Around The World in 80+ Days

Stardom and changing dress sense

2007-05-08T17:31:00.000+01:00

I now work for the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, which is an address not an organisation. I actually work for the government in one of the ill-reputed quangos.

Part of my job is taking and inflatable observatory to Primary Schools to tell them all about the stars. Fun? Yes. Weird? A bit.

I have an office too now, which is a first and am required to wear clothes bought in Marks and Spencer that invariably say Chino on them. I was surprised to find out that dressing nicely costs considerably less than the jeans and hoody combo I've been wearing up until now.

Learning curves

2007-03-15T13:39:00.000Z

Today I watched an eighteen year old hack into someone's email account, change their password and adopt it as their own. Along the way he had a brief chat to someone called Rodreigo in Krakow, Poland and bought his friend an ipod using this poor person's amazon account. He managed to get into that through a password stored in one of their old emails.

This was all in the fifteen minutes we were waiting for the teacher to turn up to class. Scribing.. what a job. Afcab didn't turn up again, so i left shortly after the teacher arrived. He turned up for the next class, but then felt sick after about 45mins and i have another afternoon to myself.

Notes written today = 0
Total notes written to date = 1 x A4 side (two large diagrams of where to place the address on a formal letter)

My first day at school

2007-03-13T11:25:00.000Z

You don't really want to forget your timetable and your phone so you can't find out your timetable. You don't really want to get lost a few times. You definately don't want to get a copy of the time table to find out that it was the wrong one and you're 45mins late for the most important class.

You especially wouldn't want all this to happen if you were actually there, not for yourself, but to assist Afcab a deaf student.

But actually all these things did happen. My first day working for Afcab, was totally one of those nightmare experiences that should only happen when you are asleep, so the blow is cushioned over all by your incedibly comfortable bed. It was when i got to somewhere in the building where every door seemed to say on it, "To enter here, you must wear protective clothing," that the panic pot started to boil over. I couldn't even find a pay phone to phone Lucia to find out the room number.

Gosh. But weirdly and incedibly, although it was quite awful, it wasn't terrible. Does that make sense?

Afcab didn't even turn up for his first class and i sat there with the sixteen to eighteen year olds and learned how to write a formal letter. I eventually did find him later on and it all worked out...kind of.

The college is a bit of a joke, it's mostly about going on MSN and playing those games where you run around and shoot people form the perspective of the guy holding the gun. Somehow it made me want to be a teacher.

Religious Tourism

2007-03-13T11:11:00.000Z

I met a woman the other day who described herself as a religious tourist. She's the half Lebonese half Scottish daughter of a strick Muslim, who can't seem to get away from Born Again Christians. She says they turn up everywhere she goes. Some of them have become good friends of hers. She affectionately refers to them as HER Christians. It was with the glee of a seven year old boy who'd won a chocolate bar in drawing competition that i told her that I too was a Born Again Christian. She said I'd slipped under her radar. I took that, somehow, as a compliment.

It was Jesus who made up the phrase Born Again. It was us who took it and capitalised it. Now, in America especially, it has all these political connetations I'm pretty certain Jesus never intended. I think he meant: It's a big deal to follow me. You become my child and it's permanent.

Lucia and I have been engaging in religious tourism of our own. Church shopping. Swooping in collecting welcome packs and friendly strangers as we go. Singing the same songs with different people. Everyone loving Jesus in their own particualr way. It's kind of fascinating and a bit horrifying. Lucia said she felt like you shouldn't be allowed to choose your church. It's like trying to choose your family. Imagine you held some sort of Pop Idol auditions for your prospective family. They had to succeed in categories such as: Style of singing, age, sex, background and of course theological persuasion. It would be a farce.

Additional job

2007-03-06T17:35:00.000Z

I got another job today! Now i have two.

I think I've got it. It depends whether Afcab liked me or not. I think he did. Afcab is the student i will be supporting in his computing classes. I'll be writing notes, clarifying things etc, because he is deaf. He is an amazing lipreader. It's like some strange power.

[Interlude: have you seen the kid in X-men whose special skill is changing the channel on TV by blinking. How much does that suck as an X-man skill. "Storm, she controls the weather, pretty awesome. Xavier, he reads minds. I pretty much change channels." That would not come off well at X-men speed dating.]

The most amazing thing is that Afcab he has a thick scottish accent. How does that work? I have so many questions like how far away can he read lips? Can he "hear" my accent?

I'll keep you posted.

The IKEA nesting instinct

2007-03-06T17:17:00.000Z

This is a list of things I care about now, but in all honesty I really wish I didn't;

1. Ornamental fire surrounds.
2. Interest rates.
3. Whether that lampshade is cool, or just kind of odd.
4. Things in general, matching.

Seriously i walked into someone's house the other day and the first thing i said was: What a lovely fireplace. I shouldn't even be using the word 'lovely' for a start. I barely knew them.

Apples

2007-02-28T11:03:00.000Z

I've never been a big fan of apples.

I found out why. I am defective. It's impossible for me eat an apple without causing myself an undue amount of pain. My mouth is simply the wrong shape.

Top teeth in. okay.
bottom teeth...no, lip is in the way. Uh oh, press against lip...ahhhhhh.

Bottom teeth in. Top teeth, sliding mercilessly past, unable to grasp on.

I asked Lucia for some training, but all she shouted was "Take smaller bites."

I tried taking smaller bites. It would take me four years at that rate.

Top teeth in, bottom lip held back, using free hand. Bottom teeth kind of in....top teeth in toooo far, hard cold apple rubbing against gums. ahhhh.... Pull Pull Pull. Wow, large chunk of apple in mouth..Semi success.

I think after the whole Garden of Eden incident God rethought the the whole mouth design and what he came up with was my mouth. I can eat any other fruit with out even the beginnings of a problem, but for the safety of humanity, apples are out.

The Apple. Caused the downfall of humanity. Still widely available in supermarkets.

Being Ill

2007-01-22T23:31:00.000Z

The world started to spin or i started to notice that it always had been spinning. I woke up in a pool of my own sweat, my body on fire and on ice at once. It could only mean one thing...i was sick. I spent the rest of the night trying to get the motivation to vomit. The motivation never came and by the morning there was nothing left in my stomach so i spent twenty delightful minutes dry retching into the white porcelin. I believe the delerium had set in by then, becuase i spent at least ten of those minutes intermitently cleaning the stupid toilet. You never really notice how dirty they are until you are on your hands and knees in front of it.

