War Cry 29 October

matters

Is Connor really a long-lost brother in TV’s The Pact?

What is The Salvation Army?

The Salvation Army is a Christian church and registered charity seeking to share the good news of Jesus and nurture committed followers of him. We also serve people without discrimination, care for creation and seek justice and reconciliation. We offer practical support and services in more than 700 centres throughout the UK. Go to salvationarmy.org.uk/find-a-church to find your nearest centre.

What is the War Cry?

The Salvation Army first published a newspaper called the War Cry in London in December 1879, and we have continued to appear every week since then. Our name refers to our battle for people’s hearts and souls as we promote the positive impact of the Christian faith and The Salvation Army’s fight for greater social justice.

From the editor’s desk

NOT everyone has a good start in life. While many children grow up in stable, loving family environments, others are raised knowing physical or mental abuse, which was the experience of Peter Mutabazi.

In an interview in this week’s War Cry, Peter describes the way he, his mother and his siblings lived in fear of their father, who would beat and belittle them. At the age of just 10, Peter ran away from home and lived on the streets of Uganda.

Street life was also tough. Peter tells us that he was treated by people he encountered as ‘less than human’. However, his life was turned round when he was befriended by a stranger.

‘He kept meeting me and feeding me for a year and a half. He earned my trust before offering to send me to school,’ Peter tells us, adding: ‘I was always intrigued about how he could be so nice to me, and I discovered he was a Christian.’

In his interview, Peter explains that ‘the kindness of a stranger taught me what a father ought to be’.

As a direct result of this practical kindness, Peter began helping disadvantaged children around the world. His work with relief and development agencies included taking food to orphans living in refugee camps after the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Today he lives a fulfilling and happy life caring for children and young people in the United States who have experienced a bad start in life, just as he did. He has also become a Christian himself.

Editor: Andrew Stone, Major

Deputy Editor: Philip Halcrow

Production Editor: Ivan Radford

Assistant Editor: Sarah Olowofoyeku

Staff Writer: Emily Bright Staff Writer: Claire Brine Editorial Assistant: Linda McTurk Graphic Designer: Rodney Kingston Graphic Designer: Mark Knight Email: warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk

The Salvation Army United Kingdom and Ireland Territory 101 Newington Causeway London SE1 6BN Tel: 0845 634 0101

Subscriptions: 01933 445445 (option 1, option 1) or email: subscriptions@satcol.org

Founder: William Booth General: Brian Peddle Territorial Commander: Commissioner Anthony Cotterill Editor-in-Chief: Major Mal Davies

Peter’s is an inspiring story of how God can help someone overcome the most challenging of situations and lead them into a better life that has purpose and direction.

It is also a reminder that when someone becomes a Christian it not only impacts their own life, but also enables them, with God’s help, to make a difference for good in the lives of other individuals and the wider community.

’veread the WarCry , whynot PASS IT ON f

Oh brother!

HAVING grown up without knowing anything about his biological mother, Connor (Jordan Wilks) has questions. And when he finally tracks Christine (Rakie Ayola) down, the young man approaches her for some answers. Why did she leave him in a toilet block as a baby?

In the opening episode of the second series of BBC1’s The Pact last Monday (24 October), the Rees children were shocked to encounter a stranger who declared that he was their long-lost brother. Though oldest brother Will (Lloyd Everitt) dismissed Connor’s story at first, younger siblings Jamie (Aaron Anthony) and Megan (Mali Ann Rees) were stunned to see that he was the spitting image of their recently deceased brother, Liam. They asked their mother, Christine, if there could be any truth to Connor’s claims.

family for good.

As the series continues next week, Connor is determined to gain the family’s trust and find out what happened in the past. Megan questions whether Connor’s story has any connection to their father’s sudden disappearance many years ago. Jamie meets Connor and confides in him about Liam’s death. The more the siblings spend time with him, the more Christine worries that they are building a connection.

He’s looking to start afresh

She’s desperate to prove that Connor is not who he says he is. So she insists that they do a DNA test to discover the truth.

While the entire family wait for the results, Connor insists to his siblings that he’s not going anywhere.

