oops, a little slack in blogging again.

BUT tomorrow Tom (who has been working really really hard) and i are off to Dubai for a week! Yippee!

Tom's parents live and work out there and after many years of having done so they are about to retire to Portugal (in a lovely house in th emiddle fo orange tree orchards. The smell is amazing!). So we thought a trip out to see them before they leave was necessary, plus i've never been to the middle east before and wanted to go.

So sun here we come!

Last night we had fun at housegroup. It was my turn to lead the worship section - he he he!

I explained very briefly about my thoughts on worship (a la we/us songs and the need for community-reflecting songs to be sung when we are coming together as a community rather than i songs and also having correct theology in songs)

Then at the start we read out psalm 136 (give thatnks to the lord fo rhe is good; his love endures forever) in pairs to each other, with one half reading the give thanks bits and the other reading the his love endures bits. It was like we were speaking truth over each other as it was straight out of scripture, we were hearing God's word being read, which is always good but then also reading it - Godron Fee would approve!, and then we were giving glory to God all at once!

Then there was a talk bit (fantastic job done by angela)

And then at the end we then sung a kind of negro spiritual song, accapella, with harmonies and improvisations etc so that with everyone praising God themselves in little sections, when it came together as a whole, it made something more than the individuals had and something that i think was very beautiful to the Lord.

Very cool : )

Since i wrote that blogspot, (04:12:48pm) i have been kind of had some friendships which i'd forgotten about put in my face and now i need to stand down a bit from my previous statements. Although they are still mainly true, i think i probably need to acknowledge that 1. a year isn't a very long time 2. that effort is needed on both sides to make friendships work.

So easy to fall into despondant introspective me!

Thankfully my God always pulls me out. Hooray for Him!

I feel i want to blog, but can't really think of what to put down!

i've been thinking a bit about friendships recently and what makes someone an aquaintance, and then what makes an aquaintance a friend. I feel a bit strange here in bristol in this world of lots of people knowing who i am from my job, a few knowing me better and not so many really knowing me deeply. It's hard to know which acquaintances to try and pursue and grow into becoming friendships and then which friendships to grow too. I've been here for a year now and i still feel such a newbie and yet people say to me that i seem part of the woodwork. What to do.

That's not meant to sound all doom and gloom. just some thoughts...

I wonder if the friendship of the type Paul had with the Philippians exist in our society? We were learning about them in Bournemouth - how they were almost contractual, but a contract whereby the other party would do anything as a natural par for their life for the other - ie take in their kids if they died, give them money, support them in every way possible. I guess a bit like the OT covenants.

That would be kind of daunting but amazing i think.

Nothing very exciting has happened today, just a nice normal day. The good thing is though that i had a pretty productive day doing all those things i'd been putting off doing because they seemed to be too much of a mammoth task. When i got round to them they weren't actually too bad at all! I'm sure there's a talk somewhere in there...

Last night Tom and I went out for our weekly 'date night', which we have now restarted having had a bit of a break whilst getting married and settled into our house. Having thought we'd try this new Indian place called 'Oh Calcutta', it turned out to not look too great when we got there and so we went to a tried and tested place up the road. Sadly i fear it wasn't very good at all! Oh well. I am in desperate search of this indian dish that Tom had once which was like having curried coconut with some chicken in it - really sweet and mild. All the coconut ones i've tried recently have failed to stand up to the tests.

Someone bashed into our car the other day. Well, more scraped along the side of it, taking out the wing mirror, denting the back section a little bit and scraping down to the metal in some sections. This must the be the most unlucky car purchase i've ever made. next time i'm going to muster up HUGE amounts of faith and pray for all the money for a way better car. At the moment i'm mustering up faith for paying for repairs!

Ho Hum!

OH NO! I have fallen into that blogger wilderness - the one caused by not having blogged for a while and then realising there's too many things that have happened and you don't know where to start and so you don't bother!

But i'm going to try and fight against it.

So last week we went to Bournemouth for the annual gathering of leaders within the vineyard 'movement'. Aside from seeing lots of people i hadn't seen for a while (always a joy and a feeling of horror!) we had an incredible time lisstening to the wonderful Gordon Fee. He spent his time talking us through Philippians in a way i've never encountered before; really opening up the bible for us and showing us how to read it PROPERLY.

Then i had a fun weekend out with some girls on saturday while Tom was on a stag thing. We went along to Boudakan and had nice food AFTER A 1.25 HOUR WAIT! In the end my great friend ange politely complained to the manager and he clevely gave us the whole dinner free. not bad! So to make up for not having spent money on that i went along with some friends to Dynasty, the most amazing chinese place int he world with a bunch of people and scoffed lots.

Then yesterday we had a staff outing to see the Passion fo the Christ - Mr Gibson's film. I closed my eyes through 1/3 of it as it was too disgusting for words, then for 1/3 i was totally detached from it, not able to link it to being the Jesus of the bible at all so it became instead a horror movie, then the rest of it i was actually quite profoundly touched - mainly in the area of realising what actually happened. I'm trying to think how best to explain that. it didn't make me feel bad for it, like sometimes people try and say oh jesus did THIS for you, so repent. More it brought up a guiltless thankfulness and profound sadness at the same time. Doing what happened to jesus is a horrific thing to happen to anyone. How he could have endured all the flogging etc to have made it to the corss in the first palce is beyond me.

I found the making of the turin shroud quite a comical section along with jesus making the first table and chairs with high legs in the world. What was that about??!!

Last night i fell asleep at housegroup, woken up by tom putting his hand over my mouth during prayer time after i'd snored. oops. I think it was a combination of last week's conference (much too many late nights, pre-dinner and after dinner drinks), crazy weekend, tom being a bit ill an dgoing out ont eh One25 night van on Tuesday. We didn't get done until 12pm and so i didn't sleep until 12.45 and that with crazy dreams about the pitiful girls we met that night!

I think that sums everything up! here's to blogging more regularly : )