I spent the next four whole days in bed. I had a fever which seared my eyeballs everytime i blinked. I was genuinely suprised not to hear the sizzle of my tears violently evaporating as my skin touched them. Exhaling through my nose, when i could, felt like two tiny hairdryers had been shoved somewhere up into my nasal cavity, switched on and left to melt themselves to destruction. After day two i worked out what i had to do when the wave of fever crashed in. Sit up flannel, containing ice on head, knees uncovered (essential) and eating ice as fast as i could.

I felt drunk on the delerium. But not drunk in an at-the-pub with your friends sort of way. More like drunk at your gran's house. I didn't want to feel drunk. I didn't want to be fixated on the most rediculous things for hours on end. For example how many people groups in the world end in "-ese". e.g. Chinese. The answer is ten by the way. Good luck. Or the number fifteen thousand. I couldn't get rid of that one for a day and a half.

I'm pretty sure I'd be dead by now if it wasn't for Lucia.

I rang NHS 24. This is called a waste of time. Though we did have a bit of a laugh when the woman told me to put my chin on my chest. I was trying to do it with my mouth closed. Which doesn't work at all for me. I think i must have a small chin.

2007-01-04T15:50:00.000Z

Householding

2007-01-04T15:05:00.000Z

Look everyone it's me and Lucia in our flat. This was the very second day after we moved in. The photo stars a wine bottle which was given to us by the shop Lucia worked in in Elie. As I remember it was quite nice. Also in shot you can see our fine bare floorboards, dating all the was back to one hundred years ago when the flat was built. A sharp contrast to the futon we are sitting on which was constructed not more than an hour previously.

Owning a flat is a bit weird. A foot or so below my feet is a ceiling belonging to Mr Caves, a really rather nice man who is a history teacher. Directly in front of me not more than two metres is a wall, which is painted and cared for on one side by us and on the other by someone else entirely. A man named Erol. Perhaps about twelve metres behind me is a similar wall which we share with Dave and Elaine. Above me is the roof space, which I'm told, everyone shares, even the people in the flats way down on the bottom and not even in the stairwell.

So I'm trying to work out exactly what we just spent £145 000 on.

Air.

Space.

We are living in a very expensive gap. Not the one with all the trendy clothes you feel a little bit guilty about buying because they were probably made in a sweat shop. Not a sweet shop, which would be altogether more acceptable. But a common-or-garden GAP.

Next time you're in a large open sapce take a glance about fifty or sixty feet up into the air and imagine a large rectangular cuboid 20m x 4m x 8m. That's what we own. (all measurments are approximate and do not form part of the contract of sale)

Do come and visit.

Things you shouldn't think about while...

2007-01-04T15:02:00.000Z

...Cleaning the toilets at Starbucks.

1. The faces of all the customers you have served that day, knowing that it was one of them who didn't feel too well and made that mess.

2. How much you've spent on your education.

3. Revenge.

Finding your feet

2006-11-27T12:44:00.000Z

Apparenetly I'll pick it all up in no time at all... Did anyone order a tripple shot venti skinny gingerbread latte with no whip, for here in a paper cup? Gosh i hope not, because that means i have to make it. Worse than that i have to slam it down on the end of the bar and shout all that rubbish at the top of my voice. It was all going pretty well until i realised i kept on shouting GingerNut Latte, and one of my co-baristas warned me i may offend some ginger haired folk.

Also my initial excitment at clearing tables was quickly dulled by doing it for eight hours in a row. It's rediculous how much my feet sweat and ache. As i was cleaning the toilets the other night too i decide there must be more to life. I had similar thoughts as my head was deep inside a massive fridge removing a couple of litres of whole milk from the bottom, using little more than an oversized toilet roll. Oh well there's no point crying over spilt milk....or latte for that matter.

I'm still trying to find my feet. When i do i'm sure they'll stink of sweat and spilt milk.

The job hunt continues.

Memoirs of a Barista

2006-11-15T10:27:00.000Z

When all you can smell is coffee and serenity. When the music is bland, but familiar. The colours contemporary and the art mediocre, where are you but Starbucks? I slid my green apron of the day over my H&M black shirt (£14.99, bought yesterday) armed myself with a clearing tray that just about exactly the wrong size, pressed my buttocks against the door and faced a hoard of sneering dirty tables.

It was my OJE today. Not half as exciting as the OE the Kiwis always talked about, which involved them going overseas for a year. OJE is On the Job Experience, the final round as it were in the interview process for my first real world job, since travelling – Barista, Starbucks, Morningside, Edinburgh. I was being assessed in a few different areas, most of which I can’t remember now, as they were overshadowed somewhat by one massive area. Which at best could be called peer assessment and at worst gang initiation: the opinion of the other staff.

I coasted around from table to table, perfecting my technique. Being a rooky I went for the empty tables first. Remembering to replace the chairs as I went. A top tip from the bleached-blonde spiked-hair, punk-chick who was my shift supervisor. There was a mute understanding that she was ultimately the one I had to impress. So I listened and did exactly as she said. The battle was a short one, the sneering dirty tables quickly became shining examples of decorum. They were IKEA clean. I made a good job of them, slowly sliding the last chair home, partially delay the second battle.

The second battle involved a lot of leaning over and interrupting. I loved it. There are worlds in Starbucks, floating above tables in conversations. Him and her, students. Him and her and the daughter, Family. “Sorry, can I take these?” Of course of course. Yes. “Sorry are you finished with that?” Thanks mate. I’m a privileged interplanetary traveller, leaning my head in through the atmosphere, into his divorce, her essay, his school play. Then out again and they barely notice at all.

I do a stock take. Of course I get it all wrong and quickly admit it, which is what you’re supposed to do. I introduce myself a lot, shake some hands etc. Ask questions about where stuff goes. Use the dishwasher, forget some peoples names and pretty much I’m done.

Apparently it went well. During the first half of my interview, yesterday, the manager had nonchalantly admitted that he liked me. I made him laugh a couple of times, so I figured I was on to a winner anyway. We shall see…

Parklife additional

2006-03-15T15:33:00.000Z

Two men one approximately 20m in front of the other, dressing identically, walking backwards, with a morose look upon there faces. There skill at not bumping into anyone (rare in China) and the severity of their faces leads me to believe this was not a one off venture.

Speaking of bumping into people Lucia and i played a game today where we tried to get the subway somewhere, without touching a single human being. It lasted barely a minute, we didn't make it anywhere near the subway. And we were leaping left and right with the agility of elves or monkeys.

