Category: General

It was a humdinger of a day. In fact it made the first day up into the mountains from the beach outside San Diego look like a stroll in the park. It’s also my luscious Lizzie’s birthday, so I’m sad not to be with her to celebrate together. What a great woman, and what a lucky man I am! We knew it was going to be difficult, so could we possibly make it, with the state of my knees slowing us down? Probably not, but we’d try. Backtracking to last night, we were hosted by David and Corry Wells, relatives […]

(Arizona scenery) The day got off to an ignominious start for me. Sleep is crucial to recovery in these endurance events, but I woke up at 2am dehydrated, and didn’t get back to sleep at all. I did drink three bottles of water and eat three bananas in the meantime, but largely lay there thinking about how totally daunting this attempt is. Our challenge is that there is almost no room for anything to go wrong, in terms of trying to catch up time, and today something did go wrong. Sleep and food – the keys to lasting the course. […]

When I said goodbye to Geoff last night, he thought he was going to die. It turns out he had had, according to initial tests, a heart attack. What?! His family were flying out, and he said to me he wanted to see them one last time. Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? But Geoff’s no drama queen, I assure you. That’s how bad things looked. We left to find an RV park on the Colorado River, to get some much-needed sleep. A couple of hours later, Geoff was medically evacuated by helicopter. Dad, who has joined our crew for the first […]

(Our beloved Geoff Morris) Nobody would have guessed how today would pan out. It’s been a very memorable day for the wrong reasons this time. It took us a long time to get away. I’d been up since 4am. The views outside under the stars were amazing. Actually it had taken a while to get to sleep because of my sheer elation to have made it through yesterday. And then I had to contend with Geoff’s snoring, closely followed by John’s, and then Craig’s, all distinctive in tone but equally effective at keeping me awake for a while until the […]

Greetings from somewhere in the desert! What a day! We were up at 515 AM to prepare to leave from just North of San Diego.  We dipped our bikes in the sea and began our 3,152 mile journey across this huge country. These are 8 guys with us for the first few days, and they have brought a great team of chefs and supporters to make the start a real cracker.  (Bike for Burundi team getting ready to bike 3,000+ miles!)  (Team dipping their back tires in the Pacific Ocean)(The RV at the beach) We knew the first 50 miles […]

So we’re almost ready to role. In the pictures you’ll see our home for the next five weeks, with John Stinson (driver, chef, masseuse, shopper, etc) and David Strauss (videographer). Here they are putting on our Bike For Burundi stickers, having just driven across the USA from East to West coast in preparation to be our support back from San Diego to Charleston. Thanks again to Todd Gaylord for lending us his RV for the trip, it’s an incredible blessing. So, now you can picture us, please pray we all make it, stay sane(!), safe and healthy, and raise lots of awareness and interest in […]

Greetings from somewhere in the desert! What a day! We were up at 515am to prepare to leave from just North of San Diego.  We dipped our bikes in the sea and began our 3,152 mile journey across this huge country. There are 8 guys with us for the first few days, and they have brought a great team of chefs and supporters to make the start a real cracker. We knew the first 50 miles would be a killer – it was almost all uphill into the mountains and the sun was blazing down on us. I doubted my knees […]

I’m writing this from Cincinnati on my way to LA. So as the big day for Bike for Burundi draws nearer, this is the culmination of hundreds of emails, dozens of hours of planning, thousands of miles of training on the road, on the treadmill, in the pool, etc. And after 5 months of being injured and trying to build up body strength, particularly in my knees, the moment of truth has arrived. How do I feel? Well, I am desperate to make the whole ride. It has consumed so much of my time, focus, energy, and thoughts for eight […]

OK, Bike for Burundi is ready for take-off! Imagine doing 30 marathons in 34 days, through snowy icy mountains, deserts, plains and cities. That gives you some idea of what cycling 3,152miles at over 100miles/day looks like, as I (with three others) prepare for the epic challenge of riding from West to East coast of the USA. It will be a killer, and we’re doing it to raise money for the poorest of the poor, to empower the Batwa (pygmees) and orphans we work with in Burundi, and to generally press forward with our work to see the transformation of […]

So I’m hugging this serial rapist, and it feels OK. Should I not be hugging him? I mean, God’s forgiveness extends to me, but can it really extend to him? It was all very sobering. We spent a full day in a maximum security prison on Friday. The inmates had been working through our ‘More than Conquerors’ DVD and were loving it. The chaplain contacted me last year, and we arranged that when I was next in town I’d come and share face-to-face. So it was a privileged opportunity to spend some time with society’s biggest rejects. Some looked fearsome with their […]

Three Christmas Wishes from the persecuted church Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, What do I wish for you this Christmas? What can I say to you, who live in the free world? The Lord gives us everything we need for our lives. “God did not keep back His own Son, but He gave Him for us. If God did this, won’t he freely give us everything else?” (Romans 8:32) So here are my three wishes for you: “I know everything you’ve done,” says Jesus to the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2:2, “including your hard work and how you […]

The response for Christmas meat has been phenomenal. Several hundred of you have contributed. The GLO family comprises 195 workers, who each will now receive $90 for a smashing Christmas celebration. Average family size is 8, plus the two orphanages, so that makes over 1600 people laughing and stuffing their faces thanks to you guys.   So this is another MASSIVE THANK YOU from me!   And then a number of you were deeply moved by Sylvestre’s needs, having been kicked out of his house with wife and three little ones. If I back up a little, he was studying […]

