Oranges

My parents often come with us on an Easter break.  One time my dad, who has a great eye for a bargain, brought a bag of at least 370 small oranges with him on holiday (it might not have quite been that many, but was still rather a lot)  So I borrowed a load of them, and wrote maths problems on them, one number or symbol on each orange.  Simple problems such as 5 + 3 + 4  = 12, written in red on 7 oranges, for little Rebecca. More complicated, in different colours, for the older boys, upto Matt who got square roots etc.  You get the idea, lots of oranges with colour codes sums on.  Then I hid them all around the big holiday house we were visiting.

The challenge was for the kids to find all the oranges for their given colour, and put them in the right order to make a proper sum.  So it was “hunt the thimble” combined with “mathletics”, with extra vitamin C

Gardens of Time live

This was inspired by the Facebook game “Gardens of Time” which we all love here.  I collected up 50 random objects, including clothes pen, glove, spoon, tape measure, pile of coins, etc etc, and placed them randomly in a room.  They were not hidden as such, but placed quite subtly so their location was not obvious.  Then I listed the items on a pile of little cards, and gave each child 12 cards at random.

The game was to stand at the door to the room, and see how fast they could find their 12 items. We timed each child, and kept a note of how quick everyone was. We kept going, shuffling everyones cards each time, until all items had been found. It wasn’t exactly “hunt the thimble”, more like “point at the thimble from the door and shout ‘there it is!’”

I encourage you to try these, or similar games. Do you have any suggestions that I should try on my family?

If you know the sort of worship meeting I mean I’m sure this will be familar to you.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you really should come along sometime – it’s better than it sounds!

Anyway, two weeks ago I pushed the boat out for me and spoke during the worship time how I though that dodgy footbridge that was built in London a few years ago was a good metaphor for how we can try to take steps in our Christian faith that seem to go wrong, and this puts us off growing spiritually in the future.  Or at least that’s what I meant/tried to say. It was really convincing in my head before I opened my mouth.

Last week, not to be put off, I read out loud the scripture where Jesus says “I am the resurrection and the life” and then prayed about how amazing it was to live in the good of never having to worry about death.  I am still mostly convinced it made sense after what the preacher had said, but it pretty much went down like a lead balloon with the congregation. Luckily the musicians started another song straight away and no one seemed to worry.

The bizarre thing is that after both these less than stellar contributions someone came up to me and thanked me for blessing them with what had said.

So I want to thank those two people for teaching me to not worry too much about how I feel after I’ve opened my mouth. I try to be wise and thoughtful with the contributions I make, and I don’t want to take it lightly if I make mistakes. But I guess I’m not always the best judge with these things.  There is sometimes I great calling to try, and then leave the results to God.

The odds are against Jesus birthday being December the 25th. But it is absolutely amazing that he has a birthday at all.  The Christian celebration of Christmas is taking a day when it is (at least in Manchester) grey and wet, when light and warmth are at a noticeable premium, and deciding to remember that most wonderful of miracles that is the Incarnation. There was a day when a baby was born who was a baby rather unlike any other, before or since. I have no idea how it works, that someone goes from “Through him all things were made” to “I think he needs changing again, and it’s your turn Joseph” but that is exactly what Christmas celebrates. It really was “he made himself nothing” to go from creator to creature. In some way he remained divine, and so some 33 ish years later, sometime around Easter, was able to become saviour, yet learned, grew, hoped, cried as a man.

I love that there is a day when my mind can turn back to this. I talk to the kids about us giving gifts to each other as a remembrance of the one gift given to all mankind. We go to church and sing carols, both old and new, and usually have some fun with pretend shepherds with tea-towels on their heads, and pray, and pushing aside thoughts of wrapping paper and food and tv schedules, we stand amazed at the heart of the whole celebration: a son has been given, and he is my saviour.

I love that Christmas stimulates my craftingness. This is the second year I have hand made Christmas crackers for the kids. It’s well known  that you can’t have a proper Dec 25th meal without crackers, but the little gifts inside are often not majorly exciting. So last year I decided to make my own crackers, starting with choosing more interesting gifts, and working outwards.  I bought diy kits from hobbycraft last year, this year I got the make-the-crack-noise things from ebay and did the rest myself. I had to use plastic lemonade bottles halves rather than toilet roll tubes to fit the gifts in, so they turned out rather mutant crackers, but all good fun. I didn’t end up using half of the gift ideas I’d come up with – so they will carry forward to next year.