‘All my life I’ve been alone,’ he tells Jamie. ‘I just want to get to know my family.’

sometimes end up feeling misunderstood and lonely.

‘It’s impossible,’ she said, adding that he must be deluded. ‘This boy is not a part of our family.’

While Megan learnt more about Connor’s experience of growing up in care, Christine discovered that Connor had previously approached another family with claims that he was their long-lost son. The mother warned Christine that the only way she would get rid of him would be by giving him money. Christine told Connor in no uncertain terms to stay away from her

He says that, while he can’t change what happened in his past, he’s looking for an opportunity to start afresh. He wants his future to be different.

Whether viewers believe Connor’s story or not, perhaps many of them can identify with how he feels. Across the world, there are people who feel alone and isolated. Maybe they long to find a place where they can fit in and be accepted for who they are. Even people who are surrounded by loving friends and family can

In times when we feel as though we don’t belong anywhere, we still do. The Bible tells us that, no matter who we are or what we have done in our past, Jesus accepts us.

Speaking of how he offered everyone the love of God, Jesus said: ‘I will never turn away anyone who comes to me’ (John 6:37 Good News Bible).

When we put our faith in Jesus and allow God’s love to transform our life, we can experience what it means to be part of a family where the door is always open – no question about it.

Connor and Jamie could be brothers

A family is thrown into turmoil with the arrival of a stranger TV feature by Claire Brine

Christine denies Connor’s story

BBC/LITTLE

DOOR

PRODUCTIONS/SIMON RIDGWAY

How Rosemary Conley came to see faith as fit for purpose

HEALTHY eating expert Rosemary Conley found faith in God and a new direction during a difficult period in her life, wrote Sarah Ditum in The Times

In an interview article about Conley’s autobiography, Through Thick and Thin, Ditum described how the author of 36 diet books became a Christian in 1986 after having her gallbladder removed.

‘During her convalescence she read a Christian self-help book and had a Damascene moment,’ Ditum wrote. After finding faith, she believed ‘God was telling her to marry Mike’, her long-term boyfriend. The couple have been married ever since.

In Through Thick and Thin, Rosemary Conley explains how the Christian book the Power for Living invited her to say a prayer, which changed her life.

‘As I knelt at the side of the bed, I said the prayer and earnestly meant every single word,’ she writes. ‘As I prayed, I felt my body being “washed through”. There were no flashing lights, no flames, no claps of thunder or puffs of smoke, just a feeling of being “brand new”. A new beginning. A fresh start. It was as though God had taken my list of mistakes and wiped the slate clean.’

nTHE architect of the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer – a Christian landmark under construction near Birmingham – revealed that he turned to prayer before coming up with the idea of building it in the form of a Möbius strip.

In a video documenting the progress of the building work, which can be seen online at eternalwall.org.uk, Paul Bulkeley of Snug Architects explained the connection he saw between humankind’s experience of prayer and the shape of the never-ending loop.

‘For me, the Möbius strip is poetically symbolic of quite a lot of the things that matter in prayer,’ he said. ‘The way the form rises and falls … there’s a sense of it being grounded… But then it rises and is transcendent and twists, and there is a moment where it flips, and everything is turned upside down. And then it comes back down to earth and re-engages with your life, before life’s problems and life’s challenges lead you back into prayer, and life’s hopes lead you back into prayer. You go round that journey again and that journey never stops.’

At its completion, the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer will reach a height of 51.5m, making it twice the size of the Angel of the North sculpture in Gateshead.

Poor countries hurt by debt ‘chokehold’

RISING debt repayments to private lenders are creating a ‘chokehold’ on poorer countries who are repaying it, Christian Aid has warned.

Research by the international development charity has found that the practice of issuing bonds and borrowing from non-governmental or multilateral lenders is backfiring, plunging poorer and middle-income countries further into debt. Rising interest rates and a strong US dollar has made repayments even more expensive.

Christian Aid says there should be transparency. It also wants private creditors to work within IMF mechanisms.

Karimi Kinoti, Christian Aid’s interim director of policy in Africa, said: ‘The UK government has a moral obligation to act. Ministers should use their influence to compel private creditors to support debt relief.’

