Recently in Family Stuff Category

Wow, it's really been a long time since I was last here, which means as usual I have so much to report that I'll probably forget half of it by the time I get to the point where I may have considered writing about it, and if that is the case I can only appologise in advance for the small amount of detail that is missing regarding the last month of my life!!

Ok, so it would appear that I damaged my back whilst in the process of moving house (again) this week. Bizarrely, it was actually in the process of lifting Maisey to give her a cuddle, but I'm guessing it was mainly the heavy lifting thing that caused the problem.

And boy, did it hurt!!

Anyway, after my team told me to "GO HOME!!" yesterday, I visited the doctor and she prescribed some codiene (*sp) which is great, and now my back doesn't hurt as much, which is also good. I have to take "2 codiene tablets 4 times daily", and "8 ibruprofen per day" - which is actually the same thing but quite confusing when explained in 2 very different ways.

We also had friends to stay last night which was cool - guests to stay on our 2nd night in the house. Boy, are we socialites?

So I'm back at work now, and pleased with my back relief, but I did just scuff the bumper of my car on a bollard, which is VERY annoying.

Wow, that felt a little random, as far as blogs go, but hey, that's my ramblings I guess.

Ciao.

Have you ever heard the story of a guy, trapped on his roof after his whole street gets hit by a major flood - Being a Christian, he prays that God would save him. Some time later a lifeboat comes past, offers to help, and the man replies "no, God's gonna save me!!" Then a helicopter flies by and offers to help, but the guy says the same again, after 4 declined offers of rescue, the guy falls from the roof and drowns. On getting to the pearly gates, The man asks God, "Why didn't you save me?" to which God replies "What do you mean? I sent you a lifeboat, a helicopter....".

So, what does that have to do with anything, I hear you ask...

Well, we've been asking God for a while now to help us with the whole housing thing, and it kinda feels that over the last week or so, we've been offered a lifeboat and now a helicopter.

I can't really say much about the lifeboat, but the helicopter is an offer of a rent-free 2 bedroom house just down the road. It's really quite an unbelievable offer, but still means committing to Rugby for the forseeable future, rather than the planned move to Coventry.

The big question is, is this God trying to help us, or a cunning ploy of the other guy to keep us out of Coventry?

And can we really risk the potential of drowning when I'm still on a 6 month probation period at YFC?

As usual, your thoughts are really appreciated on this one, as we need to make a decision (again) pretty quick smart.

I'll keep you posted!!

On the way back from somewhere (I honestly can't remember where we'd been) last week, Zak started talking to us about Jesus, which obviously we were both quite excited about.

He asked us various questions, about how Jesus could be everywhere and yet we can't see him. I thought we explained it quite well - all about the wind, and how you can't see it, but you can see it's effects in the moving trees etc. And the Zak told us something that we found quite comical...

"But dad, I don't want Jesus to be invisible, cos what if I bump into him and fall over and hurt myself?"

I soooo love listening to our kids trying to explain away the universe in a way that only kids can do. It's amazing to be a part of!!

So, you're wondering, why has it been so long since I last posted ANYTHING on this blog?

And the answer, quite simply, is that I've been in the process of changing jobs, moving house, going on holiday, Zak's first trip to the cinema, and performing minor miracles.

Now for more detail...

As many of you will know, my role at North Staffs YFC ended about 3 weeks ago, and I'm now getting ready for the next phase of the journey as I take up my new role as director of YFC in Coventry. It's all really quite exciting, but also quite hectic as we've been busy trying to sell our house in Stoke, which has been a right ordeal, with the estate agent constantly telling us to drop the price and people viewing the house with no intention of actually buying any house in the present climate. Anyway, we've now moved in with our good friend Rob until the house sells and we can get somewhere of our own to live - whether that will be in Rugby or Coventry is still very much undecided.

So, we've been in Rugby for a whole week now, and I've taken a huge step forward in the whole home-brewing department - I made WINE!!

It's quite amazing really, 40 pints of water, a bit of grape juice, sugar and yeast - and bingo, we have wine (after just 7 days). It really is a minor miracle (especially the fact that it tastes ok. Admittedly it is quite potent, and will improve over the next 3 months, but it's already quite palatable (*sp?) - since I bottled it on Wednesday we've (with friends) emptied 5 bottles of the stuff.

Right, There's plenty more to tell you about (including my bargain ebay bottles from Devon), but that'll do to get you all started again. More about the holiday to follow (hopefully including pictures).

Ciao for niao!!

I know I don't hear clearly from God all that often, but I never would have said he was "sending me to coventry" before. However, now it seems that He is!!

I've just this minute finished painting our bedroom (again). After ripping down a small piece of the border around the top of our room several months ago, we decided that we weren't going to re-decorate our room as originally planned. But now with selling up and all, we figured we aught to fix the border back.

I had my appointment at the Hospital today regarding my impacted wisdom tooth, and while I was there I received some bad (but expected) news and some good news that I wasn't quite expecting.

Basically, After waiting around for nearly an hour I finally got to see the dentist guy who confirmed that I should get the little offender taken out and there were about 100 things he needed to "warn me" about, but claimed that it would be a completely painless process (yeah, right) and should happen in about 6 weeks, which clashes nicely with our summer holiday - that's the bad news.

Anyway, as I was leaving the hospital, I got a call from Beverly Minster (in Yorkshire) to say that I got a job.... interview!! Woohoo - That's the good news. However, when I got back I checked my diary, and the 2 days of interview are the exact same 2 days that I'm supposed to be at a training conference on Funding (which is something I could do with extra training in). So what do I do? I guess I need to cancel the training, but then, if I don't get the role, and I miss the training, then that would be EXTREMELY frustrating.

Oh, and the other good news - we finally got the new toilet installed, so now I just need to decorate round it and bingo!!

Cya laters.

ps. The house is officially going on the market on Thursday, so keep praying!

It's been a while, but I'm back, and this time I'm slightly baffled!!

For those of you that don't know, after spending the last few months working through various issues of Leadership and Life-Planning I decided it may be time to move on from NSYFC so started looking at (and applying for) various youth-type roles. As yet, I still remain unconvinced whether my future is in church based youth ministry, a YFC centre based role, or something completely different - all I do know is that I need to work that out within the next 2 months.

Having had several long conversations with Liz at NSYFC, I can now officially tell you that I leave my role at NSYFC at the end of August this year. What that means in the short term is that we need to work on selling our house (there aren't many youth worker roles around in Stoke at the mo) and looking to God and the jobs pages for ideas regarding our futures.

One thing I know for sure, is that God has big plans for our futures and I'm actually really excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. Believe it or not, this is a very positive situation to be in. I just kinda wish I knew what God's plans were NOW (but apparently he doesn't often work like that).

Anyway,  keep praying for us as we work out what's next on the journey, and if you feel the need to don a paint brush and work overalls for a few hours at any point, you know where we live.

Ciao for now dudes (and dudettes)

Today has been an odd day.