Monkeys. I saw about five hundred (not really) monkeys in the zoo the other day. There was a sign that said, "Please don't feed the monkeys, it makes them sick." I can only assume that the Chinese translation went something along the lines of, "Please feed the monkeys, it's funny," judging, that is, by the amount of people feeding them with glee. Or maybe even "Please feed the monkeys, it's funny, especially shoes." Because there were at least three shoes in there (really- and they didn't match), being chewed on by the monkeys.

Monkeys and Pandas. I saw Giant Pandas for the first time in my life. It was vaguely satisfying, but i couldn't escape the uncomfortable thought that this was not a Panda at all. But in fact a fat man in a Panda suit, in a cage, through some kind of perversion.

Got my hair cut the other day for 80p. Can't complain. That was my second ever time in a hairdressers, my friend recommended a place. There are some very very dodgy hairdressers, with suspiciously under used equipment and supeciously over dressed hairdressers - we're not talking evening wear here. Maybe i should say underdressed. I don't know. Very dodgy anyway.

Ran over a cyclist today in a car; he was alright, mostly they are. Nearly got run over by a van too. It had to skid, that was new.

Parklife

2006-03-03T15:08:00.000Z

It's all about your joggers who go round and round and round.

And lots of old people doing very odd things.

There are loads of parks in Beijing. They all cost less than fifty pence to get into and house a veritable menagerie of oriental delights. For example the Pagoda, the Rockery and the Outdoor Gymnasium. What, Outdoor Gym? That's right. At first glance an unsuspecting westerner would suppose the apparatus to be some kind of children's play park, brightly coloured as it is, surrounded by rubber flooring for all those little fumbles, falls and trips. However momentarily you will notice that these are not children at all (or very ugly, wrinkely children), but full grown adults.

Now your average frequenter of a British park would not be given to labourious exercise. Aside from the joggers, most care to do little more than the odd stretch to feed that poor little duck at the back who doesn't seem to be getting any. Not so in China. Elderly men and women, all be it quite half assed with a fag hanging out of their mouths, are truly exercising. It does hold the gaze (which in China also isn't rude. If i wanted too i could march right up to some old man, stand over him and shout "ji se te" all i wanted, it still wouldn't be rude. Like the man beside me slurpping his noodles - not rude or the man in the park farting very very loudly, but thankfully not so close to me - still still not rude) .

But your gaze will quickly be diverted by some loud, consistent and multiple chanting. Forty or so women and two men, one seemingly quite drunk, doing some form of Aerobics. No not Aerobics, dance. No that's not right, Ti Chi. No, way too militant for Ti Chi. They're doing something anyway, involving shouting and digging your thumbs into your back as if you were a doctor making some kind of incision. The drunk guy could do it all with his eyes closed. He didn't need to look at the intense young lady with loads of makeup on, and i suspect though i was nowhere near close enough, lipstick on her teeth, who was leading the whole affair. I walked off, suddenly suspecting it was purely something they do for kicks when an unsuspecting white guy walks by.

Parks are where Chinese people come to get away with doing whatever the heck they want. Middle aged men fly kites for hours, couples kiss, people drink a lot of tea from large flasks. Today a lady, without provocation sreamed, or rather shrieked at a tree she was passing. It didn't reply, as it appeared she was expecting. Her husband didn't bat an eyelid. I saw a man delight himself by swinging his arms around like he was being attacked by a swarm of bees that only he could see. Frequently men break into song, operatic song. There's the odd tree caressing. A man today appeared to be impersonating a bull with an itch against a tree trunk. (The trees are all carefully labelled and photos are taken which are displayed in "foyer" of the park. Presumably it's for those who want to see the trees, but don't have the time to actually have a walk around.)

And of course there are the joggers who go round and round and round....
...wearing suits. The Chinese it seems don't change for exercise. On the way home from work, pop into the park, couple of dashes round in the style of British-man-trying-to-catch-bus and your're good.

more info

2006-03-03T14:50:00.000Z

Copy of the email lucia sent:

The yellow thing, on the right, well something very like it, something pretty much identical, has been living under my skin, on that little red area I asked you to inspect, for the last 6 weeks or more.?It 'popped out' after the doctor squeezed and prodded the area a lot today.?How unbelievably gross is that.?If he hadn't got it out, evenutally it would have come out itself, as a fly!?Yes a fly would have flown out of my skin.?This is possibly the most disgusting experience of my爀ntire life.?And I am very very grateful to the doctor for squeezing and poking my skin and not just prescribing me more antibiotics.?So it wasn't just a sting, no, not just an infected bite, not even an abcess, it was this botfly larvae, growing inside my flesh.

inside lucia's leg

2006-03-03T14:36:00.000Z

The one right about 1.5cm long and 1cm in there for six weeks since brazil.

Halmiltonian

2006-03-03T14:28:00.000Z

Robert, a whole entry dedicated to the hamiltonian....

...i believe it's merely an operator which when applied to a wave function provides the energy eigenvalues.

Though i do believe with more surety that i got a nine out of twenty in that module. Which to you less mathematically minded is less than half. So i wouldn't listen to anything i say.

Made in China

2006-03-02T12:53:00.000Z

So all my possessions have come home. I feel sad i didn't bring more of them with me for this pilgrimage to the home land.

Seven years in Tibet

2006-03-02T12:38:00.000Z

Not really, more like two weeks in Beijing. Yesterday i realised something rather profound. I really don't hate this place.

There are so many many reasons why i should hate this place. I'll give you but i few, because then maybe you'll still come.

It has a smell...not a good one. I can't read anything. I can't speak to anyone. It's freezing, all the lakes are frozen. People push you all day long and your preceived personal space (the amount of room a person needs to breathe, respire, exist etc) is somewhere between minimal and negligible. You can't go fifteen seconds with out hearing someone clearing their throat into their mouth and spitting. You can't walk fifteen feeteen feet without stepping in the same. People smoke everywhere, especially in confined spaces. The concept of a queue is a little more than a utpoian ideal. Everywhere beautiful old buildings are being torn down and sacrificed to the progress god, in anticipation of THE games, 2008.

But i love it. I love the food, i love the energy, i love the noise. There are certain liberties i really value here. The pushing is actually relaxing. There's none of this akward British tension of no one knowing what to do. Or what they should do. I was standing on the tube, completely in the way of a lot of people, because i hadn't noticed, but it was fine. No one scorned me, or even thought bad of me. You can muck up and it doesn't matter. It's relaxing. Also people think i look like David Beckham.

From Tracey's

2006-02-25T11:08:00.000Z

Tracey had taken the best photographs i have ever seen. I include galleries and art students in that. Seriously the best. In the right hands she would be a millionaire....
... but probably quite stressed out too.

