Tuesday 2 November 2010

News from the Streets

Well the Street Pastors have come through yet another Halloween weekend. Lately in fact since freshers week have been very busy in the City. Sadly despite all our efforts Alcohol related violence has risen and things are much more hostile on Friday and Saturday nights. On one evening recently we called 5 ambulances in 2 hours. The cases were for a 17 year old boy badly intoxicated with cannabis and alcohol. Another call was for a young single Mum fitting as a result of an Ecstacy/Alcohol cocktail. Then we are dealing with a man who's ear has been bitten through by someone in a fight. However we are convinced that Jesus is in all this. We believe that WWJB means Where Would Jesus Be.. We think the early hours of a Sunday morning he would be ministering love and care to people who need it.

This week at our Jubilee project we heard of a tragic tale of an impoverished single Mum who had been charged £150 bank charges by her bank for being a tiny bit over her £50 overdraft level. We made a complaint and were then able to help her clear her debts. In fact last week we were able to get several thousnad pounds worth of debt paid off for people thus getting them free and allowing them to sleep again. We have been so blessed in the quality of our excellent volunteers who serve the clients so well.

A huge thank you to all who gave to our Harvest Basics Bank Food appeal Chruches and School from all over Derbyshire gave so generously we estimate over £20,000 worth of food has been donated ot help us relieve poverty and to help make peoples lives better. Special thanks should go to John and Sylvia Gatt and Einir Cooper who along with the other stalwart volunteers Sue Smith, Sylvia, Karl and Andy and Ruth have done an amazing job in bringing in the harvest sorting it and administering it all.............. an amazing feat.

Recovery Project. we now have over 45 clients coming to this each week and are partnering with Restore to reach out to sex workers who come into the project. It is great to see this project which is a prtnership between Ozzy Road Church, YWAM DCM and now Restore take shape and begin to see lives turn around...... For myself Alasdair it is the highlight of my week !

The Healing in the Streets conference despite the down pour went really well with one lady being healed as we prayed for her and just now I took a call from a lady who we had prayed with on the streets the other day asking where she could find a church where Gods power was as she wanted to join a church where God was .......... providentially I had lots of choice in Derby !

Over 60 Christians from 21 differrent churches came together for the conference and we are so excited to see what God is doing in Derby through His church.... It really is the Hope of the World...

Please pray for the fulltime staff at DCM, the other day we calculated that we now have over 200 volunteers working accross the various projects we run and as you can imagine that takes some administrating and caring for.... So please don't fgeel forgotten we can just get very busy at times......