Christmas Thank-Yous

It's Christmas and I'm feeling unusually reflective. We sent an email round a couple of weeks ago telling folk our car had been stolen, but one of the things we'd been thinking about is all the stuff we were thankful for in the midst of it all. Well, we continue to choose thankfulness in the middle of the "down" moments in life, but actually, as we approach Christmas there's so much to be thankful for IN the circumstances (and not just in spite of them)!

Our car showed up a few days ago. It wasn't burned out, crashed in a ditch or had "i love my mum" spray-painted down the side. It looked pretty good actually. From what we can tell, he must have even parked it nicely as it took our fine constabulary a couple of weeks to realise it was a stolen vehicle. Even more amazingly, apart from a few empty CD cases (our thief seemed to be a bit "intelligence challenged", if you know what I mean) there wasn't really a lot taken from inside either. It looks like he just fancied saving the bus-fare home. Our keys have a "reward tag" on them, provided by our insurance company, promising a £10 reward for anyone handing them it at the Halifax. Our entrepreneurial car thief decided to maximise on the opportunity and try to claim his £10 reward for 'finding' our keys. he wasn't too happy when he found out you had to leave your name and address and asked for the keys back. The woman at the Halifax pointed out that they'd already established they weren't actually his keys and he decided it was time for a hasty exit.

So; we have our car, we have most of our stuff and we even have the key back (which saved us quite a fsmall ortune!). As a family, we've spent a good chunk of time over the past few days being thankful to God for all the ways he provides for us, but on this Christmas eve, we are drawn further into thankfulness as we consider a creator God who chose to leave the splendours of eternity and arrive into this world via a stable.

East Meets West

Paul: I've been traveling again. This time to Northampton. Nice not to have to get on a plane to go somewhere! It was a gathering of all our HR leaders from around Europe. Normally, organisationally, we split Western and Eastern Europe up, but for the first time (to my knowledge) we had 3 HR leaders from Eastern Europe come and join us. Yuri from Moldova and Sasha from the Ukraine joined John, based in Hungary. It was a fantastic time: sharing stories of the stuff that's worked and the times we've crashed and burned, getting emotionally involved in case studies and examining resources that will hopefully move us forward.

It dawned on me (as it has a habit of doing during times like this) that the role of caring for and developing missionaries is quite an isolated, misunderstood, under-equipped and under-resourced role in many of our countries around the world, and actually, Western Europe is doing pretty well when compared with so many other places around the world.

A few people have quizzed me & Lesley recently about whether there is really all this need for galavanting about so much. It's a good question and one that we wrestle with regularly, but this conference (and a number of emails I got while I was there) reinforced again the need to equip people to serve the servants of God. I do hope and pray that one day we'll have built up the competency and confidence within our ministry around the globe that my hands-on resourcing won't be needed as much (we're certainly working on some models that I hope will get us there). Until then, we'll carry on wrestling with stewarding God's resources in the best way we can, in order to see His plans accomplished.

Thanks for being part of this too.

"So, what is it you actually do?"

Paul: I find a lot of folk have difficulty understanding what it is I do exactly. In order to help this, I thought I’d post a letter I received after the last Global HR gathering we organised. It should hopefully give a bit of insight into what I am trying to achieve in building up competent and confident HR leaders who are capable of developing and caring for their staff so they can more effectively get to their mission. Here’s what Moses wrote (it’s not his real name; it’s his chosen “English” name)

To: Paul Cheesman, Global HR Director
From: Moses (Singapore)

The global HR directors’ conference has blessed me in at least three aspects.

Firstly, it changes my perspective as a HR staff. Before I went for this conference, I did not understand why I was in HR, and why I was doing what I was doing. In most cases, my attitude was: “I do it because someone has to do the job.” HR’s job seemed like an “unwanted” job to me. However, when I found out from Acts 6 that seven Spirit-filled deacons were chosen to serve the needs of the widows, I was encouraged to see that HR can be an important, biblical and essential role. Just like how the apostles could focus on spreading God’s word because of the seven deacons who took care of the widows’ needs, it caused me to see that how CCCI (Agapé) could focus on her calling to create spiritual movements everywhere because of HR who cares enough to look after the staff’s needs. I am now able to perform my HR roles and functions with a big picture in mind. Praise the Lord!