I turned the advent calendar into a mini treasure hunt. We have a nativity with 24 wooden pieces, which we slowly assemble through advent. This year each slot in the advent calender contains, not a tissue wrapped piece, but a clue to where in the house a tissue wrapped piece may be found. I’ve tried to make the clues age-relevent, so Becca’s little sheep rather rather easier to find than JM’s king 2. Matt was almost late for school last week when he couldn’t find the palm tree, but I’m taking that as part of the enjoyment, in spite of his scowling at me.  Currently pondering if I should use the same clues next year, or make them even more cunning!

I love buying gifts for the kids. There is always that wilderness experience of realising that <insert childs name> has suddenly grown and is no longer interested in the sort of gifts that went down a storm last year. But just occasionally inspiration strikes, or you just get lucky, and you know it’s been worthwhile.  This year I had some extra savings and was able to spend a little more on a special post-lunch gift which I’m hoping will buy their love for another year :p

I love getting to play games with the family over Christmas. We are all into various sorts of games – card games, boardgames, quiz games, wargames. Some require lots of skill and concentration, some require a good vocabulary or artistic skills, some just require an annoying amount of luck. Quite a few end up being played for chocolate, just to raise the stakes.  But they are all cute opportunities to sit around the table, and spend time together, and have some fun.

After 6 months of being married, some 19 ish years ago, we were in a discount store in Bedford discussing how now we had our own house, and were having a Christmas to ourselves, we didn’t have to do all the usual seasonal stuff, and especially not all the decorations or a tree.  Of course as we were sharing this moment I was picking out and purchasing a plastic tree. It’s taken Mrs C a long while to get used to it, but each year I want to buy more tinsel, more lights.

Given my traditionally dysfunctional family I have precious feelings about Christmas.

My (step) dad uses to baracade the top of the stairs so we couldn’t get down in the early morning.  No presents were allowed to be opened until the coal fire was lit.

One Christmas I got a 1/24th scale airfix spitfire. I don’t think I ever finished making it, but it was a very impressive kit. I was really too young for it, but that was part of the treat – made me feel rather grown up.

Another Christmas my dad gave me a chess computer game. It may have even been the first proper computer game I was ever given. I opened it full of excitement, only to realise it needed a joystick to play, which I didn’t own. I was momentarily crushed, until my dad, with mock surprise, presented another gift saying “oh maybe you’ll be needing this”

We always got the Christmas radio times and scoured it to see what would be on. I even have half a memory that each child had a different coloured pen to we could highlight what we wanted to watch.

I can’t remember what we ever did for Christmas dinner, I can’t remember if we ever went to Church, or went to visit relatives, or played games. But whatever we did as a family it made me very fond of the season.

I’m hoping my own family will pick up the same delight. Or at least a love of mince pies!

But the problem is clutter makes the house untidy, difficult to.clean, and a bit depressing to welcome guests into. One of the reasons our summer holday cottage was so lovely was that it didn’t have all our junk in it. So I returned from holiday, as I always do, determined to clear up. This determination was helped by a conversation I had with my friend Graham who described clearing his elderly parents house after they had died a number of years ago. He said someone eventually will have to sort the house out, and it’s not fair to inflict that on your kids, so you might as well start now.

First step was the loft – where I put things that I really should throw out, but am too emotionally attached to. Out went my first pc (long broken and out of date) together with boxes of games. Loads of floppy disks, remember them?

A load of baby programs on video went. I had to tell myself the memories of watching them with the kids would not go when the cassettes themselves went.

After my first day, a car full of junk dropped off at the local tip, I was struggling to stay cheerful. But I am persevering, and slowly the house is emerging. There is still plenty to do, and I hope my resolve will hold, because less clutter will really improve the house and bless my family.

I still haven’t been able to get rid of my Buffy videos yet though. Pray for me?

My latest obsession is cardcraft. There are loads of nifty patterns of models available to buy at reasonable prices online. Print them out onto white card, a bit of cutting and glueing, and there you are  Some come out better than others, but they are all fun to attempt. I’ve got a number of excellent patterns from Fat Dragon Games, and they have a few free bits if you want to see what you’re letting yourself in for.

Anyway, here are a few pics of some that have come out quite nicely:

Scary stone circle

from http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=94330&

Ruined cottage, in progress and then complete.

from http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=92290

Various scary furniture for a friendly Dungeons and Dragons game

from http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=84425

About 15 mins before leaving I realised I had lost the mobile mains kit which we use to get electricity in the tent, where electricity = light and heat. Worked out it had been left in storage in Mother-in-Law’s garage an hour away.  Then found out I had no spare gas cylinders for the backup lamp.

