Global Gathering 2015

Body_finished_GG15Through our links with American charity Amor Ministries, a team from Urban Saints Guildford was priviledged to take part in the Global Gathering 2015.

So what happened…………………..

A message from Hana:
Firstly a huge thank you from myself and Harvey, Stan, Matt and Jagat. Without your generous financial and prayer support we would never have made it safely to Mexico to take part in a truly unique experience.

Over the course of the five days of the Global Gathering there were a number of community outreach projects that included children’s work, prayer and healing, a vision clinic and a sports program running along side the house builds. We were able to take part in discussions about human trafficking and poverty and learn more about how we can make a difference to these growing issues. We also took part the house build and various community projects in the surrounding area.

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The vision clinic saw over 200 patients and was able to provide a 9 year old with glasses for the very first time! During the first day of the children’s outreach, the volunteers stopped counting children at 150! Harvey was able to take part in the prayer outreach on most days, which had very positive participation and feedback from the community.

There were five houses built during our time in Mexico and the three lads and myself were building a house for two sisters, Sandy and Fatima, and their 10 children, ages between 3 and 12 (three of whom worked 12-13 hour days who we therefore didn’t see very much). Prior to the house we built for them, all 12 of them lived between two properties. Each were made from a combination of wood and broken concrete and cardboard with extremely damaged roofs and make shift doors.

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The first day of the build site saw us wiring the polystyrene walls and the roof together, which was a fairly long and repetitive process and resulted in the largest number of blisters for the group.  We made good progress, which meant that by the end of day two, we had put up all four outer walls, an inner wall and managed to get the roof on!

The remaining days were made up of constant mixing of cement, sand and water to create “stucco”. This was then used to plaster the walls in two coats, inside and out. The roof was then covered on day 5 in a thick layer of “stucco” to seal it and make it watertight. These houses are made from these materials to enable them to withstand the hurricane winds that are common each year in this area of Mexico.

A message from Jagat:
Body_jagat_GG15I would firstly like to start of by thanking you as such generous supporters for being able to help the Global Gathering trip go ahead. The many prayers and funds helped such an exceptional missionary trip to take place. I learnt so many things and had my eyes opened to the things so many of us take for granted at the cost of others on the other side of the globe. I had such a challenging trip at a spiritual level as well as at a physical level. Our jam packed days consisted of going to talks and learning from some of the worlds most well known speakers. Furthermore, a big part of the week was a house build for a large family, and in my opinion, being at the build site was the best part of the trip; it was such an exciting part of the week where everyday we would be faced by new tasks in order to complete our house in time.

A message from Matt:
Body_matt_GG15First of all I would just like to say thank you to you as if it weren’t for your generosity we wouldn’t have been able to go on the trip.

I would like to share two moments with you from whilst we were out there. I had been praying about being filled with the Holy Spirit and so God said yes to my prayer and I received the gift from God on the first night of the Global Gathering. The second moment was that when handing over the keys to the family we passed around the keys to everyone who built the house and each said a little prayer. This was a very special moment and one that I will never forget. Thank you again.

A message from Stan:
Body_stan_GG15My favorite part of The Global Gathering was being able to pray with people from completely different backgrounds and to learn from their experiences and to take inspiration from the way that they had sacrificed to serve God. Thank you for all of your support.

A message from Harvey:
The Global Gathering was an emotional, tiring and fantastic experience. As my first house build I found this aspect of the trip very rewarding and loved the chance to practically serve God and the local community through the building. Yet more than just a build, the trip had some fantastic teaching both biblical and on some world challenges such as trafficking and poverty. Personally, I was encouraged by the spiritual teaching and found myself really seeing Jesus’ heart for the poor and learning more about how to mirror this practically in my own life. In addition, I feel God really blessed our interactions both within our small USG group but also with the wide range of different Christians serving alongside us and I was both inspired and motivated by some of the friends we made.

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