Secondly, it stirs up my passion in HR. The change of perspective results in increased passion for my HR roles and functions which results in me taking more initiative to lead. For example, I take initiative to facilitate discussion on Strategic Planning Process for my HR department, and get Dennis Metcalf (area HR director) to coach me in EQ-I (Emotional Intelligence) to help kick start the whole coaching process etc. In fact I have done so well that two months after the conference, my HR manager decides to promote me to be assistant HR manager to take care of the staff development.

Last but not the least, it creates partnership internationally. I enjoyed my fellowship with many national HR directors though I was the only non-director there. I should have realized that it was a global HR DIRECTORS’ conference as its name suggested. At the hindsight, it is really a blessing in “ignorance”. I appreciate The GCX (Global HR website) connection that provides an excellent platform for HR directors to interact with one another over difficult issues. I am especially grateful for resources that global HR team has compiled for us. Materials like “Your First 100 days in HR”, “Coaching”, “Doing Strategic Planning” are really helpful for me to do my job more effectively. Such partnership and sharing of resources and information have definitely empowered me in my HR roles and function. It’s so good to know that I am not alone in this tough, yet rewarding HR journey because I am in the global HR community.

My many thanks to Paul and his team for making this possible for us. I am just so blessed by your hearts to serve us.

not so much a land of drought

Paul: When I think of Ethiopia, I still have a Bob Geldof-style image of poverty , famine and drought. Well, it sounds like the poverty still has a firm foothold, but not so much of the drought.

Lesley left for Ethiopia on Friday, and got a phone call from one of the team out there the night before to say "Bring Wellies". The area just outside Addis Ababa where she and the team were to be based had just been stricken with flash flooding, and all the joys that entails for areas without good sanitation at the best of times.

Lesley (who has promised to fill in more of the details when she returns!) is part of the design team for a Europe-wide leadership development project. This is their first "experience" designed to throw them in at the deep end (in a number of ways). I've now just about exhausted my knowledge of the purposes of her trip, so will give up before I show the full extent of my ignorance. The details of all she's been involved in will be a better tale from her anyway!

On a separate note, I had the MRI scan as planned and a friend managed to sneak me the results (He's a proper doctor, honest!). As hoped; it revealed nothing sinister (i'm not convinced they found anything inside my head at all). It was quite an experience being conveyor-belted into a giant waffle-iron that makes horrendous noises at you for half an hour, while locked alone in a room that has thicker walls than most nuclear blast shelters. I highly recommend it!

I think I'm starting to feel better anyway, and with that spirit of optimism upon me, I'm off to Egypt on Thursday with some of my HR folk from around the planet (Lesley comes back on Saturday, but has promised to wave as she flys over Cairo). I'll tell you more about that one when I'm back as well!

Thanks for reading!

Quote:

Anyone who has hung around with missionaries know they breed rather unique kids, who always have an unusual perspective on the world. Kai (who is 4) was talking to his mother the other day after pondering on global diversity and asked: "Mummy; with all the languages that are in the world, why is it we only speak 3 of them?" Being the typical British mono-linguist that I am, he's had me smiling about this since I heard.

Thanks for your prayers. I've had a remarkably quick scheduling of an MRI scan for next Saturday (6th), so we'll see if they find anything in (or between) my ears then.

not a well boy

Paul: For the praying-types amongst you, we just wanted to let you know what's been going on for the last few weeks. We'd love to use it as an excuse for not blogging much, but you already know we've been hopeless at that recently!

Anyway. I've been acting a little strange. I keep on coming over dizzy and then falling over (most embarrassing scenario so far: falling over in 'Boots the Chemist' and knocking over a whole stand of disposable cameras. I fear some of them may now be a little more disposable than planned). I went to the Doc who told me I probably had something loose in my head (many have mentioned there was no need for qualified medical opinion for that diagnosis) but specifically in my inner ear. The Doc also said it would probably be fine to fly. Big mistake - throwing up on an aeroplane was a new experience for me, though!