The research, conducted with the help of several other organisations, explored the economies of Kenya, Nigeria, Guatemala and El Salvador.

KATHY

HUTCHINS/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

A computer-generated image of the prayer wall

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Slavery cases rise, says Salvation Army

MODERN slavery referrals to The Salvation Army have risen by 15 per cent in the past year.

In its annual report, the church and charity revealed that 3,068 people of 100 nationalities were rescued and supported in its safe houses and by its outreach services. British people continue to be the second most common nationality exploited in the UK, the most often represented nationality being Albanian.

Between July 2021 and June 2022 almost half (46 per cent) of all modern slavery survivors supported by The Salvation Army had been exploited for forced labour with little or no pay in areas such as factories, building sites and farms. About a quarter (23 per cent) of survivors had experienced sexual exploitation, while about a fifth (20 per cent) were exploited for criminal purposes.

Major Kathy Betteridge, The Salvation Army’s director of antitrafficking and modern slavery, said: ‘People trapped in modern slavery are hidden in plain sight in villages, towns and cities across the UK. We can all help fight modern slavery and raise the alarm if we spot something suspicious and are worried that someone is being exploited.’

The Salvation Army has held the government’s modern slavery victim care contract for England and Wales since 2011.

l If you suspect that someone you have come into contact with is a victim of modern slavery and in need of help, please call The Salvation Army’s confidential 24/7 referral helpline on 0800 808 3733, the Modern Slavery Helpline on 0800 012 1700 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111

ON THE WRITE TRACK

Feature by Emily Bright

PENS and laptops at the ready. National Novel Writing Month starts on Tuesday (1 November). Since the initiative’s launch in the US in 1999, thousands of people globally have accepted the challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days, and 367,913 novels have been written.

National Novel Writing Month, which is now also a non-profit organisation based in California, hosts writing events in libraries and community centres in locations from Mexico City to Seoul. Its online platform helps to keep writers focused, tracking the number of words they have set down and connecting them with other like-minded people.

Organisers want to encourage people to write all year round too. There’s now a Young Writers Program, which encourages school students to exercise their literary creativity alongside their existing curriculum, providing classroom materials, an online writing community and author mentors.

Each year about 100,000 students take part in the programme. In a survey of participants, 77 per cent of young people said that it helped them write a story they care about. This number sits well with the month’s tagline: ‘Every story matters. Let’s start writing yours.’

Literary works have allowed authors to express their stories and important truths throughout the centuries, and have the power to provoke, challenge and shape our world view. It is certainly the case with the bestselling book of all time, which is packed with allegory, poetry, wisdom, history and a life-changing love story.

One of the writers whose words have found a place in the Bible explained the importance of its contents. ‘All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realise what is wrong in our lives,’ he wrote. ‘It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right’ (2 Timothy 3:16 New Living Translation).

In life’s complexities and challenges, going to a source of tried-andtested wisdom helps. When we give it a read, it can help us write a fascinating new chapter in our own life story. We’ll also encounter God’s unconditional love, which exceeds anything we could imagine.

Going to a source of wisdom helps

National Novel Writing Month encourages budding authors to put their thoughts on paper

B roadcasting B elief

As the BBC celebrates 100 years on the airwaves, head of religion and ethics at BBC Audio TIM PEMBERTON reflects on the past, present and future connections between the corporation and religion

Interview by Andrew Stone

THIS year the BBC is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Since its first radio broadcasts from Marconi House, London, in October 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, the organisation has evolved into a media giant on radio and television and online. In its earliest years the corporation’s purpose was summed up in three words: inform, educate and entertain. Those principles have led to programmes as diverse as Strictly Come Dancing and Panorama on television and to radio shows such as The Official Chart Show

and Moral Maze – which is one of the programmes that is made under Tim Pemberton, who is head of religion and ethics for BBC Audio.

‘The BBC has always valued religion,’ he tells me as we chat over Zoom. ‘From the very beginning it was thought that religion should form a big part of the corporation’s output, whether that was the broadcasting of services or the creation of bespoke religious content.’

