On seeing old friends

Birmingham!

So, the first visit home happened last weekend, and it was fantastic! Short but packed full of fun times. And it reminds me how much I miss you all – it’s so easy to settle into conversation and into being yourself with all of you, and it’ll take some time to find a similar bunch of people here. Anyway.

Here’s some photographic highlights:

I got to watch the practise of this weekend’s Christmas play – it’s gonna be sooo good! Favourite parts – ‘No, no, no, NO, NO!’ and ‘Sebastian? I ate him too. And Nemo!’

Then dinner a la Mandy and Helen, a-MAZ-ing. Great food (bacon, chicken, cheese – what else could you want?!), great conversation (Chrissy, Rebecca, Helen, Mandy), awesome carol-singing times… I miss times like this.

Someone was becoming too interested in my food…

And then there were the baptisms on Sunday – the very things I came up to see!

All-singing, all-dancing.

Chrissy: “Do you like flowers?” E: “No, not really…”

Me and the Lord Jesus are working on the temper, Alan…

Check out the hooligans in the back…

Using the photo opportunity to do some shameless advertising…

Trying to blend into the manly group…

And then there was iD. One word: Nuts.

The weekend was rounded off with dinner one more, this time a la Marilyn. C’etait trés incroyable. (I have a feeling Chrissy will comment on my French, ‘avec les corrections’.)

Ross, you Crack Me Up.

So happy to have seen you all again. Hopefully, I’ll be back soon!!

First Day in London

Had a photoshoot, hair-makeup, etc. So fun!

This is how it turned out:

Well… these aren’t *the* photos, these are, obviously, done in Photobooth. Sorry

As my 21st year on Earth begins…

September 18th has rolled around again, and caused me to turn 21 – bringing a new era of adult life with it

My birthday also signalled the end of a very good summer – with a wedding, a missions trip, a family holiday, time in London and a house-move filling up the whole 3 months.

The new academic year also brought a lot of new challenges…

I’m psyched about all the new things happening this year – from new cell groups and a bigger role in youth group to dissertations, projects and graduation – but I am also unsettled in my heart about what to do. How can God best use me here in Birmingham, ie. what’s His plan here – and will He let me in on it? How will I know what to do? Am I just making plans because they sound good or because they are genuinely God-inspired and Christ-driven?

The end result of all these questions is a determination to learn who my God is; to fill my mind with knowledge of his Word, to learn how Jesus did things and where the heart of my Father is. What are the solid, theological foundations that should underly my actions towards everything I put my hand to? I’m yearning for something beyond self-help, better-yourself kind of teaching; I want the Word – some solid, theological teaching that provides frameworks upon which I can hang the answers to my questions.

I’m also very much focusing on the here and now because currently I have no specific pull towards anything once I graduate. But, now that I’ve written all of this, I’m beginning to realise that it’s possible God is building this thirst for knowledge in my heart in preparation for what’s to come; in fact, it has been in my prayers for some time to get to know him more and it’s crazy how it’s coming to fruition now. He works in mysterious ways, does he not?

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Out of the three camera batteries I have, one is working, one thinks it is fully charged after 2 minutes, and the last one doesn’t even register in my charger. So I’ve lost 2 handy batteries in 2 months. Shucks.

Israel in Pictures

Golan Heights, Israel.

Student Beach, Haifa, Israel

Sea of Galilee

Everything I Can Think to Write About..

There’s something hugely satisfying about going through a to-do list and being able to tick everything off, one by one. For me there was double the joy in that I wrote it on a sticky note and got to crunch it up and throw it away as well.

I feel that I’ve had the most productive morning ever.

Well, I say morning, but it’s 12.40 now and I started at 12, however apart from breakfast it was the first thing I’ve done since I got up. (Which was 10. I like slow mornings!)

One of the things I always get behind on are e-mails. In gmail there’s this brilliant ’star-ing’ method where you can put a little star next to an email (I suppose simliar to ‘flagging’ an email, but much cuter) and I have a habit of starring an email with the aim of replying to it later.

However, later comes and goes and it gets to the point where my eventual reply would always begin with a mass of apologies and excuses for my extremely bad time management.

Perhaps you’ve received one of those, to which my deepest regrets I put forth:

My bad.

But today was good, I managed to send out Christmas present thankyou’s (not so bad in that the one gift I only received a week ago…!) and sorted out MEC things. MEC is looking AWESOME folks, start signing up now!

I had the MEC cheque on my desk for a couple of days but just had to throw it away because of a massive tea ring stain on the bottom half. I’ve lost the form as well. I think it accidently ended up in the paper recycling last Sunday.

Which brings me to another thing!

Someone STOLE our green recycling bin! It was leaning in this handy hole in our house by our door, so someone had to walk right up our path, past our front door, pick it up and walk all the way back – not like it could have been ‘mistakenly’ thought to be theirs…! Marilyn has a conspiracy theory and thinks the government steals them back so we have to pay for replacements.

However replacements are free according to the website. And so we should be getting a new one within two weeks! For now, all our glass and stuff are stacked up in our house..

Other happenings – the lightbulb fixtures in our kitchen and bathroom have broken so that they can’t hold the bulbs anymore, so we’re having a great time cooking in the dark and showering by flashlight. Joy…