Aaargh, I really don’t like getting these emails!  Leaders have tough calls to make, so I’m wanting to share the load with you! Patrice has just written again. He’s our SU Treasurer, and SU employs about 75 people right now. He’s emailing on behalf of them to say that the staff kids are wondering if they’ll celebrate Christmas at all this year. Inflated prices of staple foods means that it’s hard for them to simply get enough food to eat on a day-to-day basis. For an example of how tough the situation is, my evangelism partner, Sylvestre, just got booted […]

Hi guys! Welcome (again!) to my blog – having had problems with the last one, this one is now definitive and is newly-designed and a whole lot better (thanks Viktor!). We’ve added some new features like Sermons and “Follow by email” (every time I make a new post – you will get an email with its contents). Follow me on twitter and check out my facebook page. Feel free to leave a comment if you want to share. Hope you enjoy it, cheers for now.

I’d been looking forward to these three days for a long time. I’m a cycling novice, but have been training hard for several months in preparation for my biggest physical challenge in life thus far this coming March – as three of us attempt to cycle just under 3000 miles across the USA from LA to Charleston (see www.bikeforburundi.com). Could my body handle doing three days of 100miles/day? I was feeling in good shape so thought I’d be OK. What happened?

So yesterday I launched out on my first100miles with about 200 other cyclists as part of Festivelo in Monck’s Corner. I didn’t know the route and didn’t want to get lost, so I stayed towards the front, as most participants were just doing the 60miles course. That meant I ended up unintentionally with the big boys, so I had to keep up with them. Actually, it was wonderfully exhilarating. I’d never been in the peloton, feeling the boost of having someone in front cut through the wind and thereby making it easier for me. I even took my turn at the head as each one peeled off. And I’ll be honest with you, it felt great. Inside I was thinking: “I’m the man! This is easy. I may be the new kid on the block but I’m cruising, it’s a piece of cake. I feel sorry for those slow plodders way behind us, etc…”

How wrong I was! What a moron!

I’m pretty confident that Burundi will be the most exciting place in the world to be for the first two weeks of August – and I would love to be there, but can’t because I’m doing the Bible Readings at New Wine Newark for the coming week. Anyway, why is it going to be so amazing? Firstly, Andrew Palau (son of Luis) and his team are doing a big citywide evangelistic festival during the first week. Please pray for that. They have managed to mobilize many of the different key groups to work together, which is no mean feat, and […]

I’m just flying back from a hectic several days speaking at Summer Madness in Belfast, Causeway Coast Vineyard in Coleraine, and Urban Soul in Dublin. Not everyone would enjoy this lifestyle, but I love traveling, speaking, meeting new interesting people, and seeing lives changed.

There are lots of people doing fantastic things far removed from any limelight. Youth workers are some of my ‘ordinary heroes’. They are invariably very gifted and could have gone into all sorts of more lucrative careers. But they aren’t motivated by money. They want more. They are about seeing lives changed. And that needs to be done with young people before they get stuck in their thinking and settled in their respectability and tameness. So these youth workers often get paid a pittance, but they love the truth enough to live it. God bless them. I’ve met a whole load of them over the last week. Keep firing, guys, the reward is both now and later…

I wrote this a few days ago, but had to do a first post before this one really, to introduce myself. Anyways, here goes:

Pentecost Sunday, 12th June – So this is a great day to begin the epic training schedule on. I will be doing thousands of miles in the coming nine months, culminating in 35 days of sheer determination and hopefully success in our goal to cycle from Los Angeles to Charleston, and in the process raise stackloads of money for God’s work in Burundi.

I crept out of bed at 520am, trying unsuccessfully not to wake up Lizzie. My gear was all ready downstairs, all courtesy of my new buddy Mason Moise. Cycling is a totally new ball game for me. I’d never heard of cleats before this week, but now I know that I need to click in and out of them or I’ll fall flat on my face. That’s already happened to me for the first and hopefully last time, with a few cuts and bruises – but it was more a case of bruised ego for looking such an idiot as I wiped out on the road!

Off I pedaled in the dark. With no lights, I needed all the more to stick to the pavement. 1.8miles to Isle of Palms Connector, where there’s a big extra lane that I will use regularly, 2.1m across, and I did six of those, so all in a 16.2m opening ride. Not far, but a start.

Right. This is all new. I’m usually a few steps behind on these things, so am playing catch-up, but here goes:

What can you expect on this blog?

My passion is to see people step out boldly into God’s purposes and see His Kingdom come; to see people come to the realization that life to the full can only be lived in personal relationship with Jesus; to see Burundi radically transformed by a new generation of costly followers of Christ; to get to the end of my life, however long He gives me, and have absolutely no regrets over not acting out His plans in my life. So there’ll some of that.

I passionately love my family – the luscious Lizzie, earnest little Zac (5), kissaholic Grace (3), and disturbingly volatile Josiah (nearly 2). So there’ll be some of that.

I’ve recently committed to cycling 3000 miles West to East coast of America, with the aim of raising $1million for our stunningly beautiful work in Central Africa, so there’ll be some of that too.

And who knows what else…