Knowledge recently aquired

• Chalet-hotels in the French Alps lend themselves more to blogging than semi-detached houses in Birmingham suburbs
  
• A candle, plastic table cloth and washing line in a garden at night can make great 20th birthday entertainment


• Using too many visual aids when telling a Bible story at children's club makes the children think Jesus came to give us glitter in our lives
  
• Criccieth has a castle that was built long before Prince John (the phoney king of England) came into power and has stood for long after


• Hard floors and sleeping bags aren't the best recipe for comfort
  
• The Bible says that our evangelism can be made effective by letting people see the good things that are in us in Jesus Christ
  
• The university I will be going to in September has only 4 rooms with on-suite bathrooms in their halls of residence!
  
• Toddlers with colds and the pre-terrible twos don't like watching telly, playing with plasticine, drawing, reading, walking, or doing anything you're not.
  
• Leaving a car's dipped head lights on over night will drain the battery to deader than a dodo, mean you have to wake you parents up early in the morning and borrow your mum's car for work


• The secret (or not so secret, seeing as it's written in the most widely published and sold book in history) to greatness.
  
  

It may be possible that very, very few things in this blog are relevant to anything and least of all relevant to you... but one thing I mentioned will be a matter of eternal life or death to each and every one of you that reads. To explain this I will put aside my sarcasm and tell you with utmost sincerity, with all of my heart, that building your life on faith in Jesus Christ is the only way you can know any greatness. In fact - turning away from your sin, asking Jesus to forgive you, and beginning to live a new life in Him is the only way of avoiding total failure and destruction. Taking up my more whimsical side again, everything else you read could be a complete waste of your good time.

Let me tell you how I came about acquiring such useful knowledge as listed above.

Candles, plastic table cloths and washing lines in a garden at night need to be viewed through high-spirits. My plan for getting high spirited is this:

1) At 7.30am on the morning of your birthday drive to Guildford, take a good friend in the car with you - I took my sister Jo.

2) Arrange to meet and stay over with some good friends - I invited myself to JoR and Tim's, then we gate crashed on their gran and stayed at her house.

3) Make a good, sensible plan for what you're going to do for the day, then don't do any of it.

4) Instead of following the plan, go to a park in bright sunshine and find a nice shady place to stand and chat with friends while watching JoR run an 8km 'race for life' in the sweltering heat; eat ice creams afterwards.

5) Hire some boats and go rowing on a river, have a water fight and end up looking like you didn't get to the toilet on time by sitting on a wet seat when you swap seats to let someone else row. Make sure you nearly crash into several people who are trying to have a sophisticated afternoon on the water and make them almost spill their nice sparkling white wine.

6) Take some of your friends to buy a barbeque and things to cook on it, while your other friends stay at home (unbeknownst to you) and make you an awesome birthday cake

7) Have a barbeque - set someone on guard to watch out for when paper plates and plastic wrappers catch fire and get some one highly qualified and experienced in explosives to throw gun powder on the barbeque - and yes, we actually did that!

8) Bring out the cake! Make sure you do this in secret, while the birthday girl is sitting there dumbly with her eyes closed being told she's learning to play a new game. Play a random selection of beepy tunes from a cake slice to disguise the sound of lighting candles.

9) Play the 'yes, no' game and wink murder until it gets too dark to see. Then light the candle...

10) Finally: hang the plastic table cloth up on the washing line, put the candle behind it and make shadows with your hands!

Remember to: Laugh A LOT, and don't drink any alcohol otherwise you won't remember it!

Having re-committed myself to the church and work here at home I've been getting more and more involved in the children's club. I've begun to teach the children's Bible lessons.

I had the subject of the parable of the farmer who built the barns and said 'eat, drink and take ease' without acknowledging God, then his life was taken from him and he had nothing to show for his earthly efforts. I wanted to get the children to see that our lives mustn't be filled with lots of different things to get to Heaven, only changed by believing in Jesus.
I took a jug to symbolise our lives, water to symbolise time, and small things/toys relevant to what we have in our lives. I showed them how we can fill our lives with so many things (just like the farmer did in the parable) by putting in the water and the toys; then I showed that when we die our things make no difference, they stay behind, by tipping the water away and filtering out the toys; then I showed that Jesus can make a real difference to our lives and he comes with us when we die and takes us to heaven by refilling the jug and putting in food dye and glitter to the water. When I asked afterwards 'who can make a difference in our lives?' the children said 'glitter' and when I asked 'what can we take with us when we die?' the children said 'red food colouring'. I've made myself a guideline for future lessons: use 3 resources or less, preferably flat and dry!

Perhaps my lesson was a bit too old for them. It's easy to over estimate their understanding because of what they talk about and the attitude they have; when all they're doing is regurgitating what they've seen around them and don’t really understand it.

On a more positive note, the week before my disappointing lesson I had a lovely time with the children at the club. They were happy and unusually attentive, we played games and they kept the rules, we had the lesson and they listened, we had a quiz and they knew the answers - I couldn't believe it was 7 o'clock when the time came for them to go home, I felt like I could've stayed and played with them for another hour.

