Carrrrggggghhhs

I am not a fan of cars. I love the convenience and freedom they endue. But I hate the relentless maintenance and cost they require. Our car has had to have it's annual MOT test. It initially failed and needed a new exhaust and tyre before it would pass. That combined with an annual service has cost us a small fortune. Unfortunately I need to have a car to get to work and back and it also makes the rest of our lives possible. Public transport would be impractical for the range of places we need to get to each day.
I have often wondered if it would be cheaper in the long run to buy cheap old cars regularly and get a replacement one when it needs lots of things doing on it.
In an ideal world I would have a car provided for a fixed affordable cost that would be replaced if it ever broke down but the leasing schemes that purport to provide this always seem to be for new cars and because of that, more expensive than running an older car. Or be so rich that I didn't car how much a car cost to run.

Thanks

When we went to the Kids' Workers' day my parents kindly came up from Dorset to child sit. It was nice to see them. Our children were very excited to see them and by all accounts had a fantastic day without us. And as an added bonus our eldest and my mum created a fantastic sunflower project for her school homework.

Kids' Workers' Day

We went to the New Wine Kids' Workers' Day on Saturday. It was fantastic, very encouraging, informative and a great time. There were different seminars, times of worship and nice food. I have wriiten a bit about it here. There is only one thing that troubled me and that is where to put the apostrophes in the title of this post.

New school

We have been looking at sending our eldest to a different school. The reasons are complex and numerous but essentially revolve around our concern for her to have the opportunity to make good positive friendships. We have just found out today that she has been accepted and starts in September. It has been a difficult decision to make in some ways in that we have to pay fees for the school and we didn't want to commit to something that would cripple us financially and cause us to live on tesco value white bread and margarine for the next few years but and easy decision in many other ways in the the schools ethos matches our own and the atmosphere at the school is lovely. And so in many ways this has been a step of faith.

New fun internet thing

I've just joined another internet networking website thing. I've had a go at most of the main ones but I quite like this one. I tried My Space but it just annoyed me and I couldn't work out what the point was but now I have joined Facebook. The good thing about it is that you can be a lot more controlled on who can see what. The bad thing is that most of my friends are not on it as it is mostly inhabited by people under the age of 25 as it started as a college/university student thing. But gradually it is becoming more popular with those born earlier such as I. See if you can find me and add me as a friend.

Haircut

I've been to the barbers and had my hair cut. This is always a bit traumatic for me. Especially so this time as I had not been to this particular barbers before. I normally go to an Italian mother and son outfit near where I live but as all our weekends are busy for the next few weeks I have had to find one near my work. Though as it turned out it wasn't as bas as it could have been. He wasn't one of those barbers who feels the need to talk all the time - I find this difficult as when I am not wearing my glasses I can't see any visual cues from their body language - are they joking or serious? Talking to me or someone else?. And he also seemed to know how to cut my hair without me answering lots of questions about what sort of something or other I wanted or whether I wanted some hairdressing term or other doing. The only thing I need now is to know if it looks ok. I'll have to wait until I'm home to find that out...

Abduct a child fund?

Is it just me or is anyone else a bit concerned about the large rewards for information leading to the recovery of the abducted child Madeleine McCann. Now don't get me wrong; I am as desperate that she be found as the next person. It's just that surely the amount of money offered is going to be attractive to the sort of evil people who steal children and it might encourage other mad people to take children in the hope of getting some of it. The fund to assist in the search seems a much better use of money and no doubt will help both in Madeleine's recovery and help either directly or indirectly in other abduction cases.

Our family's prayers are with Madeleine and her family.

Scythe sharpening

At work it seems that the new management team is looking to make the company more efficient. A number of people in the offices in America have been made redundant and it looks like the scythe of efficiency is swinging our way. I hate all this uncertainty - it makes it hard for me to concentrate and relating to colleagues who may or may not be at risk of losing their jobs. So here's to stability and to still having a job when it's all over.

Training Day

Yesterday was a leadership training day at my church. It was really good and a great time to look at the vision of the Church as see how it needs to be and can be communicated to all those involved in the stuff the church does.

One of the first things we did was try to remember the mission statement of the church but only one group could do this. (I think I had an excuse as I am quite new to the church and don't think I had ever known the mission statement.) The mission statement is (for those who are interested):

Growing individuals to become God's people and releasing them to transform their world.

This is good and I think I am starting to remember it. Though, as was acknowledged, it is quite a long and complicated sentence to remember. Once we has review these we looked at how we should be putting this into practice. This is through 5 C's:

Children and Youth

Corporate

Cross Culture

Compassion

Church planting

The first 3 things being things we are doing really well and the second 2 things things that are going quite well but could be going better. We then looked at how important it was that everyone was working towards the same vision if we want to get any of this done.

Pizza

We had another planning meeting for the October holiday club last night. It seemed to go well though there were slightly less people there than last time. There was also someone from one of the other churches we are partnering with to put on more than the one event at the same time. He was really enthusiastic and excited about all the possibilities (as were we all).

The metaphorical jungle denizens went down well as publicity material for the event and we thought about some of the characters from the Bible we wanted to include. As a result of the ideas resulting from the philosophy behind the publicity we are looking for people in the Bible who God saved from something, but also had some sort of character flaw that they needed help with as well. As most people have flaws of one sort or another this shouldn't limit the field too much but it has made it hard to find female characters. They are either very well behaved, prostitutes or both.

On the food front we had pizza and as we had catered for the maximum number of attendees and only had about half that number attending there was plenty to go round.