From Tracey's we went lots more places. Because now I'm in China.

In between Tracey's house and China is lots of other strange people. Including Pam and Paddy, who we stayed with at their place in NZ. Paddy kept saying, "how about that," and "how's that sound." Also he had a pig slaughtered and gave Lucia and i two chops. That was the day our wedding venue changed dramatically and we were in the middle of nowhere. All worked out though.

As i saw when i went to London. In London there's a few great sights. There's Rob and Yusanne. It was rob's birthday which made it all the better. And Yusanne is going to cook up a storm at out wedding. She's a scientist too, which i appreciate deeply. Science is much like cooking. We investigated the venue

Northern Ireland is in between London and China too. Our family upgraded our TV and our cat. We got a puppy. Every boy's dream. We still have the cat and the old TV.

Then i came here.

Around the South Island in Eight (easy) Days

2006-02-10T09:23:00.000Z

Hitchiking.

Douglas Adams wrote a book called The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy. Pretty funny. Real hitchhiking, pretty funny too.

It was so good to be on the road again. Aside from spits and spats across the globe i hadn't done any hitchiking proper since last Easter when myself, the lovely Hwai-Jiin (from Singapore) and the wonderful Anna (who i just travelled with) set off for a week of faith on $30NZ. I wrote about it one time, check it out. This time we had a bit more money and a bit more vision. Oh and signs....this time we made signs.

We headed South. Lucia has a friend who has a Batch in Wanaka. A Batch is like a holiday home and Wanaka is a like a town. We made it as far as Tracey's house. Tracey picked us up in Twizel (great for a town, my Mum used to call me Twizel, because my hair stuck up in all different directions. The causal relationship between the hair and the name never became apparent to me.) To be continued....

home?

2006-02-03T23:36:00.000Z

Being back in New Zealand is like coming home. Partially because there are a lot of Irish people and a lot of sheep, but mostly because this was home for me for three months. The YWAM base smells the same. And lots of the people are the same, if a little new and improved by their world travels.

It's odd that a wooden house in a village in New Zealand could feel like home to me and a host of Americans. It's good, though, amazing even. (It's almost as if God exists, invites us all to be his children, people from all over the world and unites us with bonds that are as strong and sometimes stronger than family ties.)

www.ywamoxford.com

Had ice cream today at the ice cream shop, spent some time in the tree house and in the hammock. Walked up to the look out. Everywhere is a hundred good memories. It's even better now though, because Lucia can see it all too.

Vanette (our van)

2006-01-29T23:58:00.000Z

Dear Ben, (co-owner)

So, there's no easy way to tell you this..

....but she didn't pull through. We did everything we could. Death was pronounced at approximately 11.20am. The doctors were working on her from approximately 11.15am. She passed quickly. In fact, truth is she was probably already dead. DOA.

She was too old really to donate any of her organs, her body was simply falling apart by the end. She had deteriorated a lot since we last saw her. The tears are still fresh in my eyes. Thankfully there are some undertakers who will do the funeral for free. I guess I'm writing for your permission as co-owner (as of approximately 10.15am) to finally lay her to rest.

On the plus side I did take the time, energy and finance (approximately NZ$ 9) to get her registered in our names. So now at least we OWN the piece of crap.

I'm sorry I shouldn't talk about her that way. I think the emotion is getting to me. I'm assured though by the memories we will always have of her. At least those will never rust and be taken away for scrap.

Love conor.

santiago airport

2006-01-26T18:39:00.000Z

Six times.

can you believe it. It's a nice airport, but six times. check out www.sleepinginairports.com .

Peru

2006-01-26T13:57:00.000Z

Two essential things to know before you go:

Paddington bear was from Peru (deepest darkest Peru).
All those hippy looking people with odd hats and really big wooly jumpers, they've been to Peru.

Being thirty

2006-01-18T20:26:00.000Z

Is it okay forme to love Scrabble and tea so much?

Lucia and i are in the pumpingest hostel in Santiago. It's like beng in first year at university again. Or maybe even at a gig in Belfast somewhere. Everyone is very young and drunk and there's a lot of kissing. It's like being at someone else's house party.

It is in stark contrast to the idealic little paradise called Rapa Nui, or Easter Island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, which we just left. There we also left James and Anna and all these wonderful older couple friends we made. Completely the wine drinking, dinner party and Scrabble generation. My generation.

Our flights all got messed up around Mexico and now Lucia and i are in Chile and James and Anna are in Papette. If you don't know where that is don't worry, needless to say it's very far from here. We'll meet them again in New Zealand. Then they go home and we go to China, to get some nice food.

Chinese takeaways....being thirty?

Christmas...

2006-01-18T20:02:00.000Z

...feels and felt a million miles away.

Miles away now because we are in Chile, having spent seventeen days on Easter Island, and we had Christmas in Brazil which is about a million miles away from home.

It was great though. A Scottish-Brazilian Christmas on the farm. Ted cooked a very suculent turkey on Christmas eve, as is the local custom and i got a chance to wear my tie. Along with the volunteers, Morven and Fabio, who run the farm had over the two kids they are trying to adopt and two other kids from a local orphanage who didn't have anywhere else to go.

These guys were so cool. One is 14, Nilo, who has had try outs for some great under 18 football team and Matias, who is 9 but built like Mike Tyson. Matias had a serious case of ADHD, but he was helpful in his own way. He drank a lot of coffee. One day full of pride he came up to the farm house riding bareback on a semi-wild horse he'd managed to lassoo with some rope. It was premeditated. He was wearing a cycling helmet. I truly believe he thought this would make it okay in the eyes of Fabio to go horse whispering like this.

He was a good laugh, but the laugh turned sour in your mouth; his story is a bit too tradgic for much humour. Apprently he'd been a lot worse, when the people at the ophanage met him he was frequently professing Satan was his father and he wouldn't let anyone touch him. His legs and arms are marred with scarring that looked to me like burns.

He knows Jesus now and was delighted to read to me from his Bible for a long time. It is hard to fairly judge the passage of time when listening to Bible stories in Portuguese. But for a kid like him it definately was a long time. It didn't seem to phase him, knowing i couldn't understand anything. He even contented himself to ask me how to say some of the words. It suprised me how encouraging you can be even when you don't speak the language.

Besides the various dramas we managed to squeeze in the mandatory couple of terrible films about Christmas ('Christmas with the Cranks' and 'Skipping Christmas') and the not so mandatory, but delightful game of Scrabble.

This advent season...

2005-12-16T19:28:00.000Z

...I am spending covered in mud, wearing only my swimming trunks and digging a drainage channel for some missionaries.

