I have heard God saying to me "This is the way, walk in it"...

Back from the brink...

2010-01-29T12:43:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we walk so close to the edge don't we? From the day children are born we can see them pushing the boudaries, testing what can and can't be done. A two year old jumping off the back of the settee is finding out how far they can fall without hurting themselves, a five year old looking around cautiously as they snatch a toy from their friend's hand finding out what the consequences of malice will be, a 16 year old finding out how drunk they can get before they damage themselves, a 20 year old finding out how many illegal activities they can get involved in before anyone cares, an 80 year old telling stories from their past finding out how many times they can offer wise advice before they're shipped off to a nursing home.
Do we have to go to the edge before we learn that it can't be done? By modern standards you'd think there was no other way than falling straight off the cliff and hoping to survive the fall, perhaps a random do gooder or a government agency somewhere on the way to break your fall.
Psychology likes to call this 'availability heuristic' - we make judgements according to what we know, and obviously don't consider the information we don't know.
Someone recently told me that they thought that the 'availability heuristic' of Biblical writers was so limited that, had they written the Bible in the 21st century they would have experienced the benefits of plurality , polytheism and would have seen science disprove God and would subsequentley not have written the parts of the Bible that point to one true God (that would be the WHOLE Bible).
I have two points here.
1) considering their availability heuristic was so limited; no telescopes, no ultrasound scans, no well developed theories of psychology - they got A LOT right.
Isaiah 40:22 says God sits upon the circle of the earth. This was when people thought the world was flat.
Job 26:7 God hangs the earth on nothing. This was before they'd gone beyond the atmosphere and discovered the lower levels of gravity in space.
Ecclesiastes 1:7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. This was before they'd worked out the water cycle.
Ecclesiastes 1:6 The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. Wind circuits, this was before the Met Office!
I could go on and on... read the Bible for yourself to find out more.
2) Who's to say our availability heurisitc is complete? Maybe we've digressed in our understanding or taken the wrong direction with our investigations. Maybe one day the one true God of the Bible will come down from Heaven to judge people according to His righteous law and our availability heuristic will explode with information! We will suddenly realise that we were not taking into account our confirmation bias (human beings' natural tendency to think that their own opinions are right and only notice information that confirms their opinion.).

There is an incredible thing that can save us from that terrifying fall over the brink: it's called trust and it goes beyond our own knowledge.
For the 2 year old about to jump off the settee, they should be able to trust the adult that tells them 'don't do that, you could hurt yourself'
For the 5 year old snatching their friend's toy, they should be able to trust that they will receive reasonable consequences for their bad behaviour.
For the 16 year old going drinking they should be able to trust people older and wiser when they say the risks aren't worth the brief moments of numbness from life's pain.
For the 20 year old who's involved in criminal activity, they should be able to trust that someone cares about the honesty and integrity of their character.
For the 80 year old they should be able to trust that their life's experiences will be valued by future generations.
Would this kind of trust not hold everyone more accountable for their actions? Would this kind of trust not keep so many people from toppling over the brink of self destruction? Wouldn't this remove the pressure from the fragile, hurting person who's wondering if anyone would miss them if they weren't around any more?

For someone hurting, feeling rejected, simply being able to trust that someone would ache if they died - could it keep them from going over the edge from where they can't return.

And who can they trust?

The first and MOST important trust is in God Himself. Trusting that His word is true, trusting that He gave Himself entirely out of love for you, trusting that He will give your reasonable consequences for your behaviour according to His holy standards.

But it doesn't stop there. Where are God's ambassadors? The people who God speaks through, the signposts to Christ. Can you be trusted?
If your children, your friends, your family can trust you; you could be the one to reassure them and bring them back from the edge of unbelief - when they're about to stop believing that there's justice in the world, that they're worth anything, that good decisions are worth making.
Does your yes mean yes, and your no mean no?
Do you speak the truth?
Do you go out of your way to prove that you're trust worthy?
In the little things and the big things. Day by day, the hard work of building up trust by stopping yourself from making momentary promises, carrying out a difficult commitment, writing the letter you said you'd write, visiting the person you said you'd visit, giving your child time out for as long as you said you would, giving your child the attention you promised you'd give them when you'd finished being busy; it might pay off one day.
One day when you have to tell some one that life's worth living, would they be able to trust you?

The Jeepney and the Cockroach

2009-08-05T03:07:00.000-07:00

Philippines 10.7.09

A light skinned girl stood under a blue umbrella, her soaked shoes looked like they'd once been pretty and flowery - now they were brown and slimy. The rain poured, it had lightened from the torrential downpour 5 minutes ago and the humidity was creeping up.

The girl and a Filippino companion hovered around the faded pink line on the ground, stepping backwards and forwards as they looked for a jeepney in the passing traffic or avoided being splashed by the cars as they drove through the flood swelling from the drains.

Was it just her natural expression, or did she look anxious? She'd been in Jeepneys before, the bumpy, noisy, cramped, erratic journey would not be new for her - but perhaps the heavy holdall she was carrying was giving her cause for concern. In the Philippines you don't ask questions like, 'how will I get this onto a jeepney at the same time as closing my umbrella, climbing up the step, and squatting as I walk along the narrow aisle bumping into people's knees?'

Maybe it was the calling in tagalog and waving coming from the drivers of passing Jeepneys that they didn't want to take - as if shouting louder is going to make the passengers want to change the direction of their journey. The curious stares of by passers couldn't be ignored, a forgeiner waiting for a jeepney!? The looks of people nearby, not at the girl, but at her holdall - what treasures would a Westerner carry in an overnight bag, possibly worth more than their weeks wages. Perhaps, all in all, there was just cause for her to be anxious, in which case there was a strange sense of confidence as she headed toward a moving jeepney, the co-driver gesturing madly as the Filippino companion indicated that two wanted to travel.

The dripping umbrella and the holdall bashed, brushed and wetted the legs and feet of the people who were already on the jeepney, until she came to a space just behind the driver. There they were, on their way to Masinag on a jeepney bound for Gogeo.

The vehicle's music pulsed through everything, the diesel engine chugged along with jolting stop, starts. The driver seemingly unaware that two vehicles couldn't occupy the same physical space, he wove in and out of lanes, halting at the very last second, millimetres from the door of a lorry or bonnet of a car or legs of a person. The co-driver apparently unaware that two people couldn't occupy the same physical space as he held out his sign indicating 'Cogeo', emphatically yelling in tagalog and indicating with a grubby finger that there was room for one more.

The rain continued to belt down, the overcrowded vehicle with covered windows was like a melting pot. The flooded roads and swelling drains, puffing diesel engines, the driver's cigarette filled with who-knows-what, the hot and sticky bodies all conspired to make an offensive smell - making the girl remember the polluted smell of her English home city with longing, as if it were pure fresh air compared to the thick grimy air of Manila.

The driver turned the wheel manically, as he did so the jeepney moved fractionally, the play in the steering made the girl look around to observe other faults in the vehicle - perhaps this was unwise. The roughly welded corners, badly fitted mirror, a tattered seat belt hung across the driver's open doorway - a safety precaution? Unlikely.

The cold bucket of water she'd tipped over herself as a shower this morning seemed a distant memory. From inside the jeepney the world felt oddly abstract. Where did the driver sleep last night? Cardboard on the street, or something more substantial, a shack made with tarpaulin? Was the co-driver thinking of how he would feed his children tonight as he called for one more person to hang in the back doorway of the jeepney?

The school boys sleeping through the vibrating din and sudden stops; compared to the English school children on the spacious, quiet, fuel efficient English buses - she never thought she'd consider a bus spacious or quiet, but somehow every thing changed from inside the jeepney. Health and wealth seemed less tangible. Life existed by the second, getting past the next car, picking up the next passenger; along with everyone else she was surviving the journey, there was little about it to enjoy.

Until Masinag market appeared on the smoggy horizon and everything came back into place, she was a foreigner, a visitor; the poverty was just an observation - she had wealth at her fingertips, she lived for tomorrow. Bashing, brushing and jumping she left the jeepney; but she was at a completely different place than where she'd got on.

Philippines 8.7.09

I had a faceoff with a cockroach today. I was sitting doing my very boring work of entering emails into the database when I couldn't help but notice a big bug thing with a shiny back and long wiry antenna lurking behind the desk not far from me. My heart beat changed its pattern, but being the brave, missionary hearted person I like to imagine that I am I looked directly at the computer screen and carried on typing. Tap - tap - tap - I felt a breeze on my leg and nervously twitched, 'it's okay' I told myself, 'the cockroach is still over the... uh oh, it's moved! hang on... you're not supposed to be looking, just leave it alone and it'll scuttle past' tap - tap -tap -tap; suddenly, as an instant defence mechanism before I can blink I've drawn my feet closer and my elbows tense against my side, the cockroach advanced, in my direction, and it's still moving.

As it intently scuttles towards me, centimetre by centimetre I'm arguing with myself, 'Some thing has to be done!... You can't jump up and scream like you would in England... no, but you're not going to just sit here and let it crawl up your leg are you... your desk is right at the front of the whole office, any move you make everyone will see... but this thing is massive, it'd take a warrior dance to scare it off!... perhaps I could just pretend to go to the toilet... what if it's still there when you get back? What are you going to do then? Pretend to go again!.... Aaaaarrgh, it's moving faster, do something!'

I take a quick look around the office wondering if anyone's noticed my heated internal debate or sudden nervous movements, my absent minded scrolling through the database and distinct lack of typing. Nope, everyone's hard at work, and what feels like the past 5 minutes has actually been about 3 seconds, cockroaches can move fast and this ones only out for a stroll.

As everyone's safely absorbed in work I shift my feet and the cockroach hesitates, he waves his menacing antenna, they're longer than he is! 'Please don't fly, please don't fly, please don't fly' I plead silently with the insect, trying to look unintimidated, with all the courage in my body I lower a note pad towards the ground, it takes all my remaining energy to look casual as I wave the notebook at the scuttling creature and he defiantly takes his time to turn around and crawl away.

My body releases a surge of relief as the cockroach maintains his departing direction all the way back behind the desk where it began. As my blood pressure returns to normal and I can count my heart beats again I say to myself 'how bad would it've been, even if it had crawled on you, it's not that nasty, I mean, it doesn't bite or anything, it's just scuttly, and crawly, and creepy, and...' I slightly shiver, and cast one last precautionary glace towards the desk before I continue tap- tap -tapping.

It's a shame that having so much to blog about leaves so little time to blog.

2009-05-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

For starters can you imagine how unromantic it is reading a psychology lab report on love - also labelled 'partnership love', 'romantic love', 'intimate attraction' amongst other boring words. All I have discovered so far is that psychologists are as clueless as the rest of us! Their term for being clueless is: 'love is subjective' - that means you can interpret it any way you want, just don't blame us if it goes wrong. In their opinion love cannot be defined (of course we're working outside the realms of 1 Corinthians 13), cannot be exhaustively explained and -although they wouldn't admit it - they give every impression it can never be truly understood. I can completely understand why they feel true love can never be understood, it's probably because it can't be. A good way to begin though isn't handing out questionnaires, asking open ended questions or sequencing cards with love related events on them - but feel the depth of sacrifice, especially to the extent of dying for someone; take a good look at the cross of Calvary. All this reading about love was necessary for a report on 'the influence of culture on romantic relationship formation' - the topic for this report was decided at university while I was away - a lesson never to skive was well and truly learnt.
I did, however, feel that skipping two days of uni was worth it to go and meet up with some friends, 3 of whom had flown over from France. We went a saw most of the big, free things to see in London - Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, the British Museum, Tower bridge, changing of the guard, St James' Park, Buckingham Palace, London Eye, River Thames, Tower of London. It's amazing how little I know about my own country, which I didn't realise until I was showing visitors around. We managed to find our way to the beach, and had a barbeque. We went to Cambridge and went punting on the river something which I found I'm not incredibly skilled at, perhaps not least because I was so afraid that I could barely stand up at the end of the punt. Then the concept of leaning any part of me out over the river in order to let the pole sink to the bottom of the river and create any kind of driving force for the boat to move was slightly dizzying... it's not a wonder we hardly moved from the side of the river the whole time I was punting!
In three days I went from Birmingham - London- Bournemouth - London - Cambridge - Birmingham. The weekend before I'd been from Birmingham - Brighton - Guildford - Birmingham. I've had my 'new' car for 6 months and have added 5,000 miles to the clock!
This month I opened up a toddler group. I applied for and received a grant earlier this month, allowing me to buy equipment and pay for training of volunteers for a toddler group. We run for two hours one morning a week, and so far have had two families come - our maximum has been 3 children and 4 adults. Being the great dreamer that I am, I see this as the start of something so much bigger and feel ever so blessed by the opportunity to start it.
In all the activities I've been supervising recently I've been struck by the reality of responsibility - not only for things, but for other people. For their time and their efforts. I have so much 'at my disposal', so many people willing to do a job for me, to prepare a Bible lesson for club, set up toys for toddler group, and every time I take them up on a offer or ask them to do something extra I have added responsibility of using their time, making sure I'm not wasting their time or stealing it from them. Especially if something could be done more efficiently, or if I could have done a job myself if I'd been more disciplined. To him who much is given, much will be required.
Every day I feel more aware of my inability to do everything and the wonderful grace of God in allowing it all to get done.

When is it too late to say - Hang on a minute!?