After quite an exhausting trip to the US (I'm well aware of the queue of good friends who told me not to go, now lining up to say "I told you so") I had an appointment with the ENT doc today, who didn't really come up with much, but put me on an MRI scan waiting list (to eliminate anything nastier than the "loose debris in the ear" scenario). Traveling around to some unique and wonderful countries and their intriguing medical facilities makes me exceeding grateful for the NHS, but I'm finding it tricky to keep that grateful-heart attitude today.

So if you're up for it, as you think of us, do have a word with the Great Healer for us. I'm about a zillion emails behind, and have a quite a bit of prep to do before a full and exciting term and its proving tricky looking at a screen for too long before it starts going fuzzy! We'll update you soon. Thanks for being part of this.

A Day in the House of.....

We have a big old house and I love it. It’s the place Lesley and I always talked about having as a hub for integrating family life and the other folk that God has seen fit to put in our life right now. Some times it’s a haven for the four of us to re-group, particularly after we’ve had time apart, but then every so often we have a day like this:

The day before some friends called and said they were in Birmingham and could they (and their 2 kids) come and stay for a day or 2 which was going to add to the fun! I was on kids-to-school duty as Lesley had to be down in London for the day. Ironically, all our London team leaders were spending the day in our front lounge. I was leading a training session with the 4 of them (I think it went rather well). One of Lesley’s team was leading the afternoon session as I had an “all day meeting” with my team, via videophone (“all day” doesn’t start until 2pm when everyone else is in Orlando). I left them all downstairs while I retired to the study for the meeting.

It all got rather busy downstairs mid-afternoon as the family staying with us had kindly offered to pick up our kids, so our friends and the 4 assorted children had the run of the back of the house with the training session still running in the lounge!

As the trainees departed, our friends (who used to live in Brum) had invited a couple of their friends round for the evening. It’s quite bizarre (but wasn’t the first time) to come downstairs from a meeting and have to say “Hi; I’m Paul. I live here. Who are you?”

Lesley came home just in time to also introduce herself and say goodbye to our dinner guests. The 4 of us sat down with a cup of tea. One of about 40 cups that had been made that day. Just another day in the house of the Cheeses………

In the Steps of Heroes

Paul: I grew up in a church that has always had an unusually high commitment to mission. Some of my earliest memories are of praying for “our missionaries” whether they were workers on the base in Papua New Guinea, (Brian and Rachel) medical mission (at times on hovercraft- how cool!) on lake Chad (David & Ros) or the truly cross-cultural work that took place in Wythenshawe, Manchester – the largest Council Housing estate in Europe (Ken & Cynthia).

They all captivated me in different ways and although I would never have admitted it at the time, theses were my heroes as I grew up. In particular, I was fascinated by Kitty and Leslie who have committed most of their lives to the Chatino translation of the Bible in Mexico. What a legacy!

These were the things and people that were going through my head as I sat on a plane heading for Mexico last week. To go to a country that has been so formative in my thoughts and prayers concerning mission over the years – and go there as a ‘missionary’ – had a profound impact on me (I’d emailed Kitty and Leslie the day before just to say “guess where I’m going!”).

I was heading to a city called Puebla, where our national office is. It did cause the adrenalin to pump just a little, being in a city overlooked by an active and smoking volcano, but no-one else seemed to mind much. (It was a great flight in, weaving between mountains!) I was there, along with Karen (on my team) to help the national leadership team think through and develop their HR functions. It was an excellent time. There’s always the tricky stuff to work through when you are looking to move a ministry forward, but it was so exciting to see the plan for developing Human Resources and moving the ministry forward, that we came up with by the end of our time there.

If you’d like to join my spiritual heritage in interceding for Mexico, then please do remember Kim and the rest of the team there as they seek to grow and have a wider impact on the spiritual climate in this nation. Thanks.

the journey back home

Paul:
It's becoming a bit of an ongoing joke amongst our youth group that recently all my stories of talking to people about my faith start with "well; I was on an aeroplane.....". Occupational hazard I suppose. To celebrate the end of our mad-season as a family, I traded-in some air-miles and we all went to Orlando over Easter. Our journey back home from Orlando added another story to the list.

Joel and I were in the middle and window seat. I'd tried to co-ordinate our "getting up" to minimise disturbance to the poor guy in the aisle seat. After checking twice with Joel (and despite the vast amount of Orange juice he had consumed) he decided he didn't need to 'pay a little visit' until just after I had sat back down, when he loudly announced "right; I think I need the loo now". I was just deciding whether to throw Joel out the window, when the guy next to me said "it's OK, I've got a boy of my own" and promptly got up for us.