Politics

Now we’ve done religion it’s time for politics. Gosh bogging is so liberating!! I will be sorry to see Tony Blair go. I actually think he has been a great Prime minister. Putting the Iraqi war to one side, I think he has brought the country on in leaps and bounds since the Tories were in power. There have been immense improvement to the health service and education. Unemployment is down and we have a very strong economy. To have won 3 general elections and to then stand down and not be booted out can’t be bad. Last night my other half said would he like to have Tony round for dinner. I think I might prefer to go to his house for a meal. Yes I would love to if you could arrange that for me. Apologies to my brother in law who might be reading this. I know he will be hissing and spitting and be quite glad to see the back of Tony. Come on Castle Langley let's see some more blogging.

Google is quick

I have just found that I am listed in the result of a Google search for metaphorical jungle denizens after only writing about it mere minutes a go. That's fast.

Jesus

Last night we helped out with our Churches Alpha group. It was a really great night. My other half gave the talk about who Jesus was. It was a really interesting evening which led to quite a bit of discussion about Jesus’ existence. It amazed me that despite all the evidence, not just in the bible but other none biased historical documents etc... people had really strange ideas about who Jesus is. And what actually happened to him. One person suggested that after his crucifixion he survived and went off to INDIA!! So he never rose from the dead. I almost think they have no real understanding of how brutal the Romans were. In that day when they crucified someone it was to execute them in a very slow and inhumane way.

When it comes to God I think some people would rather believe the impossible than to believe in God. I actually think it takes more faith to believe there is no God. Maybe that’s because I know God to be true. We’ve had so many amazing things happen in our lives that is more then just coincidence, it’s not just about getting what you want in life it’s experiencing deep love and fulfilment, hope and intimacy like you’ve never know it.. I know a number of angry people who refuse to believe and their anger never goes away. What hope without God is there? Why do people refuse to even step out in faith to see if he is there? Maybe they think the cost is too high. How deceived they really are.

Denizens of a Metaphorical Jungle

The who is Jesus talk seemed to go ok. Though it seems that some of the people at the meeting might have preferred I use The Davinci Code rather than the Bible as my main source of information about him. The food was very nice also lasagne followed by raspberry tart. Whilst I was there I also had a chance to discuss some of the ideas from the team looking at the publicity for the holiday club that we are involved in planning for October. They involve what can be described as denizens of a metaphorical jungle. More of this later...

Who is Jesus

Writing this blog entry is a bit of a displacement activity as I am supposed to be preparing a talk for an Alpha course my mother-in-law is running tomorrow evening on who Jesus is. It is a bit short notice but her first choice found they had prior commitments at the last minute. I quite enjoy doing this sort of thing but always feel unprepared. Probably because I spend most of the time that I should be preparing doing things like writing blog entries...

No fear

My youngest seems to know no fear. Well that's not quite true he did seem a bit scared of the bit of Doctor Who he saw the other day and he was truly petrified by his first potty training experience - but he has no fear of physical harm. Yesterday he was at a friend's birthday party where there was an inflatable slide - it must have been 5 feet high and he was just throwing him self down it. I couldn't watch as it was too scary - but he seemed to be having fun and also to come to no harm, In fact the only time he hurt himself was when he banged heads with another child in the race to get up the slide for another go.

Jonah

Today I was Jonah in the monthly family service. I was good fun, though I am always nervous of being an embarrassment to my family and myself. My eldest was very helpful with designing my costume and learning my lines. (Though we did have some stylistic differences in how the costume should look- but those were eventually settled.) She also helped with making seaweed out of crepe paper and fish bones out of plastic milk bottles.

Hopefully the people in the service learnt a bit about Jonah and that it helped reinforce the message being given by the people leading the service.

Secret garden gets bench

My wife has bought a little bench for the secret garden for the children to play on. It looks very sweet.

New Job

I started my new job yesterday. I'm working as a Nursery Nurse in a Nursery school. I was asked by a friend from church who is a family worker at this school if I would consider working one day a week up until the end of the summer term. It’s fantastic as it fits in brilliantly with the family and the school is happy for me to bring my son in with me. The timing of this is also amazing, which I will share more about in a later blog. It’s funny not long after I qualified as a Nursery Nurse I regretted my qualification and have not really been sure of what to do, but it’s actually been a wonderful career that has opened many interesting doors for me. It’s also a good career that fits in with family life. I am feeling really blessed at the moment. My son loved his first day at Nursery school, I barely saw him all day. He got a little clingy when I was doing some singing with the children. When it time to go home he did his normal: a tantrum! Never mind. We will be back again next week. I'm also excited by the possibilities that this could open up for me. They've already asked me if I'm interested in more days.

Best Seat

When ever I fly to go and work with a customer I always try and get the seat I consider to be the best. I'm not excessively competitive about it. That is to say I am not one of the militant queuers that seem bent on being first in the queue no matter what. But by a process of being in the right place at the right time I aim to sit in the seat by the front door in the plane. This seat has the advantage of lots of legroom, nothing in front of you,the chance of getting of the plane first and sitting by a window. You also get to see the cabin staff and what they are up to, and as I am one of those nosey people who likes to know what is going on this suits me very well. I suppose some of the disadvantages are that you are the first to be sucked out of the plane if the door falls off, you cant put any bags under your chair and the little table that comes up from between the seats is a little wobbly. But as I only fly to places that are quite close and so don't take long this isn't a problem. On my trip to Glasgow this week I managed to get this seat on the way their but not on the way back - I had to sit one row back, but at least I still had a window. Tough on the way back being first off the plane only meant that you got a seat on the coach to the terminal as the plane parked in a funny place.