Stunned by fundraising

My fundraising has been going brilliantly, something for which I am very grateful and also give thanks to God for. Mind you, very little of this success is actually my doing. I seem to have done relatively little, except perhaps "light the blue touch paper" as the saying goes! St Michael's Church West Andover (www.smwa.co.uk), where I am an Assistant Priest have been brilliant in this respect. I had an idea to do 'odd jobs' in return for a donation but this was scuppered by various regulations (inland revenue, insurance, health & safety, etc). However, a number of people in the congregation have given generous donations. In addition, two ladies fixed, organised and hosted a Coffee Morning on my behalf last Saturday. I attended, answered questions, and mounted a display about chaplaincy in Athens, Berlin and Vancouver. At least 30 people attended throughout the morning and through people's generosity more money was raised. I also discovered recently that, unknown to me, one or more people (I know not who or how many) have been doing some of the 'odd jobs' that I'm not 'allowed' to do to make sure the donations still came in. That type of action almost stuns me into silence - but a very grateful silence. It really feels now that I shall be going to Vancouver not just to serve as a chaplain but to represent the people of St Michael's as I do it. It is a good Christian principle when someone is sent out from a local Christian community with their support to fulfil a specific role, and I really feel that this is now what is happening.
On top of this, I heard officially at the beginning of this term that two departments at Loughborough University have also expressed their willingness to give some money towards the expenses of my trip. When I learned this, it was another moment when I felt stunned, albeit very pleasantly so. Both sources of money, Loughborough and church, feel like a great affirmation of my ministry among them. God is so good!

New Year, New Challenges

Happy New Year to you!
As one year finishes and another starts, many people are filled with optimism as they look forward to what lies ahead. New Year resolutions abound. New challenges are identified. New aims in life targeted. And athletes are no different - indeed, many of them will be even further ahead of the rest of us in their looking forward. Many won't have had the Christmas break that some of us have had, as routines will have continued throughout and alongside the festive season. Training for this new year will be planned. Competitions will have been identified as targets. Aims and goals for performance will have been set. And dreams will have been dreamed. 2010 is a big year for competition. In addition to all the annual competitions for each sport, there are a number of others this year: Vancouver and Whistler in Canada host the Winter Olympics in February and the Winter Paralympics in March; Doha, in Qatar, hosts the World Indoor Athletics Championships in March; South Africa hosts the FIFA World Cup in June and July; Guildford, in the south of England, hosts the Women's Rugby World Cup in August and September; and Delhi in India hosts the Commonwealth Games in October - to name but a few!
Last weekend, a number of track athletes laid some foundations for this year by competing in the Great Edinburgh International Cross Country; and it was good for me as Visiting Sports Chaplain at Loughborough University to watch several Loughbrough based athletes in action. I perhaps ought to add that I was in the warmth watching on TV whilst they were competing in a very cold and snowy Edinburgh!
I'm also beginning to make my own preparations for this new sporting year. Towards the end of last year I learned that I'd been selected as a chaplain for the Winter Paralympics. This was quite a surprise as numbers of accredited chaplains are small and I wasn't expecting to be selected at all. So fund-raising started in November, because virtually all such chaplaincy appointments are self-funding (as was Berlin last year), as did the search of accommodation, etc, etc. I'm also playing a major part in planning and providing the chaplaincy provision at the Women's Rugby World Cup, which thankfully is happening much closer to home.
So the blog has been redesigned and relaunched, and I'll be adding more news and updates on a regular basis from now on, including daily bulletins from the Paralympics in March (hopefully, technology resources permitting).

The morning after the Championships before

Monday in our Team Hotel was a weird experience, and no doubt it was the same in the other one too. By the time we went to breakfast at 8am, some rooms used as offices or other Championship facilities had already been cleared and returned to their normal state. At lunchtime, this was even more obvious, especially as the security guards had even started to disappear from the doors; and by the evening, 'ordinary people' were checking into the hotel. Some athletes had left over the last few days anyway, once their events were over, either because they needed or wanted to get home or because they had other competitions to go on to; but the main bulk of the athletes left during Monday. As the athletes disappeared, so did the facilities provided by the Championship organisers - which is why there has been a delay in updating the blog since Monday morning - the athletes' internet lounge which I'd been using disappeared sometime after 9am on Monday. And it was not just facilities that disappeared but also the security guards, police, photographers, and autograph hunters that either gathered or were posted outside all the doors. Both Team Hotels and certain parts of the Stadium were secure areas. The chaplaincy team were fortunate and also extremely grateful that the organisers had granted us such a wide accreditation - there were very few relevant places that we could not go to. However, there were occasions when I felt very sorry for the more well-known athletes who were faced with the hassle of autograph hunters and photographers every time they got off a shuttle bus. I obviously had to walk through them too but at least they weren't in the slightest bit interested in me so I had a fairly free passage each time. The freedom that having security guards and police outside the hotels was greatly appreciated by athletes. It also meant that startling things happened occasionally, such as the evening when I walked through an exuberant gathering of Jamaicans and others in one of the public areas and realised later that I'd wandered through Usain Bolt's birthday party! All humans need personal space occasionally and it's hard for sportspeople to get this sometimes whilst on the competition circuit.

