In 2023 a group of mums from St Matthew’s church in Burnley came on a boat trip aboard Ten Thousand Reasons their main comment was “oh I wish I could bring the kids”.

In 2024, we took Ten Thousand Reasons to Burnley and did a day of boat trips for families. National statistics state that 48% of children in Burnley are raised below the poverty line so this was a real treat for them. We kept in touch with St Matthews visiting Fun Church occasionally. Later in 2024 we were invited to Churches Together in Burnley to see if we could help with the summer program.  The result of this was our visit in August this year.

In 2025, the plan was to get as many boats as possible with a maximum of 8 to Finsley Gate Wharf in Burnley.  The first challenge was the weather; because of the drought the Canal and River Trust made the decision to close the locks at the summit level of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at the end of May. Paul and I prayed and discussed with Canal Ministries members what we should do. We decided to move Ten Thousand Reasons to Burnley before the closure.  This would result in as having two lots of mooring fees from May until August. But after making the decision to move Rev Kat contacted us to say there had been a very generous anonymous donation towards our mooring fees. The mission was planned with a lot of help from Churches Together in Burnley especially Rev. Kat from St Matthews. Members of Canal Ministries (Andy and Sue, James and Hazel and Richard and Mary) came and stayed in accommodation locally, four on site at Finsley Gate and the mission went ahead. 

It was a really busy week and this is a brief summary of what happened

• Prayer and breakfast every morning in Saint Stephen’s Church
• Twenty boat trips with eight people on each trip. They were offered literature, prayer, tea, coffee, biscuits, and they ate the context contents of the fruit bowl twice.
• We visited seven churches, sang hymns in Urdu and Punjabi, held a pie and peas folk night with James and Hazel Bell and approximately 50 people present.
• We visited the bishop of Blackburn’s Palace for a barbecue. 
• We were hosted for tea by Rosehill Baptist Church. Their pastor is an amazing Cook.
• The Bishop of Blackburn, Philip North, preached the gospel message from the roof of Ten Thousand Reasons. 
• Everyone went on a very long walk to enable conversations. 
• There was a family fun day with four churches providing activities and we did short boat trips.
• We visited Downtown in Burnley which has a Foodbank, Community Grocery, a school uniform exchange and runs a café. All the profits from the café go into the Foodbank.

We had an amazing week seeing God work in peoples lives. We’ve decided we love Burnley. 

Our boat conked out on Monday but thankfully there were no trips booked for Tuesday. We did take a day off.  We were able to get a mechanic out who happened to have a nine tooth starter motor in his van to get us going again for the trips booked for Wednesday.  This was a wonderful answer to prayer and the children signed a card for him to say “thank you”.So if you are wondering how you can work for God on the waterways, start small and see where God takes you.