[TSSF-studies] Prayer Request

[David]

My dear brothers and sisters,

Some of you may recall a paper I posted a while back about the way a group of us here in East manchester are using the restoration of a Franciscan monastery as a catalyst for changing the lives of people in a post-industrial inner city area long blighted by some of the worse poverty in Western Europe. A documentary about our work is due to go out on BBC tv next month in the "Passion for Churches" series.

Last year, we were facing major hurdles and held a month of prayer to ask God to show us the way ahead. Those prayers were richly answered. We have taken over an old school and renamed it The Angels. From here, we run our outreach projects with groups and individuals that include:

* Young Families
* School aged Children
* Teenagers
* Children excluded from mainstream education
* Offenders and ex-offenders
* Victims of crime & anti-social behaviour
* Serving prisoners
* Asylum seekers and refugees
* Elderly people
* People with Learning Difficulties
* People with mental health issues
* Unemployed people
* Those who seek training or further education
* People with drug and alcohol issues 
* British Travellers and Gypsies
* Care Leavers
* The sick
* The dying and bereaved

Although we are not a religious group, our core values are rooted in the Franciscan legacy left by the monks for the community they served so wonderfully for well over a century. As the only Franciscan member of the team, one of my roles is to guide our prayer life and ethics - though this is, of course, a responsibility we all share. 

As always, we seek Heaven's will for the future. We do not expect a problem free journey. Indeed, we rejoice in the strength and insight we have gained by addressing the many problems we have so far encountered on the way. However, it really is important to us that the right ballance is struck for this wonderful and diverse community. As we develop our buildings with new partners in our efforts to strengthen the minds, bodies and souls of local people, we are privileged to experience a process of individual and collective growth towards a healthier, happier safer community. Each day brings new challenges. We are a small team and have to run with the restoration of the monastery itself, a large number of community projects and manage a large building with heavy overheads. The more succesful we appear on the outside, the harder it becomes to raise the funding needed to keep it all going to a point of funding itself. 

Of late, we seem to be attracting an increasing number of people with their own personal agendas who are demanding time and energy for themselves that we really need to spend more widely on the good of everyone. But overall, we are touched every day by grace and are fully aware that everything is held in hands far more capable than our own.  

One of the great pulls on myself at the moment is that York Chapter coincides with an annual camp in Scotland with local young people. The CLCGB Camp holds daily activities that help the young ones gain confidence, think communally and reach towards their inate God given potential. I am the chaplain for the week and am due to take one of the nightly fellowship groups and help frame Sunday and mid-week worship. During the day, we will be climbing mountains, canoeing, gorge walking, abseiling and generally engaging with the young people in a range of challenges and new experiences. This group has consistently produced the leadership our community needs if it is to succesfully take the reigns of the promising new future that now awaits it. 

Someone (following a hard-drive crash I've lost touch with who it was) asked if I would rewrite the paper I recenly submitted in a shorter form for York Chapter. If that person is reading this, I guess this is it. My brothers and sisters, in deep love and regard, I implore you three things:

1: If it is your will, accept my apologies and excuse me from joining you at York Chapter. If my order tells me I must be there, then  to York I will go. God's will be done in this. I would ask that someone who can do so give me the decision as quickly as they are able so that I have time to prepare myself and others should I not be making that journey to Scotland this year.

2: Please pray for the Monastery of St Francis and Gorton Trust and the work of the Angels, Healthy Gorton, Surestart, Active Life For All, the CLCG Brigade, local churches and other faith groups. Pray too for the policing, schooling, healing and nurtutring of our neighbourhoods and for all the work we undertake together as a Matrioshka community. Pray that God will ever guide us and, forgiving us our faults, be pleased to guard the processes we are involved in from human error. 

3: Pray especially for the people impacted by our own and a much wider regeneration process. Pray that this time their dreams may not be scattered; their lives not impoverished or their sense of belonging not torn assunder; but that God may richly bless them, heal them and love them, that they might learn for themsleves how to spread the blessings, the healing and the love of God in the wide, wide world.

In Christ, St. Francis and St. Clare.

Your brother,

David. 

Rev. David Gray
Community Coordinator
The Monastery of St. Francis & Gorton Trust
The Angels
Endcott Close
 West Gorton
Manchester - M18 8BR.

Tel: 0161-223 3211 Email: david at theangelsmanchester.com Website: www.gortonmonastery.co.uk 

 









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