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April 2012

Birth of our favela

By Arg, Photos No Comments

Friday eve 13th Apr 2012 – I arrived home to this sight!

A brief explanation. Having not seen our downstairs neighbor since late November I went to the police station in late January to see if we needed to report this or not. We also got in touch with the landlord of the flat. Long and short is that he was a massive hoarder and the flat needed clearing.

So – this sight – it was the beginning of the clear-out but there was no-one about so I assumed they’d finished for the day.

The following morning I woke up, went to look outside at the weather to see one of the work-men arriving to continue the clear-out so I went to have a chat and got to see the state of things and it was quite grim.

The floor was covered 3ft deep – and i really am not exaggerating – of junk. This explained why, when we had seen our neighbor, he had been entering the flat through the small side window. He was unable to actually open the door itself.

The  most alarming thing was the fact that in the middle of all this stuff was an oil radiator that was powered on but the cable was beneath the pile. Its a miracle that there was never a fire cause if there ever had been, we would have been toast!

By the end of the sat the view had transformed in to this:

We found this quite impressive for all of this to come out of such a tiny flat but by the time we returned from church on Sunday afternoon it was even more impressive. While it was a little alarming the lads had said they’d be back to take all the stuff so we were cool with that but then we woke up on Monday morning to this:

You might just be able to make out Ruth to the left of the shot!  You’ll also notice that some of the bags on the edge have been tampered with and we had to clear away some of the stuff to the left that people had rummaged though.

We braced ourselves expecting that it would all be cleared away by the end of the day when we got home.

It wasn’t.

Not happy so we agreed that if not done by the following day we’d get in touch with the landlord.

Cut to the following morning and more (what I;m gonna call) looters have visited and wreaked havoc on our access.

So – I had to dig our way out and made up my mind to get in touch as this was taking the mick now. So that eve I rang our landlady to get the number of the landlord downstairs.

The following morning we had a repeat performance.

EVERY MORNING we have had a repeat performance and they still have not been back yet!

Have some more pics to see the joy we are experiencing:

 

The tip if the iceberg #POTD

By Via Phone No Comments

The landlord if the flat downstairs has started the epic job of clearing it out after our neighbor disappeared months ago.

Its quite sad as he obviously had some mental health issues the main one being a compulsive hoarder of which this photo shows the evidence.

Oaktree 24/7 Prayer Room

By God, Photos, Video 2 Comments
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/40109207]

During Holy Week Oaktree got together with the Antioch community and the Acton Vale Missional Community to take part in 24/7Prayer.

It was a brilliant week and I was involved with the all-night youth session on the first night which was epic in itself. Every time we do this I love watching how the room evolves and seemingly comes alive with the prayers of so may decorating the walls.

Ruth and I had a slot from 2 till 5 am on the Saturday morning which was really amazing. It was great to have time with little distraction to engage with God. I shot some stills and some footage to try and capture the spirit of the room or the feeling of the room.

Our brilliant children’s worker Thalie has also made a video made from the stills she took during the setup of the room and the week itself.