2009-02-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

Not long ago I watched a film called 'Boy in striped pyjamas', it was a very moving film which told a fictional story about the son of a German Comanding Officer in the second world war. The film brings out the confusion, tension and cruelty that must've engulfed families (Jews and German alike) during world war 2. It's main point is rememberance of the holocaust and the horror of it.
After watching the special features and interviews with cast memebers; I was struck by the question that seemed to be on everybody's lips, "Why did no one say, 'I won't stand for this' " or, at least a form of that question.
It's a good question, why did no one say no? Or, shouldn't the question be, why didn't enough people say no while they were still strong enough? Hitler began as a promising leader, everything from getting youths off the streets to writing cook books and encouraging women to get married, perhaps with a bit of a hang up on the jews. Slowly and surely he took power away from people he dislikled and gave it to anyone who was greedy enough to accept the terms. As the people with the power realised they couldn't keep the power without surpressing the people and obeying Hitler, they got mean, just like Hitler.
Eventually everyone that wanted to say no, didn't have enough man power to say it. It was too late, and too many people had become too self absorbed.
Basically, the next question would be... so what? Of what relevance!? Why do we keep remembering the holocaust? It's grim, it's nasty, why remember it?
So that we don't end up killing Jews in gas chambers, okay, I don't see gas chambers and I don't see masses of starving Jews - we're doing quite well then aren't we?
But let's take the principles - the main ideas. we could say those are: watch out for greedy and dictating leaders, killing innocent people is horrific, being self absorbed stops you seeing other people's needs.

Today, slowly but surely people are taking innocent lives, our leaders are greedy and becoming dictating, and people who are self absorbed are fighting for their and other people's 'right to die'.
Thousands of babies are aborted every day, innocent lives are being taken and would-be mothers are carrying the emotional and pysical scars of their babie's lost lives.
Taking a look at our leaders we can see greed with what should be unacceptable terms; the salary of a banker, solicitor or politician if you're willing to allow the killing of unborn babies, tell violent youths they're the victims of their society, discourage people who want to share the gospel, consideration of Sharia law for seperate legal judgement of muslims from other religious groups, make unreasonable gambles with other people's money, and other things.
There are people who are campaigning for sickness, illness and age to be a reason to kill someone. Someone innocent.
How long before we turn around and see a generation of people who think THEY have the right to decide whether someone is fit to live?
How long before our country's being run by people who don't know what the sanctity of life is?
How long before we're teaching our children we're no more fit to live than the monkey we evolved from?

Hang on a minute!?
I think it's time to stand back and take a look at the picture of our society. The grim and nasty picture of the 21st century that might be painted in years to come - perhaps the centruy people began to believe that giving pleasant opportunities to violent and dangerous criminals would solve their problems, the century when more would-be mums than ever before carried the burden and guilt of killing their unborn babies, the century we legalised the killing of innocent people (calling it 'mercy killing'), the centruy we thought promiscuity was so fun that STIs became rampant and dangerous, the century we thought that faithfulness was so boring more people than ever before became depressed, lonely and emotionally unstable; the century we became so greedy the economy nose dived; the centruy we became so self absorbed that the lady down the road got murdered by her ex-husband and nobody even knew she'd had a problem.

This isn't the 21st certury I would want to say I lived in, and I certainly wouldn't want to think I lived through it without being one of the people who said - "Hang on a minute!"
There has to be a reason. Without a reason no one can say an innocent life is valuable, no one can say a leader is wrong, no one can say a baby is a baby before birth, no one can say emotional pain is actually real pain, no one can say promiscuity is damaging.

Experience tells us it hurts to be rejected, it brings confusion and guilt to have your baby aborted, it's painful when a life is lost.
The loving and gracious God that gave us life has given us rules for life and reasons to live. Like a map when you're lost, like a torch when it's dark, like a door when you want to get through a wall, God has given us the Bible. In the Bible He tells us the way out of the mess of the 21st century.

He offers healing for the broken hearted and freedom for the oppressed.

Before we're the generation that people look back on and say, "why didn't they say, hang on a minute!?"

Come to God, take up His offer of freedom and healing, say "Hang on a minute?!"
But the God's not just talking about politicians and abortion clinics. Our brokenness is inside, it's in our hearts, and so is our bondage. It's like our character is chained to sin and things that make God angry; we can't do anything right and we can't please God no matter how much we try.

If you want to take up God's offer of freedom, you must turn your back on sin, say goodbye to the things that make Him angry and ask for His forgiveness. Love Him with all your heart, seek the truth and you will be free.

What makes you think that terminally ill people will be better off after they've been 'mercifully killed' anyway?

January

2009-01-09T11:47:00.000-08:00

I missed the opportunity to Blog in December. I had managed to just scrape in at least once a month, even with a vague contribution of something that could barely have been classed as a blog, never the less I missed it.
So you didn't get to hear about my stand against comercialism (well, you were fortunate if you actually managed to escape, many people who don't read my blog still had to hear about it); you didn't get to hear about my wonderful visit to France, which involved staying with amazing friends, skiing, crashing into trees, missing last lifts, hikes along flat pistes, trying to help lead carols you don't know, a lovely carol concert from the Bourg corale, and SO much more that was wonderfully enjoyable; you didn't get to hear about my interesting Christmas dinner with my adopted mother and a lady of 102 years; but never mind... I'm sure you all had your own things to be getting on with over Christmas and the New year.

For me the new year began on Waterloo Bridge in London, you could say it began cold and cram packed - or you could say it began with a lot of enthusiasm and good friends, which is a way I wouldn't mind 2009 to continue. So far cold has been a regular reacurrance, with a few dustings of what the English like to call 'snow'. Friends are always a regular thing, although more often than I'd like it's through facebook, e-mail or text rather than seeing them face to face. But if I will have friends in America, France, Guildford, Manchester and London rather than in Birmingham... it's my own fault I suppose. Of course there're always my best friends who I see almost every day or at least once a week: Mum, Jo, Nic and Beth. Is it possible to have people that are such good friends that you forget they're your friends? They're always just there, some times even when you'd rather they weren't; but because they are always there the times you want them and the times you don't seem to roll together, and it's not until you stop and think about it that the way you felt about them falls into place and you realise why you felt annoyed or angry with them, or happy and laughed with them.
It's lovely to have people that are such good friends you can tell them all the things you like about other people and other places, and they'll do their best to bring that out in a situation. For example a frequent statement of mine is, "When I was in France we did..." So, recently me and Nic have been out walking, getting some exercise. Mum had bread and a salad with oil and vinegar with our dinner. There're other things I complain about that my good friends tell me to just get over it, that's helpful too.

Enthusiasm, I've had plenty of that so far in the new year too, possibly not all about useful things. A trip around the world, a piece of piano music I'll probably never be able to play, some one's note on facebook... Different things have been more constructive to be enthusiastic about ideas for missions trips that could actually happen, beach missions, applying for funding to start a toddler group, thinking about moving out (emphasis on the thinking, my bank account doesn't like the idea of me moving out, unless I get more work to do) and because of the idea of moving out I've also been slightly enthusiastic about finding work - but nothing has come up which is dampening for enthusiasm.

University has started again, all a bit sluggishly, a lecture here and there. A lecture I wasn't told about until I'd missed it, a lecture I knew about but the lecturer didn't turn up, and a lecture in a hall with 200 students and everyone scoweled at me when I smiled at them. Why did I think acedamia was a good thing to go back to? I was wondering, until I looked at all the jobs I would really like to apply for and they called for a well qualified person, someone with experience or knowledge of a certain framework or government legislation... all of which I'm aiming to aquire at university, most of what I want to achieve at university will be subject to getting a good placement next year. I shall put my pester power to the test and begin getting some names... soon, when I feel motivated. Enthusiasm is not flowing abundantly when I think of my lab reports and essays and my dire need to revise for exams in March.

Wednesday club is back, after an eventful ending to last year! We had a parents evening and we had as many parents attend as children, which was most encouraging. Things got a bit wild, some of the children got bouncy balls in their prizes, I was tied up with a talkative parent and well.. bouncy balls went flying to say the least! However, most of the parents left saying they had a great deal of respect for what we try and do with the children, I hope they come to have a great deal of respect for the saviour that we tried to show to them that evening. I eagerly anticipate a summer evening of fun for the family at the end of this school year, at least that wouldn't involve getting the children to try and perform! Until then we're back to the weekly fun of enjoying the children's over excited behaviour for an hour; I think they're all lovely children, and God's told them He loved them enough to send His son for them, I'm happy to let them be over excited and slightly mischevious - my main concern is for the rest of the leaders who seem to get ever so drained and discouraged when the children don't behave. We're not there to teach them to behave, we're there to teach them that their behaviour will have eternal consiquences from a righteous God.

A nagging concern for the state of our nation doesn't seem to leave me, even at the happiest of times. When I'm happy I think of all those people that think they're happy. When I'm sad I think of all those people who have no consolation in their sadness. We're not called to be people eaten up with concern, God has given Himself fully and we can enjoy the peace He gives us fully; but England is so obviously suffering. The difficulties we see in our economy, families, work places, schools stem from a lack of spiritual disciplines; and yet people still curse God, even though He holds the key to ultimate hapiness and prosperity. I feel I should be doing more to reach people, but God has His time for me to be where He needs me - I could reach out to 100 unelect people on a short term mission; while one elect person is sitting next to an empty chair at Newman University in Birmingham.

When I stop and listen God soothes my fears; His strong, steady voice speaks of a plan. He has called me to Himself and I must be faithful in what He gives me to do, not worrying about the whole world when He's already sent His son to be the saviour of the world.

Ideas about children and university

2008-11-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

I have to rant about one thing that I've been hearing over and over again at university - the Puritanical aspect of childhood is not connected with Freud's idea of 'id'! Also, whilst believing that children are inherently sinful, the Puritans did not believe that sinfulness could be dealt with through corporal punishment or that children were animal like or impishly evil.

Freud (1856-1939), a well known psychologist, came up with the idea of the 'id'. This id - he claimed - represented the natural instincts of children and almost rebelled against any morals the children would grow up to learn, he connected this id to strong sexual desires which he believed children were born with and later learned to control through adult guidance.
When many people look at Freud's idea of a rebellious 'id', they connect it with the puritanical idea of a rebellious nature - this connection simply shouldn't be made!

The Puritans believed that children were born sinful. They felt that children needed to be taught right and wrong - and at the time of the Puritans corporal punishment was not questioned, and child labour was popular, the Puritans can't be singled out for sending their children to sweep chimneys or beating them with sticks as punishments for bad behaviour; it was a mark of their time, not their beliefs. They can be singled out as people who respected life and cared for it, and they appreciated children as a blessing from God, rather than seeing children as evil imps that were cast like burdens on their parents.
The Puritans idea of sinfulness has no resemblance to an inappropriate, subconscious wrong that Freud calls 'id'.
Freud said that as children grow up they try so hard to forget about their embarrassing naughtiness that they had as a child, and when they're adults they think they've always been good and moral, because their mind has hidden their badness from them.

The Puritans believed that when children grow up they could either ignore God and live in their sinfulness, or they could ask God for forgiveness and God would graciously choose to forget their wrong doings - as adults they could constantly remember God's goodness to them in forgiving them.

Perhaps some of the things the Puritans said and wrote seems very harsh to us now, living in a politically correct, sit-on-the-fence society. No generation or human idea will come without faults. But the Biblical principles of the Puritans shouldn't be twisted into a devilish, nasty view of children.
The disturbed ideas of Freud (that make most adults squirm in their seats!) about children shouldn't be put together with the Puritans. Freud could see no way out of the repulsive nature he believed children had, his ideas subject people to a life of hiding and being afraid of your 'inner nature'. The Puritans had hope for their sinful children, they taught them about the just and righteous God who knew how to punish sin - and who had chosen to forgive sinners; their ideas lead us to a life where we can search for hope... and if we seek it, we will surely find it.

The reading and writing I've been doing for university has made me think of lots of things I could write, but it would become far too boring and academic - I'll have to save it for a long boring book with mile long sentences and get it published, the people can cite me in their work to back up their ideas, just like I've cited someone else in my work to back up my ideas, and they cited someone else in their book to back up their ideas... and because we've all published the same ideas, it makes them valid ideas, of course!

Did you know Rousseau was a play-write!? He couldn't get anyone to produce his plays, so he decided to write about child education instead... and now his book is considered as a major contribution to modern thinking on childhood education. Incidentally, his own children were taken into care, he was an appalling father. Yet we look up to him, respect him, quote his work and base a large part of our country's laws and educational frameworks on the ideas he wrote about - and not just him, we do the same thing with Wordsworth, a poet, head in the clouds, had an opinion on childhood, got it published, we quote that too.

