Amazed!

You dance over me

While I am unaware

You sing all around

But I never hear the sound

Lord I'm amazed by You

Lord I'm amazed by You

Lord I'm amazed by You

How You love me

You paint the morning sky

With miracles in mind

My hope will always stand

For You hold me in Your hand

How wide

How deep

How great

Is Your love for me

©2004 Vertical Worship Songs

Amazed, Jared Anderson

Wow. God's been so amazing, these past few days I've especially noticed it. Over the past few weeks at Index (youth group at church) we've been looking at "Who is God, what is He like?" How absolutely mind blowing it's been. To be reminded of stuff, to see stuff in a new perspective, to be challenged to look into stuff in more detail. As a result of it, I have such a thirst for God's word, like rarely before. I can't get enough of it, I want to just soak it all in like a giant sponge. On Saturday I went to this thing church is running called Foundations. They don't like to call it a course, but in essence, that's really what it is. It was absolutely amazing. It brought about discussions with people who were there and with others when I talked to them about it.

On Sunday night Leanne and I cooked for Index (about 90 people) which was such fun and a great way to serve. It was awesome to see the eagerness people had to help clean up afterwards as well. What servant hearts. I walked home with Tim, Jonah and Myriam, people I've never really talked to much at church but who all go to Index. It gave me such a boost. We are all at a place in our lives where we want nothing more than to get to know God better, and learn to defend the faith (apologetics). I didn't want to part ways, it helped us get to know each other and I feel like I've known them years when in reality I've only probably ever talked to them 3 hours of my life. We got down to such deep issues strait away.

My friend Jenn is getting baptised on Sunday. Everyone at Index are invited to all go up and eat lunch together and all go along to the baptism service to support her. Such a powerful thing. And so exciting too!

Who is like Him,

The Lion and the Lamb, seated on the throne

Mountains bow down,

Every ocean roars to the Lord of Hosts

Praise Adonai

From the rising of the sun

To the end of every day

praise Adonai

All the nations of the earth,

All the angels and the saints sing praise

Praise Adonai, Paul Baloche

Yay!

Times are changing.

I really should update some time, flip, I've been to Saint Andrews and back since I last wrote. I've learned lots and have had a few ups and a few downs, life has been its usual hectic self with a few added bonuses like finishing my old diary and starting a new one. I love writing in a new book. I've made 5 or 6 new friends at church, lots of "life" news in friend's lives like babies being born, people getting engaged, people getting married, that sort of stuff... nothing of those sorts for me, sometimes it feels like life is going right by me, you know when everyone else is moving from one situation to another and I'm still a single student, still working at the same place as everyone moves on... nothing really new with me at all. But, I'm making a sort of light meal for 90 students and young people tomorrow night with my friend Leanne. That'll be fun times. We're making mini pavlovas. Awesome! There's so much I could write about but my head is fairly blank and I have little time before a hectic evening begins - buying fruit for tomorrow and then an evening with Nadia which'll be good. Just one last thing if I may, if there was any doubt in my mind as to where to go next year (as in June time) like whether to stay in Edinburgh or move back to Paris, that has been removed. As much as I love Edinburgh and my church here especially, I really have been feeling strongly that the time to leave is coming. And so I go. It'll be good!

From home to home.

It's been a while... And I know there's lots to say, I'm just trying to think of it all! My head is a bit of a shambles just now, life's been a whirlwind. I guess I'm not getting bored which is always good, and there's certainly no routine to my days which is definitely a bonus. I hate routine. So. I got back from a week in France yesterday. Well not a week. Less. I missed my flight, ended up going to my friend Josie's in Glasgow for the evening, she took good care of me, and I got the last train back to the airport, slept there with about 10 other people and got the early flight Wednesday morning. It was worth the nightmare travels. Chats with Nathan til 2am, mum's amazing cooking and our good conversations in the kitchen, fun family meals (in or out), crazy sayings like "how handy" in a weebl and bob voice and the newest additions to the "rule number one" skit, actually talking to dad (he's usually out when I call home), seeing Joe and Ben grow up - Joe's now taller than me. He's 14. It's wrong! I also saw my friend Cecily and we caught up which was good. I went to see The Devil Wears Prada with mum, and that was fun. And spent a lot of Sunday at church, got roped into singing in the music group of the French service and enjoyed Saint Michael's. So I had a lovely time and felt it was too short. I'm not sure I want to be back in Edinburgh yet. But I'm here with plenty to do and juggle. EcoSoc stuffs, seeing people, uni work, little foxes, and preparing all the forms etc for my bunac interview for camp America. The interview is on Saturday. At last. But there's lots of filling out of forms and photocopies and stuff to be done before then. I'd better get going. As events coordinator for EcoSoc, I'd better coordinate some events.

Fun Times!

I am so excited - my flatmate Katy said last night that my other flatmate Stevo was really interested in going along to some church thing with me sometime. Stevo's been in the USA for the past 10 days or so, so he hasn't been able to tell me himself. I suggested Christianity Explored which starts a week on Thursday (though I will be in France for the first one) but Katy said that it'd be good for them both to go along to that. How amazing! And Arpita (my other flatmate) is also interested in Christianity so I'm going to get her along to Christianity Explored too. Who knows, by the end of the year I could be living with 3 Christians. Psalm 97 1 The LORD reigns, let the earth be glad let the distant shores rejoice. 2 Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. 3 Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side. 4 His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles. 5 The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. 6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all the peoples see his glory. We've had a few close disasters in the flat in the past couple of days, and even past couple of weeks... Katy and I made one of the plug sockets spark so almost starting a house fire. Katy took the radiator off its hinges and got water spurting all over the place. Turns out we got a new radiator fit today because the other one was ancient and waiting to break anyway. Katy and I took about 15 minutes to work out where the rinsing aid goes in the dishwasher, putting it every place we could think it might go. Stevo put the washing machine on at 90 degrees C making it foam a lot. A LOT. The builders did something to the pipes making them make a very loud and unnerving noise in the kitchen until we turned the hot water off.

And in spite of loving it here and feeling very happy here and loving stuff going on (things at work are much much better so far this week) I'm missing my dad, mum and brothers desperately and can't wait to go home next week and catch up with them, hopefully spend some quality family time. Or maybe we'll manage a meal when we're all there!

Chocolate makes everything better.

Today was the worst day at work ever. Have you ever heard of 6 and 7 year olds being actually evil? It exists. How do you deal with it? Dunno, no precedent for it in any of the staff team's careers. So horrible kids and no idea of how to deal with it, makes for a horrendous day, added to a pretty appauling walking bus (which looked nothing like a bus) to the club from school in which I almost lost 2 children. But I got home and my flatmate Arpita greeted me with a bar of galaxy chocolate, which made everything better. She knows me too well!