St Saviour’s recently started to support Alex Cama (who was until recently one of our residential Young Franciscans) and his fiancée Rachel Burton in their pioneer mission work in Northolt. Alex and Rachel have written to say thanks and to bring us up to speed on their work.
Dear St Saviour’s Church: We are writing to say a huge thank you to you as a church for agreeing to accept us as your official mission partners. When we discussed the possibility with Father Chris, it was something that appealed a huge amount for a number of reasons.
It is great to know that we have a church family who are behind all that we are doing as missionaries; praying for and encouraging us. We are also excited that we can come and share our missional experiences with you and encourage and equip you in mission, drawing on our practical experiences, as well as our studies of pioneering (Rachel is studying Pioneer Mission Leadership with CMS and Alex studied the same last year with the Diocese of London School of Pioneers). It is also a blessing that when we come back, we will know a very good number of you because of our roles in leadership of the dispersed Young Franciscans.
For those that don’t know us, we are Alex Cama and Rachel Burton, an engaged couple (to be married in May if Coronavirus allows!) who will be living and ministering not too far away in Northolt. Alex worshipped at St Saviour’s last year while he was a residential Young Franciscan (YF) living with Charlie Wheeler and Miriam Brandon. And Rachel has met some of the St Saviour’s church family through Alex and her involvement with the YF since she joined last October. Find Rachel’s blog website here.
We are both going to be engaged in incarnational, pioneer mission on the Racecourse Council Estate, Northolt, where we feel called to live, and where there has unfortunately been very limited Christian presence for a good number of years. Alex will also continue his work as an evangelist/missionary in Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville prisons and discipling ex-offenders, both of which started when he was a residential YF just around the corner from Wormwood Scrubs.
Rachel will also continue her Christian addiction recovery work at Yeldall Manor that she has been doing for 10 years now. We are also both extremely excited to be taking a lead with the dispersed Young Franciscans. We thoroughly look forward to leading the community in being contemplatively prayerful and missional, as we journey together in making Jesus known in the way of St Francis.
We both love being on and thinking about mission, so please do get in touch if you would like to discuss anything missional, or anything else for that matter, really! It will be great to be in touch with you, knowing that we are praying for each other.
We will also be coming to speak at church before too long, so we look forward to spending some time with you then. In the meantime, stay safe during this very strange time in our history.
Peace and all good
Alex & Rachel