People!
I have so much to tell you. Crazy good stuff has happened here
over the last three months.
BLEND COFFEE LOUNGE, PAISLEY HAS FINALLY OPENED!!!!
Seriously! Let’s all take a moment to celebrate this!
The second Blend shop is no longer just a nice wee dream
that I write to you all about every few months. It’s happening right now as I
write this. When one of the major reasons you’ve moved across the world suddenly becomes
a reality, it’s actually the craziest feeling. God’s
like, “See! It was all worth it, right??”
Everything’s been so
beautifully brought together. Lemme show you around!
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| 'We created this place for you. Our place is your place. Enjoy!' |
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| 'Smile: it's the second best thing you can do with your lips...' The first best thing is probably either drinking coffee or eating Tex-Mex. |
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| How can we make your day? |
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| 'We are a diverse band of friends united in our passion for people to experience some of the best coffee and tea the world over.' |
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| Blend is about details and discovery. Five of our stools are a puzzle that forms a quote. 'I had the blues because I had no shoes, until upon the street I met a man who had no feet.' |
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| A customer hand made this fabulous pillow for us. Together, we're creating Blend every day. |
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| The Evolution of Coffee: Wake up, look like a monster, start drinking... |
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| And if you drink enough coffee, you'll eventually look like this. |
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| Reminders are everywhere. |
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| We even have a children's corner! Colouring, books, board games! |
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| And we have a scratch off map of the world. Customers can scratch off their home country. I've scratched off Oklahoma for us all! |
Isn’t it cool?! Before we’d even opened, we had over 500
likes on Facebook. Customers have said the following about the shop:
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| Staff Training |
“This place is so peaceful. It’s become my sanctuary from
out there.”
“This is a happy zone! You’re all so smiley!”
“The people are really what make this place.”
I don’t think I’ve told y’all much about Paisley yet, but it’s
important that you understand our context. Paisley was a happening place once
upon a time. It was a major industrial town (paisley pattern textiles, etc.).
It has a university, gorgeous cathedrals and an abbey, tons and tons of
history. People still remember back to how they always used to choose to shop
or go for a night out in Paisley instead of Glasgow decades ago.
For many reasons though, it’s become a rough, forgotten city.
Businesses have left, and few have moved in. Some of Scotland’s most deprived
areas are in Paisley now. In the evenings after businesses shut, it’s not
uncommon to see street fights or drunks and addicts roaming about. I don’t want
to be too dramatic in describing it. There are good parts and nice folks as
well. But as a friend said, “On the whole, it’s like a city but without any of
the good stuff.” Maybe you can see how Blend would stick out in a place li
Really, both Blend and Jubilee House as well as the networks
of people behind them have become a part of a larger deluge of God into
Paisley. There’s lots of folks working to bring light and hope to the place. Years
ago, God put a passion in people’s hearts from Erskine Church of the Nazarene
(ECN) to create a fresh, unique expression of Jesus in a dark place. Though
those people have skilfully led these exciting new projects, both are quickly
expanding beyond any one person.
They’re like the river of healing described in Ezekiel 47
& Revelation 22, flowing from God’s temple, unstoppable, beginning as a
trickle but growing deeper and wider the farther it flows. New life flourishes
wherever the river flows. Salty water is made pure and fresh, and the surrounding
landscape itself is healed.
Jubilee and Blend are both like that. Blend is sometimes
more obvious though. One of my favourite moments so far has been watching a
customer discover one of the many hidden details in the shop’s design and then sharing
it with the two customers next to him. Over the next 30 minutes, the three got
to know each other and left as friends. It was a real life expression of our
Blend Story – to “look for the rewards of curiosity” and to “learn the unforced
rhythms of grace.”
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| At our pre-opening night, we packed the shop with our closest family and friends and showed off our skills. Those who stuck around after cleaning got to enjoy the after party. Such a fun night! |
God’s movement into Paisley is bigger than any of us. It’s
working in ways that we don’t see, didn’t plan, couldn’t have imagined. We’re clinging
to the Spirit and opening ourselves up to the unknown. Obviously, it’s not
always this beautiful, perfect picture. Things don’t always work. Shifts can be
stressful. Jubilee House can get caught in the red tape. The balance of our lives
is totally uprooted as we pour our passion and energy into making this thing
move. God is sovereign though. When we find the end of the rope, He refuels us,
renews us, re-impassions us, and lifts us up.
The other day on the bus to my first shift in Blend, Paisley,
I was thinking over how Jubilee House seems to sometimes just drag on, and was
this really needed? Am I putting energy into something that I think is a part
of God’s plans when in reality it’s something we’ve just forced into being? At
that point, almost as if it were staged, a woman and her husband got on the
bus. Most everyone looked up at the couple but then quickly averted their eyes.
Her entire right eye was bashed in, black and blue, to the point where she
could barely see. She had five stitches along her cheekbone. There was only one
seat left, and as she went to sit, her husband started calling her names and
said that that was his seat. So she stood for the remainder of the bus journey.
This river of life, this river of healing is so absolutely necessary.
The daily mundane threatens to blind me from that. But then suddenly, God brings an
experience like that one on the bus to lift up my eyes and remind me that the
world is desperate for hope, and He is responding with overwhelming, generally absurd
love.
I love love love telling the story of Jubilee House to
non-Christians. It makes absolutely NO sense for a woman from the Isle of Mull
who has never attended ECN to just give a house away to be used for good. That
just sounds dumb, right? It isn’t dumb, though, when you’ve discovered God’s
river of life and have been so radically healed, changed, satisfied, and have
become a part of that river yourself.
Friends, can you join me in drowning Blend, Jubilee House,
Paisley and Scotland in some serious prayer?? Over the past several weeks, God
has been breaking my heart and opening my eyes even wider to the brokenness
around me. There’s just so much. But like a wave, He’s steadily washing over
life here, pouring His spirit into all. I’m praying for even more of that salty
to fresh water kind of restoration.
I hope you’ve witnessed or rediscovered God’s river of life
for yourself this summer. I’m still planning to come home this autumn to
support raise for another year in Scotland. So I will be contacting pastors and
missions leaders over the next several weeks about the possibility of sharing
with your church community. As an added bonus, I might be bringing one of my favourite Scottish lasses and Blend baristas with me!
Thanks for sharing in this journey with me!
Love,
Catie
PS Thank you so so much to my church family in Tishomingo
for all the cards, snacks and Oklahoma gear you sent with my mum. Half her suitcase was just gifts for me. I really
don’t know what words to use to say thank you enough. Love and miss you
all!
PSS I can't break tradition. I just can't. Unless it's a tradition that I don't like, but this isn't one of those. Here are pictures of Scotland being beautiful.
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| Some friends took me to Portpatrick which is exactly what you'd imagine a quaint Scottish fishing village to be like. We explored Dunsky Castle, built sometime in the 1100's and ate fish and chips on the beach. You can see Northern Ireland just across the sea. The sun shone all day. It was glorious. |
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| Portpatrick Cliffs |
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| Mum came to visit! This is our bus selfie to prove it. People always talk about how they have the best mum in the world. Gurl please! It's a very solid fact that my mum is actually the best. I'm blessed beyond what I deserve. |
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| We saw a lot of amazing places around Scotland. My favourite, though, was Dunkeld. |
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| Something ancient |
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| Trastavere |
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| Top of the Spanish Steps That sun!!! |
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| A ceiling & my head |
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| 1 of .....6 gelatos. All pizza, pasta or ice cream I've had since my Roman holiday has just been a place holder until I can get back to Rome for the real stuff. |
