Today's the day...

It seems like a long time now since I left England on this crazy adventure. The last few weeks have been great visiting old friends and meeting new ones here in Germany.  Spending time here in Krogis at the Steiger base has been really special, I have so many great friends here who are such a gift to me. 

The last week I spent helping out with the children's activities and spent many hours, playing games, doing tricks, making mess, and learning circus skills with the kids here from Brazil, America, Poland, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, and Lebanon... It was quite fun even learning to say hello. It was so good to see them make their show on Friday night, working together, introducing each other, laughing, clapping and enjoying their new found skills... I will be very sad to leave them.

But today is the day when this crazy adventure really begins and I must set off in my journey to Macedonia. 2500km, many counties and mountains; months of rough nights, camp fires, and hopefully many new faces and friends and great shows! I wouldn't say that i'm nervous, but I think that's more because I'm in denial than because of any great faith or confidence. Maybe when I start to peddle down the hill the reality will start to sink in. But once again my bike is packed up to overflowing and even with out the unicycle and my drum it still looks ridiculous. I have said Goodbye too many times already and still i have more people to squeeze before I hit the road.

So anyway must phone the parents, pack the last few things and then... First stop Dresden!

Back to the beginning.

In 1727 in a small village in the very east of Germany a broken community of Moravian Christians began to pray, they prayed day and night for what turned out to be over 100 years...

Although I had never been there before this small place has influenced my life in ways i would have never thought of, and set me off on crazy adventures from dancing on the rooftops of clubs in Ibiza to clearing up sick and praying in an old pub - come monetary in Reading.

As I sit at the foot of the watch tower in this little town with my friend Luke, whispering prayers to God i feel strange sense of symmetry. It was 10years ago that I got caught up in this crazy movement called 24-7 prayer, where young Christians around the world inspired by the Moravians started to pray 24-7-365 setting up communities and sharing the love of God in some of the most (un)likely places. 

10 years later after university, life, love disappointment, faith, lack of faith, and many other stories I find myself to have in many ways come full circle, strangely, back at the beginning. The same questions, the same hopes still pump through my veins, my face just looks a little older and the bleached blond hair has gone. 

Sometimes these moments can be disheartening and you think 'what was that all about? Am I really just back where I started?' I guess the answer is no, and also yes. But even if we do find ourselves back at the start, we can never be the same. And often the 'start' isn't either.

So yes I do find myself 'back at the start' at another one of those points when the options and possibilities are vast and you have no idea in what direction you should run. Some might say 'into the arms of God' but if He holds the whole world in his hands then where do I find his arms?

In a week today I set off on my big ride. 2500km from here to Macedonia. I still have no idea how, why, or what this is all about but I'm excited. I have my eyes and heart wide open. My legs and back are still not convinced but I'll give them a few kind days to ease them in. Until then I am staying here with my friends in Krogis, running more circus projects with the kids here, and sorting out all of the things I should have done last week.

Friends, floods, flats... And finally summer.

I am sat out on the balcony on the 10th floor at my friends flat in Neubrandenburg. With the sun in my face I squint to see the endless expanse of fields and forests. Windmills break up the skyline in the distance and too my left a great lake is glistening in the sun. It is hard to imagine now that the glorious summer has arrived that only on Monday I was helping my friends evacuate their homes and their church as the heavy rains threatened to burst the banks of the River. Prague had already been flooded by then and it was only a matter of time before the water would flow down stream and flood Meissen too. The whole town was busy with people preparing sandbags and moving furniture to higher ground. Some people didn't even bother to block their doors when they realised the water was likely to over head hight flooding entire first floor.

I couldn't help but notice though that even with the prospect of so much loss and damage, there was a sense of excitement and togetherness as everyone pulled together to help. By evening as the last sandbags were put in place, crowds of people gathered in doorways beers in hand admiring their work. As I got to my tricycle to peddle home I discovered my front tyre was completely flat and my pump broken so what should have been a 20 min ride turned into a 2 hour walk pulling my trike behind me. Fortunately though the rain had stopped and I even saw the sun for the first time in days as is dipped below the horizon turning the whole sky pink.

I have been in Neubrandenburg now since Tuesday and have been staying with Some friends from a community called 'polilux'. They live here in an estate at the top of the hill that is dominated by 3 high rise flats. The idea is really simple... Doing life together, loving God and loving their neighbours. Many of them are also involved in a community centre at the bottom of the flats too. I have been here making circus shows and running workshops with the children for the last 3 days. It has been such a privilege to share in a small part of what God is doing here, it has been so much fun getting to know some of the children, they have been so gracious with me as I try to explain what to do in very bad German. And this afternoon we watched them make a performance to show off their new skills. 