Today that content includes daily and weekly services on Radio 4, Heart and Soul for the World Service and Good

C entenaryMorning Sunday on Radio 2. But there is another programme that is special to Tim.

‘My secret guilty pleasure is relaxing to Choral Evensong on Radio 3,’ he says.

‘As a person of faith, I enter into it in a particular way. But even if people don’t have a faith, I think they can appreciate the beauty and skill of the music. It’s rich and gorgeous and gives moments of space and reflection. It’s a high-quality piece of broadcasting.’

Tim’s faith journey began when he was growing up as the 10th and youngest child of a church minister. It was while he was in his teens that he ‘discovered a personal relationship direct with God’ by becoming a Christian, and he went on to study religion and philosophy at Lancaster University.

‘My faith does impact me as a person,’ he explains. ‘I practise it, and it’s important to me. However, when I go through the doors of the BBC, I realise that I have to set aside my own personal faith – not in the sense that I’m suddenly not a Christian any more, but I know that I need to be open and that my faith can’t be the deciding factor in the judgements I have to make.

‘I hope that I’m quite

Broadcasting House, BBC headquarters in London

assiduous in treating all the faiths fairly and seriously. I don’t believe in doing favours for Christians or for any of the faith groups. I try to treat them all fairly and give them a proper hearing.’

Tim lists the appearance of Pope Francis on Radio 4’s Thought For The Day as one of his proudest moments while in his current role. But, while that broadcast will have delighted many Catholics who tuned in, there will have been other listeners who questioned whether the Pope, or any other religious leader, could have anything relevant to say. Some of the BBC’s audience see religion as outdated. Tim, however, is certain that, as the corporation heads into its second century, religion and ethics broadcasting is here to stay.

life. It encourages people to reflect and think about purpose and what is the right way to live a good life.

People want to engage with religion

‘We made some excellent programmes during lockdown. Because we couldn’t record outside broadcasts for Sunday Worship, we would assemble programmes with interviews, pieces of music and conversations. This allowed for great creativity, which many listeners found refreshing, particularly those who wouldn’t have normally listened to the programme.’

Tim is convinced that many of the people who asked those big questions about life in lockdown have not lost their

‘As times have changed over the past 100 years, religion has gone in and out of vogue,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen that myself when there have been people who are hostile to it and felt religion didn’t have anything to say or to contribute.

‘But I think people are mistaken in that, because through the Covid pandemic we saw people wanting to engage with religion and that it is a part of our national life.

‘One of the upshots of the pandemic was that it made people pause. They saw the fragility of life, and it made them re-evaluate what was important and what their priorities were. Nothing helps people with that better than the different religions. Faith asks the important questions about

interest in the months that have followed.

‘We are still seeing people finding immense value and meaning as they engage with either formal or more informal faith,’ he says. ‘That makes my job the most exciting work.

‘As programme-makers, we have to be relevant. We need to have our fingers on the pulse of what people are talking about and what matters to them. That way, we’ll make programmes that are intelligent and that speak to people.’

Tim Pemberton

From street child to foster-father

‘IN Uganda, life was miserable at every step,’ recalls Peter Mutabazi.

‘Growing up poor, there was no glimpse of hope. Sometimes we’d go to bed hungry. But you knew the next family didn’t have a good meal either. I had to grow up so quickly.’

In his book about his life, Now I am Known, Peter details how his father beat him and his siblings up to four times a week. Virtually anything they did sent him into a rage.

‘My friends weren’t afraid of their dad, but I was,’ Peter tells me. ‘I never looked him in the eyes, because I couldn’t tell what would come. Before I learnt to speak I heard my dad say: “You’ll never amount to anything. I wish you were never born so I didn’t have to feed you.” I’d been stripped of my dignity by my own dad.’

Worse still, Peter says, was seeing his mum being repeatedly abused, even when she was pregnant.

‘If she asked my dad for help with school tuition, she’d get beaten. She got the brunt of it caring for us. Sometimes I felt guilty that maybe if she had not advocated for us to have food or schooling, she would not have got those beatings or the verbal abuse. There was no place to turn.’

