Reading and T.V and a little sewing is all I do…You are in my prayers but I can’t get to Church as I feel I can’t sit all the service but I have an instrument from Age Concern and necklace if I am in trouble…You and the Church are always in my prayers.
Lots of love, from Joanne (Squire).

DOES GOD HAVE A COMPUTER?
SUE KING

Does God have a computer?  Yes, I know it sounds like a silly question, but it’s one I have asked myself often lately. You see, as I am still recovering, I have at last got myself a new computer (the old one ran on gas butano). This new one is a super model BUT it has the new version of Windows Vista. Now, anyone who has this programme will probably know where I am going with this article. After believing all my life that I am half way intelligent, I have been reduced to a blithering nutcase since trying to understand this new way of computer life. I think that my last two articles both explain a little of my feelings, one was on patience and the other frustration….I wrote them both before I got my new machine. It would appear that God decided it was time I had a change as He doesn’t want me to get bored, so He helped me to choose this computer with this programme and now I am back to not having enough hours in a day! He now sits on my shoulder whenever I decide to try something new, and watches my every step, or should that be every finger? Then He goes back to watch Bill Gates make it all look very simple!
So my friends, this month’s article is very short as I seem to have lost a few hours each day. Having said that, I have to tell you all that I am still having to go to physio every weekday, I get picked up and dropped off  by ambulance, and this week we have a new patient who lives along the back road behind Can Tumas,  so my long journeys are now made pleasurable by looking at Gods beautiful countryside….and we know He didn’t have a computer when He created all that beauty…did He? Autumn is approaching and the air is cooler, thank the Lord for every day, they are all so different. God Bless.