All praise and glory to the Ultimate Author, who's writing surpasses time and ideas.
"Let them give glory to the LORD, and proclaim His praise in the islands"
(The Bible, Isaiah 42 v12)

Privileged

2008-10-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

As I sit and write this to you I am surrounded by Bible verses. Bible verses written delicately and artisticaly on small squares of paper and left by the computer, perhaps to be eventually dispatched as encouragements to various people by my youngest sister, but for now they are here in front of me. I can hear christian music coming from the other room, some one singing about the love of Christ, and just before I began writing I was served a lovely steaming cup of tea.
How priviliged am I.
A over the past few months I have heard and seen my family comforting people; I have especially noticed my mum's wise 'spiritual mothering' to other people in the church. I have seen my mum teaching these people (who are in their 30s and 40s) the same things that she taught me when I was just growing up. The people she's talked to have been so consoled by her words, and realised so much about Christ as she's shown them how He's been with her through her sufferings - these things I was priveleged to see with my own eyes, and her words of Biblical understanding have been there to guide me from the day I was born. By God's grace so often He has allowed mum to anticipate my concerns and even prevented problems before they've arisen!
How privileged am I!
I've spent some time recently talking to a friend who took a perilous journey to escape a tyranical government in their homeland. They don't know a lot about Christ and His loving ways - they only know that Christ's their saviour; the religion of this friend's homeland was so violent and unforgiving that the ways of peace and kindness in the Bible don't come easily to them. The ways of forgiveness, grace and mercy have been taught to me since I was old enough to listen and shown to me before I was even old enough to understand.
How privileged am I!!
I went to my friends house in Manchester this past weekend and we went to a Christian conference together. I heard about the glory of the Triune God who is my God, I talked to my friends and I met new friends. Being part of the family of Christ I felt so close to the people that I'd only just met and we shared amazing fellowship, having fun and lots of laughs. I felt so loved and cared for, I was served so lovingly by my friends and people from church.
How privileged am I.
I began university two weeks ago. I am studying with and being taught by a man who believes that there is no absolute truth - and he is about to spend the next three years trying to convince a class of psychology students the same thing. I am in two classes a week with people who will contribute to forming the future health care, social care and welfare systems; they don't know that the way to a successful care system is by learning to put others first, and Christ foremost. I know absolute, objective truth - I am conviced of what God has given me and forgiven me of. I know that God has promised that the person who delights in His Word, whatever he does will prosper.
How absolutely privieged am I.
I have a God who allows me to join in with the conversation that's been going on since eternity past! I have a God who came Himself to suffer, live, die and rise again in victory for me.
Do you know this God? How privileged are you?

Come and read, 'tis rhyming indeed!

2008-09-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

From dog sitting to people visiting,
There's not a lot to report.
Going to beach mission reunion,
Was just as fun as I'd thought.

Neighbour's new kittens teasing the rabbit
they're sitting outside on his hutch.
I went to Alton Towers, rode some white knuckles
it rained just a little too much!

I'm waiting for summer, anyone seen the sun?
Definitely can't go on holiday
uni begins in two weeks,
So I'm starting to live the student way.

The children are back, Wednesday at church every week;
craft, game, quiz and story from the Bible
Catch that hyper child!
Quick! Give 'em the gospel!

Get work on random days, up early to catch the train;
at the NEC, a mother and her baby to meet
Where could they be? Why aren't they here!?
Hang on, that's not 'till next week!

How many times do I have to realise,
just how silly I am;
It's that many times I have to cast my self
back into the care of HIS hand.

sqquuueeeeaaallllllllllllll, that's my fan belt;
I tried to tighten it, told Alan the bolt wouldn't budge
Gave him the car and the keys
In 5 minutes flat, he'd tightened it up just a touch.

Quiet as you like,
not a peep from the belt;
until my friends watch me drive,
and ssqqqqquuueeaaallll, what an idiot I felt.

Of course,
since that time
not a peep from the belt
every thing's been just fine!

Apart from Wednesdays,
and work here and there,
Not much's going on
my calendar's bare.

Just wait 'till two weeks,
When uni begins, and I join the CU
I may be blogging that I'm inundated
I've so much to study, to write and to do!

So I'll see you then,
my fair reading friend.
With lots to tell,
perhaps with less poetic hand.

For what it's worth.

2008-08-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

What is anything worth?

Well, it's a buyers market for houses and cars. Although, apparently a Seat or a Volkswagen can hold it's value, and it's said that you'll never lose equity on a piece of land.

Hard harvests and world wide famine makes our bread worth more, surely it's always far more valuable in the eyes of those who don't have any. With terms like 'credit crunch' flying around it seems to make any thing you can afford feel like more of a luxury. And petrol, should we even go there!? The difference between what it's worth and what we pay seems to be the difference between here and Mars... or wait. No petrol, no cars, no people getting to work; no one running our factories, transport, hospitals... no ambulances, fire engines, life boats, police cars...

An Englishman's word is no longer his bond and a promise is worth little to most people. Say yes or no and a majority will give it no credit until they see it done.

So, considering worth. What am I worth? What are you worth? Do you have facebook? Have you heard of the application 'buy a friend'? Last I checked I was becoming worth something in the region of 100,000s of dollars, but it was a long time ago that I checked (and the value of the dollar is coming down as fast as my friends are bidding for me, add to that the fact that the money isn't even real). At work I'm worth 7.50 an hour - that's to my employers - to the children I look after my worth seems infinitely multiplied when I soothe their fears, dry their tears and they run to me when they're hurt.

What would you give for some one else? £5 for a bunch of flowers? Who knows the price of a 1st class stamp anymore? Sent anything to anyone recently? Received anything from anyone recently?
Who thinks more of you than they do themselves? Who values your life more than their own? Who's given their lives for you recently?

In the past few days I've had hugs, text messages, e-mails, conversations, I've listened to someone cry and heard them tell me why - they did the same for me a day or two before. I've had parts of people's time, parts of their lives, all very valuable parts.

But who decides value? Who decides my worth?

A man was walking in a field one day and he saw some thing valuable hidden under the long grass- some thing almost priceless. His heart leapt inside and he quickly buried the priceless item deeper in the grass so no one would see it. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach as he almost ran home. He quickly sold his house, sold his land, his animals, his best clothes, even his solid oak dining table with a 6 matching chairs. With the money he'd got from selling every thing he had, he went and bought the field that he'd been walking in a couple of days earlier. This man was now very much richer than he had been before he gave up everything that he owned.

Around the time of A.D. 30 two sparrows were worth 1 copper coin, that's about £3-£5 to us. Who cares about sparrows? Why would anyone pay for sparrows?

That sounds similar to the question I asked earlier... Who cares about me? Why or what would anyone pay for me?

The answer: GOD.

Who cares about me?
GOD

What would He give for me?
HIMSELF

What is there that you can find that's SO valuable, that if you went and gave up EVERYTHING just to have it, you'd be very much richer?

GOD

He made you like Him, He wants you to love Him. He wants you to come to Him and give up every thing you have, for Him - give up your rebellion against Him, give up your pride in denying who He is, give up giving yourself away to things that are worth so much less than what He offers you.

So, on Saturday, in the park. A group of Christians with a gazebo, with a soft ball and some games cones. What was it worth for us to run ad jump around? What was it worth for me to jump around from hoop to hoop? What was it worth for me to write to the council, ring the park rangers, get a copy of insurance, write a risk assessment, contact someone to borrow games resources, spend hours drawing up plans for games, design leaflets, deliver leaflets, invite church people and liaise with our church pastor to get the activity organised?
It could be worth a life, an ETERNAL life. It could be the difference between Heaven or Hell to any or all of the 9 children that came and heard about the Bible.

So to anyone who doesn't believe, who tells you what you're worth? Who tells you you're actually more valuable than a copper coin or two sparrows? And when they do tell you that, why would you believe them?

Jesus said: "Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's (God's) will. But the very hairs of your head are numbered, do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. Therefore whoever confesses me before men, him I will confess before my father who is in heaven."

Also, I feel wonderfully valuable when I pray and ask God to hold off the rain for the afternoon in the park - and He does.
And when He gives me a fun time with my family having a barbeque. With my two aunts, two uncles, two cousins, great-aunt and uncle, nan and grandad, mum, step dad and three sisters.

I love my family.
I love my Lord.

Knowledge recently aquired

2008-07-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

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)

Home and everything entailed

2008-06-05T02:09:00.000-07:00

Where to start.

My day off yesterday? No, further back, I've not updated you in a while.
My university applications? Further back, you say?
Getting a full time job? That's mundane, lets go back to something more interesting.
Getting started helping with church children's club? I did too much between then and my last blog to start there.
My welcome home 'party'? Now we're getting some where,
'but didn't you mention some thing about Paris in the last blog?' - ok, let's go back to Paris?
'But didn't you say you were staying down in Bourg with some friends from the French church?' - ok then, lets go back to Bourg.
Back to the mountains, back to the clear air and the high altitude. Out of Birmingham where it feels almost as if I've never been away, right back into the valley...

My friends, my last Sunday at church in Bourg. We tried a new song, we sang in parts: the men grouped one side of the church and the ladies the other - first time was a bit rough, second was nice, third and fourth time was lovely. My friends laid hands on me and prayed for me, asked God for His blessing and guidance upon me. The next two days were chilled out, saying goodbye to people, watching films, going for walks, doing some shopping.

The journey to Paris began on a quiet Wednesday morning in the Kay household, after a 2am bed time, I woke up fairly bleary eyed around 7. I packed all my bags, cram packed them, it's amazing how much you can accumulate over 5months. It was the school holidays, but everyone was up to say an early goodbye to me - even Robert!

Charlie got my suitcase onto the train for me at Bourg, which was no mean feat.

As I sat on the train going out of the valley I could see the mountains rising either side of the tracks; I stared out of the window and saw the snowy mist hanging between me and the place I'd come to know over the winter. God drew the soft curtains together, telling me it was time to say goodbye to that part of the world for now, just when the mist became so thick and it seemed like the curtains were getting too thick to ever be drawn open again - the sun shone brightly behind the mist and the beams penetrated the haze, God's will and love can penetrate any barriers .

I managed to drag my suitcase off the train at Chamberry and thankfully met a nice man who helped me put it onto my connecting train to Paris. On our arrival in Paris this man came back to me and helped me get my bag off the train again. I did regard him with high suspicion, but felt a tinge of guilt for doing so when he said a nice good bye to me on the platform and wished me a pleasant stay in Paris and I still had my passport, purse, credit cards, phone, watch, laptop, etc. in tact and safely on my persons.

I, fairly nervously, got my Paris metro ticket and navigated the underground successfully getting from Gare du Lyon to Gare du Nord where I was meeting Elizabeth from the Eurostar.

We had a super few days in Paris. We had a lovely hotel room and got to see all of the most famous sights like the Sacre Coeur, Champs Elysee, Arc Du Triompe, Eiffel Tour, Notre Dame, Louvre, the Siene. Then we had a long train journey back to England, and an afternoon in London before getting the train back to Birmingham.

Me and Elizabeth silly-ly missed our stop at Birmingham International and had to go to New street and get the train back, which was a 10 minute delay. Seeing as that was the only difficulty I encountered on my journey from the South East of France to the Midlands of England I was happy.

It was Friday night and I was home.

I was very grateful to have a shower in a bath that wasn't mouldy, to make a cup of tea and use my own mug, to have my full wardrobe back again, and best of all was to see my family.

On Sunday, back at church, it felt great to be so welcomed back. We had an open house for the afternoon and a lot of people came back for lunch and I showed some photos around and told everybody about France - I summed up 5months in about 2 hours, I certainly didn't do it justice.

After catching up with everyone and being at home for a couple of days, I felt ready to go again. Go away, go anywhere - back to France maybe, but just anywhere that was 'away' seemed to be calling me. I hadn't expected to feel like this at all, so it was time to pray, not that I hadn't been before, but it was time to pray more, and pray more specifically. Where should I go, God? What should I do?

I read this: (Luke 10: 39-42) Mary sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word, but Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him (Jesus) and said "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me." And Jesus answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her."

I heard this: (Me to God) "Lord, do you not care that there are missionaries and people serving you all over the world, working hard and being persecuted, and I'm sitting here enjoying my comfortable bed and Christian home... Let me go and help them!" and Jesus answered and said to me "Georgie, Georgie, you're worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, Mary chose to sit and listen, this is the good part which will not be taken away from her. You should choose the good thing too, sit and listen for a while."

So I found a job close to home, I got back into the children's club at church and applied for some local universities. I'm hoping that by the time I get a response from the universities God will have clarified what the next good thing will be for me to do.

When I was away I had a perfect picture of what I wanted to do when I came home, unfortunately that clarity has melted away as some job applications have been refused and things haven't gone the way I planned. But this is the way God saw things for me, and all I have to do is sit and listen... and when I hear His command in His good timing, I can go. Where? I don't know; how? I can't say; when? I haven't been told yet... but, why? It will always be for His glory.

13 days... and counting

2008-04-07T02:34:00.000-07:00

Not long now and I'll be blogging about job hunting, the joys of home cooked food and family - I'll be home. Before I get there I have the rest of this week's work to contend with, a Sunday down the mountain, one last week of Markwarner employment, snow and ski school, then a final trip down the mountain. The plan is to stay with my friends from church for a couple of days, to say some last goodbyes, then to get the train to Paris where I'll meet Elizabeth at Gare du Nord and do some sight seeing.

This will probably be my last blog from France.

Last Sunday I spent the afternoon with a French couple from church, Louisa came too and we had an afternoon of good food and French language. At church that morning I got told that I talk far too much and that I should try and quieten down because I hurt everyone's ears with my chattering (and I thought the English were sarcastic!); so I tried to make a bit more of an effort to use my French, it turned out not too unsuccessfully.

I had a week with three fantastic little boys to look after, we had loads of fun.

On Tuesday afternoon I had a telephone interview for a job as a Community Nursery Nurse in Oxford. I didn't get the job, but I felt the interview went very well and I got fantastic feed back, so I'm happy.

I had a difficult week with my room mates and some out of order drunken behaviour, it was quite upsetting and made me home sick for a couple of nights. I have received an apology and had a good opportunity to share the love of Christ through one conversation as a result of it - so I'm happy again.