It´s hot in Brazil. And rainy. I was working the other day and getting so wet that swimming trunks were the only option left. Strangely liberating digging clay in the warm rain. It reminded me of being a kid.

My brothers and i used to turn the hose on at the top of this soil area at the bottom of our garden (behind the hill, remember Mum?). Then we´d each build a wee river. Mine i remember was fast flowing and lined with tiny pebbles. Plenty of meanders. Deposition on the inside of the bend and erosion on the outside. Niall´s was wide and deep. Like the river Nile. I always found that funny.

So as i sat in the dirt the other day with the rain fully lashing around me i smiled at the memory and was glad that all those hours in the soil weren´t wasted.

Some honesty...

2005-12-12T15:59:00.000Z

...invites me to briefly tell you of two recent miracles that occurred in my life.

In Guatemala, all those moons ago. I, like an idiot, went swimming with our room keys in my pocket in the massivest waves in the universe, 20mins or something before we had to check out. If you don´t check out in time they make you pay for another night. Obviously i lost the keys. Obviously they had a spare which took four years to find. tick tick tick. Obviously i got down on my knees on the sand and said: God I´ve made a mistake can you help me out? Make the keys that would never ever ever wash up wash up, so we don´t have to pay more etc. I didn´t say ´´etc´´ to God, i was a bit more emotional and went on a bit. I went back inside, i couldn´t see the keys. Not so obviously, just as we were trying to pay, some kind of angel kid walked in with our keys in his hand. He said they had washed up along the beach so he brough them to our hostel. How he knew they were the keys to our hostel i will never know. They weren´t marked and there were loads of hostels. God answered my prayer, because he is amazingly good.

In Peru we had the worst day ahead of us you could imagine: Get up at 3.30am and get three flights to the most dangerous city on Earth, Rio, to arrive at some other weird place at 11pm, having slept on a bus the night before. Pretty much the worst day on Earth to wake up with the worst food poisoning you´ve ever had in your life. Vomitting and the D word like crazy. And the feeling of a rusty axe wedged in your forehead, wobbling back and forward. In so much pain you can barely move your lips, never mind talk. With vomit soaking the back of your throat up to you eye balls and making you retch all the more. Trying to go through security and immigration, between outbursts of throwing up. I couldn´t believe i made it to the departure lounge. I was just considering not going on the flight, when odd stuff started to happen.

I heard an audible voice tell me to sit up. Lucia was at the toilet and the others were further away. It was no one i knew. I sat up anyway. I looked around and there was no on there. In a weird way i very naturally assumed it was an angel and didn´t think to much of it. Sitting up was good. I pleaded with God to take away the sickness. Then i thought about His love for me for a bit. Then i started crying in complete joy and something broke over me. It felt like something snapped. Then (excuse the Christian jargon) the Holy Spirit came over me and it felt warm and nice. I´m very familiar with this happening, but it´s never happened in an airport. I asked God to release His supernatural power into this situation. He did. Out loud i described what was happening. As i descibed the feeling of complete joy i was amazed because i could speak. I was standing now. I finished speaking with: And now i´m.....better!. I´m completely better. And i was! I was completely completely healed. I could still taste the puke in my throat, but that was all.

I jumped (that´s right jumped, like the leper Jesus healed) on the chair and shouted a thank you to Jesus. The others were so embarassed. Lucia even went back to the toilet. I was laughing so hard, under the influence of the Holy Spirit. And the others were concerned i would be committed to an asylum, but i couldn´t stop. I went over to the infomation counter, because i realised they didn´t have the most important information that Jesus loved them and us and you, so i wrote it down on their stuff.

Completely healed, raised some stares, but didn´t care. I ate all my food on the planes and had a great flipping day. Thank you God. You are so Good.

...

Stand By Me moments

2005-12-12T15:49:00.000Z

You know the film. You know the song. It´s full of good moments that film. One of the worse moments, however, involved some leeches. There is a lot of ticks in Brazil. They crawl up your leg or arm, looking for a a quite warm place to nestle in and suck your blood. Some of them are about a centimetre long and as black as coal.

So yeah, put all these details together and you´ll come up with what i found to my shock and horror a few mornings ago. Yes the pain and revulsion of finding a massive TICK on my inner thigh, was eclipsed and redered infinitesimal as i discovered the OTHER TICK as i prepared to go to the toilet.

I´m still in counselling.

Neuvo Destino

2005-12-12T15:29:00.000Z

On a farm outside Itabarito, outside Belo Horizonte, outside Rio de Janerio, Brazil, a about ten years ago something special began to grow. A lady got a dream from her God. He showed her children from the streets coming in their droves to their farm to a have a good time and learn stuff about life and Him. After a lot of discussion with her God and her husband the time came to sell the farm.

Morven and Fabio bought their farm having received 36000 pounds in the space of a week from people who they hadn´t even asked for money. Then they, with a team from an outdoor adventure centre in Scotland built an adventure centre. Yesterday the second group of kids ever to visit left. The lady´s dream is beginning to be fulfilled.

The name of the farm, isn´t even cheesy because it was always called that even before the vision (in the hearts of men) to give the street kids of Brazil a New Destiny.

We´ve been working on the farm for a week now. Building fences, digging weeds, building football goals and lots of other stuff. Then over the weekend we were helping out in our own Portugueseless way. It´s an amazing place. So peaceful, with such good food. Lucia and I´s old pastor, Ted, is the cook. Along with his wife Deidre, Morven, Fabio, Little baby Angus (sudden excitement about being a dad, kind of overflowing), Romeo, Fred, Rory and others have made us so welcome. It´s a good place to be and there is a lot we can give. And they have a pool.

If you feel like praying, pray for this place, pray for the kids. Pray for breakthrough in their lives. That they would come to know the God who loves them, when everyone else rejects them. We know God loves this place, because He built it and dreamed it, so He definately wants to use it. Lets ask Him together.

Brazil

2005-12-12T15:22:00.000Z

Films not to watch before coming to Brazil:
City of God and that other one.

People not to talk to before coming to Brazil:
A lot of people.

Truth is there´s a lot of murder and hardcore crime here. The place we stayed when we first got here, someone was killed around the corner during the night. Lots of gangland wars over drugs teritories in the Favellas. Should that stop you coming? No. It´s hard when everyone you talk to seems to tell you another horror story. People say things like don´t go out of the bus station- it´s dangerous. Other peole say, don´t go in the bus station - it´s dangerous. Don´t get out of bed - it´s dangerous. Where in the contract of life does it say it won´t be dangerous. I´m pretty confident at this stage that life is not about minimising danger. Danger is part of life.