Last week we went on holiday to Cricceth in North Wales. We being Mum, Alan, Jo, Nic, Beth, Jon, myself and Pippa the dog. It began on Friday after work, I drove to a camp site where Jon, Beth, Nic and Pippa had already set up camp - we had a fun evening. We went for a walk and played the card game 'spoons' with forks (for anyone who's played spoons you'll know how painful that can be), and other games. On Saturday we had an early morning, midge ridden, cooked breakfast. Then drove on to Lake Bala where we met mum, Alan and Jo; had a picnic and drove on to Cricceth - where we discovered the castle right outside our cottage window.
The drive to Cricceth wasn't your average drive. Almost an hour of this:

A single lane thorough Welsh country side

This is a two way road of course

At least 5 gates to go through

We had a lovely holiday, visited a small Welsh church, went to the beach, sun bathed, went in the sea, played tennis on the beach, we went on a steam train, visited family in Wales, went walking, went to Cricceth castle, had one last picnic on the beach and then drove to Milnrow in Manchester.

It was at Milnrow that I learnt about hard floors and sleeping bags for two nights; I also learnt of effective evangelism, and more of the secret of greatness. Me, Jo and Nic had a blessed weekend of teaching, fellowship and fun at the teens and twenties home-ed weekend.
We had a series of talks and seminars based on 'stepping stones to greatness'. Through Romans 11 v36 we saw how greatness can only be achieved through Jesus Christ and not through the world's philosophies. Greatness comes through winning our spiritual battle, all things must be Of Him, Through Him, To/For Him, to His glory alone. Giving our entire lives as sacrifice is the only logical, intelligent, understandable and sensible service in response the fact that all things are Christ's. Presenting ourselves as a sacrifice - we must be Holy and acceptable, giving of our best, giving willingly, giving as worship to Him, it must cost us.
Evangelism should be done because we desire fellowship with the people we share our faith with, because we have communion with the Father; our greatness is communal.
On Sunday we saw, through Gideon (Judges 6), how God works with little of what's ours so that He can receive the glory and He sends us out in the strength we have: Judges 6v14, not in the strength of men who've gone before us, not in the strength of our teachers or leaders - but in 'this might of yours.' The might that God gives to us. We saw in Philemon how Paul, with 15 persuasive reasons, tells Christians that reconciliation and forgiveness of each other is not an option; this reconciliation and forgiveness makes our evangelism effective by letting other people see it and that we have it in Christ.

These are the reasons we have to forgive and reconcile (all taken from Philemon):

History v7: based on being good in the past, you should have a good disposition

Authority v8: The appostle tells us to

Love v9a: The apostle apeals to us in love

Humility v9b: Makes us consider tenderness towards the one needing to be reconciled

Relationship with the one to be reconciled v10: We are brothers/sisters in Christ

Profit v11: Forgiveness makes people more motivated

Affection v12: We know God has affection for His people, can we offend Him by not forgiving them

Willingness v13b&14: Good deeds are most acceptable and joyful when done willingly

God's sovreignty v15: puts things into perspective, God knew we'd need to forgive eachother

Status v16: Being a brother/sister in Christ makes no one 'unforgiveable'

Equality v17: Chrisitans are all equal in the sight of God.

Christlikeness v18: Jesus took our sins on Himslef and forgave us, reconciling us to God

Grace v19b: As Christians we don't assert the 'rights' we have over eachother because we're all under grace

Comfort v20: the church should be an oasis and do things that rejoice one another

Expectation v21: expect the best from eachother and do the best ourselves.

Over the weekend we also went on two walks (one slightly wetter than the other), sang plenty of hymns around the piano, ate really good food, played the 'just a minute' game, played dodge ball, and enjoyed talking with other Christian young people.

When I drove back from Manchester, I read all my important letters and found that the university I'll be going to in September only has 4 rooms with en-suite bathrooms in their halls of residence. It's just as well that the university's in Birmingham, so I can stay at home. For those of you I'd told 'I'm not going to university' ...err; well; now I am. After thought, prayer, and being turned down for too many jobs because of a lack of community experience, I decided that a good use of my time would be to study a community/ socially based course at university that will direct my career into care for families and children.

Going back to work has introduced me to the pre-terrible two's - trust me, the tantrums don't start at two years old! A very uncooperative, ill, hungry, clingy toddler makes cooking dinner feel more like a juggling act. Jo helpfully suggested I become a clown rather than a nanny, seeing as I have so much experience at juggling.

After driving home in the rain on Monday night, I had my car's dipped head lights (or side lights) on. Being so tired after arriving back from Manchester so late on Sunday and having so much to do because of being on holiday last week - my mind was on other things when I got out of the car and I did the dreaded thing and left my lights on. When my car ignition didn't even turn over when I tried to start it this morning, I had to get mum out of bed to borrow her jump leads, which didn't work because I really had killed the battery, and I had to borrow her car instead so that I wouldn't be too late for work.

Now you're officially up to date.
('owzat Nat? ;o)