EZ36

This article was originally published in Edition (6) of Prayer Magazine,  Apr-Jun 2006.

Dai Hankey is team leader of the EZ36 project on the St. Mellons estate in Cardiff.

The Zone caught up with Dai and asked him to tell us more.

The Zone: What exactly is EZ36?

Dai: EZ36 is inspired by Ezekiel chapter 36 and is simply a bunch of Christian young people who have moved onto the estate and want to share the message of Jesus through what we say and what we do.

The Zone: How long have you been there?

Dai: I moved onto the estate in November of 2001 with 2 other guys and now there are twelve of us living there.

The Zone: You couldn’t really do something like that without praying!

Dai: Absolutely! Prayer was a huge, huge factor in how EZ36 came about. The church on the estate had been praying for a worker to move in, and God intervened.

The church is a Pentecostal one, but my church background was very different indeed. It’s a miracle in itself that I ended up working alongside them.

The Zone: So how did that happen?

Dai: I got to know the church leader, Pastor Paul, and every Friday for a year we would walk around the estate together and pray for it. That gave me a real passion for the place and a real respect and friendship with Pastor Paul. After a while, other people started to join us on these Friday morning prayer walks- some of them are now part of EZ36, and the fact that we have a team of 12 in place is another answer to prayer.

The Zone: Have your prayers always been answered?

Dai: Yes, but not always in the way we expected. Before I moved onto the estate I was praying to God and asking him for a particular house that I had my heart set on.

I got beaten to it and had to move into a different house. But on the very day I moved into the different house, the first house I saw came on the market and was bought by a member of the church. The place had been done  up and been made more secure, and now over 4 years later I’m married and living in that first house!

The Zone: We’ve heard you own a double-decker bus?

Dai: Not exactly- we started a project called Urban Sanctuary which is a double-decker bus fitted out as a youth centre. The vision is for it to travel all over Cardiff, not just St. Mellons. We fundraised for it and paid for it in less than 6 months, and more often than not it’s the one interesting and positive thing that kids can do in their evenings.

The Zone: Have you had any discouragement?

Dai: Plenty! Most of our houses have been broken into a few times, our cars have been vandalised and visitors vehicles have been wrecked. Yet strangely, for an estate with loads of violence none of us has been physically harmed. We believe God is really protecting us because of our obedience to him.

The Zone: Can you give our readers some helpful prayer advice?

Dai: I’d love to…

Dai’s Top Three Prayer Tips

1. God loves to hear our voice, so we need to speak out to him. Even if all we’ve got is a shopping list of prayer items then at least we are saying to the Lord that we can’t cope and that we need his help with all this stuff. That gives Him all the glory.

2. Don’t be discouraged if prayers aren’t answered immediately. Some times our prayers will be answered as quickly as going too a drive-through McDonalds but other times it will be like a diamond is being formed deep underground- and that takes time.

3. Prayer is the engine! It’s the heart of all we do with Jesus, and if you’re not praying then don’t expect anything to happen.

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