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Oxygen towards 2012!

You are invited to the evening launch of the Oxygen 2008-12 Strategic Plan due to be held at St Peters Church, London Road, Kingston at 8pm on Thursday April 24th 2008. It was in 2001 when the churches of the Royal Borough of Kingston came together through their young people to launch a new local charity that they subsequently named Oxygen. Now just six years after it was launched Oxygen has run over thirty different projects, has been in contact with over 4,500 young people and has been the springboard for many new and exciting initiatives around the Borough including Rm1, Street Pastors and Sacred Space Kingston.

Building on the great foundation established in the last few years the staff and trustees of Oxygen have conducted a comprehensive consultation and review of Oxygen, its work, its role and the opportunities that there are to make a long term difference in the lives of those young people who need the greatest support. The results of this review and the subsequent exciting plans for Oxygen’s work over the next 4 years are going to be unveiled for the first time at this special launch event which we hope you are able to come to. Our event will last for 1½ hours and will start with a review of Oxygen up to followed by the Oxygen 2006-7 AGM and a time of thankful worship. After this review of the past, we will move onto the future by giving a presentation summarising the plans and strategic aims for the next 4 years. The issues raised in the presentation will be used then for a time of prayer. Following this and over coffee there will then be a chance for questions and an opportunity to look around various displays and meet different people involved in Oxygen's work in different areas including the Borough wide detached youthwork project Urban Nites, the Extended School club Rm1 and the town centre initiative Street Pastors.

We do hope you are able to join us at this unique day, please feel free to invite anyone you think would benefit from coming as we are excited about what God is doing amongst young people in this area and as such what are our plans to respond to that in the years ahead.

Kingsnympton Youth Work Report Year 2

Oxygen’s current work on the Kingsnympton Estate was launched in January 2006. It was developed, planned and undertaken in partnership between Kingston Youth Service and Oxygen The partnership was completed by the Personal Development Trust who provided financial backing to the scheme. The original stated shared aim of the work on the estate was to build self esteem, confidence and motivation in young people on the Kingsnympton Estate and thus have a long term positive impact on the local community.

The Year 1 project report (issued January 2007) outlined how Oxygen workers had used the year to get to know the estate and in particular the lifestyles patterns of the young people who live and visit there. The conclusions at the end of year 1 was that during year 2 it was important to build on the good work started by developing other work, particularly a new work on Tuesday evenings, at the Oxygen centre on weekends and to look at developing a new coordinated work during the summer. Attention was drawn in the report that there was a need to deepen the work established; giving the young people more responsibilities whilst creating opportunities for exploring their values, attitudes and lifestyle choices.
To make these conclusions possible during 2007 Oxygen was awarded two grants by the Personal Development Trust. This funding was split between work that could be delivered during Jan – July and Sept – Dec (£5,000) and that which could be delivered during the summer holidays (£2,200).The report below outlines what was achieved with these two grants and draws up proposals for the development of the project into year 3.

Download kingsnymptonreporteditedyear2.doc (106.5K)

Jennifer's Update!

Hi, just a shortish update from myself. Spending time with the Oxygen team in Nottingham in February was great! Especially since I had been away to Zambia and Moorlands Bible College with Tearfund in Jan. Zambia was an amazing trip; I met some truly inspiring people that give so much even though they have so little. To hear their stories was so encouraging. One man, Guyemba who has AIDS told us now that he can not work, he has been blessed with time in the day to tell people about Jesus!

Back in England, I am enjoying Urban nights Kingston. Rosie, one of the girls that came along happens to live in Ealing very close to where my family live so please pray that she will take up my invite to come along to a very chilled out Christian led evening that happens every Tuesday with lots of yummy food!

As I am also volunteering for Tearfund this year, I was able to share at st Paul's youth group last friday, about the work Tearfund are doing with children orphaned by HIV and role playing, always fun! If any one wants free resources or is wanting me to help out at any youth groups putting the poor on the agenda, walk this way!

The kids at Devonway youth centre in Chessington are wonderful and I spend every thursday with 'em. We've had a recent spint of healthy eating there and enjoyed a meal of stuffed pepper and salad the other week. Exotic hey? So next time you're eating stuffed pepper and salad, please remember to pray for Sian! Over the last two weeks she has started smoking/ hanging with the wrong crowd and has been real angry and stressed, very hard to talk too.

Please can you pray that she would just be surrounded by good friends and people that will keep her from harm (Sian wanted to meet up to pray last September and she has a friend that takes her to a church in Fulham) The other council youth workers are concerned for her too.

Thanks if you made it so far. And please be in touch if you want anything Tearfund wise:)

May God Bless you n your family over Easter,

Thankyou for all your support!

Jennifer

New Podcasts Available

There are two new podcasts available to download from the Oxygen online infuse site. The comprise two different type of files, one music, one video. The first, available through the Oxygen Video Podcast is the very first Oxygen video that was made in 2001 to promote the work of Oxygen. The second, made by a young person on work expereince last week, is a audio DJ party mix, a fun combination of ceesy party tunes!

