This is the warcry, stories from the battle front about a modern warriors search for Knighthood, stories of an epic loved affair lived out on a raging battle field.

A good day!

Friday, July 11th, 2008

Today has been a good day. I started out early going to Saint Michaels. We spent seven hours doing talks on the Salvation army and chatting with the kids at the school. It was great. One of my favourite moments was when one of the boys after a really serious discussion on gang violence and gang culture asked “Do you watch Spungebob squarepants?” Naturally many serious questions was asked as well and we talked alot about Jesus and the transforming power of God.

Breakdancers at Elephant & CastleAngelina and Anja couldn’t wait to tell me about their day when I came back, they had been to the London aquarium and they had seen sharks, fishes and crabs (snap, snap).
After a good dinner and trying to have a short nap on the couch (it is hard to sleep with two wild girls bouncing on your head) I went back for a prayer evening at Southwark. On my way back I saw some break dancers doing their thing at the Elephant & Castle. I was struck with the grace and speed these dancers was moving. They where just a bunch of friends hanging out doing incredible stunts with their bodies, not showing off but truly enjoying what their bodies where capable of. For me it was awesome testament of God’s marvellous creation. I wish that every Christian could enjoy worship in the same way on a Sunday morning.

11.07.2008 Angelina, Anja, Christian life, Mission, Patrik, worship View Comments

Walking the walk.

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

As Christians we know how important it is to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Hanna has therefore bravely decided to help raise funds for breastcancer research through walk the walk. Hanna will, together with two other cadets in our session, do a Moonwalk, a late night walk through town in their bras.

Please help support Hanna here

Here is an excerpt from the walk the walk website:

This will be the night that Bollywood meets Rock n Roll… the night when 15,000 women and men will pound the streets of London in their decorated bras… and it could be the night that you take your first step to better health, fitness and making a difference! In 2007 we raised in excess of £8.5 million to be granted to vital breast cancer causes… with your help we could make an even greater difference in 2008 …

Walk the Walk is the grant making, health charity behind the famous MoonWalk events in London and Edinburgh and the SunWalk in Bristol. To date the charity has raised in excess of £35 million for vital breast cancer causes, with the 2007 Playtex MoonWalk raising almost £5 million to date.

Walk the Walk is dedicated not only to promoting power walking for fitness, but raising awareness of breast cancer and encouraging people to adopt a healthy and holistic preventative lifestyle.

Please help support Hanna here

30.04.2008 Battle report, Extreme sport, Hanna, London, Mission, Social action, Support requests, The world View Comments

Grounding myself for the summer…

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007

As my time in Latvia is drawing to a close I find myself asking what legacy I will leave behind if any. The Youth I have been working with for 18 months are changed, but will they stay on the path? Will they continue to grow in freedom and express their diverse callings loud and proud? Or will they grow quiet and sink into tradition and liturgy?

Will they continue to become more chivalrous and become a new generation of modern day Knights in Latvia and by their virtue change the temperature around them or will they compromise their commitment and settle for less.

Either way I find myself in a race with time to impart the last it of my knowledge to these teenagers, hopefully empowering them to take a few steps on the path and maybe giving them a thirst for more that will last them a lifetime.

So as I am trying to take measures to ensure their growth spiritually I am also hoping that they will continue the martial training I have started with them, both as spiritual enrichment for themselves but also as an evangelistic tool for the future.

In mid June I am hosting a WSD Instructors camp consisting of three days hard core instructors training designed to empower the youth to continue running the WSD schola and the SSG Schola as study groups when I leave. In doing so I am also preassured to finish my WSD Instructors manual in the next three weeks. It is a huge job to convert, compress and refine all my martial knowledge into writing and then researching the WMA base to find the equivalent techniques referenced in medieval manuscripts.

The hardest bit is the ground fighting wich incidently is my favorite part. I am struggling to build a Fiore based (or even WMA version) of any ground work, it seems they all stopped fighting once their opponent hit the ground. Colin Hatchers reply to this is “well since they all carried a dagger once one person was grounded it was over”. Although I give this train of thought a lot of credit I doubt that there was no wrestling going on in the italian barriers, I also doubt that there was no training in it. We just haven’t got any of it recorded.

