On Travelodges and Shopping Malls
I've just come back from a week away on the 'Hope for Planet Earth' tour, jointly organised by Tearfund, Share Jesus International, the John Ray Initiative and A Rocha. It's running for three weeks all-in-all and I was doing the middle week, taking in the sights and sounds of Manchester, Liverpool, Coventry, Cheltenham and Reading. The schedule is pretty full-on: a day-time presentation or two in a local school, then on to a church venue for the evening presentation, once we're all packed down then it's into the cars to get to the next destination, a night in a Travelodge and then up in the morning to get to the next school.
A number of things struck me while I was away. The first was listening to Dr Martin Hodgson's presentation on the science of climate change and Laura Hughes' Tearfund presentaton on the effects of climate change on people in poorer countries. I may have heard their presentations more than ten times during the week and could pretty much recite them off by heart, but the stark reality of what they were describing almost never failed to strike a deep chord within me.
I have this image in my mind of a group of people standing looking one way. Behind them and unseen by them looms a huge sandstorm, gathering pace, coming nearer, filling the sky. The people infront are vaguely aware of what's behind them and discuss a bit about what they can do about it, but noone is really aware of the scale of this storm, nor of how it is going to engulf them completely.
The second thing was a bit of a reality check for me. In our different locations we needed to find our meals each day and often had some free time when we would go into the town centre for a bit of a wander. The need for food took us on the first evening into the Trafford Centre and on the second day into
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