Hey everyone. So as you can probably now see, I have been working hard on updating my website with a nice new flashy design - I hope you like it. I decided that although Wordpress was great, it wasn't an easy CMS to use and get to do exactly what I wanted. So I went on the hunt to find the simplest CMS that I could find which allowed me to be flexible with my design and content. I have also been asked to design a few websites within the next month or so and wanted to make sure I had a good CMS behind me to use.
I came across Frog CMS which is an amazing simple PHP system. After playing around and customising this, I was recommend to switch over to Wolf CMS which is a fork from Frog and is basically the same thing apart from its actually still getting developed. So Wolf CMS it is - it really is amazing and really easy to customise.
I'm sure I will be posting here a bit more about Wolf once I finish this site and create some plugins for it. But I just want to say a massive thank you to the developers of Wolf for being so helpful.
Hey! I really can’t believe how quickly time goes. A lot has happened since my last update, so hopefully I will try and summarise what’s been going on. I have now been at CAP just less than 3months and it is still as amazing as ever :)
So lets start where I left off last time…
Everyone who agreed to sign up to give £1 (or more) to CAP on a monthly basis, I’d just like to say a massive thank you… I won the competition, with 20 people signing up to give. This is seriously amazing. Every single pound that CAP gets, we promise that we will take it and use it to help the poor and needy in this nation. CAP is currently on the way of reaching 10,000 people giving on a monthly basis – how exciting is that – we hope to reach this target by the middle of next week! A client said:
“I felt shame and embarrassment, my health was suffering and I was spending sleepless nights worrying. I can now face the future with clarity and confidence – thanks to CAP, I am free to enjoy and celebrate Christmas with my family and friends and can look forward to a new year knowing I have their support until I am totally debt free.”
How cool is that?
OK, so what have I actually been doing since then. Well the majority of my work over the past month or so has been communicating with churches and supporters who are interested in running a CAP Sunday.
A CAP Sunday can be anything from just showing the short 7min DVD, or devoting the whole service to CAP. I will hopefully post the DVD here at some point so that you can see it, but currently it’s not available online, the following though is a clients testimony from the DVD:
So my job has been co-ordinating this over the past month or so. It has been really exciting to see that we have generated over 900 enquiries, with over 350 of these already confirmed to run a CAP Sunday. We set a recommended date of the 22nd November, but many churches are doing it with the next few weeks as well, it has been pretty cool to here the stories coming in from from last weekend.
A couple of weekends ago, CAP had a couple of big events down in London. We had a fundraising dinner at Lords Cricket ground. This was just outstanding, it was such a crazy day. We raised about £149,000 – it was so exciting to just see that money come in at the end of the evening. We had about 400 people at the event (I think, although I can’t totally remember). Here are a couple of photos from the event, it seriously looked amazing! (more can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/christiansagainstpoverty/)
OK since then, things at CAP have continued to be very exciting! More and more are becoming Christians, it does seem that we are having more than 1 salvation every day which just shows how amazing God is, and how he is using this work. I heard a story the other day where a client had been living in his car since his house had got repossessed, but since he started working with us, he has managed to get somewhere to live, food to eat and a budget that has allowed him to start saving for the future, but even more amazing he has come to know Jesus through this awful situation – Praise God!
I have recently been working with churches, building relationships with church leaders and organising talks at their churches from CAP’s great trained team of speakers.
Please keep praying for the work of CAP, for our clients, for the staff and for the vision we have for 2010! Also please pray for me that I continue to work to the best of my ability, that I have the right words when in conversation with churches and that I can continue to push myself.
Thanks for reading / watching this pretty big update, I hope it has inspired you / updated you about the kind of things I have been up to!
I thought I would give another quick update since I have now been working at CAP for a whole month – how strange is that! It has been an amazing month. So much has happened, and my faith has been stretched way past what I could ever have imagined! Below is a short(ish) video that CAP produced last year with some client testimonies etc, and I think it really shows and sums up the work that we do.
There always seems to be so much going on, with people stepping out with huge amounts of faith on a daily basis! We have just recently re-focused our vision – now praying that there will be a CAP centre in every town and city within the next 5 years. That means we need to open something like 650 centres in 5 years! To put that in prospective, CAP has been going 13 years and we have only opened just over 100! We really do believe that God will allow this to happen!
If you are the kind of person who likes to pray, please pray for me, that I will continue to settle into my role at CAP, that I continue to seek God in everything that I am doing, even the things that seem straightforward, and also that I continue to learn more and continue to stretch my faith to new levels!
