This is my first go at setting up a blog. Looks a bit.. functional.. but you gotta be able to read it without 3D glasses! When I know how to import external templates properly and funk things up a bit it'll look more presentable. At least now I can keep in contact with friends abroad - which is pretty much all my close friends right now. Miss you guys so much, wherever you are.
I've been very isolated here in my latest two years Sweden and it's really knocked the stuffing out of me. I'm still in a rather lonely daze, longing for a lot more than where things were two years ago. I was allowed to study just two years towards ordination due to previous studies, but it wasn't possible to hop over all modules, so I had a particularly heavy study schedule. All that, without writing, hearing or speaking English, which makes things very unreal and doesn't allow me to be myself much. I also don't have friends with whom I can be myself with properly either, so it's a lot like being put on a sea bed in a one-man submarine. Not having a real church life has been damaging too, to say the least.
BUT - two years ago I was sitting in a staff room as a teacher - and now I'm ordained in the Church of Sweden and the Evangelical Swedish Mission (EFS). Not only that, I work for the latter co-ordinating church planting for Stockholm and an area that stretches 7 hours north and a few hours west. I have no predecessor and have a virtually free hand to shake things up a bit. None of these particular changes has had any emotional effect on myself, perhaps in part because of the whole experience of being here being so difficult in itself, but largely due to God having always caught my attention more than things roundabout. However, it will have an effect on those around me and I now have a broader responsibility.
Right now I really need a group of English-speaking friends here, a spiritual home, some kind of 'normal' home, a place to live, and to meet those other missional, pioneer types to form a core group for the new church to be built upon.
Please pray in faith for solutions to these points and name me to God. I will need your ongoing support and I know God will bless you through that. Me being over here also gives opportunity for you to come over here for cheap holidays (Stockholm is great, especially in the summer and winter) and perhaps for some of you to join in the mission work short and long term.
God bless you!
Basics
Waiter, waiter.. etc
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Can't be real: there's no sofas
Breakfast, Mars. You should've been there!
- ROB WEST
- Hi. I'm English and 41. No one believes me on the latter - but I was there! Blurb: I'm a qualified designer, illustrator and teacher and am ordained in EFS, a Swedish missions movement operating out from the Church of Sweden. My current role is coordinating church planting around Stockholm and central Sweden, including one I'll lead personally. I've moved 30 times (yeah, I know, not easy, that). I'm creative, semi-intellectual, but keep to where people are at and I get moved easily by people and surroundings. I'm lively and easy-going, with a good dose of humour. Culturally I'm British and an amalgam of several cultures via the friends I've been closest to, mostly southern and Pacific Asian, and African. I've become a lot more British in this current time living abroad, I think! I've had some really tough ongoing deals, but I've seen God's grace in all of it and he's gifted me experientially and spiritually largely through that. The natural things I'm good at I inherited straight through the family; we've always been pretty groovy! Looking ahead, I really hope it isn't quite as tough quite so long, that's for sure. God bless.