This week was half term for the schools and the same applied for those in the Oxygen team….to some extent! We have been allowed time off from doing the usual projects but instead the staff tam have been working hard on a first aid course (apparently the acting skills in Casualty are better than those on the first aid video!) and the Gap team have been carrying out ‘Challenge week’.
Monday morning we met Debbie and were given our first mysterious envelope of the week….inside were the instructions that we had to ‘Use £5 to bless people you feel are undervalued, need encouragement and need blessing…The only condition is they must live/work in Kingston’. So after a few puzzled expressions and much debate we headed into Kingston town armed with £5 worth of sweets each with an encouraging note attached. The notes varied from ‘You are loved more than you know’ to Grace’s suggestion of ‘Have a nice day!’ (Can you tell she lived in America for a while?!). We then went into each shop along Kingston high street and the market place offering the sweets to the shop workers because we felt sorry that they had to work on such a sunny day. As you can imagine we had a variety of responses from enthusiastic acceptance, to ‘this is weird’, and blunt No’s! We even had one lady ask us if it was a joke like one of those shows on TV where people film your reaction!!
Tuesday morning we received our second white envelope – this time we had £10 but we had to make a difference nationally or internationally! This was even harder to come up with an idea for, especially on a budget of £10 but after some helpful team discussion time in Starbucks (!) we came up with the idea to send Grace (who is leaving the team at the end of the week to go travelling, boohoo) travelling with the £10 and to buy coffee for a homeless person in each country she visits. We also each wrote a letter for her to give to the people along with their coffee – watch this space for an update on how that goes!
On Wednesday we were given £12 with which to bless each other...woohoo! We decided to divide the money up so we each had £2 then we drew a name out of a hat and had to find a gift for that person using the £2 of something that either reminded us of them or that we thought they would like. Jamie received guitar plectrums, Bandna was given a nice belt, Bonnie had origami flowers with notes inside them, Anne received some art materials, Grace had bananas and peanut butter and I was given slipper socks – an interesting mix!
On Thursday, our final day of challenge week we had to bless those who the bible says are in need of blessing, such as the hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, sick etc with £10. This was probably the most challenging as we had to cover a wide range of groups with only a few pounds! Bandna came up with the idea to make and send Christmas cards to the local prison (which only cost us a stamp!) and Anne suggested making up a shoebox to send to operation Christmas child, which we tried to fill with donations from the local Kingston shops and finally we sent some of the money to the charity ‘Action for Children’ who help disadvantaged children. It’s amazing what you can do with just £10 when you put your mind to it – it’s definitely a lesson I’m learning this year!
It has been a good week for getting to spend time as a gap team again – normally our weeks are too busy to see each other much – and for thinking about how we can use our little resources to give a lot of blessing. It has made me think that even though I may not have much money this year I can still bless people through my use of time and energy and by just being me!
Hey hey!! Hope you’re well, and again thank you for taking the time to read this. Just wanting to update you on the latest news and goings on with me :D. 
