SWANSEA COUNCIL CHRISTIAN UNION

Praying makes all the difference

There has been a Christian Union within Swansea Council for years and a number of the retired staff come back at Christmas for our Carol Service. We are planning to start a newsletter to send out to them with prayer requests and to keep them in touch with what we're doing. Numbers had really dwindled and about two years ago there were only two of us meeting regularly within the main council building. Inspired by the Jim Cymbala book Fresh Wind Fresh Fire we just started to pray and try to depend on God to make a difference within the Council.

Slowly but surely God is rebuilding our group and there are now about 6 of us who meet regularly and 3 in another building who we meet with monthly. A number of our group have been through tough times recently and we have often found the meeting to be a little oasis in the middle of the week. No matter how much we struggle to make the meeting, God always meets with us and we feel differently going back to our offices.

We meet on a Wednesday to chat/study/pray and have a prayer meeting on a Friday. As some of us are based in different locations we have also started to meet once a month on a Monday evening in the hope of attracting people from all areas of the council who find it hard to meet during the day. We are really keen to reach out to our colleagues and are currently praying over several ideas and seeing where God leads us. We've also tried to link in with the Swansea Churches Together and we email all these Church leaders when we've got an event coming up.

We sought inspiration from God to serve our colleagues at Christmas and for the last two years we have provided a 'Chill-out Zone' one lunchtime in December where two Christian practioners have done head/shoulder massages and we served teas,coffees, cakes etc and we gave each person a gift. Last year a number of people who'd been to these events subsequently came to our Carol Service. God has been so much in control of these - just the right number of people came and we were able to have some good conversations.

We also gave out little parcels of chocolates at Easter with a verse of Scripture inside, it's amazing with both of these events that people cannot believe they're getting something for free and they ask us why we're doing it.

It seems that we take a bit of a battering after these events, we've noticed that after the joy of seeing God work through us at Christmas and Easter we all really struggle over the next few weeks. It really is a battle isn't it sometimes.