I got chatting to Kevin about kids and life. He was from Ireland but had married a New Yorker and was now living in Florida. We got to talking about what we did - he is in Pharmaceutical testing - and he was quite intrigued when I told him I was a missionary. He'd had a classic Irish Catholic upbringing and although he'd left most things of faith behind him years ago, he and his wife had recently started to become more spiritually interested. "Coincidentally", they'd had a neighbour round a few days earlier, inviting them along to church over Easter. We talked for the rest of the flight about the Bible and church and Catholicism and Jesus and Easter and eternity. I'd love to tell you he made that step of faith into the kingdom as we were about to land in New York, but he didn't. He's still got a way to go on that journey, but I felt privileged to have walked part of it with him. Do pray for Kevin and the Spiritual journey he's on.

We had a grand old time as a family in Orlando. I was working for the first few days and we did some 'connecting' with my team out there, but the 4 days over Easter was just pure fun.

When Dreams are Realised

From Lesley:

I recently returned from a trip to France to be part of a Member Care Consultation. ‘What is member care?’ you may ask. Good question! The consultation was a group gathered from around Europe and beyond of missionary sending organisations and health care professionals to consult on the best way to care for our many missionaries. Too many missionaries leave the mission field prematurely for reasons that are to a large part preventable if they were better equipped and cared for during their time.

One of the leading voices, indeed probably the original voice, leading the way on this is a woman called Marjory Foyle. She is well known for her book ‘Honourably Wounded’ and has led the way over the years in ensuring missionaries are cared for and invested in to a level that provides an environment for them to thrive. Too many missionaries just about survive and it is crucial that those who are responsible for overseeing them continue to work on doing a better job at ‘member care’.

It has to be said that Marjory is a hero of ours and so it felt an unbelievable privilege to be present on the last evening in France when we had a special evening of recognition for her, indeed to honour her. The room was filled with people who she has impacted and influenced over her 86 years. I felt a bit like I was eavesdropping on an intimate event of very special people who in turn look up to this very special woman. She looked around the room after her standing ovation, quite overwhelmed by the surprise, and announced how naughty everyone was to do such a thing but also declared that her dream, that started over 20 years ago, was this night realised. Wow.

God caused me to remember afresh why I do my work and for whom. I do it because I am passionate about people and I love it when people thrive and grow on the mission field. I do it for God’s glory and for His kingdom.

Sunday School Questions

Joel came home from "Sunday Club" with the usual bundle of badly folded paper and 3 post-it notes. It was quickly observed that the notes were answers to questions he had been asked that morning in his group.

The first one said "to save us". I had a pretty good guess as to what the question might have been, but I checked with Joel and sure enough it was a "Jesus" question.

The second post-it had "James Pritchet" written on it (his best mate at school). I was a little more intrigued by this one, and Joel explained it was to do with someone they wanted to come to know Jesus. Excellent stuff.

The third post-it had "hit people" written on it. However hard I tried to pursue the matter, Joel could not quite recall what the prompting question was about. I wonder what it could have been..........

I think nine is going to be an interesting age for our boy.

A Slice of Turkey

Paul:

I toyed with the "Turkish Delight" theme for ages, when coming up with a blog title, but as well as being just a touch predictable (not that "a slice of" is much better) I realised 'delight' just didn't quite get there in describing my time. Exciting, challenging, rewarding: yep, yep, yep, but not really what you'd describe as 'delightful'.

I was at a conference for all our leaders working in countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Most of the tricky ones, basically. The ones that keep an HR guy awake at night. I knew in theory the kind of situations my friends faced in those countries, but there is something about being in the midst of all these leaders that has a fresh impact. I'm humbled by the difference between the worlds we both live in.

Two things brought it home to me. On the first morning I was there, someone was speaking on the value of teams and asked the question "What makes you feel safe in a team?" I have asked this kind of question to groups before and the answers normally revolve around strength of relationships, openness and vulnerability. In the feedback, one answer cut through like a knife: "I feel safe on a team when I know my brother will give his life for me". This was not a metaphor or over-dramatisation. This is the reality of life and the risks taken in embracing others when in ministry and living as a believer.