Rant rant.

Team players

2005-12-12T15:07:00.000Z

Let me at this late stage introduce the others:
James and Anna. They are 22 and their parents live in Carlise. I met them in New Zealand on my DTS. They met at Durham. James studied Physics, Anna studied English and Classics.

We work very well together. We all like Scrabble and are equally matched. They are engaged to be married in April. Lucia and i will be getting married (God willing) late in May. So we have a lot of conversations that would probably bore people to death. Anna is amazing at bargaining and always gets us good deals on accommodation and food. James is fantastic at reading guide books and organising good stuff to do. (Incidentally my personality type, ``Performer`` is the least likely to read a guide book according to the bbc website). So i value James abilities highly. Lucia loves talking to strangers and making friends with people. I´m quite cool too. Basically this is a brief list of examples of how we are different, thankfully, and flow well together. We have laughs. Recently Lucia and i went a day ahead somewhere in Brazil to meet some people and we actively missed the others. It was the first night we´d been apart since the 15th of September.

We do a lot of lending eachother money and doing eachother´s washing. We have our stuff in common. I´ve found myself refering to my knife and plate as the knife and plate. It is a subtle, but important difference. We have nights for couples sometimes. It´s all good.

Tikal and Turtles

2005-11-21T23:17:00.000Z

Did i mention Tikal? Pryamids and monkeys in the jungle. The steepest longest ladder i've ever seen. Lucia freaked out a little bit and managed to freak out this American guy at the top. She had to sit very still by the wall, clinging desperately to a prefunctory rock outcrop, laughing so manically. It was quite funny.

Monkeys swing and jump like mad things. Weird parrots, lizards and four million million ants. The ground was an unduating black sea of minature orks.

Turtles in Guatemala. Giant ones baby ones. The baby ones had a race to the sea. Only 1% will survive. So cute. Exactly like finding Nemo. No joke at all. Exactly like it.

Nazca

2005-11-21T23:08:00.000Z

In the middle of the desert some people made some drawings Art Attack style in the rocks. These are very important to some other people, more recently who believe they were made by Aliens. Or maybe it's they were made for aliens. The guy who worked at the weird tower we went to view them from, who had been fully asleep seconds before explained the shapes. We were right by the "hands," "tree" and "the lizard". Some Americans had built a road through the Lizard. Whoops. It's not like it wasn't visible. The longest was about 100m long formed simply from a trench, which is now only about 5cm deep.

These aliens were very busy. A level headed documentry i saw once attributed the lines to worship of some water gods who lived in the mountains. Flip did they need them. The place is a as dry as the Gobi desert. Interesting place, but as is a bit typical our interactions with the sleepy guide were a bit more fun than the lines themselves.

Miami to Lima Peru

2005-11-21T23:04:00.000Z

If you get the chance you should meet Becky, Summer and our friend Jeremy. Some excellent people who gave us an amazing one night stop over in Miami. Then you should go to Lima, where on a half hour walk six or seven people talk to you in a really friendly way and you can get a baked potato, a boiled egg and some spicey sauce for about 18p.

Lucia has a sore tummy pray for her.

The Rich Young Ruler and People Who Steal Things

2005-11-21T22:50:00.000Z

The rich young ruler thought he had it made because he was such a good boy. He never smoked or cursed and he looked after his old mum. But Jesus told him it wasn´t enough, he'd have to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor. The rich young ruler left, dejected because he was, as i said, rich.

Then he was on a bus last night from Nazca (where there are many lines, which he saw from a tall tower) to somwhere else in southern Peru and something happened which made him think. His bag was stolen. It contained his most valuable possession: A diamond emulate given to him as a dowery from his fiancee's family. The emulate was gone, along with his toothbrush and a set of postcards he bought of the many lines.

It was an odd set of events because in many ways it mirrored my recent experiences. My CD player got nicked last night from a bus. Some vague prophetic arrogance prompts me to believe i saw it coming (or going). It makes you feel a bit weird when something of yours is now someone elses and you know they don't care half as much about it as you did. It was my most valuable possession, given to me by Lucia.

It does, really helpfully make you think about the value of stuff. I told the police. They were very nice about it all. Easy come easy go. Life lesson is that you have to forgive people a lot for stealing from you. Banks, ATM machine's, Taxi drivers, Bus conductors, they all take their little share. But if you don't forgive them you go crazy and get really annoyed at beggars.

Volcano

2005-11-17T16:50:00.000Z

And then we went up a volcano.

My trip isn't entirely about the Lord of the Rings. The film was really long, yeah, and it didn't even show all the in between bits. They made it look way easy to climb an active volcano. Towards the top the rock is at once crumbily and razor sharp, so it feels great in your socks. It is kind of like climbing an infinite sand dune made of tiny razors, which occasionally exudes plumes of sulphurous gas, in the suspciously warm areas. These warm areas are a little worrying on rubber shoes where you kind of think the thing is just going to melt stuck somewhere. And you'd be left having a bit of a Terminator Two moment.

The gale force wind doesn't help much either. But it lessens the searing heat as you try to steal glances into the crater.

In short it was flipping amazing. So weird

bye

The Contents of My Backpack

2005-11-11T15:31:00.000Z

Three sections:

The Top Pocket
Bible
Small black notebook
Larger silver notebook
Travel Scrabble
AW80 song book
"Let The Nations Be Glad," by John Piper
"The Invisible Man," by H. G. Wells
Occassionally some food, my contact lens stuff, toothbrush and toothpaste
A pack of cards

The Middle Section, wow this is big
(for the sake of this entry I´m assuming I´m naked)
One pair jeans
One pair light trousers (lovingly refered to as my emergency trousers)
One pair shorts
Two T-shirts, one white, one navy
One long sleeved T-shirt, white
Three shirts
One hoodie
One thinner stripey jumper
One coat (which is too big)
One cap
One broken camcorder with tapes etc in a hemp bag
One snorkel with mask
One sleeping bag liner
One sleeping bag
One Lonely Planet New Zealand
One Tuperware, containing first aid kit.
One washbag containing: razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo from a Mexican hotel, contact lens and case.
Two cups
Two plastic plates, green
Knife, fork , spoon set
Torch, headlamp style
Jasmine Tea
Swiss Army knife
Pen
Day sack, or Timmy.

Side pockets:
Five pairs of boxers, typically three clean
Four pairs of socks, typically all dirty

Things lost since the beginning of the trip:
One shirt, Philadelphia
One hoodie, Guatemala
One hat, Guatemala
One bottle of tomato ketcup and some oats, unknown

Things temporarily lost:
Money belt
Keys to Hotel room

Guatemala

2005-10-30T23:30:00.000Z

Guatemala.

