Reality Bites

The last week or so has been weird and busy.

Work's been a strange place and things have been very difficult for a number of people. I attended the funeral of a man in our church who was killed along with his 3 year old grand-daughter in a car accident a few weeks ago. On Friday we found out that Christina's grandmother had died. On Friday night we had a divisonal youth event which was poorly attended but really great to be part of. On Saturday Christina's dad flew in from Denmark and I was leading a session at a youth retreat in Northmpton, it was a great afternoon so a big thanks to the rinkers for making us feel welcome. Saturday evening we spent with Andy Hill celebrating his 30th Birthday and Sunday was a day for our church to look at it's kids work meaning an all day meeting at the hall for Christina. This coupled with the fact that I was in Romford leading a youth alpha session (quick mention of the great job the youth leaders are doing there in making horrible room look and feel really good for their young people) meant I didn't see Chris all day until Sunday night when we went to Mashbury for a Bonfire and some pizza.

And so a few days and lots of stuff floating around my head. But I'm grateful for every experience and for our friends who look after us and my wife who in the midst of it all is a constant source of love and encouragement to me.

Monday night, I swam 800metres at the gym then Straight Ahead practise, I was conducting which was a weird throwback but a lot of fun.

Tuesday night, I swam another 800 metres then had some guys from church round to discuss their ideas for a 24hours prayer vigil for stop the traffik which was really encouraging

Today, lunch with Mike McC, then a meeting at DHQ, then our first 40 days of purpose small group at our house and I haven't hoovered yet this week!!!! Christina's mum arrives tonight for the funeral on Friday.

p.s. Our DHQ team, they're going through lots right now and they're doing it with love and grace and patience like I've never seen especially Mick & Lyn our leaders.

p.s.s. Christina and her family as they say goodbye this week to Kath an amazing Godly woman who was loved by everyone she met and who will forever be known to me as Grandma Max.

Back to reality.....without Rick Waller or Ricardo

So TYB finished on Friday and I had an amazing week!!

The young people were really responsive and great fun to be with. The staff were a great team of dedicated people who it was great to chat with and Friday evenings concert went really well with both the band and choir doing really well and more than one person commented on the passion that these young people were clearly displaying in their music. God is really good and I learnt loads from this week.

After the concert on Friday Christinagot the train to meet me and we drove over to Devon to spend some time woth our friends and their new baby (not quite sure about me at first but by Sunday I was definitely the favourite) on their farm. We had a great weekend with them all and it was lovely to rest and relax in their beautiful surroundings. On Saturday I was asked if I'd like to 'play on the quad' (they're very aware of my inability to perform farm based tasks) And so out I went on the quad around their fields and had a great time looking around and seeing all their farm stuff. At one point I stopped the engine, put it in park and just sat and looked around and it was amazing!! The quietness was amazing, the view sublime and in that moment I just sat, rested and prayed and it was incredible!!

We drove back to Chelmsford yesterday to be at church for last night's service in which 40 days of purpose was being launched it was a great service and the next 6 or 7 weeks are going to be very exciting and are going to raise lots of questions for our church and us as individuals.

This week, work, back to swimming, event on Friday night, birthday do on Saturday night for Mr Hill, hopefully seeing Christina's grandma in hospital and more

Hello from the sunshine coast

This week I'm in Bournemouth at TYB which is the Territorial Youth Band which is a week long course from brass musicians aged 12-18 from The Salvation Army.

I came here 3 years ago and had a great time with the team and students here and this year have returned as "Spiritual Director" this basically means I do the Bible studies and morning and evening prayers. I'm also the percussion tutor and this is reminding me of just how rusty I really am!!

I was praying in late 2006 and realy felt God speaking to me about the story of Daniel, this was handy because I already had some material from Spring Harvest 2005 and really enjoyed teaching it then. However I soon discovered that my material had been lost in the great laptop disaster of late 2005 and I only had a large study guide and some DVD video diary left. This has meant that for the last month I've been re-reading, and re-watching and even re-listening to material from 2005 to try and gain some inspiration for this week's teaching.

What I've discovered is that I'm a very different person to 2005 and that's exciting. I'm approaching this week's teaching in a very different way, TYB and Spring Harvest are vastly different so this has been necessary in many ways, but also I'm a different person and my grasp of this book of the Bible has changed. This has meant that I've been able to really be refreshed as I've been preparing for this week. So each day we're using the Spring Harvest themes but I'm teaching them in new ways for me which is great!!

Well it's now day 3 and yesterday we looked at the idea of the cahracters in Daniel being taken to Bablyon and what that might have felt like and how we can learn from that experience.

This morning we looked at prophecy. I've been petrified about this session for quite a while now, my denomination is not very vocal about prophecy. In fact in some settings I've heard it said by people that The Salvation Army doesn' t believe in prophecy (which isn't true by the way!!) Well this session has been concerning me for ages and I've been trying to come up with ways of presenting prophecy to this group of young people. Then last night I got chatting to a guy from the course and he asked me how to know when God is talking to you about yourself and others. I almost fell off my chair!! Here I was trying to convince myself that this was the right thing to be even attempting to teach and the guys here were miles ahead of me!!

This morning seemed to go well and there was a good response from people about the whole thing and it certainly raised questions which is great.

I'm humbled by the fact that I'm here this week and humbled that God is speaking into my life through it and I'm learning a lot from being here.

Lesson 1 - I am no longer a 'good' percussionist (if I ever was)

A dying art

So the weather's pretty hardcore today


And so all the news this morning has been dominated by scenes of reporters in train stations and by roads, all wrapped up warm. The BBC had a reporter at Paddington station all morning who as the morning has progressed has began to go blue on the face, no joke, she's slowly going blue in front of an audience of millons!!

However that's not my point. Throughout this coverage, this lady has been in the middle of a busy london station with lots of commuters wandering backwards and forwards behind her. Now in the good old days a few young whippersnappers would have got behind this reporter and done a few 'yeows' or bunny ears, now the more impish youths would have done a rude gesture or two and this was always unhelpful to the cause, but the overall message would have been lots of jumping and thumbs up and loud noise to entertain the nation.

Today was another story!! People walking past politely, perhaps a cheeky glance at the camera from time to time but on the whole there was a bizarre reverence for the camera crew invading their station!!

And so I urge, bring back the good old days when newsreaders had to be ready to come back to studio at any time because of a group of young scamps doing the macarena behind the latest outside broadcast!!

This guy's keeping the dream alive

WARNING!! This boy could be a genius!!!!

Big congratulations to my little brother Adam who, on Saturday, discovered that he has got a grade 'A' in his 11+ transfer test. This means he will be the 4th member of our family to attend Regent House School. We're all massively proud of him!!