Restored - Ending Violence Against Women

We can’t believe it’s nearly the end of August, the holiday season in Europe, and we have not got a prayer email out to you all. We have continued to pray regularly here at Restored to see relationships transformed and violence against women ended.

Events

New Wine - UK

Peter, Natalie & Mandy had the opportunity to speak at two of the New Wine Christian summer conferences in the UK in July. Both seminars were well attended. Peter’s call for men to stand up and be counted was very well responded to, with over 30 men being the “First Men Standing” to say no to violence against women. It was an encouraging and emotional time to see so many make a stand.  

Greenbelt - UK

Restored has two seminars at the Greenbelt festival this coming bank holiday weekend in the UK. You will find us in the Sovereign Lounge at 10am on Saturday & 10am on Monday. The first seminar is entitled ‘For better or for worse? The church’s engagement in ending violence against women’ & the second ‘Men required – apply within’ which, as the title suggests, focuses on men.  Do pray that we will speak with words of love, truth and grace and that we speak what God wants us to speak at both these seminars. Do pray for the people who come along that they will hear what God wants them to hear and leave having been changed by what they hear.

Micah Network GBV Consultation – Ecuador

Restored will be attending the Micah Network consultation on Gender Based Violence in Latin America taking place in Ecuador at the end of September. It is a fantastic opportunity for Restored to raise awareness of the issue, the work and the vision going forward. We want to encourage church and Christian leaders to raise awareness of the issues within their own countries and contexts and bring about a restoration in relationships as God originally intended them to be.

First Man Standing

Peter is currently working on shaping this idea for mobilising men to end VAW into a reality. He is keen to hear from men interested in working with him, alongside him or generally interested in getting involved. Do contact Peter direct on Peter.Grant@restoredrelationships.org . Do pray for Peter as he leaves Tearfund at the end of August to focus 50% of his time as Co-Director of Restored and the other 50% working for a consultancy firm.

Website, blogs, Facebook and Twitter

We have been quite active on Twitter & Facebook (via Superbadger) asking the British Foreign Secretary to appoint a Minister on International Violence Against Women and to encourage other countries, as well as the UK, to implement CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women), especially article 5 which refers to challenging negative stereotypes of men and women in the culture. If you haven’t already done so you could write to William Hague asking why he has yet to appoint a Minister. If you are on Facebook you can do this via Superbadger – the Tearfund application for campaigning accessible here http://bit.ly/bxKS7s He can be emailed direct using this address Private.office@fco.gsi.gov.uk

Are you on Twitter? Then do let us know and we can follow you and you can follow us @Rest0red (the o being replaced by a zero). @Rest0red on Twitter currently has over 100 followers. This is good news in the short time we have been tweeting. We are keen to spread the news that we are there and spreading key news, information and resources. If you have a Twitter account then do follow us and let us know so we can follow you back. Do send us suggestions on how we can improve our tweeting too. We are still in the learning stage at the moment and getting used to the hash tags, #FF and #CharityTuesday shout outsJ. If you are not a tweeter you can still follow us online at the website where we will soon have the tweets appearing in real time so no-one misses out J

Talking about the website www.restoredrelationships.org we regularly put up resources and blogs to keep the site fresh. If you haven’t checked it out in a while then you are probably missing out on some exciting resources, and amazing blog posts!  What is new is introductory videos of Restored that were designed, produced and Directed by Restored summer volunteer Camilla Betts. We are very grateful to her for her time and effort in getting the videos finished. Check some of them out here http://www.restoredrelationships.org/about/   & here http://www.restoredrelationships.org/about/board/

We are keen to hear from you. We have had a couple of guest blogs at Restored. Would you like to contribute a short blog on a particular subject? Do get in touch. Also we would like to hear any prayer requests so that we can pray for you, your work and church. We want to get to a place where we send out a reminder email before this email asking for prayer requests so that we truly represent the international alliance that we are.

DRC

Some of you may have read this report over the weekend, confirmed by the UN this week. Read the report in the New York Times here http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/africa/23congo.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=rape%20DR%20Congo%20weekend&st=cse

It’s devastating. It’s outrageous. It’s scandalous. It’s completely unacceptable. Do pray for all the women, and the families involved in this situation that in the midst of the trauma they would know, feel and receive God’s love & compassion. Pray for all involved in bringing about justice in this situation. Pray for complete healing and restoration of the women and families involved. Pray also for Restored founder member, Heal Africa, working in eastern DRC, as they continue to restore women daily from the trauma of sexual violence. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Training Event

Friday 3^rd September Restored is hosting a training event run by the wonderful Sue Dunn on a basic awareness of domestic abuse and how the church can respond. It will be held in Teddington, UK. We have a very limited number of spare places available. Do get in touch if you would like to attend this free event.

Prayer points

Our priority prayer requests are:

• For wisdom & words of love and truth as we speak at Greenbelt this coming weekend
• For wisdom & ideas for the First Man Standing work
• For wisdom ( you are sensing the theme here) as we plan for the future
• For men’s attitudes and actions to change so that violence against women is ended;
• For women to examine their own attitudes and hearts about unhelpful beliefs and attitudes
• For Christians to catch the vision, share God’s heart for this issue and take action;
• For unity in the church to act as one in ending violence against women
• For the many thousands of women suffering daily in abusive situations that they would find freedom, justice and love
• For the continued development and launch of Restored; that it will honour God, know his blessing and make a significant difference in addressing VAW;
• That we stay close to God and don’t take any wrong turnings
• Give thanks for the different types of support we have received for this work to enable us to get this far

Thank you for continuing this partnership in prayer. Please do feedback any thoughts, words, pictures that you may have as you pray. We really do value and appreciate you setting aside time to pray. It is very much appreciated.

Mandy Marshall

Peter Grant

Natalie Collins