Oh my! It is February! It is February and it is going to be Lent next week and where has all the time gone!?!

December was a very busy month! We had a craft fair which was lovely and a Christingle service and the stay and play group had a Christmas party and Barnes close hosted lots of people for Christmas dinners and it was all very busy! The highlight of the month I think was the New Road Nativity on Christmas Eve. The local community turned up despite very bad weather and had a fantastic time, Shepherds, Angels Wise Men, Mary and Joseph as well as a real life donkey and sheep processed down the high street to join carol singers at St Chads and enjoy mulled wine and mince pies. They say never work with animals or children and I can understand why now, we ended up with two Marys, and the donkey bit one of them! Then the sheep came in the church and ate the flowers- what a lot of festive fun!

Christmas day was spent with James’ family which was lovely but it was also different to how my family do it. New Year was spent with my mum and dad and brother and I got to see some of my family and friends from school which was lovely.

Then January happened as well! This month we lunched Tea and Toast a Morning Prayer and breakfast club for parents at a local primary school. We have met three times so far and our numbers are increasing! 2 the first week, 4 the next and 8 this week (exponential growth!)  Whilst it is different to how we imagined it we are excited about where it is going and can see a core group developing, it feels like such a good thing to be doing.

I have also started going to a high school, having been invited in by one of the teachers, to spend time with a group of teenagers, this feels really positive and I love being able to help and support them on their Christian journeys but I must say it also makes me so happy I am not 15 again! The exams the pressure the ease with which you can all fall out- horrible horrible stuff!

So there we have it a brief overview of some of the stuff what I have been up to!

Till next time X

Wow! It is November already! It has been an exciting month and lots of things feel like they are coming together! So what better thing to do than to splat them all at you in a blog post because it has been ages!

We had our first mission group meeting and had quite a fruitful conversation about our vision for Rubery and how we might start doing things. We went on a prayer walk of the area and that was a helpful way of starting to see the parts of our community that we don’t normally look at, parts where there are high levels of poverty and relative deprivation.

I went to a fantastic launch event for the safer families for children west Midlands. Safer families for children is a Christian charity where people volunteer to be family friends and are then put in contact with families that need a bit of extra support with the aim of stopping children from being put into the care system. of course me being the excitable Yes Woman that I am signed up and I am excited to go to my training for it in December!

Recently I have started to organize the “New Road Nativity” . The idea is that people gather in specific shops on Christmas Eve morning dressed as Nativity characters and at pre-agreed times, start walking down New Road - a bit like a flash mob nativity.  Local shop keepers are being very supportive, we have a stable and we are looking into getting real farm animals, and trying to reach out to local youth and children’s groups.

Another thing that is bubbling to a head is “Tea and Toast”. When I first arrived Claire was keen to deep something that would be for parents that toddlers could come to but the parents would still get something out of it perhaps around school drop off time in the morning. This was inspired by Soul; Food in Weoley Castle which was a project developed by a previous mission apprentice. We have been offered free use of Hazel house - which is a community center next to a primary school by the head and when we discussed the offer of this space at the mission meeting we came up with the name “Tea a Toast”. My brother is working a logo which looks pretty snazzy. Clare and I have visited Soul:Food and are speaking with the people who set it up. It is all looking very good!

I am still helping with my Brownie unit and I am hoping to set up a Rainbow unit in the New Year, I am also helping with the weekly stay and play group which meets on a Wednesday morning at st Chad’s and they bring a bouncy castle and ball pit! It is wonderful! I am also hoping to develop a link with a local high school to support young Christians there in exploring their faith!

Overall I am doing loads and loads of stuff but loving all of it! That said there are some tricky parts as well, it can be quite difficult to be far away from friends and family in a totally new place, and sometimes I can find it quite hard to work out what to prioritize - do I see my partner, or my mum or my new friends in Birmingham or organise church events or meet people or should I be spending more time Praying or am I doing enough or am I doing too much or am I just worrying too much!!!!  - I can find it hard to get out of those spiraling thoughts sometimes but that doesn’t mean it is all bad, I still very much feel that at this point in time I am in the right place.

Well! I have been living and working in Rubery for over a whole month now! It has gone so quickly, and I am actually starting to feel like I have got a bit of a rhythm going.

I have started learning sign language which gets me out of the house, most of the people in my class have been learning for a lot longer than me but I think in some ways that has helped me to improve.

I have also started helping at a local Brownie Guide unit (shout out to 150th Birmingham Brownies!) and we have just finished our friend to animals badge and started working on our disability awareness. Brownies are aged 7 to 9 which is fine but I must admit that in my heart of hearts I am a Rainbow leader (the tiddaly biddaly ones). I am enjoying being Tawney owl, our main hope this term is that we will grow so I have been trying to get posters around Rubery and maybe to a bit of a social media campaign.

Work is going well, I have started helping on a Wednesday morning with the stay and play group that meets in the church, it is wonderful but very busy (they even have a bouncy castle!). I have been getting to know the church by attending church events and meeting with parishioners for tea, I have really enjoyed getting to hear all of their stories. And we are now at a point where I am starting to gather a core group of keen people who might help me start doing more!

