Residents’ News

Jack - Eco Week

“With the students at HTL I have been leading a climate change awareness week called Eco Week! The idea behind it was that most people agree we need to do something about climate change, but a lot of people don’t know how or where they should start, so Eco Week was designed to give a load of easy, practical tips to help the students to start living a more sustainable lifestyle at uni. It has lead to some really great discussions and raised lots of questions about our role in battling climate change, and has made a lot of people start to think about what they personally can do to help the planet.”

Phillip - Prayer and Worship

“At Church of the Martyrs we’ve enjoyed running our monthly praise and worship evenings where there have been some incredible encounters with God and seeing new ground being made e.g. people who were once shy of praying out loud are no longer afraid to do so. It has been a massive privilege to start Wednesday morning prayers where we have invited different communities on Narborough Road to join so we can pray for them whether that be their business or their ministry.”

Laura and Anna - Holy Week Pilgrimage

“I went on a pilgrimage with the Lay Community of St Benedict over Holy Week because I wanted to encounter God in the natural beauty of the UK. When standing on the top of the Shropshire hills, the sublime views made me feel closer to God, and creation spoke to me about the glory of God.” - Laura

“Being a part of organising trips like this is one of the best parts of my job with the Lay Community of St Benedict. To make this journey with others over Holy Week was a very powerful experience for me. Experiencing wonder in the big and small things and sharing laughter, silliness and struggles with a group of people over 109km made coming around the Cross with them at Easter all the more special.” - Anna

Steph and Léonie - The Send

“From the 23rd to 30th of April we had The Send UK Tour with an amazing team from different nations gathering in 6 cities and 7 different churches here in UK. We have been praying for revival and reformation, and we believe that we are called for such time as this.

We saw many people saying ‘yes’ to Jesus, surrender everything and going all in. What a privilege to see around 1.8k people worshiping the Lord.On 25th of June, we’ll gathering in Olso, Norway. The Send is more than an event, it is a movement to see a generation who will be totally committed to Jesus, saying “no” to inaction and passivity and ‘yes’ to being sent wherever, whenever.

For more information, you can follow @venitvivus on Instagram.”

Ayo, Phillip and Josh K - Good Friday Evangelism

On Good Friday, Ayo, Phillip and Josh joined Bishop Martyn Snow in taking to the streets to hand out Hot Cross Buns and share the good news about Easter - and make an appearance on BBC East Midlands!

“It’s easy to forget that these are an important few days, so this is a good way to love people and express the love of Jesus to them.” - Josh

“It’s a privilege to be out meeting people, handing out bags and starting conversations with them.” - Philip

Claudia and Laura - A Testimony

“A man with a guitar came to speak to us outside our House after DY one day. He started talking to us about Richard lll and the Cathedral, and we got talking about atheism and was worried we had been misguided by the Church. We felt that arguing about theology would get us nowhere, so we started talking to him about the love of God and applied the prophetic and healing so that his heart would be softened.

He was very concerned about human suffering, so we asked is he would consider that God might use him to help those suffering with mental illness to heal them through his guitar-playing. After this, another man walked over because he wanted to hear the other man play his guitar to calm him down. After spending some time with him, talking about his love of music and other interesting, God healed his hand and shoulder and he agreed to go away and read the gospels. Amen!”

Our Garden

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been able to eat the first food from our garden! We’ve been enjoying salad and radishes grown in our very own greenhouse. The House team have also planted out some of the plants from the greenhouse and our garden is beginning to look a lot greener. St Francis’ garden is taking shape!