One night Peter snapped. When his father sent him out to buy cigarettes Peter used his own savings from selling peanuts to take a bus to the end of the line, Kampala.

‘At the age of 10 I ran away. I wasn’t looking for a better life. I just thought: “I’m going to die anyway, but I’d rather end it somewhere else.” That’s why I ran away to become a street kid.’

Peter spent the next four years living on the street, next to the sewers. He would sniff diesel to disguise the stench around him. He and his friends would steal food to survive and faced a life of sleepless nights and abuse at the hands of strangers. Children were crushed while

At the age of 10, PETER MUTABAZI was forced to fend for himself on Uganda’s streets after fleeing his abusive father. But an unexpected encounter with a stranger would change his life. Now living in the US, he reflects on fatherhood and faith

Interview by Emily Bright

Peter aged about 18

sleeping under buses, poisoned by eating the wrong food or killed by relentless beatings.

‘Strangers called you garbage, and said you’d never amount to anything,’ he recalls. ‘You believed them because you ate from the garbage dump, you slept

under the sewer, you smelt, you were a thief. I felt and was treated like less of a human being.

‘There was nothing to care for and there was nothing to protect apart from myself. So if I was stealing from someone, my attitude was: “I need food right now and I

don’t care about your feelings.”’

While living on the streets, the children would often help people with their shopping to earn food in return or steal it. One day Peter’s encounter with a man while carrying his shopping would transform his life.

‘I followed a man, waiting to take shopping to his car for him. In the process, I’d get something to eat. But he asked me: “What’s your name?” That rattled me, because no one had ever asked me that. Then I was worried, because in my experience kindness was always followed with abuse. So I backed off, but then went back to carry his stuff. He gave me something to eat and he left.

‘The next weekend he came back and

this time he called me by my name. That was a shock to me. He remembered my name. That’s really what changed my life. The more I saw him, the more I looked forward to seeing him. Not because of the food, but rather because he saw me as a human being.’

James continued to look out for Peter, although the young boy remained suspicious of him.

‘He kept meeting me and feeding me for a year and a half,’ Peter says. ‘He earned my trust before offering to send me to school, but I wasn’t sure. He asked me several times and I said no, until he said: “There’ll be lunch, dinner and breakfast.” It was the food that attracted

me. I thought I’d check out the school.’

After initially seeing an education as an impossible dream, Peter started attending Katweha Primary and Secondary School. He was amazed to discover he would be fed three meals a day at the boarding school as well as receiving an education. Students around him dreamt of becoming doctors, engineers, teachers and lawyers, something Peter had not even comprehended before. However, his new life took some adjusting to.

‘I could only think about one thing –food,’ he remembers, ‘and I realised that to receive it, I needed to go to class and stay in school. Yet as a street kid, fighting was my norm. But they didn’t kick me out

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Peter with Zay, an 18-year-old he is supporting, and adopted son Anthony

He saw me as a human being

9

of school. Instead, they saw the best in me.’

Six months after Peter settled into his new life James invited him to stay with him over the school holidays.

‘His family were kind, and I began to want that,’ says Peter. ‘I was always intrigued about how he could be so nice to me, and I discovered he was a Christian.’

In fact, James was a pastor. Keen to keep in favour with him, Peter began attending church. However, he struggled to reconcile the Christian faith with his own experiences. ‘I held hatred towards my dad, and I didn’t want anything to get in the way,’ he says.

‘You hear the gospel say, “Forgive those who wrong you.” I was like, “Look, there are some things we should forgive, but there are some that we should not. And

that includes my father.” But I had begun to see glimpses of hope, so I thought: “OK, I’m going to pretend I’m a Christian so they don’t kick me out of school.”’

Peter’s perspective on faith changed when James invited him to help an international relief organisation get food to thousands of orphan children living in refugee camps after the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Peter became a translator, buying essential supplies and handling the logistics of delivery.

While there, he witnessed the aftermath of the brutality, suffering and death that Tutsis experienced at the hands of Hutus. Thrown into the middle of a war zone, he was left fearing for his life and he asked

his driver, who was a Christian, to pray with him to know God for real. Just as hatred was tearing Rwanda apart, Peter knew that, in a smaller way, his own heart was corrupted by bitterness towards his father, and he believed that he needed God’s healing love.

