I'm homesick for the first time since I moved away.

I am back - in fact we are all back. No one seriously injured, no one losing passports/visas/money/cameras... All told it was a great trip. Obviuosly there is far too much for me to even begin telling you about - suffice to say it was amazing. I saw a crocodile eat a chicken about 3 yrds away from my feet - no fence in between. I saw a whirlwind and was in the middle of the debris it blew up. I played with 19 AIDS orphans for 10 days and loved them. I pick-axed and shovelled and hoe-ed and got a tan.

What did I learn? Probably I learnt most about being intergenerational. I am 23 - the oldest membert of the was 65 - and yet we all got on like a house on fire. Age is so irrelevant really - it makes a difference round the camp fire when you are singing songs becasue some people want Tony Bennett and others want the Chillis, but it is just a non issue most of the time.

It is good to be back in my own bed - grass huts with snakes and mice and bamboo bedding are not my idea of luxury (although not bad for a week or two to make you appreciate what you have!).

Thanks for your prayers. It was an amazing time and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. It was pretty hard to see all the places I last saw Rachel and to see her name on the wall in the orphanage (one unit has been named after her in her honour). Saying goodbye to the mates we left out there was very hard too - too many bad memories of goodbyes - but God is good all the time so I am leaving it all with him.

Leave me comments about what you have been up to over easter!

Well done Charlie and the team - heard you were 12-0 down!!! Good work!!

Well, I am off to Zambia on Saturday with a team of 20 people ranging in age from 13 to 65! Luckily the 13-16 yr olds aren't my responsibility (phew!!) but the rest are.

It is going to be amazing - I would value your prayers if you have some time over the next 12 days actually - the team dynamics are interetsing to say the least. You know me, so you know that I am not a detail person, I am more of the big picture person - well I have a person who is into details in a BIG way on my team so that's interesting! Useful but sometimes sets my teeth on edge!

We are going to be working in a childrens' village that my church and a group of churches there have built over the last year and a half. It is so amazing to see kids (24 of them now) who had no homes, whose parents died of AIDS, being cared for and loved in a community. It is so cool.
I will let you know how it goes but please pray for safety.

Many of you will know about Rachel, the girl who drowned last year in South Africa on our year team. It is all a bit fresh in the memory to be honest and the last time I saw her I was in Zambia so it is a bit weird and I fell a wee bit emotional about it all. One of the guys who was on her team is coming too and I am not sure how he is feeling. Iguess because it is the last place I saw her it just reminds me of her so much, and also because she loved it so much. We are taking this years year team out with us and leaving them there so it is all a bit raw. Prayer would be great.

I have to say I love blogging and I love reading all your blogs - it is such an amazing insight into what is going on all over the place. Keep blogging and update more often people like Stu and Steeler etc!!!

See you all after Easter some time and I will update in a few weeks with Zambian news.

Lots of love, em

Have ammended Transition link so should work now - it will go staright to their home page and skip introduction.

quote of the day...

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who... spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
T Roosevelt

Well, hope you had a good weekend everyone!

I did some gardening on Saturday - it is so much fun! I never liked gardening at home - in fact to quote my dad "I couldn't have beat you into the garden with a stick". But now, when it is my own garden - I love it. I mowed the lawn, weeded, dug out old plants, killed bugs, secateured (sp?) things and generally made a nice mess and got all green and brown!

There is just something about being out there with nature... Connecting with God? It seems so to me.

Claire and Julianne and I are on a fitness mission - we are going to climb Doanard and enjoy it. I have been up Donard a few times and hated it - I woudl like to climb it and enjoy it - like Charlie or Tim who juts do it for fun! So, that's the challenge - feel free to join in, just let us know!

Last night I had a few mates round for tea - Claire, Julianne and Donna.

When we arrived at the house to make tea we discovered that the washing machine was expelling its contents around the kitchen floor!! (someone had mopped up a wee bit but had just left it to go on spewing - no names and noone will own up..).

So, being DIY godesses, Claire and I took apart the waste pipes at the back of the machine only to find an amount of goop uncommon, and indeed unhelpful, to the ordinary waste pipe!!

So, duly cleaned, we then tried to put the things back together. Whilst we may be DIY godesses of taking apart, the putting of things back together has a habit of escaping us!! Lo and behold, now many leaking joints as opposed to one overflowing pipe. Crap job.

The end result - phoned my mate who's a plumber and I have to get new pipes - he reckons they are too old to ever work again. So I would just like to bid a fond farewell to my washing machine waste pipes who are going into retirement and bid a hearty hello to those new ones which await my purchase in Kellaway Building supplies. You served me well old pipes and shall long be remembered as the first of many to enter retirement at the hands of a couple of DIY goddesses - an honour in itself.

has anyone gone to the link on Charlie's page - ages ago - about the pump mud flap? v v funny!!!

It was form Thursday Nov 21st

Today I was meant to be getting new windows in my office. To date it has at times been akin to fridge-work as opposed to youth-work in here, but all was going to be in order this week with the addition of double glazing and some nice white pvc.
However, as all "wee jobs" go, there was a hitch.
As we sat, my colleagues and I, in an adjacent office overseeing the workmen, we noticed that the windows carried in with much effort and noise at 9am this morning were in fact a good foot short of matching the size of the window.
Even more odd was the fact that the workmen were putting the window into place - a block of wood at the top and one at the bottom to keep the window in roughly the middle of the hole they had earlier created!!
When one of us decided to mention to them the fact that is seemed a little odd to us to suspend a window, not on the window ledge, but instead on a piece of brown mahogany, they managed to splutter some stuff about not being the right size and promptly down-tooled and made off with the other 13 window bits that were the wrong size!!
What a polaver (I would like some help on the spelling of that word 'polaver' if anyone has any ideas!).

It is going to take at least another month!!! for the new windows to arrive!

Do you know what i love about these blog thingys - they are all so different. I just read Zoe's - who else would talk about modelling and catwalks with such enthusiasm and passion. God did a good job making us all different. And who would think to write a whole list of bike parts and their prices? Dan Weeks - who else! Bizarre but very amazing.

Just one more thought before I go - what does it mean to be friends with someone? Answers please...

I feel frustrated by my lack of technical expertise. All that you see around you, the splenderous vista that is my blog site, has been created by Rachel Kirk, and grateful as I am I feel I would like to know how to do all this myself. Does anyone have any ideas?

I had a great weekend at home, it was so good to see you all again although it was kind of weird without Johnny and Claire and Rachel!

Anyway, Charlie was brilliant on Sunday morning (he was speaking in church) - if you weren't there get the tape because almost everything he said was worth writing down. It is very cool the way God uses you Charlie - you are a briliiant communicator. I am serious about the tape - phone up the church and get it if you weren't there - well worth a listen.

Something Gordy said on Sunday night made me think - he asked the question "are we just making a disharmonious cacophony of irrelevant sounds". What a great sentence!! But what a sad sentiment. It would be so dishonouring to God if we were irrelevant and disharmonious-sounding. It made me think about how my life hangs together - what makes my life in any way relevant to other people or to the world in which we live. I don't know the answer except that it is probably Jesus - but how does it affect what I do?

And, we will never be relevant if we don't have God's fire in our hearts - we cannot muster up passion for God, it just doesn't work. God has to come down and do miracles in every heart (like Charlie was saying on Sunday morning - get the tape!!). Well, I am going to pray for miracles - in all our hearts because otherwise we are making a disharmonious cacophony of irrelevant sounds.

And for some reason this is having some trouble posting - don't know why!