The term has been rolling on at quite a pace since our last blog post.
We now only have one week left of our development module, but we have found the reading and discussions really helpful. As I mentioned previously some of our study has been taken from Bryant Myer's book 'Walking with the Poor'. In this he proposes the idea that poverty is about broken relationships, broken relationships between us and others, our community, our environment, ourselves and ultimately God. In this sense we are all impoverished until we begin to put our trust in Jesus who is able to reconcile these relationships.
Bath Time
At the end of January we were back in Bath as we had an important presentation to make to our home church missions committee (the WiSE team). We also used the Sunday to feedback what we had been doing to the three services at Holy Trinity Combe Down. It was a great opportunity to catch up with friends from Monkton and our home church. We really enjoyed staying with the Udale Smiths who have an annex to their house especially for returning Mission Partners! We will be sure to find lots of reasons to come back to Bath now, especially as the annex includes an outside hot-tub!
A Good Year
A couple of weeks back we were able to attend the Neema Crafts UK trustees meeting. It was great to see how much interest and support for Neema has been generated this year in the UK and very exciting to read the Hart's review of the year which I include below:
“This has been a big year for Neema Crafts with visits from the BBC, The Times and the National Geographic Magazine as well as several Tanzanian government ministers and senior officials. Neema Crafts has been honoured with two major awards: Neema Crafts Restaurant was voted ‘Best Restaurant in the World’ in the Telegraph Newspaper ‘Best of British’ competition. Neema beat over 600 nominated establishments from all over the globe. This is a huge honour for a restaurant entirely run by deaf chefs and waiters who a few years ago had no training and no hope of employment. Susie Hart, founder of Neema Crafts, was named one of four ‘Women of the Year’ at the prestigious Women of the Year lunch at the Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane, London, in front of a selected audience of 450 of the most influential women in the country. Susie was nominated for the award by Sandi Toksvig and Maureen Lipman in recognition of the work she and Andrew have done in Tanzania on behalf of the disabled community."
This was taken from the Neema Crafts UK annual report which can be found on the charities commission website: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/
You can also follow the latest news from Neema by signing up to the Neema Crafts group on Facebook.