So I am facing a dilemma, in the absence of medieval refernces, do I just fill the void with modern MMA techniques or do I make assumptions based on the techniques we actually have documented and say, well if Fiore did this standing up, it kinda makes sense that he would be doing it on the ground only turned this or that way to account for the floor being in the way.

Whatever way I’ll be going with this it proves to be an interesting summer, with blue knees and sore muscles.

VIVAT! 

05.06.2007 Colin Hatcher, Fiore Dei Liberi, Mission, Schola St. George, WMA, WSD, youth work View Comments

Self control, what a glorious idea!

Friday, May 18th, 2007

Tonight I am speaking at Riga 1 – One Way, about Gods calling on your life and how to find out what God wants you to do. And as I go over the subject in my mind I keep coming back to this wonderful thing self control.

Say the word self control to a bunch of teenagers and you will get a bunch of frowns back, it doesn’t quite bounce of the tounge like “Joy” or “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. No it is a word we clamp down or teeth on and it tightens our jaws. The little ebel that lives in the back of your mind crys out in anguish, and you need only to add the word discipline to finish of the job and send the little rebel on a full scale assault on your mood.

But the fact is that self control is a lovely thing, not only, as I have written in this blog before, does it give us the oportunity to be joyful when the chips are down, to love when we don’t feel like it and to laugh in the face of whatever this world might throw at us. But also, if we are willing to state the obvious and realize that there is not only a forest but also a bunch of trees, we will realize that self control means the control of self.

This means that self control, a fruit of the Spirit, a fruit of Love, gives us back control over our lives. Having before been slaves under sin and this world we humble ourself and bow down in front of the glorious creater of this universe, the big boss. There at the throne we give over control of our lives to God and as we spend time with Him and we walk in the Spirit the fruits of the Spirit will manifest in our lives. One of these manifestations of The Holy Spirit in our lives is the fruit of self control and this is the awesome part. When we surrender our will to God he graciously gives control back to us and we are free to do what we want at any old time.

Self control then means that we actually have free will, we are free to create our own future, to change our stars. Self control means that we can be anything we want to be, do anything we want to do, become anything we want to become. As long as we walk in the Spirit and let our hearts be joined with Gods heart, He will direct our paths and give us our hearts desire! (Psalm 37:4)

Self control, what a great gift, what a glorious thing it is!

18.05.2007 Chivalric values, Christian life, Disciple Knight, Discipline, Faith, Mission, youth work View Comments

Swords and helmets

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

As most of you know we have been running a Schola Saint George study group here at Riga One. It has been the corps sports activity and a way to meet new people from groups we would not normally reach.

As a pilot project it has been succesful and well liked by our youth and the ones coming from the outside. As we are now preparing for our summer camp and as the group gets ready to survive on it’s own without me, we have some desperate needs.

If you want to support this project and help ensure it’s survival after me and Hanna leaves, here is the list.

  • Four FIE allstar Three weapons masks or baton sparring helmets (2nd hand or new doesn’t matter $150 each new)
  • Four 39” Shinais ($50 each in latvia)
  • Four Shinai hilts from Ardenwood forge ($35 each)
  • Four pairs of lacrosse gloves or medium sparring gloves from revival.us
  • Four Gorgets

If wishes where wings we would also like to have….

08.05.2007 Mission, Patrik, Prayer requests, Salvation Army, Schola St. George, Support requests, WMA View Comments

We do so little!

Monday, May 7th, 2007

Yesterday I was struck with this thought, All our corps have such a large base of volonteers and people freely giving funds to our work and yet we have so little impact on the community around us.

I am talking about the local corps here and not the Army as a whole. When I worked for the Guardian Angels we had a much bigger impact on the local community with just a handful of teenagers now I ask myself what is the difference?

Well here is what the Angels did….

  •  Most of the Angels time was spent on the streets in uniform, giving the community at least 20 hours exposure a week to our uniformed presence.
  • The angels where well trained in basic communication skills. Say hello to everyone you meet. At any opportunity give the ABC rap (ABC rap was a basic pitch of who we are, what we do, and how you can support)
  • The angels where 100% dependant on the support of the local community (that is where the money and food came from)
  • Every Angels was made to feel like they where super heroes when they donned the uniform therefore they acted like super heroes.
  • The full time volonteers worked full time with no pay and where motivated by their passion alone.
  • The Angels where always in the press, running press campaigns against injustice and violence all the time even after the first hype had died down.