Accomodation: 78p
Nicest meal ever: 2 pounds
God´s creation: free
Nicest people on Earth too, because they are kind of Mexican.

The lake. We´re staying by a really big lake and going horse riding and Kayaking. Enjoying life and the people around. Last night went to a church with lots of children singing very loudly about Jesus. I´ve never been somewhere so Christian. On the walls everywhere it says Jesus is Lord. I´ve never been offered pot and horses in the same breath so much in my life either. And of course the seemingly infinite banana bread. So good it hurts.

We´re having a good time. I´m learning loads about God, which is my favourite thing. Lucia is picking up Spanish at a phenomenal rate. Seriously she´s chatting away to people. It´s so cool to see. All you have to do really is add an O or an A to the end of the English and they mostly get it.

USA end of.

2005-10-30T23:18:00.000Z

Pittsburg.

Mary´s in Philadelphia. Body worlds exhibition- weird as. funfunfun. New car Mercedez-Benz C286 or something. Golf clubs. New York. Big big. Central park. Empire state. Times square. Good Bagels. Adam´s house. Washington DC. Whitehouse. (Being offered banana bread as we speak. It´s really nice. quiere comprar pan de banana mañana. The girls are tying in Spanish for me. It´s a friendly place Guatemala!) Kentucky. Aaron Paterson´s house. Motels Dallas Huston, Ben´s family. Stuff stuff stuff. Flights mania. Hiring a car. Forty million hours driving.

And we landed just about in Belize....
....where they live with ease.

My Saint Lucia

2005-10-30T22:58:00.000Z

If you know me enough to ever read this blog. You´ll know about Lucia. You´ve probably met her too, she´s nice isn´t she? I think so.

I woke up, having slept really well considering the hurricane outside, at 5.30am. It was light and the shack was still around me so far as i could see. I got up. I looked through the shutters. The ground was wet from the surge, but there wasn´t the cnn scenes of stay dogs swimming and cars semi-submerged. Or crazy hicks, still on their front porches for fear of looters. I really wanted lucia to wake up. "Really wanted," became make lots of noise. Flip sake she sleeps soundly sometimes. She was at the other side of the room in the girls´ bed. (I´ve got well used to sharing a bed with James). I kicked something and luckily she woke up and none of the others did. She saw me. It was cool. (i won´t go fully into the emotions i was feeling, for fear any of you are diabetics) Very cool. We went out for a walk.

It was windy but not too bad, the hurricane was slower than expected and would really hit later that day. Phase one of my plan had been a sucess. Phase two was get to a beautiful place, so we went for a walk.

We found a pier. Something like 30ft waves were breaking out on the reef that thankfully was protecting the island. I told Lucia to look at them, then i got down on one knee. Phase three.

She wasn´t expecting it because there was a hurricane and she was more than a little afraid for her life. The suprise, as part of it, was essential for me. I had been so excited when i found out there was a hurricane for this reason. I knew Lucia would be distracted.

We hugged for ages. I gave her a ring I´d got in New Zealand. A friend had made it. It was wooden and had a cross embezzeled on it made from Paua shell. I´d carried the ring for about four months. She loved it. We´ll probably get a proper one when i get a job. hahaha.

I talked to her Dad later that day to ask for his blessing, which he freely gave (some people like these details). Then i rang my parents.
In between oddly we bumped into some friends of Lucia´s from London. Really weird to meet them on an island in Belize, during a hurricane.
No worries though all was good, the hurricane edged away from us and we got a chance to help a bit with the clear up after.

HAPPY ENDING.

Belize

2005-10-30T22:34:00.000Z

"In Belize we live with ease, we eat our rice with meat and cheese."
-a lyric from some Rasta guy we met who played us too many songs, with too few chords one evening. Then he got pissed off and stompped off. Not very at ease.

The whole Rasta thing is seems like a big excuse not to grow up and an ample platform for judging people who have ambition. By ambition i don´t mean anything grand. A job is too ambitious for some of these guys.

WILMA came. If you don´t know where Belize is, scroll back in your mind (put the cursor over the arrow shapped like "<" and hold down the left mouse button. If you can´t find your mouse, I´m not telling you where it is) to Wilma on the news. Belize was pretty much obscured by the red area just beyond the eye. Not good really.

So day two of our relaxing time (a holiday in a holiday, if you will) on our beautiful tropical island, just about everybody at once informed us there was going to be a hurricane. Cat 5, the lowest pressure tropical system ever recorded. It´s fair to say we were a little unnerved. But in Belize they live with ease.

Most of the tourists started to leave. It was nearing the time of the last taxi boat before it was to hit. We´d spent a night praying and facing our own mortality (rather gleefully, it should be said). We vaguely decided to leave. None of us wanted to go. The ease of the Belize was rubbing off on us. I really wanted to stay.

The Island we were on, Caye Caulker, is both a pimp and a prostitute to tourists. It pimps us out amongst its various landlords all for the sake of their reputation on the Island and a fast buck. It prostitutes itself to us, tourists, because you can make a bit more money fishing the rich westerners, than Baracuda and swordfish. It both sucks and is wonderful. Their is a toursit price and a local price for everything, covert though it is. If tourism colapsed here, the islands four hundred inhabitants would colapse with it. Even the EASE of the rastas is dependent on the prolific marajuanna trade among our kind. It´s wonderful because this place is paradise; it sucks because of the schism between the tourists and the locals.

This is why i wanted to stay. It would be such a completion to our parasitism to leave when the going got tough. So under the final advice of the Pastor and a police man, who we bumped into on our resigned journey to the last taxi boat, we stayed. If our shack was washed away they said we could go to shelter in the school with the rest of the locals. Sounds kind of fun doesn´t it. So we stayed, had some rice and beans and i slept right through it. So i slept through a category five hurricane.

road trip USA

2005-10-04T15:22:00.000+01:00

Your brother emails you a website: autodriveaway.com. You coincidently bump into one of your best friends in Dallas. He's been rerouted because of a Hurricane. His family helps you out a lot. A company gives you a free car to drive from Dallas to Conneticut. Which is flipping miles. They give you a free tank of gas in your 2004 Grand Jeep Cherokee, with blacked out windows, all the gadgets of a spaceship. Cruise control....ummmm. Flying along at a steady 70mph on Interstate 70 for a good 6 to eight hours. It's shocking how fun it all is. Can this really be working out?