Tonight we are heading off to the lake to relax, swim, make fire and drink wine, then on Sunday I make my way back south for a quick stop in Berlin and then onto Meissen to get my tricycle ready for the big ride.

I will be sad to leave this place though, there are no platforms or pulpits, no celebrities or big names, just a group of friends loving God and sharing their lives with others... and it's beautiful.

On the road... Again.

So after many months of deliberation, conversations, and generally thinking 'What the chuff am I doing?' I have come up with a bit of a plan...

On Tuesday next week, I will leave the house bags packed, staff in hand and hitch my way back to Germany. After a bit of travelling about catching up with friends, Christians and Anarchists alike, I will reunite with my beloved tricycle and start out on another epic journey cycling from Meissen in Germany to Prague, Munich, then to the coast of Croatia, through Montenegro, Albania and finally to Skopje in Macedonia...

Why? ... Erm... I've not really got that far yet.

I'd like to say that I feel like this is part of my 'calling' or that I just know that this is what God want's me to do. Or even that I have some kind of plan or vision behind it. But to be honest all I can really say is that right now it just seems like that most... logical... thing to do. It may seem strange word to use, I guess what I mean is that it just kind of fits, with where I'm at now, with the questions I have, with things that I feel are somehow unfinished, and dreams that aren't quite realised.

Also I've got to get my bike home somehow and I have a bit of a thing against going back the way you came, so it seems... logical... to carry on.

I keep joking about meeting my sister in India in January too... But i'll see how I go after 2000k and take a rain check on that one.

So yeah the plan is to cycle from place to place making shows, running workshops, meeting friends and making new ones. Sharing life and stories, hopefully somehow being a blessing to the people I meet. And preferably staying alive!  

So that's it... Plan sorted!

About Summer, Winter and a thousand Questions.

It has been many months since I last wrote. My last post describing the eventful journey back from Albania seems like a dream ago now... 

And I guess it was. 

So much has happened (and not happened) in the last 5 months that I scarcely recognise myself. 

You see is it's all about questions... 

Big questions, the kind of stop you in your tracks questions, keep you up all night questions. those kind of... life changing questions, that really you don't want to ask, but some how they just keep finding you, like some long and boring game of hide and seek.

After 8 months of cycling, fire dancing. learning, listening, travelling, performing, preaching even - every now and then looking over my shoulder to realise that yes those questions were still following me... I guess a kind of weariness took over. It seems almost ironic now that in those last days of our tour we were being chased relentlessly by the rain. 

As I made my way slowly home, tired, confused, and full of a thousand questions all I knew was that I needed to stop. 

The thing is I stopped writing too, because my questions had finally caught me up and I had to find answers.

I thought, I can't move until I know where I'm going, I can't write until I know what I'm saying. 

So I didn't. 

And it's been a long Winter.

Over 5 months have passed since I returned home. And many of those 'thousand' questions still remain unanswered. At first it really troubled me, I felt like I had lost my way, I didn't know what I should do (or even what I wanted to do.) But as the months went on I began to realise that it's OK not to know, to question, to re-think, to re-examin. Yes questions are scary sometimes, and inconvenient. But questions create opportunities to look, to feel, to think... they spark change, force us to be real...

I had planned to be back in Germany by now, starting my new life as a full time missionary - I have been living out of a suitcase all winter in expectation. Questions kind of stopped my in my tracks.

My brain is fried, my heart is beet.

I have a thousand questions - still 

Many of my questions are about the God I love, but I love him - still

I don't know where I'm going, or how I'm getting there.

But I know this for sure...

I'll start where I left off, Back to the beginning and beginning at the end.

Summer is here. And I'm going on an adventure!