Decided to go anyway, and sort these things out the next day. I had deliberately picked a campsite that was only 30 mins drive away, so if there were any major crisis we could just go back home.

So we arrived, kids very excited. Matt helped me put the big tent up, and the little ones unloaded the car.  Went to put the main gas fire on … and realised I had brought the wrong regulator fitting. So nice cooker, plenty of gas in the bottles to power it, but the wrong £5 connector to link the two.   So overall we had no power and no heat. And most important of all – no way to boil a kettle and make tea!

By about 9.30 it was dark and I was totally stressed out. My initial thought was to leave all  the camping stuff in place, drive home for the night, and try again the following day.  I mentioned this to the children, and they were very upset at the thought of giving up. I thought they would be pleased to have a warm bed to look forward to, but turned out they were really excited by the camping in spite of all the problems. So I agreed we would stay. Once we were all in our sleeping bags it wouldn’t actually matter if we had no light or heat.

Then, to me, the most wonderful thing happened. John Mark, who is supposed to be 10 years old, said I looked really stressed and I should just sit for 5 mins and catch up with myself. He got me a glass of milk and a cookie, and said I wouldn’t feel as bad once I’d got a drink and snack inside me. Of course he was right, I was tired and fed up and starting to lose perspective. It wasn’t really a great crisis. We just stayed the night, sorted everything out the next day, and had two more nights of very civilised camping.

Afterwards it occurred to me that if everything had gone so smoothly on that first night John Mark wouldn’t have been a total star.

Its great for the family. The organisers work hard to provide activities to appeal to children as well as adults. So Rebecca spent time in the craft tent, and played on the pretend beach. JM loved the wargaming displays, finally winning a zulu battle competition. The highlight for me was the Crimean War experts. I know little of the period, so it was great to watch the soldiers in replica uniforms performing drill and firing their percussion cap rifles, while explaining about the history of the campaign.

There was also plenty of shopping opportunities, including a armoury section with a rather nifty looking crossbow that Peter had his eye on. I bought a set of WW2 skirmish rules that were on discount, but that was only after a long long hunt round the Osprey Books tent.

The Saturday program finished with a World War 2 battle demonstration complete with machine guns, tanks, and a spitfire dogfight overhead. Spectacular and very loud!

It is a great blessing that Jane and I and all the kids all find these events fascinating. If it all looks your sort of thing, and if you are going to be nearby in May 2012 I strongly encourage you to come along – I might even buy you a coffee! No one complained of being bored at that weekend!

Rather than talk about the last two talks I am going to try to think avbout the conference overall. I know is was a big christian celebration, but first of all for me it was a holiday – rare time away from the family, space to think and enjoy myself

I enjoyed the worship/singing bits a lot more than I expected. There were some cracking tunes which I hope will turn up on a conference cd. And I was chilled out enough for the songs to lead me into prayer and drawing close to my heavenly father. I think there will be a lasting legacy of being less self concious in worship (I am usually horribly self conscious)

The impact of the preaching will be more long term, particularly those talks about courage. The call to courage is only tested when you actually do something. I have made some positive decisions about home and family but they have not been all worked out yet.  I am looking for the courage to start things, and the courage to keep them going!
At the moment I just feel more on the front foot for God. That sounds very wooly and touchy/feely but I can’t really describe it more than that. I am more likely now to think of prayer, and miraculously, to actually do it. The church meeting on Sunday morning, which I have been increasingly struggling with, flew by this week leaving me wanting more – something that hasn’t happened for a long while!

With all this excitement I keep the strong commitment to be protective of family time, making sure family remains my first priority.

And then in that context Jane and I have been  drawn to the new church group Colin and Tim and friends are looking to start in Levenshulme, not far up the road from us. So, while we were considering this, we were delighted to be invited to join the starting group. In the past we have been blessed being part of small groups of people starting new church groups in different parts of Greater Manchester, so we are exited to be having another crack. Each new group I am part of means another chance to make less of a fool of myself, so here’s hoping!

[the talks from the conference are now available as mp3s on http://www.newfrontierstogether.org/Groups/174930/Newfrontiers/Resources/Talks_and_Preaches/Select_Event/Leadership_International_11/Main_Sessions.aspx - may I particularly recommend talk 5 - P J Smythe on Suffering, Sickness, and Healing - let me know what you thing!]

To be honest the talks today have rather gone by me.  There was one about God using our weakness, which is excellent news for people like me. And another talk about what are some of the aspects of our New Frontiers churches that maybe make us a little different from other churches. 

