Graduate News!

We will be catching up with some of our past graduates to find out what they've been up to and where life after Academy has taken them!

This month we bring you Academy 2 Graduate Graham O'Leary from South Woodford in Essex.

Well it’s been such a long time since academy 2 yet the memories are still fresh for so many things that happened there. I don’t know about you guys but I miss those days!

The O’Leary’s as a family have had an amazing journey over the last 3 years with plenty of highs, loads of lows, and loads of everyday normal humdrum stuff, as we all have, but what a journey!

As I look back I can see God’s mighty hand at work in our lives and thank Him for bringing us through it all.

September 2005 saw me being appointed as Worship Pastor of our church which was a great honour and blessing but also a real challenge too! The stuff we learned at the academy was liquid gold and enabled me to lay some strong foundations for our team which we built on and are still building on today. We now have a team of eight including my good friend Neville Bluck who has become our music director and things have just spiralled and grown as we have put structure and controls in place to minimise the effort but maximise the blessing upon us. Saying that what with new ways of practicing, chord chart making, song learning, meeting and planning sessions it has seemed a lot harder but now we are into the flow things are coming together nicely, and God is certainly in the details and as a church we are experiencing a new and fresh excitement and expectancy in worship. God is so good and I thank him for the principles and practices we learned at the Academy.

In early 2006 we felt as a family that we should sell our house in Dagenham and move to Woodford to be near the church and the bridge community venue where we worked (The community arm of our church) so with fear, prayer and trepidation we sold our house, moved to rented accommodation, in 3 days got thrown out and then lived at the bridge, hotel and my parents for a few weeks and wondered what was going on! However God made a way and we are in a better house, a better location and are now settled right where He wants us to be! It’s great. Steph gave up work and became self employed and cut her hours down yet we have seen God just provide all we need and we seem to be living better than ever now which is awesome.

Steph has started ‘the bridge nurse’ health initiative and works 1 day a week on a deprived estate offering health care and advice etc. She is going to the house of commons soon to give a presentation on a health bus with cookery school on board for the community, and this is an exciting time as it’s going cost well over £160,000 to get up and running! God is bigger than eh?

My son James went away form God, spent a load of money, got involved with a non Christian girl and had two years of rebellion, but praise God he bought the prodigal home and he is now living for God with all he has!

We are so excited about what God is doing in Woodford. Our church is growing and seeing grace and favour with all areas from local MP’s to other organisations who want to partner with us in our community. We are going as a worship team to dB Studios to record our first song for our church album. I am busy writing and singing my songs in church and some are being sung as far abroad as North America! Amazing!

Life is not all roses and struggles and trials come but we have a foundation, the solid rock to stand on and whenever someone pulls the rug out from underneath us, we still are standing on the solid rock underneath.

Blessings to all academy students, See you one day eh?

Graham, Steph and family.