I went down the mountain on Saturday and went to a concert that the church was putting on. We had a Christian guitarist, called Manu, come and play and sing; he was very talented and it was a pleasure to listen to his music. There was proof that Christ's church is international, for there in that small hall where Manu was playing there were people from seven different countries - England, Ireland, Canada, America, Madagascar, Romania and (bien sur) France.
There are two gentlemen from Romania who visited the church last week and this week and were at the concert, one of them speaks very good French and the other speaks no French, but Spanish. Louisa also speaks Spanish; so on Saturday in a small French church there was an English lady and a Romanian gentleman talking Spanish.

I was completely drained by the end of last week and was glad of a peaceful nights sleep at the Kay's house, as opposed to the bright, noisy nights I have at the hotel.

At church in the morning Manu lead the service and gave a message on temptation, he said that we can have a worldly view of what temptation is and make our own rules about what's right and that God is a very present help in times of temptation and has overcome our sin so that we can live freely.

That afternoon Mary had choir practice, so she explained to me and Louisa what needed to be done with the food and left the boys in charge. Matt, Chris and Charlie did a great job of making sure the food got done and well presented, by watching me and Louisa ;o) No, I jest! Seriously and slightly more honestly me and Louisa prepared salad and seasoned some of the food while the boys went to get some bread and lit the barbeque; then me and Louisa sat out on the balcony with Matt and Chris as they cooked the food on the barbeque. We had a lovely meal and were joined by the two Romanian gentlemen for lunch.

After lunch some of Charlie's and Mary's friends came over and we all went for a walk together, we drove some of the way and walked the rest of the way to La Rosiere where there was a beautiful view of the valley and a pretty little chapel.

Then, once again, all too soon, it was time to leave.

When I got back to the hotel I just had time to put my overnight bag in my room and change my jacket before going out bowling with some of the other nannies; we caught the bus to a nearby resort that has a bowling alley with four lanes. It was fun playing and out of six of us, I came third.

This morning I was introduced to the five 3 year olds that will be 'mine' for the week ahead. They were fantastic - the two boys were very excited about their ski lessons where they would be able to learn to ski super fast, and the three girls were slightly more reserved but were happy with their various pink goggles, snow suits and glittery hats. All 10 of the children in mini club (5 being my responsibility and 5 others being the responsibility of Leanne, another nanny) play very well together and it was quite a chilled out afternoon.

As for me I'm now going off to take some photos of La Plagne; for soon it shall all be but a distant memory.

Waiting on the LORD brings strength

2008-03-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

...Those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31

Three weeks to go until the end of the season, 26 days until the last guests leave. Everyone's tired, fractious and very ready to get out of La Plagne; the powder is great, but being over worked and under paid for the last 5 months means that fresh tracks are just too much effort to make. Bed seems to be the preferable place to be for someone who's not working, all day ski trips don't happen anymore and the staff DVD room is being more used that before. Illnesses and sickness bugs have been going around for the past couple of weeks and everyone's drained.

But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings like eagles. The joy of Easter, the celebration of our Saviour's resurrection from the dead, being shared with other Christians over the weekend was an indescribable blessing. Greeting each other with "Il est ressuscité!" (He is risen) "Il est ressuscité certainment!" (He is risen indeed).

I hope each one of you had a joyful Easter and knew the renewing of your strength.

A couple of Sunday's ago the church had some visitors from Boston America, a group of young people who were in France to help spread the gospel, they were staying with the church in Albertville (the 'mother' church of Bourg); they came to visit Bourg on their last Sunday in France. We weren't able to use the church hall, so church was held at Charlie and Mary's house again. It was a very full living room, with the usual church members, the 16 young people and the youth leaders there. The young people and some of the church members stayed for lunch with the Kays, there were a total of 30 people eating lunch at the Kay's house that Sunday. It was a friendly, busy atmosphere; with not much room to move! Everybody helped with setting out and clearing up lunch - some people more than others though.

In the afternoon all the young people and the youth leaders went up to Les Coches to go ice skating, it was good fun and we played a French version of British bulldog on ice. None of us had kept track of time and it wasn't until we got back to the house that we realised I was late for the last bus back up to La Plagne... So I got the bus the next morning at 7.30.

It was the first time for a while that I felt like I was really going to work. When I'm in the hotel, if I start work at 8.30, I leave my room at 8.30 and still get to work on time; but waiting for the bus in the cold at 7.30 gave me a real feeling of going to work. Not unlike English busses it was late, the snow slowed it down even more on the way to La Plagne, and the deep snow I had to trample through from the bus stop to the hotel meant that I got to the hotel at 8.20 - and had to make a mad dash to my room to get into my uniform and get to work in 10 minutes.

I had two toddlers to look after, they were very settled and one in particular was very interested in exploring and loved the CD player and climbing into the play sink unit that's in the crèche, he began walking on his own in crèche (as opposed to just cruising the furniture)... that was very exciting, but still more tiring because I had to keep my eye on him because he was very unsteady on his newfound feet.

Vicki and I had two toddlers each last week, we decided that we would go on the 'bubble car' - a cable car that goes all the way up to the top of the mountain, it's used by skiers to get to the runs that lead back down the mountain. It's necessary for everyone to have a lift pass to go on this bubble car, so we asked the parents. The parents got the lift passes (some more begrudgingly than others) and the next day was so snowy and windy we didn't go on the bubble car, the parents of Vicki's two toddlers were very upset by this, seeing as they'd spent so long - all of half an hour - getting their children lift passes (which don't cost a thing). So the next day, Saturday, me and Vicki determined to go on the bubble car and we weren't going to let anything stop us - the parents wanted their children on that bubble car, so we'd get them on that bubble car! We took two sledges, and despite missing sleep times and bottle times we donned their suits, boots, hats and goggles and took them out towards the bubble car. We were soon to find out that was a VERY bad idea. Out of necessity we discovered a new way of carrying two children on a sledge designed for one child (not a usual sledge where they can sit in front of each other, a pushchair sledge); three of our toddlers fell asleep, they all had a screaming fit at one point on the journey, at one point I was pulling a sledge with one toddler and pushing a sledge with two toddlers while Vicki was carrying a screaming and kicking toddler. It took us an hour to get to the bubble car, we spent 10 minutes on the bubble car - which I'm happy to say the toddlers actually really enjoyed - and then it took us an hour to get back to the hotel!

Saturdays involve transfer clean as well. This means cleaning EVERYTHING in the crèche, the walls, the toys, the units, behind, in, under every where; and then taking all the bedding and the cloths that you've used to clean everything to the wash. Needless to say, by the end of Saturday I felt thoroughly worn out.

I had just enough energy to carry my skis, boots and overnight bag to the bus stop to catch the bus down the mountain. I was greeted by a familiar bus driver; the same bus driver comes every Saturday night and every Sunday night when I'm getting the bus up and down the mountain, he lets me on the bus without a ticket, and on Saturday he asked me what my name is. So now I know that it will probably be Sebastien that takes me down the mountain and brings me back three times before the end of the season.

Charlie picked me up from Aime and took me back to the house where everyone was decorating boiled eggs with crayons and food dye. My energy was replenished with a cup of tea, a comfy seat and half an hour of listening to my friends talking and laughing. Before the night was out I was able to contribute a St. George's flag to an 'internationally' decorated egg, and decorate an egg of my own by crayoning a pink bow on it and dying it green.

The following morning we had an Easter breakfast at church. It was almost a feast of croissants, sweet bread cakes, bread, jam, fruit, chocolat chaude, coffee, tea, fuit juice and mini Easter eggs. The fellowship and food was lovely. We cleared up breakfast and had the church service, then I had a lovely walk back from church with Louisa, Emily, William, Robert and Matt - the boys had a little snowball fight on the way, also involving any girls that happened to get in the way, or Emily who was more specifically targeted by her brothers.

We had beautiful Easter table decorations and candles at lunchtime. Mary did a wonderful job of serving 13 people for lunch, and we all received an Easter gift after the meal - mine was a Lindtt 'Cloche Or' chocolate 'gold bell'. After our chocolate and a cup of tea most of us went sledging.

After sledging it was time for me to go home. Chris took me to Aime and Louisa came to say goodbye.

I felt very refreshed when I got back to La Plagne, but still tired. The week ahead was due to be my 5th week working over 50hours and I felt very unable to get through it. On Monday morning, just before work, I looked up a Bible reference that mum had sent me in a text message, Isaiah 40:31, I committed the long week ahead to God, trusting Him to raise me up on wings like eagles and truly renew my strength to live for Him.

On my way down the stairs I bumped into the head nanny, she said "Please tell me you've seen the new rota." I hadn't, so I said no. "Well," She went on to explain "We've had two children cancel for this week, that brings the ratios down and frees up two nannies to help you this week, so you don't need to be at work right now" My working hours had been halved for the week. I was able to go back upstairs to my room and rest until 4.30pm!

Today has been a peaceful and restful day. A lazy morning and a leisurely two hours skiing. I was skiing with someone who's just a beginner, that gave me a great reason to be on all the easy slopes and I could keep stopping to wait for him to catch up. When we got too cold we came back to the hotel, just enough time to warm up and change before work.

I would've lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!
Psalm 27v13

Major events in a seasonares majorly eventful week.

2008-03-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

At the moment I am very tired, so you'll have to forgive me if this is even longer and more ramble-ier than usual.

Just to remind my self of what's gone on over the past week or so I've done a really quick 'off the top of my head' list of bullet points (At least it would be bullet ponted if Blogger wanted to work propperly, but it deosn't so you just have an ordinary list):

Walk in fresh powder, babies in pushchair.

Going to shop long way round

Church, skiing

week with babies, heavy baby, Ryan can't carry

Evening listening

Camping tea

Chocolate cereal

Kirsty moving out

Skiing with Matt, Louisa, Charlotte and Sarah - skiing over on my own, taking ages to find them.

These on their own don't give an incredibly fun, chronological or informative description of what I was doing, but if you'd like to stop reading here you'll still have a good idea of what's going on in my life right now. So if you want to escape, have washing to do, children to educate, friends to contact, a Sunday school lesson to prepare, something useful to do with your time - here's your chance to leave, the 'x' button on the top right (or top left if you have a Mac, I think) should get you out of here... if not, I admire your courage.

Going chronologically, the first point is: Chocolate cereal.

To get you to understand why this actually makes it onto the list in the first place, I have to get you into a 'seasonare' mentality. Ready? Okay. You're hungry, you ate staff dinner last night, but you'd digested that and burned all the energy it provided by the time you went to bed, in fact you woke up in the night slightly hungry already. You've got dressed, you're ready for work, it's 8am and you've got a long day ahead of you with two babies that don't like being separated from their parents. You know what the staff breakfast shelf looks like: it gives hints of having been white at some point in history; it's useful for storing last years left over coffee sachets - which have a tantalising picture of a creamy looking cup of hot coffee on the front. There's a fresh box of Apricot jam packets, that's actually quite nice on toast, for the first 20 times you have it; you really can't help but wonder how long the instant chocolate granules have been there for, but no one's quite certain, so they've not been touched since the beginning of the season. And the bread packet contains a couple of slices of stale 'Pain de Mie' - so this morning, on your way past the dry store, the piles of cardboard boxes from kitchen deliveries and the noisy washing machines you wonder why you've actually bothered to get up this much earlier to get breakfast, you could've had an extra half an hour in bed! When you walk into the staff taverna (after shivering because the broken window in the laundry room has blown open again) you look up at the breakfast shelf and there, standing proudly amongst the stale, boring, out of date foods is a box of 'choco shells'... you suspiciously bring the box down from the shelf and read the 'consumer avant' 'use before' date, that's not for another 6 months; you check the seal to make sure no one's slipped something undesirable into the packet, that's all fine, no problem; then, without a moment to loose you run upstairs to the kitchen, grab a bowl and a spoon and get a fresh carton of milk from the walk in dairy fridge and have yourself a bowl of choco shells for breakfast. What an exciting morning.

Next is skiing with Matt, Louisa, Charlotte and Sarah. That was fun. I had my afternoon off that Thursday and they'd decided to ski over my side of the valley for a change, I finished work, got lunch and went out to meet them at a place called 'Montchavin' - it was quite icy on the way over there - it took me about 40 minutes to get to Montchavin and after a very icy red run I got down to the bottom, right into Montchavin. I phoned Louisa:

'I'm here' I said,

"Where?" Louisa said,

"At Montchavin" I said,

"Right at the bottom?" She said,

"I don't know, I've never been here before, but I'm at the bottom of the chair lift called 'Montchavin'" I said,

"Oh, well, we're three chair lifts up from there" She said

"You mean I didn't have to slide on ice nearly all the way down the last red piste?" I said

Silence

"Okay, I said, I'll get three chair lifts up and see you there" I said

"Well, we're just skiing down now, so phone me at the bottom of the next chair lift”...

One chair lift up... ring, ring...

"Hello" Louisa said

"I'm at the bottom of the next chair lift, should I get on it?" I asked

"Yeah, we're going quite slow, you get on that one"

Another chair lift up.... ring, ring

"Hello" Louisa said

"I'm here" I said

"Wait for us there, we're just coming down"...

Wait, 1 minute... 2 minutes... 5mintues.... getting cold... 7mintues... it's sub-zero temperatures... 10 minutes... ring, ring

"Hello" Louisa said

"Have you passed me?"

"I sent Matt down to meet you..."

"Should he be here by now?"

"Umm, yeah..."

"Okay..."

Suddenly Matt comes skidding down the slope... "Sorry! I was skiing and suddenly realised I wasn't on the piste anymore, so I missed the chair lift, I've been down to the bottom of the other chair lift and got both of them back up and skied back down... How are you?"