‘I didn’t want to give away the hatred I felt towards my father until I realised that Christ died for me on the cross for that,’ he says. ‘I was carrying a burden that I did not have to carry. I forgave my father. It felt as if I lost a 100lb weight instantly, and I decided to use my past as a foundation to help others.’

Peter decided to go to Makerere University in Kampala to study business administration, becoming the first person

I forgave my father. It felt as if I lost a 100lb weight instantly

in his village to go on to further education. While he was there, he worked as a nighttime radio operator for the International Committee of the Red Cross, helping them to co-ordinate their trucks and planes as they went in and out of Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also worked part-time day shifts for another relief and child advocacy group.

After taking degree courses in crisis management and theology in the UK and the United States respectively, he was offered a job at Compassion International, travelling the world to promote child sponsorship.

While he enjoyed the work, Peter later felt compelled to support vulnerable children closer to home in the US and enquired about becoming a mentor to

a troubled teenager. The social worker he spoke to suggested that he become a foster-father. Peter was immediately attracted to the idea. Since becoming a licensed foster-father, he has looked after 29 children, adopted one and is in the process of adopting three more.

‘It has been a joy,’ he says. ‘The kids give me more than I give them. They’ve taught me what loving unconditionally means and how to give sacrificially.’

Peter is determined to follow James’s example rather than that of his own father.

‘I sometimes think, “I hope I don’t turn out like my dad”, and those fears come in,’ he says.

‘But I am not my father, and the kindness of a stranger taught me what a father ought to be. James didn’t know me, yet he loved me as his own. The gospel made sense for me because I based it on his life. James didn’t share much of the gospel with me. He just lived it.’

l James’s name has been changed. Now I am Known is published by Baker Books

The kids taught me what loving unconditionally means

YOUR prayers are requested for Jack, who has been homeless for a long time and is seeking help.

The War Cry invites readers to send in requests for prayer, including the first names of individuals and details of their circumstances, for publication. Send your Prayerlink requests to warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk or to War Cry, 101 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BN. Mark your correspondence ‘Confidential’.

jBecoming a Christian

There is no set formula to becoming a Christian, but many people have found saying this prayer to be a helpful first step to a relationship with God

Lord Jesus Christ, I am truly sorry for the things I have done wrong in my life. Please forgive me. I now turn from everything that I know is wrong.

Thank you that you died on the cross for me so that I could be forgiven and set free.

Thank you that you offer me forgiveness and the gift of your Holy Spirit. Please come into my life by your Holy Spirit to be with me for ever.

Thank you, Lord Jesus. Amen

‘

TEA M TALK

talkTeam talk ’

Sometimes we need to embrace the mess

Claire Brine gives her take on a story catching the attention of War Cry reporters

WHEN writer Dolly Alderton took on the role of agony aunt for The Sunday Times Style magazine, she told her editor of her desire to help readers with their problems.

‘I couldn’t and wouldn’t claim to be a sage, or an expert, or even a person who made the right decisions,’ she explains in Dear Dolly, a book containing a number of her columns, published this week by Fig Tree. Rather, her aim was simply to be ‘someone who was trying to better understand life, just like the person writing in to me’.

In the book, one woman writes to Dolly: ‘My friend’s husband propositioned me – should I tell her?’ Dolly admits it’s a difficult problem to tackle. She considers several courses of action which the letter-writer could take. But it was the final sentence of her response that struck me the most: ‘Remember that while the truth will set you free, it might make a bit of a mess first.’

The truth can cause disruption

I don’t know whether Dolly is a Christian or not, but I found her choice of words interesting, because 2,000 years ago Jesus told his disciples that if they continued to follow him, they would know the truth – and that ‘the truth will set you free’.

I then found myself pondering the second half of her sentence, with its warning of the potential disruption that knowing the truth can cause.

