Govanhill - Glasgow, Scotland

Where has the time gone? It's already July 16 and two weeks from now we will be back in the states, hard as it is to believe. Upon leaving Drumchapel we spent about ten days in Govanhill, a neighborhood in Glasgow. Govanhill is a very impoverished neighborhood and also has 159% more violent crimes than the Scottish average making it a perfect place to set up camp for awhile. Additionally it is a large cultural hub with over 30 languages spoken just in a few block radius of our church. Many middle eastern and Romanian people live in the neighborhood and these were the kids we interacted with the most. We actually had very little interaction with Scottish youth during our time here. Ministry was intense and exhausting as we ran Holiday Clubs Monday through Friday for 3 hours a day and Youth Clubs for 2 hours every night. Several of our students also had the opportunity to share their testimony each night with the local youth, but the evening club was very
challenging. We encountered many teenagers that were disinterested in discussing anything religious and were only interested in playing ping pong or dancing. It is was a great growth opportunity for our team, especially when they were able to engage in conversation with kids who were either Muslim or Atheist, as most of the kids we met were. 

Our team also performed their dance and dramas every day and we even went into downtown Glasgow on Saturday and did two performances. During the second performance a couple of our girls, Rachel and Emily, shared the gospel with two women on the street and they made commitments to Christ that day! So there is some very real, very intense ministry happening and it is so cool to see how our team is learning and growing in their faith. We had a Culture & Heritage day in Edinburgh on Monday and went to Loch Lomond for a hike and a little R&R on Tuesday but now we are in Dunoon and ready for our last week of ministry before heading to London to debrief.

Please continue to pray:
- For healing as many of our team over the last 3-4 days have been sick with what we suspect is some sort of stomach virus and several others have been battling colds.
- In addition to Damien from Drumchapel, also pray for Azam, a Pakistani man that I met who grew up Muslim but doesn't really believe in anything anymore. I shared with him on Friday night and he even returned for church on Sunday but he remains unmoved by his sinfulness. Please pray for his heart to be softened to the Gospel.
- Pray that our team would finish strong during our last week of ministry and that we would not be overcome by exhaustion.