We spent the next couple of hours skiing together, did a little bit of off-piste, then I skied 40minutes back to La Plagne.

(If you thought 'it'll be okay if I just finish reading this, It'll only take a minute and I'll do the dusting afterwards' I'm giving you another chance to leave, before I give you the rest of the gory details about my very eventful seasonare life...)

I think it was on Saturday that Kirsty moved out and went into another room; Kirsty's been my room mate since the beginning of the season. She's lovely and we've talked a lot about Christianity and the gospel, she's a good friend and very easy to talk to - She was a good room mate too, she vacuumed and I cleaned the bathroom, and we had a bit of a system going on with taking bins out. So I miss Kirsty and Kirsty if you're reading... I miss you, the rooms just not the same without you. Now it's just me and Linsey on this side of the room, we don't talk a lot, so it's quite quiet now. Now the floor needs vacuuming, I was the last person to take the bins out, I was the last person to clean the bathroom and I bought a new hand soap for the toilet... and seeing as there've been 5girls using the bathroom and toilet for a week since I cleaned it, and no one else seems to know what to do with the 'lingettes multi usages' that have a picture of a sparkling bathroom sink on the back of the packet... our room's a bit of a mess.

I went down the mountain for church again this Sunday and this week I took my skis with me. We had the service in the Kay's house because the hall was being used for the local mayor elections. After church I went skiing with Chris, Robert, Emily, Louisa and Mary - we took it easy and went down lots of blues, which I enjoyed because it's too icy to be doing anything too challenging. After we'd skied for a couple of hours Mary went back down to the car, the rest of us went to the snow park to watch Chris doing his jumps that he'd been practicing. We went down the snow park a couple of times, first we watched Chris do the black jumps; then Emily, Louisa and I did the green jumps, Robert did the green jumps too but with a bit more 'jump' to them.

I've just realised that I've missed the point about the babies; this actually comes just after the cereal, chronologically that is. Last week I looked after two babies, they were very cute. One of the two babies was also very heavy! Everyone kept commenting on how we had the smallest nanny with the biggest baby. One day me and Heavy baby joined Toddlers on a walk. I put Heavy baby in the sledge and pulled him along; but Heavy baby didn't like the sledge and began to cry, so I had to pick Heavy baby up and carry him. I'm guessing not many people from home will know how hard it is to carry any baby when you've got your Markwarner puffer jacket on, and they've got their snow suits on and you're both as chubby as marshmallows; they slip right off your hip, you can barely get your arms around their waist to hold them up and the waterproof material has no grip so they just slip down and keep sliding out of your arms and you have to keep hoisting them back up again... there's the dilemma with your average baby, now imagine this with Heavy baby, all the way around La Plagne. Half way around I asked Ryan (our male nanny, or 'super manny') if we could swap, I would push the pushchair with the toddlers and he could carry heavy baby, Ryan is about a foot taller than me and just a lot bigger than me in general - about 2 minutes after Ryan had taken Heavy baby from me, he said "Cor, I don't know how you managed him this far... I can barely carry him... how did you do it!?" I think last week I built up my muscles quite a bit picking up Heavy baby.

After work yesterday night me and Vicki had a cup of 'camping tea'. We'd made the tea using the staff tea bags and when we tasted it we decided it was like camping tea, or tea you get in a polystyrene cup that you buy when you're at a fireworks display just to keep your hands warm - it wasn't particularly nice tea, but it did for melting my chocolate in and finished my bar of chocolate and half my tea while I was reading before I went to bed.

Yesterday evening it began snowing, then it got heavier, and it just hasn't stopped. I took the babies for a walk today and all the snow kept building up on the rain cover of the pushchair, and I had to keep brushing it off so that the babies could see out and so that they didn't get too hot inside. After work I went for a walk to the shops and the snow was so nice and powdery that I walked the long way round the outside of the shopping centre just so I could be in the snow for longer. It should be nice powder for skiing on my afternoon off on Friday.

Well, I told you, you should have gone and done that ironing...

Here we are, here again!

2008-02-29T09:54:00.000-08:00

Well, I was just thinking, 'I've done quite a lot over the past few days... maybe I should blog, no, I only just blogged the other day, I haven't actually done that much, it just feels as if I have because I've been working,' but then I came and looked, and actually it's been 10 days since my last blog, which is far more than I thought.

I really enjoyed a barbeque when I was down the mountain on Sunday, it was a lovely sunny day, I felt like I needed flip-flops and t-shirt rather than snow boots and tights with my skirt. I didn't do very well with my French during the church service, because I was so tired, I found it hard to listen and translate for myself at the same time. Which I was quite dissapointed with myself for.

I went for a freestyle lesson on Tuesday afternoon. Rip Curl were doing a promotional 'girls tour' and offering a free two hour lesson to any girls who wanted to sign up. Seeing as I had my afternoon off on Tuesday and some of my friends had already signed up, I decided to have a go as well. So I 'rocked up' to my lesson at the snow park at 12pm on Tuesday; we got split into ability groups and went up to the top of the snow park. After some instruction and a quick demonstration by our instructor, it was our turn to go down and do a small jump - small being, not that small to me! I stacked it on my first four goes; every time I fell my instructor asked 'ca va?' and my increasingly pained English accent creeping in to my response made the instructor finally catch onto the fact that I was English... So she decided to explain how to jump in Enlgish, it turned out that I'd understood almost exactly what she'd said in French before... so that wasn't why I stacked my jumps. But after that I managed to land all my jumps, so somewhere between the psychology of being certain I was understanding the instructions and the physicallity of learning how NOT to land jumps the first 4 times I'd tried I managed to get it sorted. So I got some good air eventually. Unfortunately as I was jumping I found out that I'd not completely healed from my wipe-out on Tuesday last week, the aches and pains came back and I went with my better judgement and stopped skiing after the lesson and went back to the hotel.
I have been kindly reminded by a good friend to 'take care, because you're getting quite intimate with the snow recently'

Child care has been incredibly quiet this week - with only 10 children booked into the clubs in total, rather than the 30 that were in last week. I've had to take care of two 3-4year olds; it's been me with my two children and Ryan with his three children in the upstairs creche all week. Very quiet, especially seeing as the 5 children we have are at ski school all morning and play very nicely together when they're in the creche for the afternoon.

This week has also been very special for me because I got an unexpected e-mail from a good friend that I've not heard from in a long time. So I was really happy with that.

Last day of my working week tomorrow, church on Sunday, and it all begins again on Monday with two new babies - God willing. See you here again soon.

Going backwards

2008-02-19T08:52:00.000-08:00

How long has it been since my last blog? In some ways it seems absolutely ages, in others it doesn't feel that long at all. What makes it feel like ages is that I've had plenty of time off this week but haven't really been able to ski; and what makes it not feel that long ago is the fact that there's plenty I've been upto, which I'm here to tell you about.

Let's work backwards from here to my last blog, shall we?

Here and now, I have 50minutes untill I have to be at work. I'm sitting on my bed and the bedroom window's open; it's a bit cold, but we're trying to get rid of the smell of disinfectant from our room. We used a whole bottle of disifectant in the very early hours of Thursday morning when a drunk room mate didn't quite make it to the toilet... until 2am me and three other of my room mates were scrubbing the floors, changing bed sheets and putting blankets in the toilet for our drunk roomie to sleep on. At least I didn't have to be at work until 12pm Thursday afternoon.

On Tuesday I went out skiing. Me and James (a guy who works on the chalet team) went and got first lifts at 9am and got some good runs in before the holiday makers started getting up. It was a very icy morning, we hadn't had snow for almost two weeks. Later on in the morning, as more poeple were on the slopes, as we were skiing down a pretty steep and very icy patch, I found I couldn't turn because there were people either side of me. That meant one thing, I was now flat lining, which you all know means one other thing - I was now going far too fast. Which we all know means when you try and stop on ice, going far too fast, it doesn't work. Which I then found out would lead me to the edge of the piste, a hard fall off the side of the piste, and I'd travell (really quite fast) down an icy dip between two pistes, and end up bruised and grazed but - thankfully - whole about 15metres from where I'd fallen. It didn't take James long to come down to where I was and make sure I was alright; it was quite a task for him to go and collect my skis, poles, sun glasses, and his own skis and poles from where he'd left them to come down to me - apparently the fall had looked about as painful as it had felt. After sun bathing and recovering for a while I managed to get my skis back on and ski very slowly, and rather painfully back to Plagne Centre. That's the reason why I've not been able to ski much this week, despite not having work until at least 12 every day, it was quite dissapointing and to add to that it's also been quite painful getting through the rest of the week.

Going further back into my week, Sunday was lovely and relaxing. The sermon was preached by a native French speaker and wasn't translated, but I managed to follow most of it: that Sunday was ordained by God, that we need to rest, that Jesus was full of compassion and compassion is the reason we have Sunday, not legalism. I didn't have to work until 12 on the Monday, so I stayed over night with the Kays, we watched my favourite film 'Miss potter' - well, me, Louisa, Mary and Emily watched Miss Potter; the guys had all decided it was a chick flick and refused to stay in the room :o) I went shopping on Monday morning, for all the essentials - Chocolate and toothpaste. Mary drove me to the bus station and Louisa came with us, we got to the bus station early and had a lovely time to talk and pray in the car before I got the bus.

The week leading up to Sunday I'd had 3 toddlers to look after. They were all adorable and I loved looking after them. It was just me and them in the creche downstairs on our own; all othe other nannies were looking after the older chidren in the creche upstairs. We had a nice, easy going week, taking things at our own pace and not completely staying within the planning; it got slightly boring for me every so often, but all three of the toddlers slept at different times, so it was never too quiet.

The Sunday preceding my work with the toddlers had contained another trip down the mountain to church, and that afternoon Mary, Louisa, Matt, Emily, Robert and I all went for a walk up, and up, and up a mountain. We got a lovely view of Bourg, and we kept walking until we came to a little chappel near the top. There we all stopped, drank, ate, rested and tried to ring the bell of the chappel with small stones and snow balls (some of us more successfully than others). Afterwards we began our descent.

It was a lovely walk and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it thoroughly wore me out. That evening, after I got the bus back to La Plagne, it was the 'nannies outting'. All the nannies went ice skating to an open air ice rink, I was so exhausted, as we walked to the cable car to get to the ice rink I went past exhaustion and got a new lease of life - So I managed to skate, race and play (very badly) a bit of ice hockey.

That, appart from an uneventful Friday and Saturday, is where I left you last time I believe.

At the foot of the cross

2008-02-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

I took this photo on Sunday when we went for a walk up a mountain... I'll tell you more about that in my next post. For now, I just wanted to share this with you, I think it's lovely. A good reminder of where you find the most peace, the most beauty, and where the best place to rest on a long, hard journey is: At the foot of the cross.

Lac Annesy

2008-02-08T14:06:00.000-08:00

Here's a picture of Lac Annesy, where Francois took me last Sunday. Francois took this on his phone because I'd forgotten my camera.

God's kept me for another week

2008-02-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

This past week I have been so aware of God's blessings and safe keeping. I have a massive 'Thank You' for God, because on Friday He kept my baby safe in creche when she began choking. God gave me the presence of mind to remember what I'd been taught in my paediatric first aid and after holding baby in the 'paediatric choking position' and some firm pats on the back it didn't take long for her to resume breathing and get some colour back in her cheeks. The feeling of an unbreathing, limp baby in my arms is one I wouldn't like to feel again. Thankfully baby was ok, she seemed none the worse for her experience and was probably more distressed by me not letting her go for the rest of the day before her parents got back!

Sunday had far more plesant events in store. I was a rather unusual sight on the way to the bus stop on Sunday morning: I had my skirt and smart boots on, my hair all plaited for church and then I had my ski boots, back pack and skis on my shoulders. Church was lovely, the sermon was about Jesus's times of 'silence' and how we can meditate in silence and spend more time being silent before God. After church Charlie, Matt, Robert, Jonathan, Louisa and I had sandwiches and then all went out skiing. It was great going skiing with such good friends. Keeping up with Robert and Matt was out of the question, so me and Jonathan (who's 12 and just learning to snowboard) agreed that we'd wait for eachother, Louisa also kept herself to my pace so we were actually skiing together, not just meeting eachother at the chair lifts. Robert went off piste through the trees and still beat me to the bottom of the slope when I was going at top speed!

Later on I cheekily aksed if I could stay over, seeing as I didn't have work the next day. Mary and Charlie said they were happy to have me. Matt, Chris, Louisa and Kate invited me to join them for a cultural meal out. We went in search of 'frogs legs'. We found a refined, quiet French resturant and soon filled it with our enthusiastic chatter and our unsuccessfully hushed laughter. I ordered the menu of the day, and then traded some of my desert for some of Matt's frogs legs - yum yum. Later on Kate and I went to Matt and Chris's apartment to watch a film; the film finished at 1am and me and Kate walked back to Charlie's.

I was very excited to have my breakfast in my pyjamas on Monday, seeing as it can't be done at the hotel. I enjoyed a leisurely morning, and later Mary took Kate, Louisa and I to a wool mill where we saw some of the old fashioned machines and looms working. It gave a bit of insight into the commerce that went on before the tourist industry dominated the mountains.

