Hi Everyone! 

Basingstoke is cool, I'm enjoying urban life the ease of getting around and convenience! Variety of prod­ucts. My new financial freedom is something I'm very grateful for but I need to be careful not to make it vanish without a trace! By January I'll have every thing I need i.e. car, bed and then I'll be saving.

Home is good the lads I live with are great fun and easy going. We are doing Secret Santa this year and watching Band of Brothers together all good bonding stuff, as Mike says family time! I find it interesting how the lads relate to me, they seem to have a hard time working out how to be around me, not just because I'm Irish and a girl but as a Christian (whatever that is!) and that I work for a church. As they work it out in the mean time I continue to be quietly amused.

My job is going well, I did the sermon last Sunday (31st October) and nobody com­plained (that I know of) so that's good. It's an easy way for people to get to know me and to share the vision of the ministry of St. Gabriel's with the people of Popley. Just lately I've been spending a lot of my time out and about meeting people. I'm doing this through other organisations at the minute, because I don't have a team yet. I did drop the bombshell to the management team that I think we need to employ more people to work with me and that the building needs to be expanded. This was met with very worried faces, but I explained that this was for the future and that we needed to be praying about it now, they seemed to un­derstand but I wonder will they pray.

My mission before I started in Popley was to make sure a group of people met regularly to pray. Prayer is of huge importance to me as I recognise the spiritual aspect and influences our work comes under, we also need to make sure we

are doing what God wants and not what we think. So now every Wednesday we (mum's usually) meet at 9.30 for a hour to pray for whatever, me and Rev Arthur do half hour prayer on the other days and twice a month the youth worker prayer team meets!

In the New Year my work level will increase, as we start up different groups. Ideas for groups have come through observation and conversation with different folk. One big concern for me is the lack of men in Church (not because I'm single just in

case you are wondering), but if I'm working with young men promoting the benefits for a relationship with God yet there is limited example of men living out their faith then is it any surprise they choose not to get involved. So what do we do, firstly we need the men that are 'alive in Christ' to continue developing their relationship and to begin sharing that. Secondly taking baby steps; getting the men to meet regularly doing things they're interested in, while talking about life issues and involving God in them. In time inviting more friends to take part in the activities enabling the male believers to widen their circles where they talk about God and their relationship with him. My hope being that the men will grow in faith and that their example will be influential to those around them. A golf group is our starting point.

Another idea is a Mum's Breakfast meeting monthly for them to chat about life issues, finding others that will listen with genuine acceptance, and support, rec­ognising God is always available to them.

Hopefully by the end of November I should be in the secondary school every day for three hours facilitating a mixture of one20ne small group mentoring and class sessions, in the new year we will review to hone the strategy.

I have been attending the local statutory youth group at Popley Fields Community centre, which has been useful for me to meet the pre-teens outside of primary school, the relationships are building slowly. Time will tell how useful my involve­ment is. Now I'm taking the assemblies at Marnel Junior which is a great way to get known by loads of young people quickly as ,most of them will be going to the local secondary school too. This is groundwork to relationship building so all good really.

I'm also going to attend a teen parents group run by Pebbles, the local Sure Start family education centre, I hope that I can be of use to the team and the young people.