Racing with the rain

So it's been quite an eventful few weeks since I last wrote. Our journey from Gaziantep to Albania was incredibly fast (for us) we got as far as Istanbul in about 18 hours. Greece was a little more tricky but we made across to macidonia in only 3 days. We would have gone all the way to Elbasan in Albania but we were invited to stay the night with one of our drivers with his family who live in Ohrid, so we had an unexpected stop in this beautiful town sat right on the edge of a vast lake and surrounded by mountains, where we were force fed home made Rakija for dinner and breakfast. After a morning of being tourists we made the last 50km in a very fast car on a very windey road to Elbasan... Patrick looked quite pale when we finally got out of the car.
We stayed in Elbasan for 6 days and we had a really great time making circus workshops with kids from the Roma gypsy area where the family we were staying had planted a church. We also made a couple of shows one in the gypsy area and one for a youth event at the church. The best part about our stay though was that we made some really great friends. And more importantly friends that make really good cakes!
We had planned to stay a little longer but after looking at the weather forecast we decided to make our way north before the rain caught us out. (hitchiking in the rain is no fun at all and nobody wants two soggy guys and wet bags in there car) So on Friday morning we made our way back up the windey road to macidonia (this time in a not so fast car, in fact 2 very slow lorries) it took us the whole day to get to the border of Serbia where we made camp for the night and felt for the first time the cold chill of winter approaching.
Now my advice for hitchiking in Serbia is quite straight forward... Don't do it!
Actually it wasn't so bad but with the cold wind and the rain getting closer the waiting seemed even longer. Somehow though we made it all the way up to the border of Hungary by nightfall where our driver dropped us off half asleep in the pouring rain. We had done really well so far to avoid the rain but now it was relentless. We walked in the dark, in the cold, and the pouring rain down the side of the motorway (don't tell my mum) hoping to find some shelter or someone kind enough to pick us up. (and pitch our tent was useless as we had lost the roof) The green lights of a petrol station have never looked so beautiful! We slept in the warm and dry on the shop floor with all our wet gear spread out to dry and it was amasing.
The next day we made our way through Hungary and Czech Republic and up to Poland really quite fast, and the rain held off too. The big shock to us though was to see snow on the sides of the road, as we were waiting for our last lift we were jumping about just to stay warm. We finally made it though on Sunday evening. I don't think either of us had quite realised just how tired we were.

New Shoes!

So our time here in Gaziantep is almost over - in fact we had planned to leave today but my stomach was playing loop the loop last night so we decided to take a day off and make our way north in the morning.
We have had an incredible time here working with a friend we met in Germany who is setting up a youth center in the city and staying with a wonderful family from the states.
It has been a busy but amazing week. Sabine had organised for us to run some circus workshops in two of the schools she has been connecting with since she's been here. It was really great to be working with kids again but very different from working in schools in the UK. We might as well have been pop stars for the reception we got from the kids. They all wanted us to sign there arms - and we really couldn't refuse - so in the end we exchanged signatures with them all and had kids writing all over our arms too.

On Friday we had the opportunity to visit one of the refugee camps on the Syrian border. If the schools in Gaziantep were crazy this place was something else - from the moment we arrived kids followed us everywhere. We arrived at the camp at 9am and had organised to run some workshops in the schools there. We had hoped to run workshops for groups of 30 but it seemed the teachers wanted all the kids (of which there are about 4000) to have a go. So our first workshop consisted of us holding a ring of over 200 kids, trying are very hardest not to get completely swamped as the circle got smaller and smaller around us. I lost count of how many workshops we did that day. In the evening we had organised to make a fire show for them. As it began to get dark and we started to set up a huge crowd started to gather, the kids were going wild, we were dancing together, playing games, singing songs, just to keep them at bay while we waited for the sound system to arrive. When an older group of boys picked Patrick up and carried him off i thought we'd lost it... Finally the sound system arrived and a crowd of nearly 2000 people watched the show. When we tried to share a few words at the end i could see the crowds pressing in on us and by the time i had said Jesus loves you we were mobbed by a crowd of excited children, literally climbing all over us.
It was a day that i will never forget. I was completely exhausted but blown away. After the show we were invited out for dinner by the camp manager and all the officials. Patrick and i sat in our scruffy smelly clothes dining with smart officials and a posh hotel - very very bizarre.

So of course the other important event of the week was the purchase of a new pair of shoes! My old red toms aren't quite dead yet. (they still just about stay on my feet) But i fell in love with the traditional Turkish leather shoes, although sadly they didn't have the red ones in my size.

This is the point in our tour when we turn around and start heading home. Tomorrow we make our way north to Albania to work with a YWAM group there for a few days and then it is all the way north to Germany. It feels quite strange to be hitting the road again, we have kind of cheated the last few weeks with taking buses, but tomorrow we go by our traditional method. Hopefully we'll be there by Saturday.

so signing out...