We are The Salvation Army 8 and

George

detached house that takes 11 clients with low support needs. With its 11 bedrooms, shared bathrooms, a kitchen and a lounge over three floors, Rookery Nook has a welcoming, more relaxed atmosphere and feels more like a family home.

Looking to the future, we plan to include an outside gym in the back garden of Witham Lodge. Exercising outdoors gives people all the physical benefits of indoor exercise – improved cardiovascular health, blood flow, strength, flexibility, endurance and more – while also providing exposure to sunlight that increases their levels of vitamin D. This will give our clients the opportunity to exercise for free during the day and evening. We hope it will help to relieve stress and occupy their time, which will benefit their overall fitness and mental wellbeing. This is all being funded through generous donations received over Christmas from a local hotelier, a church and Falmouth Temple. Falmouth is my home corps and has been raising money for the Lifehouse ever since its inception.

What I love about being the service manager here is that I never know from one day to the next what I am going to be facing. For example, we recently had a couple of quiet days when everything was running smoothly. The residents were attending their appointments with support workers and a couple were excited to have been accepted for properties and were due to be moving out.

On the third day of that week, I came on shift to discover that the night staff had trouble with a group of people, starting at 10pm and finishing at 4.30am. My job was to speak to all those concerned and see what they had to say about their actions. This took most of my morning and they were all given 28-day written notices, which meant they had to abide by the rules of the centre for the next month.

We have had many residents’ lives transformed since coming through the centre, two of whom went on to flourish as coastguards.

Paul was successful in Spain, running his own bar for 10 years, but his relationship broke down early in 2015. He needed to return to the UK and rebuild his life from scratch but had no address to call home. Jonathan had no life skills whatsoever and became homeless after the death of his father.

Having worked hard all his life, Paul wanted to do something at the Lifehouse and encouraged Jonathan and others to build an onsite pond and chicken coop to give residents something to do. They both became regularly active in our Hope project and partnered Jobcentre Plus, the council wellbeing team, the probation service, social services and housing associations as part of their work experience. They were working several days a week helping many vulnerable people in the Skegness area with gardening or painting and decorating.

Jonathan moved into his own accommodation in 2016 and Paul in 2017. They set up a business together as handymen and joined the coastguard team and are now fully qualified. One of my proudest moments was when they laid a wreath at the town cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.

Witham Lodge

‘‘I never know from one day to the next what I am going to be facing’’

Coastguards Jonathan and Paul on Remembrance Sunday

HOW CLEAN

Lieutenant Nazia Yousaf considers the purifying work of Jesus in our lives as individuals and corps work of Jesus in our lives as individuals and corps

AS I was going through my calendar, my gaze stopped on a date that featured ‘moving prep’. With a sigh, I recalled a lifetime of moves with my officer-parents and all the preparation that was involved. Mostly it meant sorting things out and getting rid of what we no longer needed. We then had to deep clean the house ready for the next officers to live there.

My mother was proud of her housekeeping, so my family all got involved in deep cleaning after every season and before every big occasion – Christmas, Easter, holidays and even visits from our leaders. Cleaning and getting rid of the stuff that would otherwise get in the way was a major element of our lives.

My calendar entry prompted me to reflect on the story of Jesus clearing the Temple. This was the centre of Jewish religion – the worship, rituals, holy occasions – and was the place where people would expect to find God. That’s why, when Jesus found people making God’s place of prayer and worship ‘a den of robbers’ (Matthew 21:13), he cleared out the buyers and sellers. The destruction and dirt had to be removed – Jesus could no longer put up with them.

In his first letter to the Corinthians the apostle Paul asks: ‘Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?’ (6:19). This question led me to reflect on how we keep our own temples clean and on the importance of spiritual cleanliness. When Jesus thinks about your temple, how does he see it?

What they were doing in the Temple was originally meant to be a practical service for those coming to worship. Many worshippers would have come from other countries and therefore needed to change their money into local currency or purchase birds or animals for sacrifice – all the matters included in the rituals they had to perform at the Temple.

Unfortunately, this turned into a bad business. The Temple created a monopoly on animals that were able to be sacrificed. The business of buying and selling animals and changing money became more important than the act of worship itself. The noise of the animals would overpower the prayers of the people and the priests. The authorities and traders were not just corrupt, they were robbing the worshippers by spoiling their ability to meet God and worship him.

This story encourages us to reflect on our traditions and rituals, values and habits – both as individuals and as corps. These practices were initially good for expanding God’s Kingdom, but we must ask if they are still serving that purpose. Are they still good? Are we still willing to let Jesus take the lead? Or have they become corrupted, serving the servers instead of those who need to be served? Have programmes designed to save souls, grow saints or serve suffering humanity just become work that keeps us busy? Sometimes we can think that we are doing the right thing – that we are serving the Kingdom – but our actions might be preventing people from finding God.