Although the Championships had finished, chaplains were still around if needed, although we had a much freer space ourselves. In the morning I went to meet a lady in the former eastern half of Berlin who my husband and I had stayed with in 1989 before the Berlin Wall finally came down totally. It was a moving experience to hear her stories of the last almost 20 years since full reunification, and to enjoy a visit to her church knowing that I was able to do so without being watched, which would have been the situation last time we visited. In the afternoon, I revisited some of the famous sites to see how they'd changed in the same period, as well as going to the Jewish memorial which is new since the last time I was in Berlin. In the evening, the remaining chaplains got together for a meal before we all left the following morning.

Finals Day

Sunday saw the finals of the remaining events. It was also a day of endings for many people and, for some, a day of new beginnings. Endings came as the final events took place, as people said goodbye to each other, and as the organisers and others began the task of packing up. New beginnings were heralded as people prepared for going home, with or without their targets and expectations having been met, and contemplating questions such as "where to now?" and "how do I put this experience into perspective and use it for the future?". The chaplaincy team experienced all of these themselves, as well as with athletes we were still in contact with.
We had a final chaplains' service at noon on Sunday, during which we all shared our experiences of the Championships and gave thanks to God for all that had gone on.
Then I headed off to be on duty in the Stadium Chapel for the final athletics events, and what a session it was! I had thought anyway, how apt it was that having been on duty there for the first morning of athletics, and experienced the initial 'teething problems' of working in such close proximity to the media who seemed to see our presence as slightly strange even if not contradictory to their presence, that I was also on duty for the final session. Although I knew that our presence was much more accepted by this stage in the Championships, I hadn't anticipated such a positive ending. As it was finals day and so the number of athletes competing was smaller, it is harder to share the full flavour of the stories without giving identities away but I shall try:

• Our first visitor was a photographer who said he'd passed the chapel several times a day but never been in. I showed him round and explained that the words on the walls were various verses of Scripture in different languages, and started with the back wall which has the Lord's Prayer on it. His response was "Sorry, I'm an atheist". We talked very gently and after asking if he could play the organ (but I couldn't find the switch) he took a leaflet about the chapel away with him.
• Similarly, one of the staff came in saying that he thought he ought to take a look having walked past so many times. He too chatted for a while and took a booklet about the chapel that he said he would like to discuss with one of his family who is a faithful churchgoer.
• At least 6 athletes called into chapel to pray or to talk. One prayed on her own; 2 asked for either my colleague or myself to pray with them; 1 from a country where to be a Christian isn't easy simply wanted to say hello to 2 chaplains; and 2 who I'd had several conversations with during the Championship stopped to talk with me.
• The team manager from the predominantly non-Christian country who we served on Wednesday evening came into the mixed zone, stopped at the chapel, and said "thank you for your help last time I saw you".
• One television crew asked was filming allowed in the chapel. Not knowing the 'official answer', I took a leap of faith and said yes. They filmed various aspects and then asked "can we stay for a while so that we can get a shot with athletes walking past the door because for the last week we've sometimes filmed athletes giving interviews with the chapel in the background and it'd be good to now film the chapel with athletes in the background". After that, they filmed a short interview with me about what sports chaplaincy really is. As they were from Eurovision, who supply sports, news and people stories to a large number of broadcasters, I have no idea when (or even if) the footage will be used, but pray that it will help sports chaplaincy to be both better known and more accepted.

It was certainly an amazing time of duty. After the athletes from the last event has passed the chapel, I dashed to get the shuttle back to the Team Hotel where I'm staying. I had originally planned to try and get a seat in the stadium for the Closing Ceremony, but we chaplains had been surprised to get an invitation to attend the Athletes' Banquet that evening, along with some of the other volunteers. This was a real privilege although, as it was held in a huge, dark warehouse-type arena with lots of loud music and at least a couple of thousand people, there was little chance of meeting up with anyone. I was glad to go though, and was pleased to be there for the final 3 Medal Ceremonies of the Championships. It was unusual for these not to happen in the Stadium, and some felt it wasn't fair on the athletes in these ceremonies, so it was good to be able to cheer loudly when the GB men's 4x400m team got their Silver medal. (As I was still on duty in the chapel I hadn't been able to cheer when Lisa Dobrisky got her silver medal in the Stadium earlier on.)

Marathon Day dawns

Saturday dawned brightly but cooler, much better conditions for running marathons the first of those - the men's - was this morning. Both marathons take an approximately 10km lap course and so passed each spot 4 times. One corner of the course was within 5 minutes walk of our hotel so I went down to watch - but was only able to see the first 3 laps. But in each was able to shout encouragement to one athlete who'd visited our Oasis most mornings. Before going to do this, I'd spent some time helping prepare for and attend a special Service of Thanksgiving that a few of us had planned. This was aimed specifically at some Afro-Caribbean teams but it was, of course, open to all. Although not so many people came as had said they would, it was still an uplifting service, especially the singing and an interactive way of telling a Bible story.

