Day seventeen #40acts

I'd like to think I'm already quite a polite person. I remember to say please and thank you and try to be aware of the people around me when it comes to holding doors open and stuff. I guess the one place where my politeness has a major downfall is the moment I step into the car! 

The past couple of years have taught me that London has entirely different traffic laws to everywhere else in the country. People are crazy! The other week some guy cut me up on a roundabout so badly that I had to swerve to avoid him hitting me. He then raised a middle finger at me and shook his head like it was MY fault!! I mean...what?? However, I have also noticed that since getting our own car I'm slowly becoming one of these monstrous London drivers who has no patience to sit in traffic jams and NEEDS to get to my destination as quickly as possible! 

Today I took the being polite challenge onto the road. I was patient, I stopped and waved pedestrians across the road, I let cars out in front of me. I even stopped at Amber traffic lights without convincing myself they were still totally green!!!! What effect did my politeness have? Well, I may have got to my destination a few minutes later than it would usually take me but I got there chilled and rather pleased with myself.

Day sixteen #40acts

I was so happy to receive this mornings email. No scary challenge, just baking which I happen to be quite good at! The suggestion was cupcakes but I get bit bored making cakes so I decided to do something more fun and make Mocha Slices. I cannot take any credit for this recipe. There's an awesome lady at our church called Pauline and she is seriously one kitchen goddess!! This is one of her recipes and it's soooooo yummy! In fact, these little slices of heaven are soooo good that I ended up making two batches because I knew I'd end up eating a load of them. 

The recipients of my baked goods will be my Kids Church team tomorrow morning. We all have quite a long morning of two back to back services and I think this little baked goodie will give us a zap of energy to keep on going :) Plus, they are an amazing bunch and an absolute pleasure to lead. They definitely deserve a treat for all the commitment and hard work they put in week in week out. 

Day fifteen #40acts

A campaign very much on my radar and close to my heart at the moment is Home for Good. I was excited to see that it was the #40acts chosen charity a few days ago. Home for Good is linked with Care for the Family, CCPAS and Evangelical Alliance. The campaign is seeking to find homes for the 6,000 children who are currently waiting for adoption and to provide 9,000 more foster placements throughout the UK. They are trying to reach out to churches because they state that if one family in every church decided to adopt or foster then the current need would be met in the UK! 

They are doing some amazing work and are already working with 15,000 churches who want to champion adoption and fostering and to bring kids into a safe and loving church family. 

Day fourteen #40acts

A day of not letting your left hand know what your right hand is up to. It's also a day of not letting you guys know either! My act of generosity will forever remain anonymous. 

As I can't say anything about today's challenge I thought I'd let you know how blessed I've been through doing #40acts. I think I wrote in my blog on day one how I suspected that I'd become better off for doing all these generosity and blessing acts. A kind of reverse generosity. In 2008 I went on a two week mission trip to Uganda. I went out there to serve and give my all to the people I met and the church and orphanage I worked in. I'm sure in different ways I made an impact but I know for sure that the lessons I learned, seeing utter poverty, watching how faithful people were and how much they gave out of the little they had, transformed my life so much more! That's what I mean when I say reverse blessing. 

So, during #40acts as I've been writing thank you notes, collecting loose change, giving generously, I've also been the recipient of three separate thank you notes. Along with the thank you notes were gift cards with various amounts of money on them. All the thank you notes were for work or other things I've done but none of them were ever expected. So a reverse blessing! 

Is anyone else finding themselves being reversely blessed during #40acts? 

Day thirteen #40acts

Yesterday was a crazy busy day and sadly I didn't get to do the challenge of going local. If I had had the time my choice of venue would have been lunch at Vero Caffe on Sussex Ring. It's a little cafe only a 5 minute walk away from church. They serve amazing panini's and despite the extensive range on the menu, they still will make you pretty much any sandwich you want providing they have the stuff in to make it. The staff are always lovely and happy to have chat which makes going here a great experience. I don't drink tea or coffee but Ash (who did go here yesterday!) has reliably informed me that the coffee is good! 

Day twelve #40acts

Become like children. Oh, as a passionate kids pastor I could waffle on about this for hours and possibly write a sermon or even a sermon series on it! In Kids Church a month or so ago, the children were in the midst of their 20 minute free play activities before we officially began the session. I was on the door registering kids as they arrived. Every Sunday we have a lunch for the homeless and often some of the homeless people will come to the service before lunch. On this particular morning one of the homeless men appeared with a trolley full of his 'belongings'. Rather than dragging it into church he pointed to the corner of the Kids Church room indicating he wanted to leave it there. Of course I said yes to his request but not before a whole ton of thoughts had passed through my brain. Thoughts like 'I'd better just watch him whilst he is in the room to make sure the kids stay safe' Yes, I have a duty of care to the children but why did I jump straight to the conclusion that he could be some kind of peadophile? 

While the man was dragging his cart into the room, one of the boys looked up from the Jenga tower he was building, stood up and walked over to the man. I was a little panicky but interested to see how this was going to play out. The young boy, with all his innocence asked the man why he had brought all his 'toys' to church. A number of different things happened inside me at this point. A part of me wanted to laugh, another part of me cringed and another part of me just wanted to get the child as far away as possible. This man clearly just wanted to leave his stuff and go and sit in church, he hadn't spoken a word to me, just pointed, so why would he bother with a small child? To my surprise the man spoke to the boy, it was brief, I can't actually remember what he said but it satisfied the child's curiosity and off he went back to his Jenga tower. 

That event hadn't really impacted me until I remembered it today. How judgemental had I been, maybe not with my words but definitely with my thoughts. If I hadn't had my filter and been more like my Kids Church child that whole interaction could have been so different. Obviously I knew the real reason behind why he was carrying all his stuff in a trolley but I could have asked some other questions, like his name, or offered to help. It's so so easy to judge people and have preconceived ideas. I hope I can become more like the kids I teach and catch some of their innocence. 

Day eleven #40acts

Confession time. I don't always remember to take the reusable bags to the supermarket. I don't recycle everything because sometimes I just can't be bothered to wash out tins or bottles. Since getting a car, despite saying I wouldn't use it all the time, I do! 

Today's challenge woke me up to my own laziness towards looking after the planet. Annoyingly I only read the challenge after I'd already been to Tesco's (in the car!) and used plastic bags! Whoops! So to attempt making this up I spent some time looking up what I can and cannot recycle. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of items that can be recycled these days, and also a little shocked by my own ignorance. From today I am going to endeavour to make more of an effort with the recycling and remember that every little bit can help to change the world!