English Cafe

During dinner, the nerves hit me and I got a bit scared about doing my talk on Identity at the English Cafe - it would be my first real time of standing in front of people and it was in Hungary with a translator - I always seem to do things the hard way.

However, when I got to the church, my nerves seemed to disappear, but they quicky reappeared again when instead of the 15 people that we expected to come, 45 people actually turned up. This was exciting to see but nerve wracking for me - we quickly had to get more tables and chairs for everyone.

It was great encouragement both for the team and also for the church to see all these people turn up in order to learn a big of English from us and to hear a little talk on God.

Ava introduced the night and we all stood up and introduced ourselves, telling them our names and where we were from. One thing about the Hungarian people that I noticed as soon as I got into the country is that they are very friendly welcoming people - a bit like the Irish!

To start off the night and break the ice a bit, we played a game called Bingo - everyone was given a piece of paper with different things about the London team on them, and the aim of the game was to go around all the team members and find out which person fitted the squares. There was lots of buzz and they seemed to really enjoy the game and the ice was finally broken.

My nerves were going crazy at this point as it was now time for me to get up and speak.

The experience wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Esther, who was translating for me was very good and even though we both messed up some lines, it did not seem to matter to everyone.

People were listening well and laughing at the right points which relaxed me and in the end it just felt like Esther and I were just standing there having a conversation together and the rest of them were just listening to us, that was a good thing as it took away my nerves. But also my prayers before hand were being answered, and one in particular - for me to speak slowly... which I did, amazingly for me!

There is no evidence of me speaking as no one took any photos of me, boo hoo!

When I had finished my talk, there were table discussions. This time was to be used to introduce one another and talk about what they thought identity was. These discussions went well and it seemed that my talk went down really well and people enjoyed it. And the point I wanted to get across about our identity being in Christ and nothing else, seemed to get across, which was fantastic.

God was definately with me when I stood up at the front, I felt a calmness when I got up there and could really feel His presence with me which was good. He helped open people's ears and let the message sink in. My nevers were replaced with joy and amazement again in the power of God.

I ended the night really looking forward to Wednesday and what God had in store for me and the other team members.