After watching the 3 laps of the marathon, I dashed off to the shuttle bus for the other hotel. Whilst here, I did speak to some people I hadn't met before, but it was really a time of making sure that I said farewell and tied loose ends with some of the people I've met since arriving. Then it was on to the stadium, where I got an amazing seat by the long jump that felt like I was almost in the sandpit itself. This was such a privilege, but also enabled me to speak again with a coach I've had several conversations with. It was also great to be in the stadium to see a Loughborough student gain a medal with the relay team.

And then the rain came falling down

After the heat of Thursday, waking up to dark clouds, heavy rain, thunder and lightening wasn't surprising. I did feel for those in the 50km walk though, as it may have made their final pre-race preparations more uncomfortable than is desirable - although at least the cooler temperatures will have been welcomed and made the actual race more comfortable. My first duty of the day was the 7-10am slot in our hotel's Oasis, so apart from going to the staff canteen for breakfast I didn't have to go out in the rain. Several people called in during that time, one who has been attending most mornings. The next couple of hours was spent supporting a fellow chaplain for whom today was difficult, doing some admin, as well as the 2 main tasks of the morning: Firstly, having finally managed to acquire a New Testament in French, I spent time tracking down the Team Official who'd requested one a few days ago. Eventually, I was able to give it to their team attache along with a letter for him, although I put it in a sealed bag for reasons of both personal confidentiality and also possible religious sensitivities in the country concerned. Secondly, I wanted to leave a message for the English-speaking Team Coach I chatted to a few days ago as one of her athletes had done well the previous evening and I wanted to follow up our conversation. She was actually in her room and although pleased about that athlete was still feeling very much under pressure, and said she was very pleased to see me. We had a chat. I then went over to the other hotel to 'loiter with intent' for an hour or so, during which I managed to speak with an athlete I wanted to see, before heading off to the stadium.
Soon after arrival, the rains came down again big-style. I didn't get too wet but it was sad to sit in the stadium and watch both athletes and officials getting wetter and wetter by the second. It must have been hard for those in the second group trying to qualify for the Javelin final who had much worse weather conditions than those in the first group who'd competed earlier. Then, as those of you who watched it on TV will know, throwing and jumping events were suspended for safety reasons, and the start of the track events was delayed. That too adds a stress onto athletes as their preparation is aimed at a certain time and then they have to hang around for an uncertain length of time before being able to compete - a bit like what happens at Wimbledon in a rainy English summer! Thankfully, once the rain stopped, competition was able to resume and was all scheduled events were completed, albeit later than expected.

Serving athletes (and others)

Thursday's main activities included a noon-2pm duty in the Oasis in the other hotel, and an evening trip to the stadium, although I only went to watch the long jump - both to watch the 2 British entrants but also an athlete related to contacts made in the last few days. It was a very hot day and the temperature was still 31degrees C when I left the stadium at 8:30pm, and so I wanted both to cool down and get back to the hotel in time for supper. However, in this post I want to list a number of occasions in the last 48hours which show different ways in which chaplaincy serves athletes and others:

• On the way back from the stadium on Tuesday evening I chatted to a coach from an English-speaking nation who admitted that the team was suffering low morale due to not doing so well as expected. We talked and she took my contact details saying that she'd like to get in touch if/when she thought that others in the team might like to talk.
• Whilst in the Stadium Chapel on Wednesday evening a runner came in after her event, sat for a while, and then asked me to pray with her.
• Another incident on Wednesday evening resulted from an athlete hurt in a fall (not on the track) being taken through the mixed zone outside the chapel to a medical room. Not long afterwards 3 anxious team officials arrived. Despite being from a predominantly non-Christian country, they reacted kindly to the offer of sitting quietly in the chapel rather than standing in the bustle of the mixed zone. I was also able to respond to their requests for water to drink and later for tissues to wipe their worried faces. Although not sharing the same faith, they expressed their gratitude at these examples of Christian service.
• On Thursday in the Oasis of Silence at the other Team Hotel, I led a Bible reflection but first had to call two other chaplains to come to help with translation. I led the reflection in English, the Bible reading was in German whilst the 1 team official and the 1 athlete followed in French and Spanish bibles respectively, and my words were likewise simultaneously translated into French and Spanish. In the following time of prayer, each person was invited to pray in their own mother tongue, which actually added a 5th language!
• Whilst in that hotel, I was able to have a brief meeting with someone from the Japanese delegation to help equip me for the times when Japanese athletes will be at Loughborough, and also responded to a German volunteer who said to me "You're a chaplain? Can I talk with you?"

I'm aware that the anonymity of some of the stories in my blog might seem a bit too vague for some readers, but I hope you will understand that this is essential to maintain confidentiality, trust and integrity - and I had cause to say something similar to some media people in the mixed zone on Wednesday evening who during a conversation with them ask if athletes really did come into the chapel and if so were they famous ones.......