So I have now moved to Birmingham. (This actually happened last month but I have been quite busy enjoying myself before I start work... Not that I don't think I will enjoy my work... Anyway I digress) I moved to Barnes Close, a retreat and conference centre managed by the Community for Reconciliation which is situated just outside Rubery, where the church that I will be working at is based. The Community for Reconciliation is an ecumenical community committed to praying for peace and Reconciliation and which supports projects in the UK as well as overseas in Afghanistan, Croatia, Romania, East Africa and India.

Before I moved in I got to play decorator which was a lot of fun and if I may say so (which I may because this is after all my blog and I can say what I like!) we did a good job of transforming it! so I wanted to share some before during and after pictures.

Before:

During:

After:

 volia!
Till next time!

As part of my job as a Mission Apprentice we have to write 100 word summaries of what we have been up to each month. I wrote my first one on the train but then discovered that it was way over 100 words! so I truncated it but I didn't want my train journey to be a waste so I thought I would put the unabridged version here:

I arrived at the Mission Apprentice training residential in June excited but a little anxious about meeting my fellow mission apprentices. My anxiety was quickly put to rest once I met everyone and the laughter began. I thoroughly enjoyed being stretched at the residential and I tried many new things: sharing testimonies, modern worship seasons with a guitar accompaniment and ribena! (of all things). All of which put me slightly out of my comfort zone (the ribena was a bit of a joke but it was the first time I had had it though!). I was really inspired by everyones stories and I was struck by how even though some were very different to my own I found that everyone completely respected and took seriously each others experiences. I think that, that taking seriously and deep listening is one of the big things I took away from the few days we spent together and I hope to carry it on through my missional work in Rubery.

 The last couple of months since the residential have been an interesting mix of being very busy and having deep periods of good rest. I moved in to Rubery and met a few of the parishioners who came to help me decorate my new flat, I have began to get to know the area before I begin work in September, going to a couple of local cafés and an ice cream parlor. I also attended a couple of services at St Chad's and was sung happy birthday at the end of one which was lovely. The parishioners have been extremely warm and welcoming and I am really excited to work with them in our mission to the local area.

I have a lot of ideas for projects that I would like to initiate but I want to get to know my parish context a little better before I jump right in, I like the idea of starting a breakfast club for parents and children. I would also like to start a community garden at St Chad's and I was excited to learn that one of our parishioners has her own allotment so she may be keen to help! Also I might put the idea of running an art festival in conjunction with the return of the some art works to the front of the church building. On top of this I am hoping that some ideas will come to me organically as I better get to know my area.

***

I hope that wasn't to dull for some of you, I will be back later on with a blog about moving in and decorating with some nice before and after pictures!

lots of love
Jodie

Well it's happened! Last week I graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science. I have spent three very formative years studying, laughing, crying and growing in the capital. I can confidently get from Kings Cross to Covent Garden with no need for the assistance of a tube train. I attended my first march, fell in love and co wrote and presented a comedy radio show. I grew in confidence about speaking about politics and I now (provided I am in a safe public space) sometimes yell back at street harassers.

I went to New York and ate bagels and I have been to Hampstead heath and swam in a pond. I wrote to my MP and I voted in a general election. I have been to see live comedy and theatre and music and actually feel like I am legitimately a little bit cool.

I have done a lot, but I wouldn't have done it without the we and us and they that helped me. My partner, my housemates,  my friends my classmates, my teachers, my counselors my academic advisors my family my chaplain my priests at home and in London, my lecturers (note that this are not mutually exclusive categories). I have been supported, challenged, and comforted over these last three years and I feel truly blessed to have come through it all with the people who I came through it with.

So as a new chapter begins I am sure I will still be adding footnotes to the last one. I think the narratives we tell about ourselves are rarely as clear cut as they seem, little experiences stay with us without us necessarily noticing until something else makes sense of them in a new way for is. The main take home I think I have from the last three years is that life is complicated, we do things that please others and we do things that let them down and others do things that please us and then they let us down, this doesn't mean that the nice things we do are any less nice and we can get hung up in the fantasy that we can make everyone happy all the time and that we should feel happy about others all the time. But in practice I think the human spirit can withstand an awful lot of breaking and pain, we are tougher than we give ourselves credit for and there is always space and opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation.

And now I am left with a piece of paper, a plush beaver, shed loads of memories and a photograph of myself on an elephant. I get nostalgic and a little bit sad every time I walk anywhere between Euston and Waterloo but that doesn't mean I am going to stop walking there.

Lots of love, till next time x

Well, hello and welcome to my blog! This is something that I am very new to so any advice or feedback would be welcome.

I know that most of the time the things we present of yourself on social media tend to accentuate the positive aspects of our life's whilst brushing over some of the harder parts. I am going to try my best on this blog to avoid that, I anticipate that some of the ideas that I have here may not make total sense or they may change later on or be a bit mixed.  But, so long as everyone is aware of that it gives me permission to be a bit free with what I write which should be fun.

So what exactly am I going to write about? Well I have just finished an undergraduate degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science, I'm not an economist I did social policy and sociology which makes me an "and political scientist" and now I am about to begin a job as a Mission Apprentice with the Church of England Birmingham, consequently expect some "God stuff" and updates and reflections on all the exciting things I will be doing in that role.
I am also an avid member of Girlguideing UK and I am hoping to complete my queen's guide award so this blog will also be a way for me to record my progress with that as well.

So that is a short but sweet introduction to what I am all about.
Till next time!