Louisa, Matt and Chris - as part of their ministry for the church - are helping at the local secondary school in the English classes. It was a big answer to prayer for the church that they were able to go in to the school, the teachers were all enthusiastic about it, but some higher officials weren't happy with their connection with the church. Seeing as the officials wouldn't let them go in on an informal basis Louisa officially applied for the job, which wasn't too difficult seeing as she'd worked in a French school before and had a lot of relevant papaerwork to allow her to do so. Louisa was officially offered the job, and now she has the job she (and due to the eagerness of the teachers) Matt and Chris are working in the school for 12 hours a week. So from 1.30 on Monday me and Kate went out shopping while the others were at the school. Then we went back to Charlie's house and Mary took me to the bus station for the 5.35 bus back up to La Plagne.

It was so nice to spend more time with my friends from church. I really get on well with my room mates and people from the hotel, but talking about Christ and things from the Bible comes so natrually with other Christians. Often I find it challenging to talk with non-Christians; if we're talking about the Bible and God I get very stretched to remember accurately what the Bible says about salvation, forgiveness and Godly living. If we're talking about things in general it' can be difficult to keep the conversation on things we have in common and on things that are 'clean'. It's nice to have a conversation with other Christians where I get challenged on my Biblical thinking, rather than a conversation where I am the reference for all things Biblical and God related. Connecting on a much deeper level means that I don't find conversation so hard to keep up and I don't have be be so much on my guard to make sure the conversation is appropriate. So I find my time with the Kays and friends very restful and rejeuvenating.

After skiing on Sunday, I got to go out again on Tuesday, I was out yesterday, and I managed to get down just one run today: So it's been a ski-ful week so far. The more I ski the more I realise I need to learn to ski better, so hopefully I'll be out agin tomorrow and Saturday trying to improve.

On a less exciting note I spent an hour today cleaning our bathroom and I've finally unpacked some of my things from my suitcase under my bed onto some shelves that were left empty by a room mate who moved out. So, I've unpacked just intime for mid-season - time to start thinking about how I'm going to get everything back into the suitcases!

And thanks to Josh for the congratulations on the length of my blog post; I hope these aren't too long and boring... I'll try and collect some new photographs for those of you who aren't so keen on the reading part.

Another week, another blog

2008-01-31T03:39:00.000-08:00

Since my last blog I've said goodbye to two very cute babies, made new friends, eaten out, seen France's second biggest lake, said hello to two new very cute babies, received a fantastic parcel from my nan, got punked up, been woken up by drunk room mates on more than one occasion, been very tired and been very happy.

Work's been quite easy having babies that are relatively happy to be left in the crèche, with a little bit of reassurance. That is, as easy as it can be to have two babies to keep entertained, clean, fed, watered and happy all day. Since Monday I've had 10month old twins in the crèche; they are very cute little girls who sleep quite a lot and they have a doting aunty who likes to take one of them out at a time to go for a walk when they're not sleeping, so I feel almost as if I've only had one baby in the crèche, it's been very nice.

On Saturday night I had quite a nice surprise, a visit from Louisa and some of her friends, they came to the hotel in La Plagne. Although they didn't come specifically to see me... originally I had intended to get the bus down the mountain to Aime on Saturday night, Louisa and her friends were going to pick me up from Aime, take me to Charlie's house to stay for the night so I could get to the train station in time to catch a certain train on Sunday morning. It turned out that the parents of one of Louisa's friends (Emma) were staying at my hotel, so they decided to drive all the way up to La Plagne to come and get me and to visit Emma's parents. While they were here Louisa, Abbie, Emma and I all went out for something to eat; which was really nice. We went back to the hotel and had a drink with Emma's parents before driving back to Bourg. Abbie dropped me and Louisa off at Charlie's house and she and Emma went on to the apartment they were staying at. It was fairly late when we got to Charlie's, so it was only Robert, Emily and Kate (a friend from America) who were up - we stayed talking for a bit and then after deciding who'd sleep where, putting out cushions, rolling out the sleeping bag, getting ready, and reading I eventually got to sleep about 12.30 and my alarm was set for 7.

The reason I was getting up so early was because I was getting the train to Albertville the next day. On the Sunday that he'd driven me back to La Plagne François had invited me to go and visit his church, so we'd arranged that I could go to his church and spend the day with him and his family.

At 7.20am I actually decided to get up. The house was totally quiet; everyone was still asleep, so I tiptoed around getting ready. I managed to be ready by 8.50 and Charlie came and said good morning just before I left to get to the train station for 8.07. It was a fairly uneventful, hour long train journey through some villages and through the mountains and I arrived at Albertville at 9.05. I had to make an emergency phone call to Charlie and Mary because I'd been daft enough to forget to look properly at the map online, so I didn't actually know where the church was! (There’s that duck again) I got to the church at about quarter past nine and waited in the 'jardin public' over the road for someone to arrive - the service wasn't until 10. It was a very fresh, quiet, French morning. Every now and then a car would pass; I'd see someone walking their dog, or someone coming from the boulangerie with their baguettes. But I didn't have to wait too long before someone arrived at the church and I was able to go and introduce myself; Mira showed me around the church and showed me into the library and suggested that, while she went and set some things up for 'ecole Dimanche' I could wait in there for my 'freres et soeurs arriver'.
I didn't have to wait very long before someone arrived, as he walked to the main hall he passed the library, when he saw me - this man who I'd never seen before said "Georgina?", perhaps seeing my slightly confused 'how do you know who I am' look he added "I'm François's brother, Laurent". Obviously they don't get petite, long brown haired, English girls visiting the church very often, as he had seemed fairly confident that I was Georgina, and I'm guessing François had told him I was going to be there fairly early. He introduced his wife, Jenna (who is American), and his two children, Micah and Caleb. Plenty of other people arrived, as did François, his parents (Mr and Mrs Joguet) and his sister (Sophie). I managed to get the gist of the service, and Thierry (who'd been at Bourg last week) was sitting next to me and François and so he helped me with a few tricky parts.

After the service we all went back to François's parent's house. It was a lovely house in a tiny little village about 10minutes outside of Albertville. Lunch was sitting in pots on top of the wood burning stove when we arrived, Mr Joguet got some wood and Mrs Joguet put it on the stove to heat everything up ready to eat. Every body helped me by speaking French very slowly to me, even though Laurent was fluent in English and François and Sophie are both very good too.
We all ate well, after lunch Laurent and Jenna left and Sophie had to prepare a lesson (as she's a music teacher). Mr and Mrs Joguet, Caleb, Micah, François and me went for a walk; François showed me his dad's rabbits, they were so cute, and all 'manger' (http://www.babelfish.altavista.com/, I suggest you only translate if you don't own a pet rabbit).

Then we all walked to François's grandma's house, it wasn't far, we all said a quick bonjour and then walked back to the house. I picked up my bag and said good bye to Sophie, Micah, Caleb and Mr and Mrs Joguet, then François took me to see Lac Annesy, the second biggest lake in France. The drive there was amazing, right in between two mountains, the road was so quiet and windy, François pointed out that 'Il n'y a pas beaucoup de monde ou voiture ici' (I'm not trying to show off, these parts are for Josh, who I know loves speaking French! Oui Josh, n'est pas?). Then we drove up the mountain and stopped at a place where you could see right across the lake, you could see all the little villages around the edge and the mountains beyond. The lake was still, with a single boat sailing, the mountains behind were streaked with mist, it was awesome.

After a while we got back in the car and drove down to the edge of the lake, we drove around the lake and back to Albertville. When we got to Albertville we still had a fair amount of time before we had to get back to Aime for my bus at 18h25. François suggested that I'd like to see the historic village, so we parked up and climbed a lot of steps. We went into the village through a stone arch way, a walk down a stony lane, past a fountain lead us to the square with an ornately decorated church at one end. We took some more steps away from the square, these lead up to an 'antique jardin', through another smaller stone archway, under the arbour and to the wall at the edge of the little garden. The wall was waist high and over it you could see over the whole of Alberville, the valley stretched out beneath the Antique Village. As we'd climbed up the steps, the sun had begun to set and now, while we were resting on the wall, the sky was pink and the sun was disappearing just behind the mountains in the distance; while we were watching Albertville's lights began to come on. And then it was time to go. A drive to Aime and a bus to La Plagne. There was just enough of the day left for me to have a drink with the other nannies, to do my washing and go to bed.

Monday and Tuesday were all fairly mundane; the twins have an easy routine of bottle, sleep, play, lunch, play, sleep, bottle, dinner, done. Yesterday night it was one of the nannies birthdays; her party was punk themed. So I got a bit punked up... this involved cutting up a top that had paint on it from start-up, wearing it over another bright coloured top, rolling jeans up, wearing them with boots, a messy hair style and a bit of eyeliner - relative to me I looked fairly punky, relative to the other girls I looked rather demure. I didn't stay punked up for very long, after a couple of drinks I was done. I came and got my makeup off and put my pyjamas on just as some of the other girls had finished work and were going out.

Unfortunately with the big party last night it means that no one's up for skiing today, so my afternoon off is proving to be a bit boring. Hopefully there'll be more chance to ski next week when I'm not key working.

Oh give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercy endures forever... It is better to trust in the Lord than put confidence in man. Psalm 118:1&8.

Don't you love it when God says "Good morning" !

2008-01-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

This week in the hotel there was a bit of a palava, one of the members of staff went down the mountain during the day, then later on at 1am her room mate noticed that she wasn't back and no one had heard from her. Her room mate had to go and tell the night porter, the night porter had to tell the duty manager and the duty manager had to wake up the head nanny who had the girl's mobile number. At 1.45am I recieved a phone call from the head nanny, 'Georgie, your room mate's a bit worried about you, where are you?' - yes, that member of staff was me!

I'd gone down the mountain on Wendesday because I had a day off; I spent a lovely relaxing day with Matt, Chris and Louisa. We had the youth group in the afternoon, so 4 young people came and joined us at Matt and Chris's appartment for 2 1/2 hours, we played four-square (a game with four squares, a ball and some tactical bouncing), did a memory verse hunt and had a goute (snack). After that me and Louisa went and did some shopping, went back to Matt and Chris's appartment for something small to eat and then went on to Bourg train station to catch a train to Aime. When we got to the station the train I'd planned on taking wasn't on the departures board, we checked the timetable that I had in my pocket again, and there was supposed to be a train running at that time. All the information desks were closed, but there were people behind them, Louisa said a very sweet 'excuse moi monsieur' and someone came out to talk to us. He told us the train simply wasn't running. End of.

So we walked back to the pastor's house, he said he'd drive me to Aime. Unfortunately it wasn't until we were nearly there, I looked at the bus timetable and realised I'd 'done a duck!' I'd missread the bus timetable! The last bus had actually left Aime for La Plagne three hours before I'd even gone to get the trian with Louisa! Needless to say, I felt awful and stupid, and awfully stupid - but Charlie very kindly said it wasn't a problem for him to drive me up to La Plagne or for me to stay over; I didn't have work until 12 the next day so I stayed over at Charlie's house, I shared Louisa's room for the night. As me and Charlie were driving back to Bourg from Aime I tried to ring the hotel to let them know I wouldn't be back for the night, but no one was answering the phone! I didn't have any of my room mates' mobile numbers, or any one else's, I just had the main desk number and obviously no one was at the main desk to take my calls.

I knew the head nanny had my phone number, so I was expecting to have a phone call from her some time later. I had expected my room mates to notice by 11.30-12ish that I wasn't there; but apparently I'm too quiet to notice even when I am in the room, so they didn't know I wasn't there.

Meanwhile, back in Bourg the church house group was happening at Matt and Chris's appartment, they were kind of surprised to see me turn up with Charlie, they thought they'd got rid of me when they sent me off with Louisa about an hour ago! But I got to join in with the singing, praying, studying and fellowship - it was such a blessing. I enjoyed spending the night in a quiet house, with no rowdy or drunk room mates comming in late, and I had warm baked oatmeal for breakfast, that was yummy.

The big question on everyone's lips when I got back to the hotel was 'Where were you last night!?' - the fact that I was the last person they would've imagined staying out for the night wasn't easily hidden. And one of the first things I did when I got back was to get all of my room mates mobile numbers, so next time I get stuck down the mountain I can ring them and they won't have to go waking up half the hotel to try and find out where I am.

On Saturday morning I was awake before all of my room mates and for some reason I had a great deal of uncontainable energy, I couldn't wait until after lunch to go skiing, so I got my gear on and when out on my own. This is what I saw...

Don't you love it when God says "Good morning" !

I was standing at the gate of the chair lift as it opened, it was very icy and difficult en piste. I managed to get down a couple of runs before having lunch and going back out with some friends:

On Sunday I went to church. After church the young people, along with the visiting speaker - Thierry - went to McDonald's for lunch, we went from McDonalds to Matt and Chris's appartment where Thierry did a short talk and then we all went ice skating. We took over the ice rink with a fairly rough game of ball that had two rules: 1) you can't hold the ball for longer than 5 seconds. 2) if you make 10 consecutive passes within your team your team gets a point. Matt, Chris, Jonathan, Aniesse and me made a team, versus Emily, Louisa, William, Rino and Thierry. I'm not sure how long we played for; but it ended with Thierry's team having 12 points and our team having 10 (it also ended with everyone having some sort of injury to show off, mine are two very bruised knees). We had a goute and then went back to Bourg, after a couple of sips of tea and a chat Thierry took me to Aime on his was back to Allbertville.

This week should be a full week of work, with two beautiful babies to keep happy.

Praise God for getting me through last week, for keeping be from doing any severe ducks, and for letting me dmake a couple of little silly mistakes to remind me how dependent I am on Him every second of every day!

Here's a bit of video of me and some friends skiing; it's not brilliantly clear, but you can see that none of us stack it! wahoo.

