Birthday, bones camp + breakthroughs [ + more ]

Hello again! I know it's October now, but I'm coming at you with a summer recap. As you know life here at Radiant moves so fast and so much happens each season, so I'm going to give you the highlights of the summer and all that God is doing here!

THE BIG SUMMER OUTREACH

This summer we had a big summer of outreach as part of Arise UK, our ministry that seeks to ignite the body of Christ to bring revival to different areas of the United Kingdom.

This summer we headed to Birmingham to do outreach for the Commonwealth Games, Weymouth to serve the local church and community (and enjoy the beach to get some rest for the rest of the outreach) and back to London for Bones Camp (but more on that in a second)

Some photos from Birmingham and Weymouth!

We also filmed episodes of The Anchor of the Week in Birmingham and Weymouth as part of our series on the human longing. The idea was to travel around the UK to get people to go deep and get them thinking about what their hearts really long for.

WE LOVE CAMDEN FEST

At the beginning of August, our community connection ministry, We Love Camden, hosted our first annual community festival! It's a place for the community to come and have a fun, free day, but it's also a place where we can reach out and meet their needs - both practical and spiritual. It was amazing to see how God brought all of the pieces together, and we are excited for the future as we grow this festival to be a place where local traders, businesses, churches and more can come together to bring Hope to our community!

BONES CAMP

Bones is a week-long camp leading up the Notting Hill Carnival where we do evangelism all over London, have worship + word nights, and prepare our big days of evangelism at the Carnival. This year was the first carnival since 2019, so we were so excited to a part of it again! Bones Camp and the Carnival (which is the second biggest street carnival in the world right after Rio) are always an amazing time where we see God move.

Snaps of Bones Camp and the Notting Hill Carnival outreach!

TESTIMONY TIME: one of my favourite testimonies of our evangelism at the Notting Hill Carnival was actually a beautifully simple moment. I was handing out little pieces of paper that we call "promises", with things written on it like "You Are Loved - Jesus", "You Are Known - Jesus" etc. I gave promises to these two girls who were passing by. The one just continued walking, but her friend stopped and read it and smiled at me before continuing on. A nice little moment because she was obviously touched, but I didn't think much about it. Then, a few moments later she came running back to me. "Thank you so much for this. I've actually been trying to get closer to God again so this means so much to me," she beamed. I said a few words of encouragement before she took off to find her friend again, but I was stunned at the simplicity of how God works. In a sea of two million people, God saw her and knew just what she needed to be reminded that He is with her. How cool is God, eh?!

For a better look at Bones Camp and the Notting Hill Carnival, you can see tons of photos and videos that will be able to give you a better idea of what we actually do on the Arise UK instagram HERE.

MY 27TH BIRTHDAY

That's right, your girl has officially crossed over into her ~ late twenties ~ !!! It's crazy to think I came to London six years ago as a fresh 20 year old! At this point in the summer we were in Weymouth, so my friends joined me for some early morning coffee on the beach (and it was raining. They're very good friends). Birthdays are always both my favourite thing and a little hard for me (I've got some sort of an age complex that we're working through haha) but God always speaks to me quite clearly around this time. The word He gave me for this new year of life is "higher standard" - he's calling me to a higher standard, a deeper level than before. Maybe there are things in my life that aren't bad necessarily, but are they getting in the way of the fullness of life that God has for me? Am I willing to let go of things that are good for His things that are better? I know, not the most uplifting word, but I wasn't surprised given the season that I was (am?) in...

Early morning + coffee + [drizzly] beach = the best birthday morning

...and this leads us to the last section that really should be called BREAKDOWNS + BREAKTHROUGHS. Pro tip: when you tell God that you're finally ready to deal with things that you've been tired of struggling with for as long as you can remember, He'll take you up on the offer. And on a personal level, that's what a lot of this summer was: letting God uproot things from my life on a deeper level than ever before. And it hurts, obviously. But although this brought on a lot of breakdowns (shout out to my close friends who had so much patience with me as I seemed to always be crying - cause apparently I do that now thanks to what happened in Norway), there were so many breakthroughs as God was speaking so clearly to me and I felt Him so close to me the entire time. So really I couldn't even be mad about it at all. And now that things have settled down a bit, I can honestly say I'm so thankful for the healing, growth and spiritual maturity He brought through this season. Life ain't easy, but God is good :)

On that jolly note, I think that's where we'll end for today. Thanks for coming along for the ride, and supporting me in all ways. God is doing amazing things in London and I'm so grateful that you get to be a part of it with me. 🤍

Until next time,

Court xx