In the middle of May this year we were approached by a friend working with a Church in Burnley asking if we could take a group of young mums out on a trip.
The mums arrived and had a lovely day but one comment kept coming back. ‘O I would love to take my kids on something like this’
The logistics of bringing lots of kids over from Burnley to the Marina at Barnoldswick would prove difficult so we wondered about taking TenThousand Reasons to Burnley.
Our friend spoke to the leaders at St Matthews Church and it was agreed to go ahead.
We spoke to Reedley Marina and they had a mooring, we spoke to Finsley gate Wharf and they were very happy for us to load and unload children there.
So we planned to be in Burnley for the first week of the school holidays.
The Church sent us a young man to help with the locks, our 3rd crew member aka Elliot our grandson was available and another boat from the Marina decided to join us. We did the 7 locks at Barrowford in 1 hour! We were soon in Reedley Marina and settled for the week.
On Sunday we went to worship at St Matthews – not what we’re used to but people who loved the Lord and wanted to serve him.
Sunday evening we went to a prayer meeting. Two of our friends started this meeting with 4 people praying for revival in Burnley. Now nearly every Church in Burnley is represented plus CAP and the head from a local school. They were all keen to hear what we are doing. One Church backs on to the canal and is in discussion with CART about adopting their bit of canal and buildings a jetty, we jokingly said we may have a boat to moor on it and they were delighted.
Monday was busy – 5 1 hour trips !
It was amazing to see the delight on the kids faces, Finsley gate Wharf had a bouncy castle up and I asked if we could use it – another yes from Finsley Gate! Our friends who travelled with us bought an ample supply of sweets for the kids. We had some good conversations with our passengers and a few took literature and New Testaments.
Tuesday – The Vicar in Accrington heard about what we were doing and booked a longer trip. On reflection this trip was to long and the kids got bored – lesson learned !
We stayed on in Reedley until Saturday, we had a trip booked for Friday for a group of young people in support ed living, sadly this was cancelled due to staffing issues.
We used the time to chat to other boaters and Paul was able to pray with our neighbour and we left her some contact details and a New Testament for her new home.
St Matthews definitely want us to go back and other churches took contact details
When we first went into Reedley Marina I noticed lots of small fry(fish) in the murky canal waters, as the week went on these fry grew both in size and confidence. I felt this was a picture of what we are doing Fishers of Men but called to help those fish to grow so that they can go out, some still in the murky water but growing.