Avec un jolie sourire

2008-01-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

Since Christmas things have settled into a routine for me in the hotel. My full week of work (contact week) is 8.30 - 5 or 6pm with Sunday off and one other afternoon off during the week; every couple of weeks my 'non-contact' week will involve a couple of nights work, 7-11pm, and a couple of hours in the day, either 12-2pm or 4.30-6.30pm and Sunday as my full day off. Non-contact week is great for getting out and skiing, this week is my non-contact week. I've been out skiing from 12 until about 3, today has been my first day to ski while it's actually snowing, every other day it's been just about to snow or superbly sunny.

My Sunday routine satrts early, at 7am I get up and get ready, I leave the hotel at 7.30 and have an amazingly peaceful walk along the piste in the dim dawn light. I walk to the boulangerie to get breakfast and sit and eat my pain aux chocolat on the bench while waiting for the bus to arrive at 8. Half an hours journey down the mountain gives me opportunity to do lots of things, such as, sleep, listen to my music, read my Bible and write my journal - but most of the time I just sit and watch as the snowy fir trees rush past the window, occassionally obscuring the changing view of the valley and the surrounding mountains. At the base of the mountain I usually have to wait briefly to be picked up by the pastor or his wife and we drive 20minutes to Bourg.

I have half an hour to relax and watch the Sunday morning family rush to get ready to leave at 9.30. Then it's either a short walk or a 2minute drive to the church in the centre. Church is a great time of praise, learning and fellowship; followed by an afternoon with the pastors family and some friends, which is a great chace to practice my French. This Sunday me, Louisa and Emily went for a walk in a park nearby their house; we found a large frozen puddle and had great fun sliding on it.

Last week at work I was caring for two babies, just under a year old, neither of whom were pleased to be separated from their parents. One baby in particular hadn't been left before - so I felt very priveleged to be looking after her, even though it was very difficult to see her so upset. I resent the comments that are so frequently made by other child carers like 'they should go to nursery more often' 'there's no need to be crying, your mum's only out skiing' 'you're not even upset, you're just angry that you haven't got your own way' expecting the child to understand that mummy's going to be back when the ski lifts close. Just at the end of the week the two babies got used to being with me and we had a morning full of smiles and very few tears before they got to go back to their mummies.

Today as I was leaving a cafe that I go to fairly frequently one of the waiters said to me 'tu as jolie sourire' I looked at him, desperately trying to find the word sourire in my French vocabulary... saying 'pardon' to buy me some time, he repeated 'sourire' and he smiled. As he smiled he pointed to his smile, then to me, as I suddenly realised what he'd said I smiled even more and he nodded his head 'jolie sourire'... I said merci, slightly embarassedly, and left with a big 'jolie sourire' to go back to the hotel.

Here's a picture of me, to show that I m acutally in the mountains, not just googling them ;o)

Boxing Day 2007

2007-12-26T14:31:00.000-08:00

This year is the first Christmas I’ve spent away from my family, parts of it have been amazingly special and other times I’ve just wanted to be at home.
On Sunday (the 23rd) I got to church and I had a fantastic day. It was a bit like Christmas day; I was so excited to be going to church (especially because I’d not been for the past two weeks) that I woke up really early. I kept waking up and going back to sleep until 7, when I got up and got ready to go out. I left the hotel at 7.30am and stopped at the boulangerie on the way to the bus stop to get pain aux chocolat for breakfast. The ride down the mountain was brilliant, on the way up we’d been surrounded in heavy snow clouds and couldn’t see a thing, but this time I could see all the way across the valley and the peaks of all the surrounding mountains. I also listened to the conversation that the bus driver was having with the one other passenger that was on the bus, they were talking in French to each other and I didn’t understand a great deal.
The pastor picked me up from Aime and we went to the church in Bourg, stopping at his house to pick up the family on the way. There were a lot of English people there at the church, so there was quite a bit of translating going on – but I was pleased with how much of the sermon I understood that wasn’t translated. I was invited to have lunch with the pastor, his family and some other friends; with Charles and Mary, the 5 children, two American guys (Matt and I’ve forgotten the other guys name, how rude of me!) who’re helping with the church’s youth ministry over the winter, and another friend of the family (Francois) there were 11 of us for lunch. We had a look at the bus timetable in the afternoon, we realised that if I was to go to the carol service in the evening I would miss the last bus. So it was arranged that Francois would take me all the way to La Plagne after the carol service. It felt very Christmassy at their house, I helped Mary and Emily (their daughter) make lunch and then after we’d eaten the men all went to clear up and Emily, Mary and me sat down and chatted and listened to Christmas music. The mix of French and English conversation around the dinner table was amusing and tiring.
The carol service that evening was held in a beautiful little church on a mountain side, we sang some French and some English Christmas carols. Half way through the carol service Charlie had a bit of trouble with one of the English carols, him being American he didn’t actually know how the words fitted to the tune, we tried to sing it without him leading but we didn’t get very far before it all fell apart. I suggested to Robert (their son) and Matt that one of them go and help Charlie sing it, but they said they didn’t know it either, “You go” Robert said, “No, I can’t” I said, “Yes,” they said “go… go on, this is your chance to shine!” Robert said “Go on, go” they said. By this time Charlie had pretty much heard the boys urging me to go and sing, so he looked at me and I went and helped him sing ‘come and worship Christ the new born king’. Afterward I helped serve the cakes and sandwiches; it was lovely going through the crowds of people and hearing the two different languages here and there.
Then Francois took me home, on the way I spoke some French, Francois spoke lots of English, we said ‘no, I don’t understand’ to each other a lot, and we also got a bit lost – So it was an eventful journey. At the end of it I said a very sincere merci beacoup to Francois and he wished me a merry Christmas; and I eventually got back into the hotel at 9.30pm and I was ready to fall into bed after I’d gone and told my friends that I was back safely.
One of the most exciting things that have happened over Christmas is the chance to tell my room mates about what Jesus was doing on earth. This week I’ve answered questions like “What do you believe will happen to me when I die?” and “What do you have to ask God to forgive you for? Everything you do seems right to me.” God has allowed me to explain some of His perfection and amazing grace - grace that comes to bad people that even seem good in the eyes of the world, like me.
Christmas day I was woken up by the girls in my room wishing each other a merry Christmas, and confessing that they were either hung over or still drunk from last night. Most of the girls went off to work and others went back to sleep – I got up to greet the day and went for a walk to the boulangerie for a very festive breakfast of pain aux chocolat. On the way back to the hotel I bumped into some friends taking a break from work and we got a Christmas hot chocolate, I had work for a couple of hours over lunch, then I went out skiing in the afternoon – I actually began to parallel ski on Christmas day. Evening work was quite exciting, I served hot chocolate to the children as they sang Christmas songs and waited for Santa to ski down the slalom slope, Santa arrived just as I lost the ladle in the sea of hot chocolate and his snowboarding helper was right behind him. The presents were handed out and I had fun chasing after wrapping paper on the outside terrace while the children went to find themselves places to sit in the restaurant. Only three of them decided to sit at the table that I’d carefully set with poshly folded napkins and Christmas crackers – so I spent some time delivering sets of children’s cutlery and Christmas crackers to various tables around the restaurant before I took the food out to them. As I was clearing up after the children right outside the restaurant window there was a descent of fire – hundreds of skiers carrying flaming torches came skiing down the slope in the dark, it looked so magical. On my way out of the hotel after I’d finished clearing up there were fireworks, I watched them as I walked to a pay phone to ring mum and the gang at home. After the phone call I got back into my uniform and went to do evening listening in the crèche, I sat and dozily watched the children who were watching Anastasia and Robots. After that I went to my bed; after reading, praying, writing and an interesting talk about Christianity with my room mate I sleepily ended my first Christmas day away from home.
This boxing day has bought with it more parallel skiing, another challenge to stay awake in the crèche while the children were falling asleep watching Garfeild and Ice Age, lots of phone calls to my family, a visit downstairs with friends to the bar which is ‘the place to be’, and plenty of time to blog and chill out. God’s also given me this day to praise Him and bring glory to Him; This is the day that the Lord has made, let’s rejoice and be glad in it.

10 Days on

2007-12-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

10 Days on from my last blog. I feel a lot better about being here; I've had a couple of hours skiing, had a talk on the phone with the pastor's wife from the church in Bourg-Saint-Maurice, and the children have arrived to fill up the freshly painted and thoroughly sterilised creches.

I've discovered that the ski slopes are colour coded in order of difficulty, after nursery slopes there's green, blue, red then black. On Saturday I put skis on for the first time ever in my whole life, and skied down a nursery slope. On Sunday I put skis on for the second time ever in my life and got down a green slope at the end of a 2hour lesson. Today, Wednesday, third time on skis and I attempted two blue runs - consequently I have a couple of bruises.

The Sunday busses weren't running this week, so I couldn't go to church on the 16th - but I'm really looking forward to this Sunday. It's so hard standing, looking out at the awesome mountains and knowing that the person you're with can't possibly understand that the creator of those mountains came and spoke to you and comforted you this morning.

I've had a chance to speak a bit of French, and I got caught out by hardly understanding a word of the resopnses to my questions! Fortunately the words I did understand were the key ones, I think! So it wasn't a complete disaster. Understanding some French has enabled me to seem a bit polite though. For example, when I was waiting in a queue at a shop, the lady in front of me left the queue but she said something as she left, it took me a few minutes to process that she'd said 'I'm comming back'. So I was able to keep her place in the queue for her.

Learning ski/borader language is something quite different though! Today I proppa stacked it on the blue runs, I haven't got any air but my mate had to bail on a steep jump cuz she got taken out. I also know that popping a snowboard is practically as easy as ollying a skateboard.

I've had fun this week being the only nanny for a 10month old girl, she's gourgeous. We've done painting, chalking, singing, played instruments, played outside in the snow. And whenever we get bored being on our own in the baby room we go next door to the toddler room where it's always nice and busy.

Whenever we go out Markwarner nannies have to wear bright red puffer jackets, it's quite embarrassing, if Markwarner were aiming to get us and our enormous 'Markwarner' logos noticed on the slopes then they've achieved their aim; we're really quite hard to miss.

I miss you all.

Snow and sun

2007-12-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

First things first, praise God for being such an amazing protector and comforter; praise Him for His awesomety! Such condescention, Christ came down from Heaven, a more amazing place than I'll ever see or capture on picture.

Here at La Plagne, half an hour from the nearest train station, three hours from Grenoble air port, and prescisely 21 180degree turns from Aime-La-Plagne in the valley ( I didn'tcount them, they're labled) God has been very real to me.

First impressions of the Markwarner hotel were apparently fairly accurate for the entire standard of service and maintenance. The letters from the name were falling off from the front of the building, the snow was poorly cleared from the steps, a very well worn mat didn't help to take the snow off my boots as I walked into a foyer filled with managers wearing jeans and hoodies, vans on their feet (ask Nicole if you don't know what they are!), and several peircings on their ears and faces. Perhaps you get the picture?

I could've cried when I saw the state of the bedroom I was sharing with 4 other girls, and I could've cried even more when at dinner the manager proudly proclaimed that they were going to open the bar later and there was a drink of champagne free, just to give them a head start. But, as I said, God's a real comforter and after dinner I went with the girls to my room and we made friends as we unpacked our cases. At the air port God hadn't given me any chances to deny my faith, because when my bag was off loaded from the aeroplane and put on the converyor belt for collection, the zip came undone! So out fell my John MacArthur 'Truth for today: a daily touch of God's grace' and 'Le Bonne Semmence'; while I had chance to grab my bag, my books got away and was going for another trip around the luggage collection hall... on the second pass I managed to collect my Bonne Semence, but the MacArthur book was trapped under someone's 15kilo bag. That bag got collected, so I shouted to the next person along to grab my book for me, everyone in the luggage hall looked at me. So, first thing out of my bag, onto my pillow was my Bible and prayer journal - seeing as God had already shown me how it was to be done!! An hours walk around La Plagne, a trek in the snow, a drink with some new friends, a (relatively) early night and I felt much better.

The morning after we arrived breakfast was served at 8, work started at 8.30. Training, policies and procedures were covered for the morning; then we did painting in the afternoon and cleaned all the toys in the nursery.

The ski lifts open on Saturday, and basically we aren't getting days or afternoons off until the guest arrive. So no church until Sunday next week.

I can't wait until the kids come and we can make a propper snowman!

watch this space!

Tomorrow's THE day, at last!

2007-12-06T14:12:00.000-08:00

If God allows, I'll be waking up tomorrow in time to leave the house at 5am. Down to Standsted airport to check in at 8am, in time for my flight to leave at 10am.
The flight's scheduled to take about 1 hour and 1/2, arriving in Grenoble at 12.30ish (local time) from there I anticipate a 2-3 hour coach journey to the ski resort where I'll be working for the next 5months or so.
I'm looking forward to meeting the people I'll be working and living with, although rather nervous. I'm hoping and praying that I'll get the first Sunday off in order to go to church; but -being of little faith - I'm sceptical that they'll let me go and have free time just one day after I've arrived to work! I'm anticipating the second Sunday (Dec the 16th) to be my first opportunity to go and join the fellowship in the nearby town, which I'm quite excited about.
I shall go and try and get myself a decent night's sleep, or as they say in French 'je me couche maintenant'.
Watch this space!

Stories from our nurseries.