These are some of the things that made the Angels successful I wonder what we could use in the SA corps to make an equal impact in our community.

07.05.2007 Christian life, Church, Guardian Angels, Mission, Ponderings, Salvation Army, Social action, serving, youth work View Comments

Whom have you forgiven today?

Monday, April 16th, 2007

This sunday Sarah preached on John 20:19-23, her message was actually about waiting on the Lord but this phrase got stuck in my head.

 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.

We all know that we are to forgive others so that we may be forgiven, but how often do we reflect over this awesome responsability. Let me state the obvious, we must forgive others so that they are forgiven. What is so special about that? Well it is in the fact that Jesus states here that if we do not forgive others, they will not be forgiven, unforgiven by us but also unforgiven by the Father.  We have been anointed as a royal priesthood we need to interceed for each other as Moses interceeded for the people of Israel, as Jesus Interceeded for us. We are Gods proxy, His hands and His heart here on earth.

We are sent to reconcile the lost children of God with their Father in heaven. If we do not do our job they are lost forever. We need to find them, forgive them, restore them, empower them and teach them to give as a gift what they have been given as a gift, Forgiveness!

Our forgiveness depends on it, their forgiveness depends on it, lets start dispensing Gods grace right now!

16.04.2007 Christian life, Mission View Comments

Aim lower, think smaller, give up & go, have a cup of coffe

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

What a great Christian slogan! All joking aside this is one of the best videos I have seen in a long while… Spread the word!

This is why I am a youth worker for life!

People where fine with me being a youth worker when I was 14 and noone even blinked when I was 18 or 22 but now that I am 33 and going into Officers training, people ask me what my vision of the future is and I say urban youth mission, I get raised eyebrows and a lot of wierd responses like: You will go where the army sends you, do what they tell you. Aren’t you a bit to old for youthwork? Isn’t it time to grow up?

NO NEVER!

We must reach the youth to make a better future, I believe that our children (The children of the world) need to get a vision for the future, needs to learn about chivalry, about prowess, courage, honesty, loyalty, generosity, faith, courtesy, nobility.

Only if they learn to value this as children will it last them and guide them throughout life and only then will we see society change for the better.

10.04.2007 Christian life, Church, Mission, video, youth work View Comments

Build it and they shall come…

Monday, December 11th, 2006

I wrote earlier this year about how I didn’t know any normal people, and how I started the martial arts school to meet people who where not Christian. well the womens selfdefence course didn’t help as it made sure a lot of women came (imagine that) the Jiu jitsu class had very low attendence while the Woman selfdefence course was very popular.

The WMA (Western Martial Arts) school however, while small, has drawn the right people, although maybe not normal people … but then again what is normal these days, dreaming of dressing up in medieval armor and fighting with two handed swords is not half as “out there” as some things I’ve seen.

It’s not that we have people lining up to start training with our SSG Riga group (which is good I am not sure our hall could fit many more people) but as the study group leader I am being aproached by all the other sword fighting schools in Riga, and of course challenged to duel with them.

I don’t know what it is, curiosity, thirst for knowledge or just plain old “I need to know who’s the best”. But as it is the invitations come, and I take my sword and go, it’s all good, and loads of fun!

And suddenly I have a network of people to talk about swords with and when you talk about swords, you talk about chivalry and when you talk about chivalry, you must talk about faith!

11.12.2006 Battle report, Extreme sport, Mission, Schola St. George, WMA View Comments

Spiritual Vagabonds

Thursday, October 5th, 2006

A growing group in our society are the spiritual vagabonds, restless souls wandering from fellowship to fellowship and never settling down. Either on the constant lookout for the perfect church or treating organized Christianity like a smorgasboard where you pick and choose the bits you like and move on to the next dish.

This begs the question, what went wrong? Why is our congregation not able to even gather and hold on to the Christians? And if we cannot make Christians to come and stay in our corps how on earth are we going to be able to win the unsaved?

05.10.2006 Church, Mission, Ponderings View Comments

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