long time, no.... type?

it's been a LONG time since i blogged
so much has happened, i'm sure...
but my memory being like the seive it is..
i can't remember a lot of it..
so i'll work my way backwards, from the future, to now, the back to the past..
today is thursday...
and tomorow morning.. i'll be getting on the train to London to meet up with Kelsey and Nicole (and Simon with fingers crossed....!)
what we will do: we'll im not entirely sure..
i believe it's up to Nicole... so i think we're doing some touristy things.. hamleys, shopping possibly the aquarium etc. which should be amazing! on saturday.. we're going to see WICKED!
i can't wait.. it should be awesome!!
i love the theatre... and musicals and i can't wait.
then on sunday morning, Nicole and i are going to Hillsong Church and Kelsey is getting the plane back to Texas (yay...? (apparently) i'm going to miss her...)
these last few days (tuesday and wednesday) i was at modular training with YFC- on a course called "working with hard to reach young people".
it was an amazing 24 hours...
it was great to see loads of people again.. and to catch up with them, even if the time we had to socialise was quite a small one.
after half term, i am starting a Youth Alpha course ( :D ) with Rachel (youthworker from my church) and Kim (vicar from my church).
i cannot wait for it to start.. this is the age of youth that i really love working with (16 - 18 year olds) so i am so excited to start to see what God will be able to do through me to influence these young people into turning to Christ, or at the very least, making them start to think about their lives, and their faith / beliefs.
i cannot wait.
it should be awesome.
after half term, i am also starting a youth club with my church at the local primary school, William Shrewsbury, called Cre8 which is aimed at year 3 and 4.
other than that..
i cant really remember anything of note that has happened
so i'll leave it there
Ciao for now.

xx

kinda sleepy

understatement of the century..
i have had about 2 hours sleep (if i'm lucky) and i am babysitting tonight.. i may be forced to follow in the footsteps of my best friend kelsey and start up the tradition of afternoon naps in this house. we'll have to see, i dont much like the idea of becoming an old person quite yet.
so the reason for the tiredness... children!
small annoying children with far too much energy.
you would think a bedtime of 1.00 am would be plenty late enough... but nooooooo, they're going to stay up until way past that...
so, i eventually fell asleep at about 2.00 i'd guess and was sleeping comfortably when at about 3.00 am, Matt woke me up to inform me that the guys had started throwing a ball across the room and we're attacking each other in the dark.
not good.
i was not a happy chappy (as someone who will remain un-named used to say).
anyway. once this distraction was finaly dealt with, it was almost 4.00.
seeing as we we're supposed to be waking up at 8.00, i thought that another four hours sleep would do me good.
sadly, it was not to be.. the children decided that three more hours "sleep" was quite enough for one night, so that just before 7.00 they woke up again and unfortunately, that was it for the night.

anyway, enough ranting about sleep deprivation...

the rest of my week (and the week before that, since i haven't posted in some time) was very good. i cant remember a great deal of specifics, but i had a productive week, got a lot done and i am really satrting to be given more responisbilities with the stuff that i want to be more involved with which is awesome!

Also -COMMISSIONING!!!
yay!
it was so amazing to see everyone again, and great to see my family and friends.
i got to meet some peoples families as well, which was really good
there was a great service as well with some awesome worship which i had been craving somewhat...
all in all, it was a great day!

in a week and a bit.. we have our first modular training day back in Halesowen, so i'll get to see everyone AGAIN!!
yay!

just after that - London!
i'm going to London with my best friend Kelsey and our other friend Nicole...
which should be a great day or two...
:D

i cant think of much else to say.. so i will add some pictures..
and leave it there...

Fletch and his twin (and Tom) they're the same!!!!

Jess, Heather, Jo and I (at training)

that is all....

ciao!

xxx

times a-changing

so.....
just when i thought my timetable was sorted and i was begining to settle into a routine - it gets changed!
so yay!
but it is a good thing i suppose, i'm now doing more, which will keep me busy, and doing more "christ - related things" which is also good!
so this monday (today) i did an assembly about harvest!
which was good times...
we made children do taste / smell tests on food and got them to guess what it was whilst they were blindfolded.. it was good.. and seemed to work.. the kids loved it and was quite easy to do.
after this, i had french club again with Sue which was really good, the kids are very enthusiastic and most seem to want to actually learn french. we are still getting new people joining even on it's third week which is making it a little awkward for consistance, as we now have people at so many different levels it makes it hard to have activities that keep everyone happy all the time... There is also this one kid called Liam who is a special needs student who demands all of the attention on everyone at all times. he is quite sweet and blatenly doesn't want to learn french as he asked me and Sue today what club we were running when this is his third week of coming... but he's not doing anything wrong, he just sits at the back of the club and does his own thing and seems quite happy with it, and the teachers seem happy that he's being supervised for the time that we're there.
Oh well...
the this evening i was at GG and FOG. they were good. i got to see Jake again which was nice. and in GG we did filming for the 60 second movie clip thing for the competition, which seemd good. it was along the same standard as the other, it was ok, and seemed to work, but it was not competition winner...
FOG's group was good tonight, we followed the usual trend of not really doing much, but it seems to work, and they keep comming back, so i can't really diss the way they do things. but today's group was more religion based than any of the other 4 groups that i've attended. we actually read from the bible, and prayed and everything!
it was awesome!

The weekend just gone, Matt, Tom and I did the first of six parts of our Engage course in Nottingham. firstly, it took us about a month to get there we took a train from burton to nottingham, the a bus for about 20 mins, the we still had to walk for about another 2o minutes before we got there.
It was RIDICULOUS!
but the course itself was really good...
interesting and informative and i expect that it will be pretty useful in the year to come.
the downside is - Homework :(
we have two 500 - 800 word things to write, the do this other presentation type thing of our spiritual life journey.. which could be interesting....
the upside - we got to see ERIN! and SEAN!
yay....
it was so good to see them.. and we had a great time...
i think that'll do for today..
5 days untill commissioning! 
i can't wait!

as a good friend of mine would say - peace out trout.
x