It brought to mind a preacher I once met who said that his life had been straightforward before he became a Christian, because he had thought only of himself. When he encountered the truth about Jesus, his life was turned upside down. Jesus urged him to love and care for people who were poor –which meant getting to know them personally. Jesus said riches were a dead end – which meant that he had to hold his cash a lot less tightly. Jesus said that loving God had to come first.

The preacher admitted that in knowing Jesus his life had been disrupted in ways that he couldn’t have imagined. But he added that finding freedom from the wrongdoing of his past made it all worth it. He’d uncovered a truth that he couldn’t live without – and it’s one we can all hold dear.

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Extract

Why Jesus? by Nicky Gumbel

Who played Moneypenny in last year’s James Bond film No Time to Die?

Which architect designed St Paul’s Cathedral?

What is a baby kangaroo

Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located

which sea?

What is the name of the comedian who won the TV competition Britain’s Got Talent this year?

Which scooter brand gets its name from the Italian word for ‘wasp’?

Mal Davies explores song lyrics that have a note of truth about them

Wisdom in the words

Who do you want to be?

SOME songs have lyrics that are easy to remember and sing (a prime example being the lengthy ‘na na’ section in ‘Hey Jude’) while others are, well, a little bit trickier. And popular music has certainly thrown up its challenges, including Little Richard’s 1957 hit ‘Tutti Frutti’ with its famous tongue-twister, ‘A wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom’.

In 2003 US singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw released his debut album Chariot. It included the single ‘I Don’t Want to Be’, which peaked at No 27 on the UK chart.

God wants you to be you

It became known for the opening line of the chorus: ‘I don’t want to be anything other than what I’ve been trying to be lately.’

DeGraw said the song was motivated by the identity crisis, evident especially in the US at the time, which led youth to be driven – by peers and celebrities – to adopt a certain look and attitude if they wanted to fit in with the cool kids.

In the chorus he sings: ‘I’m tired of looking round rooms/ Wondering what I’ve got to do/ Or who I’m supposed to be.’ His sentiment was captured in the accompanying video clip for the song, which showed a young adult at a party, wandering from room to room but bored by the presence of people merely living out a stereotype.

In the bridge of the song, DeGraw pointedly criticises ‘liars’, and sings: ‘I’m surrounded by imposters/ Everywhere I turn.’

After his tongue-twisting opening to the chorus, he concludes it with the words: ‘I don’t want to be anything other than me.’

Well, that’s good advice. God wants you to be you too. What is more, he wants you to be the best you that you can be. God didn’t create you to be someone else; he created you to be you.

With his help and guidance, you can strip away the expectations of others and the façades that many people adopt and find who God made you to be. It doesn’t have to be as confusing as a tongue-twister. Just ask God to help you.

Look up, down, forwards, backwards and diagonally on the grid to find these Aretha Franklin songs

A Y P E O P L E N Q A Z

H O S Z O O M I N W H O A I S A S B

N I T I A W E R E W U O Y W E N K I

M A O O V Y Q P K Z D L A Z K V P G

S O R A L L I T S S I E S O R A E Q

Q Z M P M E L R A H H S I N A P S S

P K N I H T Q V L D J L R E J K T W

Asparagus, ham and egg muffins

Ingredients

200g asparagus

2tbsp vinegar

large eggs

wholemeal muffins

2tsp half-fat cream cheese

Method

Preheat a grill to medium heat.

Add the asparagus to a pan of boiling water and cook for 5-7 minutes, until tender. Drain, then set aside.

Add the vinegar to a large pan of water and bring to the boil. Gently crack the eggs into it and poach for 3-4 minutes.

Split and toast the muffins under the grill, then spread the cream cheese on top.

Halve each muffin again to create 4 semi-circles.

Arrange the muffins on plates, then divide the cooked ham and asparagus between each. Top each muffin with a poached egg and season with a pinch of pepper, to serve.

Berry porridge

Ingredients

Method

Add the oats to 250ml water in a pan and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and stir regularly for 4-5 minutes.

Stir in three quarters of the berries and add the milk. Increase the heat and mix the porridge well. Continue cooking for a few minutes, until the fruit softens and the milk is warmed through.

Spoon the porridge into a bowl and top with the rest of the berries and the almonds, to serve.

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