This week at CAP, everyone who is working has been given the challenge of trying to get people to give to CAP on a monthly basis. I thought it might not hurt to ask you guys (I did mention it in my last update a little bit, but this time I’m asking properly, and I promise I won’t keep pestering you every time I update!)… If any of you would consider giving even a small amount (I know most of you are students or people with nearly no money at all, but £2 a month is only £24 a year and you can always cancel it if you can’t afford to carry on paying it) – something like £2 a month really does help clients get the support and debt advice that they need! And to give you another reason, it helps me – your monthly donation will be multiplied by 12 and taken off my crazy £2000 target :) And yet another reason, for every person that lets me know they want to do this, I may just buy them a big bar of chocolate (or maybe even something better) and yes I know that is bribery – but who cares, the money is going to help the poor and needy! Common guys :) – plus I want to win the competition. Just send me an email / text / phone call / any other method of communication, and I will love you lots and lots!!
Wow! This time just over 2 weeks ago, I was still living in Chester and hadn’t started work at Christians Against Poverty, so as you may be able to guess it has been a pretty busy couple of weeks! But thank God it has been an amazing time :)
So firstly the move to Bradford. I moved to Bradford on Thursday the 3rd September into a house provided by CAP since I was doing their Internship. The house is located just north of Bradford in quite a nice area :) There are now four of us living in the house, myself, Dave, Debs and Ruth. The house itself and my housemates are all pretty amazing and we seem to all get on reasonably well :) So if you are reading this and you know me (I guess there will be some randoms out there who don’t know me…) then please feel free to come and visit me and see the wonderful* city of Bradford.
Right, the more important part, CAP! I started just over a week ago, on Monday 7th September. We were told to arrive at work at 8.40, and by 8.45 all of the CAP HQ staff (about 150 at the moment) were in the basement of the building worshipping God. What an amazing way to start a week; and for the 25 of us who were new, a new job! Every Monday morning we all meet together for a time of worship, and then every other morning we meet for prayer. God is truly the centre of this organisation!
So, in case you don’t know, I’ll explain as quickly and as well as I can what CAP do, and then I’ll say what I do. Hopefully you’ll then get a better understanding when I start talking about things!
CAP is a national debt counselling charity working through a network of centres based in local churches. It offers hope and a solution to anyone in debt by creating a repayment plan for the client and then liaising with creditors to decrease or stop interest rates on the clients debts. The repayment plan always makes sure that the client has enough money for food, clothes and their family. The centres around the UK that are run by the local church support and encourage the client throughout the time that they are with CAP, and most clients will be debt free within 5 years. CAP shows God’s love in action by providing sustainable poverty relief through debt counselling, advice and practical help. CAP’s unique ‘hands on’ approach empowers people to help themselves out of poverty and be released from the fear, oppression and worry generated by overwhelming debts. CAP provides sustainable poverty relief as its service teaches clients vital budgeting skills that will last a lifetime. What an amazing thing to be apart of :)
You can get a FREE copy of John Kirkby’s book which explains even more about CAP and how it started by clicking on the picture above – it seriously is a good read if you want to find out more :) – or ask me! lol.
As I’m sure you all know I am doing an internship with CAP. This involves working for the charity about 4days a week, and then every Wednesday we have our internship day where we get teaching, management and leadership training, and tons of other stuff (which I will find out about along the way). I am working within the Partnership department building networks between churches and CAP, organising events to raise money for CAP and lots of other stuff. It is a really exciting department to work in, and without it there wouldn’t be connections with churches or money to fund the charity (within reason!). CAP gets no government funding at all, and relies on one-off donations and regular monthly payments to run (it needs something like £150,000 a month!) CAP has total faith in God that this money will be provided each month, but at the start of each month there is never enough money! God is good!
Sorry this is a very information based update, but I thought it would be good to give you guys some sort of outline of CAP first so that when I update in the future you know roughly what is happening! But please give me a ring if you want to know more :)
Just a small sideline here… All of the interns have a target of £2000 to raise while they are doing their internship (of which I have already raised about £900), so if at any point you feel like you want to give something to CAP then please please do! Either go to my justgiving page – http://www.justgiving.com/dankingsley, or stick a cheque in the post to me for Christians Against Poverty. Or if you fancy giving on a monthly basis (that would be totally amazing) let me know and I can give you a call to sort it out – even giving £2 a month will help people who are in need!
Thanks for reading this long update… hope it makes some sense and now have a better idea of what I’m doing. Hopefully speak to you all soon :)
Dan x
*well wonderful might be a step too far, but its generally a lot nicer than the impression I was givin – and yep they do have some amazing curry’s!
I have now finished my time at the University of York. I graduated last week with a 2:2 in Electronic Engineering – which I’m very happy with.
The past three years have probably been the best few years of my life… so far. I have made many friendships which I hope will last for a lifetime (and beyond), I have learnt a lot, grown in my faith in ways that I couldn’t have imagined when I first arrived at York, and generally just had an amazing time!
Thank you to everyone who has helped me make the last three years so special, be that my housemates, my course friends, friends from the CU, or even my supervisors! Thank you!
Starting in September, I will be moving to Bradford, and starting an internship with Christians Against Poverty (CAP). I am hoping that I will use this blog to update how that is going – and other things, so please keep checking back if you want to know what I’m up to :)