The other was while singing worship songs. I've always liked the song "Blessed be your name". It's a cheery, worshipful little number. All was going well until the refrain "you give and take away, you give and take away; my heart will choose to say: Lord blessed be your name." Many of these leaders have lost friends and comrades this year through war and persecution and know first hand the impact of singing these words and embracing their meaning. I cried.

The Nightmare Begins

Paul:

February hasn't really worked out like we thought. I'm normally gallivanting off somewhere for a few days, and maybe Lesley has to pop off somewhere as well at some point, but somehow we've ended up with only 3 full days when we are both at home. Not a good plan.

This is my actual calender pictured. you can't read the detail, but the coloured blocks are when one of us is away. See the problem?

There's nought to be done about our daft scheduling at this point, but I wanted to give you a run down, so you can offer up a few when you think of us. Here's the deal:

Feb 3 - 9: Paul has dragged the Global HR team from around the planet, to little-old-England (We were going to be in Orlando, but Charis is appearing in "High School Musical" that week, so Paul wanted to be in commuting distance). We're meeting in Derbyshire.
Feb 10 - 15: Paul pops off back to the US for his usual round of meetings and eating too much food
Feb 15 - 19: Having missed Valentines day (boy; I'm in trouble) Paul has a romantic drive with Lesley, as she takes him straight from Birmingham airport to Heathrow, to catch a plane or 2 to Turkey for a few days.
Feb 20 - 21: Lesley's turn. She's away with the UK Leadership Team for a couple of days.
Feb 22 - 24: We have a weekend all together. Yeah!
Feb 25 - March 1: Lesley's attending a European Member Care Forum in Lille, France

...and then we get our lives back...maybe...a bit... At least for a week or so. All intercession gratefully received. Thanks people.

Three Days in Singapore

Paul:

At about the same time as a Boeing 777 was crashing at Heathrow, I was landing rather uneventfully at Birmingham International. I had just arrived home from 3 days in Singapore. 3 days in Singapore??!! Am I mad? what has my life become, that I can say that so casually?

Actually, I found there is an up-side to such a stupidly long trip, for such a stupidly short amount of time: Your body clock stands no chance of adjusting to the local time, so you are a zombie when you return, but you have virtually no out-of-sync experience.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, the main reason for the trip was to meet with some other Agapé / Campus Crusade folk who are developing new technology for tracking our staff and their development more comprehensively. I know very little about tech and still don't have much experience of the international issues involved, so obviously I ended up with the project leader role! I feel like I am soooo in over my head on this. All prayers gratefully received.

While I was there, I got to meet with the HR guys who lead our Singapore ministry as well as a number of other East Asia HR leaders. These folk have such a difficult role, in often really difficult circumstances. Please pray for Chee Yee and Moses (it's his "English" name) on the Singapore national team as they put together their national plan, and particularly for Chee Meng who is HR director for another national ministry in East Asia, as he leads through some difficult transition issues.

We both have a couple of weeks in the UK now, before the madness of February begins. More about that later.

West Wing Addiction

Hello; my name's Paul and I'm a West Wing addict. It all started innocently. A friend just slipped Lesley a legit copy of series 1 at a party. I thought: "What's the harm? it's only a TV series; I'm really just a social TV watcher. I can handle it." Oh, the slippery slope!

We tried just watching the odd episode, but quickly found ourselves saying "Oh go on - it's the holidays and its only midnight; lets watch just one more......". and now we find ourselves in this sorry state of breaking out into a sweat at the thought of going a day without watching just a little more of the President's antics. (apologies for those of you that have yet to succumb and haven't a clue what I'm wittering about)

All this to say I needed to let you know I'm going "Cold Turkey" (no Christmas pun intended). Lesley is away with all the Agapé UK team leaders, doing some training for the rest of the week and I have promised NOT to watch another episode whilst she is away. The temptation is almost unbearable. Please do pray for Lesley, the team leaders, my kids as they suffer my cooking (and take-aways) and me as I sit and look at the West Wing DVD box.

Lesley gets back just in time for us to watch one episode on Friday and then I fly to Singapore on Saturday. I'll try and blog you from there. Thanks people.