Visit www.oxygen-online.org/podcast for instructions on how to download.

I don’t do God!

Last weeks Monday night’s Rock Solid was tough and scary. As you will have seen on the web post below the team were not only trying to confront challenging behaviour from within the club, but were also visited from others from the local area, bent on attacking someone within the project who they had taken a dislike to. In response to this story and subsequent prayer email sent out various people contacted and commented to the team, promising that they would be held in their prayers.

Those Monday prayers were answered in an amazing way in this weeks Rock Solid as the team turned up with the two part challenge of disciplining the young people whilst also seeking to promote the primacy of prayer within the club. When at first a group of young people walked away from the night frustrated with the ban imposed they may have started to question if they had made the right decision. Yet in the background an amazing story was emerging, leading to a moment of spiritual brilliance that left everyone posthumously gobsmacked.

The story revolves around one young person (who for the sake of anonymity we will call ‘L’). ‘L’ was first approached in September during a detached youthwork session by Oxygen’s Rachel and Amy about attending Rock Solid. In response to the invite he was given, ‘L’ asked if this was the club that took place at ‘the church’, because he didn’t do church, didn’t do God, and didn’t want to talk about anything religious!

Yet despite his protestations it wasn’t long before ‘L’ found himself a regular at Rock Solid, turning up each week to play music, sing and take part in the activities on offer, often ‘L’ would hang back after the other young people had left in order help pack away and chat to the workers, simply wanting to be around and be involved. Yet even the most optimistic evangelist would have been surprised on Monday past, when at the end of the session, with most of the other young people departed and the workers gathering to pray through the young people’s prayer requests, ‘L’ started to sing. Yet this was no contemporary rock song, for ‘L’s song was a prayer, singing about how great God was, how he loved everyone. His song of praise complete ‘L’ then proceed to systematically go through each Rock Solid person’s prayer request, sending them heavenwards in his own improvised spiritual song.

‘L’ certainly has a long way to go in his spiritual journey, yet whilst some will question the sincerity of his prayer and others may say that God couldn’t hear him as he is yet to be ‘saved’, all those present on Monday knew that there was rather holy about his pslam like supplications. For maybe in a prodigal way, here was one who was once far from God, who denied the Father and yet now was starting in a very small way to see that there was one who loved him and took great delight in him and his offerings.

So, thank you for those who prayed for Rock Solid, thank you for those prayers that moved beyond the cessation of violence and requested a new hope and future for this work. Do continue to pray for I have a feeling as you prayed and as ‘L’ sang you weren’t alone, for maybe, just maybe as you prayed and he sang you were both joined by a heavenly choir who sang with you and a little bit of Heaven touched earth as a result.

God’s Post it Note

From Oxygen Worker Rachel,

Also at TGS this week 3 of the crazy young people left the room and were in the church. I went in to 'supervise' and they were looking through and asking questions about the bibles and song books and stuff. and then there’s a corner with a bible and a cross and post-its and they were writing prayers down for their families and saying thanks for things and sticking them on the cross.( one of them is a Christian (although she tells me she’s a Sikh as well )!!). Anyway they were chatting to Maureen (one of our older workers who lived as a missionary in Japan for years) and asking about prayer and god and what she did and more..

Please could you pray for more convos and opportunities to share .. .  and that they can come to have a personal relationship with god cus so many of them have none close to them who is always there for them

The Hope Revolution

Embedded Video

Rock Solid Faith vs. Shifting Sand Behaviour

The last couple of weeks at St Peters & Oxygen’s Rock Solid Club have been both good and hard. Last Monday evening was a classic example, when we had around 30 young people from all over the Cambridge and King Henry Estates arrive to have a good night. At the end of the evening, we were invaded by a gang of older young people, whom we had never seen before. This gang had come to ‘sort out’ one of the members of Rock Solid because she was deemed weak and could be bullied. As we stood between this gang and the young people, we were conscious that we were an outward representation of how God wants to protect and stand up for us no matter what comes our way. The gang moved on as we called the police in to come and help out and as we stepped back we were grateful for God’s protection in what is a challenging yet uniquely special environment.

In the midst of the craziness of this gang invasion we had great conversations with some of the girls who come to Rock Solid, finding out that they had once been baptised (and maybe confirmed) but they don’t practice Christianity. However given the relationships established they were open to chatting about prayer and wanted prayer for their family and particular friends. In particular one girl who was again desperate for prayer for situations in her family and personal life, details of which cannot be revealed here, but really do need people’s prayer (please do!).

Responding to the changing environment of Rock Solid next week we are going to change things around and hope to have a prayer tent up in the hall cus of what happened last week at the end .. and especially to ''to make a statement about what we are, what we expect and as a sort of recognition of the fact that stuff that went on Monday is not acceptable and nor should it be tolerated or ignored''

please pray that this goes ahead and works..