Union Bog

Union bog came out from a desire to raise both awareness and money for a programme that CORD run in Burundi called Toilet Twinning whilst continuing the outward focus of the Open Heaven Society (OH Soc); loving students on campus. So for a weekend in November the OH Soc spent two stormy nights and three muddy days giving out bottles of water, cleaning bathrooms and toilets, praying, worshipping and living in a cardboard shelter outside the Students Union.

If, during the weekend you’d asked me, what our goal was, I would have answered “staying alive and raising money”. However the experienceof planning, gaining permission and living in a slum for the weekend taught me, and all of us who took part, so much more than what is required to physically stay alive.

Relying on God’s strength when hungry (we only ate two bowls of rice and kidney beans a day), tired (we stayed up until 3am on Friday night handing out bottles of water to clubbers leaving FND) and irritable (no doubt a result of the afore mentioned factors) was totally key to managing to reach 13:30 on Sunday successfully.

At one point we were asked to build sculptures from rubbish that we could find from around campus to demonstrate how we were feeling. Not something you would probably find a slum dweller doing anywhere else in the world but a valid experience all the same. Any resentment that was felt towards having to sacrifice luxury for the weekend soon faded as we began to think about how our hunger was and is a daily reality for 1 billion people worldwide. Luckily one group found a broken hurdle and used it to illustrate how God really was providing strength for us to overcome the metaphorical hurdles in what we were facing. It might sound cheesy but the impact of realising what it means to live sacrificially has eternal meaning attached.

In hindsight it is so exciting to see how God blessed us from start to finish. From the receptiveness of the Budge and Jody, the Student Activities Officer and Administrator, in allowing us to put on this event to the final sum of money raised. Without God and some of the amazing organisational skills he has blessed Tom Dean with, the Union Bog simply would not have run. You might think the Students Union would have been cynical when we approached them saying we wanted to twin their toilets with a load in Burundi but after establishing we weren’t going to set up a toilet on their lawn they soon got on board. We are even now in the position where Budge is pestering us for the results and wanting to get some recognition in the Union to show that the union toilets are twinned with those in communities and schools thousands of miles away.

Finally to our total, from the money needed to build a toilet in Burundi,we set a target of £1200 pounds. That equates to 20 toilets. Amazingly through donations, sponsorship and the FND rag collection we reached our target and we may even be able to squeeze one extra toilet out of the total. We firmly believed that presenting our dreams of raising the total before God was key to doing so and it is awesome to see our prayers answered. Hopefully it is true to say that God stirred peoples hearts regarding the human rights of those we were raising money for as we received both anonymous and unexpected donations.

To get involved with OH soc events in the future join our facebook group.

Posted by: Joshua Smith on Wednesday Dec 16th, 2009

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