2007-11-03T04:26:00.000-07:00

*If you read this and think I'm exaggerating, go and spend a whole day in every room of a day nursery and then see if you believe this actually happened*
Recently I was working in a day nursery; on this particular morning I was watching the children in the 3year old room.
I settled down in the book corner with a book and began reading to a little boy, after a while I found myself reading to group of at about 10 children who'd all become intrigued by multi-tonal rendition of Dr. Seuss's "One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish." As soon as Dr. Seuss's book had ended with'...But the fish I love the best, mummy fish, kiss kiss fish" I was handed another book by an eager 3year old.
I began reading again, the children's faces were all happily focused on the picture of the poor little bunny who'd just fallen down; until I read these words 'Mummy kissed it better, and the pain had gone away.' I looked up at the children and one little boy in particular caught my eye. His face had become sad and his eyes filled with tears, he pointed gently to the mummy bunny in the picture; silently his tears started to run down his face. As I continued reading the tearful little boy got up and crossed the room to get himself a tissue, carefully he dabbed his wet eyes, put the tissue in the bin and came and sat back down again - but it wasn't long before his cheeks were wet again, he continued to sit, his tears pouring down his face.
Later on in the day a nursery nurse breifly glanced up from filling in the report sheets and saw the little boy putting another tissue in the bin, she said sternly to him "No, we're not having this again, you don't take the tissues out and just put them straight in the bin, no" - she hadn't seen him drying his eyes, and apparently she didn't see his need for comfort and reassurance either. The little boy simply looked at her without a word.

* * *

The next day I was with the 0-1 year olds for the morning. It wasn't a very happy place to be. As I walked down the hall towards the room I could hear the distressed screaming of at least two babies.
For half an hour I sat, walked and stood cuddling an inconsolable baby; after this ammount of time she began to quieten down. Her sobs became intermittent, rather than constant and she began to moan rather than scream - until I had to put her down to take the tray of snacks and drinks from the cook at the door; then my half an hour began all over again.

After snack; with one nursery nurse for every 3 tired, sticky, upset babies I sat with one baby crying on my right knee, one baby falling asleep on my left knee, one of my feet pressing buttons on a light up toy infront of another baby who needed to be quickly distracted before he'd also burst into tears and looking helplessly at a baby screaming at the door of the room. While another nursery nurse filled in the snack records and another nursery nurse disinfected the hi-chairs.

* * *

Later that day, this time in the 2year olds room, the nursery was having a 'settling-in' session with a little boy and a little girl. As the mother of the little girl went to leave the room the little girl clung onto her mum and started crying; her mum assured her that she'd be back later to pick her up, this had no effect and the little girl carried on crying. When the mum tried to prise the little girl off her and the little girl wouldn't let go, she turned to the nursery nurse for some proffessional advice "what should I do in this situation? Just... just leave her, try and put her down?" the nursery nurse looked thoughtfully for a while, then said "Yeah, that's probably best"

The mum pulled the little girl from around her waist and almost ran from the room before her daughter could catch up with her, with the door shut and the handle too high for the girl to reach, through the glass pane in the door she tearfully watched her mum leave the nursery.

The little boy stood watching his friend and quickly began crying himself, even though he'd appeared fine when his mum left. The little boy cried until he fell asleep, then he woke up crying an hour later, he cried while the others ate lunch, he cried while they played with the bricks, he cried while I read to him and cuddled him, he cried and nodded understandingly while I explained that mummy was going to be back as soon as we'd finished playing in the garden after we'd had song time, he cried while we sang, he cried while he watched me pushing the other children in the see-saw. When his mum came later, she asked the nursery nurse "How's he been?" and the nursery nurse replied "we've had a few tears, but really he's been fine, he's played with the bricks and been playing outside."

The little girl had calmed down a bit, she'd sung some songs, she'd eaten some of her lunch - then when she saw her mum come to pick her up, she cried and didnt want to go to her straigh away.

* * *

Do we honestly consider ourselves a forward thinking society? Do we wonder why so many children have social behaviour disorders? Lets go back to their nursery years, how many times did they have to emotionally detach themselves in order to get through a day? How many times did they try and build a bond with their carer, who got promoted, or got moved to the pre-school room and they never saw them again?

If our children aren't given the opportunity to learn to care about people in authority, if they aren't given the chance to see that someone has a long-term emotional interest in them - how are they going to recognise a good relatioship? How are they going to know who's a good person to be in authority? How are they going to know that they must invest their time and care into others; if no one invested sincere, substatial ammounts of time and care into them?

Please, let's invest in our future, let's really care for our children.

Something else to write about

2007-11-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

So, most people know by now that the date I'm due to leave for France is the 7th of December. It seems a long way away, and it's getting quite depressing because people keep saying things like 'I thought you'd already gone to France?' or 'really, you mean you're not going mid-November?'.
I feel like replying, 'well actually, I have already gone to France, I just came back to visit! ... For a day... two days after I just left to work... I came back... I really did' or 'I could pretend to leave mid-November, if that'd make you happier?' - but that would be really, unnecessarily sarcastic.
In the mean time - between now and that far off departure date, which isn't actually so far off - someone from church is helping me practice my French conversational skills. Our conversations tend to consist of Jon saying a sentence in French, me looking blank, Jon saying the sentence slower, me saying 'je ne comprends pas - sorry', Jon breaking the sentence down sylable by sylable for me and me going 'oh, yeah, hang on, what's the French for...' - yeah, Jon, if you get to read this, thanks for your patience!!
I'm hoping a lot of things will come out when I'm in France that I hadn't realised I'd learnt - if that makes sense to you!

Boots

2007-10-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

Uh oh! It's that time of the year again - just ask Jo, she almost screams and faints when I say the word: 'Boots'.
Trouble is I'm really fussy, but I'm not rich. You can see my dilema, yeah? It'd be really easy to go and buy that smart looking pair of Timberland, or the gorgeous looking fake-fur trimmed ones from Johnsons bootmakers; however buying those would be the equivalent of making a deposit on a one bedroomed house in Chelmsley Wood.
So, last year and the year before, Jo kindly came with me as my fashion guru and bank manager while we trapsed the 'Shoe expresses' and 'Jonathan what's-his-name James' looking for a pair of boots that kind of do as a subsitute for Reiker or Ecco... as you can imagine, that wasn't really going to happen, not very easily. I think I may have worn through an entire pair of shoes just walking around the shops, kind of making my bargain hunting a bit of a false economy - can you see why this is such a touchy subject for me!?
It's not even as-if I look at the boots in the shops and think - "ooh that pair of £50 boots is nice, but I really want to spend double on another pair of boots that are just an nice" No, I look at every single boot in the shop, and I only ever seem to be drawn to the ones that are triple that price. See, it gets worse!
Now, tomorrow, I need to go and buy boots, I really, really do - because my old ones have holes in them, my socks got wet when it rained today (when I said I'm not rich, I didn't actually mean I'm that poor, I just haven't got round to buying my autumn shoes yet, because, well, because it's such a big ordeal for me and my family). But, Jo's busy... who's going to stop me spending my life savings on boots! Who's going cover my eyes when we pass Clarks's new season boots!
Honestly, I do take ages looking for new shoes, and last year I went round nearly all the shoe shops in Brimingham, Solihul, Sutton Coldfeild, Brighton and Hove...
My problem is that I wear the same boots for the entire winter, that is when I'm going out - I don't wear them to bed or aynthing, I'm not that much of a boot compulsive. I walk them everywhere, sometimes I even like to splash in puddles with them, this year they may even have to withstand the Alps. Why is it that boots aren't made for walking!? (Unless you buy the trekker ones that look more like trainers, and you really couldn't wear them with a skirt) I would like to have asked Nancy Sinatra where she shopped for her boots, although the likelihood is that her boots would've been the equivalent of price a deposit on a house in London. Hmmm.
I would like to dedicate this blog to Jo, my faithful bootfinding assistant, also a fab sister.
To everybody else, next time you see me, please admire my boots, they were carefully chosen :o)

Freedom

2007-10-13T14:38:00.000-07:00

I've never been in dread of my government, never had anything to hide politically and never had to run in fear from my country. In fact, if I had a problem, I might have a certain amount of confidence in the British legal system, or emergency services to help me sort it out. I expect that a great deal of my English or European friends would be able to say the same thing.
I do have concerns and anxieties about the morals and the wisdom of our MPs, but I don't live scared of imprisonment or even death. How many people don't have this freedom.
I have spent part of today with someone who didn't have this privilege; his life story includes perilous and illegal journeys, this country is now his confinement, and he may never see his birth family or country again.
If we look at the history of our country - http://www.britannia.com/history/narintrohist.html
We can see many sacrifices that have been made for our political and religious freedom, with famous names such Luther, Cromwell, Tyndale and famous events such as the world wars. Seeing as so many people have sacrificed so much, even their lives, for us; our freedom to worship where we like,vote for government, protest, work where we like and choose how to live - Do we appreciate it enough?
British history has many of it's roots in Christianity and the Bible; with many great men standing up for the faith and other great men dying for it. Even now we can see vague reflections of Biblical principles in our justice system, health service and financial benefits system.
I love living in a free coutry, we have a lot to thank God for.
In a country where few realise what physical freedom we have, even fewer realise what spiritual freedom IS.

In John 8:32,
Jesus said to the Jews "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
and the Jews replied, "But we're not slaves to anyone, how can you say we'll be made free?"
Jesus answered, "Whoever sins is a slave of sin; a slave doesn't live in the masters house forever. But the Son lives in the masters house forever, if the Son makes you free, then you will be free indeed."

So - what do I (born into freedom and living without political fear) and a man (who's fleeing from persecution and praying for amnesty) have in common?

Freedom

in Christ alone!

A half-built tribute to an awesome saviour?

2007-10-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

"Thus says the LORD of hosts: "Consider your ways! Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified." Haggai 1:7,8
In the days of Haggai the prophet the temple of the LORD at Jerusalem stood unfinished; and the Jews were busy living in well built houses, sowing seed, eating, drinking, earning big wages and wearing beautiful clothes. The building of the temple had started well when the Israelites had been freed from Babylonian captivity, shortly after they started king Artaxerxes wrote a letter saying "Now give the command to make these men cease, that this city may not be built until the command is given by me." ... Rehum, Shimshai the scribe, and their companions, they went up in haste to Jerusalem against the Jews, and by force of arms made them cease. Thus the work of the house of God which is at Jerusalem ... was discontinued until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia. Ezra 4:21, 23, 24.
Years after king Artaxerxes had died, and king Darius was on the throne, the Jews hadn't got back to finishing the temple. The Lord spoke to Haggai to tell the people to consider their ways and get back to building the temple so that He, the Lord, might recieve the glory through it.

Now consider - Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 1 Corinthians 3:16
Have I stopped building my relationship with God? Am I making a place in my life to bring glory to God, so that He can take pleasure in it? Or am I a half-built ruin as a tribute to an awesome saviour? There are times when God puts obstacles in our way, when He will let satan disrupt our plans - then He wants us to look to Him, but by no means does He want us to give up building forever.
Indeed, going up into the mountains doesn't sound like a very easy thing to do; in-fact I wonder how hard it is to cut down a tree and carry the wood down a mountain. Maybe at times when my prayer-list looks super long, and the sun hasn't even risen yet, and I've got a 10hour work day ahead of me, I feel like I'd rather be walking up a mountain that sitting drowsily mumbling through a Psalm. But, no, Consider your ways, imagine - the LORD of host taking pleasure in us!
Certainly, I thank the LORD that He prompted His people to begin re-building the temple. Being confident in this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in me will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6

Also, thanks to Keith Gunn who bought this idea to Bible study last night.

A great weekend

2007-10-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

Today I got up late, worked for 2 hours, and have eaten more than 3 chocolate bars.
On Friday it was very different though... I began work at 8am and finished at 6pm. Then I got to come home to a house of giggling girlies; my two sisters and two good friends who'd come round for a sleepever. We got busy singing, dancing, burning pizzas, grating cheese onto the floor (and partly onto a pizza!), chopping salad and working ourselves up into a general frenzy before the lads arrived. Poor Si had to put up with us girls on his own before Tim arrived to rescue him; and rescue a game of Articulate that we were in the middle of playing.
The clock struck 11 and the girls decided it was a good time to get into our jammies and melt some chocolate. The Phantom of the Opera being the movie for the night, we all settled down to dipping marshmallows, apple, bannana and what-nots into the chocolate and heckling at the Phantom and Roul. The boys barely kept their eyes open, despite our random shouts of 'hot chicken' and we eventually let them go to bed about 2.30. How kind of us.
The next day consisted of the arrival of Josh, plenty of dutch blitz, a meal out at a chinese resturaunt, Nicole's baptism (Praise God for her salvation!), the arrival of JoR, departure of Hannah and Simon, bowling, cheese toasties, a discussion with John about homeschooling and - of course - an early morning theological debate, this time it was 'are there levels in Heaven and hell?' at 2am.
Sunday brought with it a long qeue for the shower, a lovely walk to church, being in the house of God and worshiping Him, lunch, a walk to the airport with the mad dog Pippa, then all the good byes... Good bye to John who went back to Holland, to Tim and JoR who went back to Guildford and to Josh who went back to Loughborough. Menekse stayed with us for church in the evening, and we watched Pride and predjudice until 3am.
The next day (Monday) I got woken up at 6.45 with a phone call from my agency telling me they'd got work for me that day, so I said my farewells to Menekse at 9am and went to work for 8 hours.
Great weekend.

I know this video is everywhere at the moment i.e. all our headbooks, I mean facebooks, and you're possbily sick of it ... but hey we love it and like Menekse says, we want to make it famous :o)