I kept going through them, much to my surprise, and made plenty of notes so I may be able to explain what was said to Jane, though I may struggle to interpret my own scribble.

Well this is life! Even at a conference! Some days are fireworks. And some days are just drinking coffee Who is to say which is more significant in the long run.

Thank you to Ann and Hannah and Jeanie from Bolton Family Church who have let me hang around with them this week. I was blessed by sitting with them in Costa coffee this afternoon sharing stories of moving up to Manchester and being around when their church first started up.  One of the advantages of getting old is that get to tell some great tales

I dont think I have mentioned this yet . . . On the first evening of the conference I was pondering on the many many mistakes I have made since moving to Manchester and being involved in starting new churches. I have really made a whole load – I’m not being modest! But the thought occurred to me: I have not yet been doing church planting for 20 years. I intend to go on for at least till i’m in my 70s. So I am not even half way through. Plenty of time to benefit from lessons learned from all those mistakes. Plenty of time to make another contribution, and maybe be involved in planting a few more churches

Goodnight.

It was the most moving and powerful and honest presentations of Christian supernatural healing I have ever heard. I have no idea if the recording will have the same impact but I encourage you to listen just in case. The challenge for me was not to be so passive about Jane being ill. I want to pray more that “God is able to deliver us”,”he will deliver us”,”but even if he does not, let it be known, we are not going to serve false gods”. Jane I am sorry I have not prayed more for you and with you. I intend to improve that.

During the singing, which we always have at the end of the talks, I started to cry. I am by nature emotional, and shy, so I probably don’t cry as much as I should. But it was very appropriate at that moment.

Time for bed I think. Plenty still to come

(pause to spill hot tea on my fingers – nothing like keeping it real is there :S )

Today I have been pondering more the thought of leadership of my family more and more. I am increasingly thinking this is was God is communicating to me. Though many other things may come my way, this is to be my primary calling now, in this season with Jane suffering with ongoing fatigue, and with the kids the ages they are.

With these thoughts in my mind my mum, a wonderful and faithful lady, sent me the following:

“Wait on the Lord and the Lord’s time is not necessarily our time.
You are always in his hands and He knows how much you can cope with, so wait in His love until some of your pressures are  lifted.  He will tell you when he needs you to do something.”

What a wonderfully encouraging and releasing prophetic word!

I am looking still to God to lead and speak to me. I am not just a believer in the book we call the Bible, though that is so important to me. I am [as mad as this may sound ] an adopted son of father God, who loves me and wants to genuinely interact with me. That is one of the delights of this conference!

In late morning the talk was on how our church group is changing because it is getting so big! A wonderful problem to have!  It was mostly theoretical to me personally but I am fascinated by strategy and structure. I hope to get more detail from my friend Colin Baron, if I can get him to indulge me

The afternoon was a lot more personal. The subject was “Those whom the Lord loves he disciplines”, maybe a strange idea for those who have not experienced our heavenly father’s love. But sometimes (often?) I need to be, as my scrawled notes from the talk say, need to be shaken, woken up, humbled, stirred. I want to listen to that talk again – they will soon be available online and I will get the links for you.

I guess you are getting the idea that I have a lot to ponder. So I came back to my hotel room and had an afternoon nap

Today is the first of the 9.15 am seminars. I have chosen Challenges Facing the 21 century Church so we will see how this goes. The main teacher is David Devenish, who lead our wedding some 20 years ago, which is cool!

The morning speaker talked about living a life of faith and courage, and then described what sort of live experiences can turn courage into passivity. 

A lot of this was directly relevant to me. I’ve got to a point where I am nervous to put my head up over the parapet. Not a good state to get into.

The afternoon speaker ( my absolute favourite, Terry Virgo ) talked about running the race of faith, from the words in Hebrews 12 v 1&2, and what might hinder that race. It was an excellent call to take on board again my particular calling, to consider what my individual race of faith involves.

During the worship/singing bit I told God I felt like a dry desert or the dry bones of Ezekial 37, and I needed his spirit. A lot of the songs carried this same theme, so I encouraged to keep asking. Generally I have enjoyed the worship a lot more than expected  

The evening speaker spoke on leadership courage during change. I started a little disengaged from this as I am not a church leader, but realised I am a very important leader in my family, and family life is always changing.

So starting and ending the day with a call to be courageous was sufficient even for me to get the message.

Praying now for some clarity and direction. If I have to do it with courage, what exactly is the “it”?

Here’s a view of the conference stage from where I was sitting. I will try to find out how many people are here but the big hall is full!

And this is the view of the pier from my window