Right now I'm in Pittsburg, Pennsylvenia, staying with a girl Anna was home schooled with then she was 15. She hasn't seen her since. They are all musicaians and such cool people. So much fun. And so so generous.

Slept in the car the night before, having been accused by the cops that we were breaking into a building. Ironically i had broken into it so Lucia could go to the toilet, but it wasn't that bad. Before that we spent three nights in Columbia Missouri with our good friend Stacey. Stacey you rock. Her parents were so good to us, as were her dogs. American football match.

Dodgy motel the night before.....CLASSIC. Ice machine, truckers, giant stinky bed. Ghetto.

God bless, We're good.
Conor

Mexico co co

2005-09-23T00:37:00.000+01:00

Hot. Noisy. Cheap. Smiles smiles smiles.

Today is the kind of day when four hundred of your prayers have been answered, you still don't understand much of what's going on and you have free internet at your hotel. HOTEL. Yeah, that's how cheap it is.

NEVER let a bad word be spoken about a Mexican. Apparently they are all supposed to murder, steal, cheat etc. It's a load of non sense. I fully believe i have never met nicer people. Like you sneeze in an internet cafe and the stranger beside you says: salut, or something, which means: your health. Everyone helps you. They all get together to help you. They barely care if you pay and they smile and smile and smile. The most relaxed people on the earth. Even the annoying street vendors aren't annoying. They are curteous.

Old men and children laughing playing in the park - no joke. People snogging, young and old, everywhere. In my line of sight right now i bet there are snoggers. Yep....there they are. So i can see about thirty people on average ambling around the square. That's one in fifteen mexicans are snogging at any given time. What a country! No wonder they never get anything done.

You can't stand confused for more than fifteen seconds without a few people coming up to you broadly smiling, willing to take you across town to help. COME TO MEXICO.

We saw loads of stuff in Mexico City. Then we went to see some Aztec pryamids out of the city and now we've come to another place to just chill for a few days.

All here are well. Lucia is loving not working, James and Anna are loving not organising. it's good mum, it's all good.

Turkey is real

2005-08-04T16:33:00.000+01:00

So I'm pretty sure I'm the worst blogger ever.

Dead sea. Swimming today. Wailing wall. Lots of places Jesus did things. Palestine.

Stuff like that. Teams from all around the world uniting again in Jerusalem. Loads of people have longer hair. Two of the staff got engaged. It's all goooooo. Met people from the Faroe island. Yes your right, they don't have a McDonalds there. Lots of guns here and windy streets. If i crane my neck i could see somewhere Jesus apparetly dropped his cross on the way to being killed.

I feel very relaxed and a bit tired. If i try to think about all the weird stuff I've seen over the past while my head starts to hurt. Also I'm thinking a lot about people like Michael and Ruth and their new baby, all you cool as people in N.I. and scotland. Then there is all these cool new people from all over the world. It's a bit odd. I have suspected for a while that the world is not that big. I've been around it now and i can confirm my suspicions.

Ruth once had a theory that the whole world actuallt was Ireland and that the whole map thing was just a conspiracy to sell lots of flight tickets. Yeah so it's true. But there's some really hot parts of ireland.

I went to estonia too. That was cool.

Northern Ireland really is quite cool. Be reassured. It's nice and the people really are friendly compared to pretty much everywhere else. Also they are relaxed and not rude. Pretty much the best.

Every country is pretty much the same. Oh and travelling really isn't that big a deal. all you have to do is book some flights and some hostels. Sometimes you need visas too, but you can check that out before you go.

What else can i tell you? I have a new found respect and love for Americans and concluded that the best tea to be found in the world is not in China at all. It's definately in County Down. Seriously guys, we forget how good we have it. A lot of the rest of the world sucks for most of the people in it. It really really sucks. This is not a nice planet. Humans are disgusting, in the words of a character from Iceage. People are not good. Most of them are quite dodgy, but it's good to be optimisitic.

Oh and it's dead easy to change people's lives for the better. But it's sticky in the existential sense of the word. You have to get involved. Three very important things are:
Breakfast Lunch and Dinner.

I feel very out of it right now, i probably shouldn't be writing. I'm finding it very funny though.

Take care all you beautiful people.

Some honesty first: The world is pretty crap, God is so good. I don't care about anything but Jesus. Because He is more real than even this blog. wow. He is everything that is good.
Ask Him if He isn't.

russıa

2005-07-11T12:33:00.000+01:00

ıs awesome.

prısons, kıds camps, puttıng ın a kıtchen, not much washıng lots of camp fıres.

i love you all.

Horses

2005-06-13T13:03:00.000+01:00

Mongolian horses are small, sturdy and strong. We spent our day off riding some in the countryside. Before we had even left the car a little band of Mongolian women had named an claimed us to ride each of their horses. They had discussed our weight height and suitability and assigned us each a horse. When we walked over there was a bit of a fight over Laura; the reasons why never became clear. We had a guide, he had a whip and we were off.

We crossed this deep river. The current was strong and the horses stumbled a little, but they made it. I got my feet wet. You don't wear helmets and to make the horse go faster you have to stand up. So it's as dangerous as it is exciting. i.e very. Hwai-jinn's horse, an independent sort, drove her straight into an over hanging branch. Completely slapstick. She fell off hard. It was not funny at the time. Then it was very very funny.

Laura's horse decided, without letting her know, to sit down on some cool mud it found. She was trying to take a photo at the time so she fell off into the same mud. It was funny even at the time.

My horse was thankfully quite feisty and was up for the occassional gallop. Ken's horse was badly stoned and didn't achieve much. Heidi and Ben did the best. Heidi had a crazed horse which suited her fine, because she has experience and Ben rode his bad boy like a cowboy.

Finlanded

2005-06-13T12:54:00.000+01:00

Flying from Beijing to Helsinki is confusing because you end up with 24 hours of daylight to begin with. Then you get to Finland and the sun refuses to set much anyway and you realise the next 9 days will be nightless.

Walking around a Finish supermarket today i had the most preculiar feeling of being at home and completely not at home at the same time. It reassuring to see fruit without worm holes in it and loads of food on the shelves, but it makes you wonder if it really is all necessary. It's weird to be back somewhere normal. It feels like a bit of a cop-out really. It's so easy.

Finland constitutes our three day holiday. Then we will do some "work" here and head into Russia next week. Work will be talking to a Finish youth group, packing some humanitarian stuff for Russian prisons and helping out at a Christian conference. Very very excitingly, Lucia is coming to visit on Sunday.

Mongolia and China

2005-05-30T12:58:00.000+01:00

They build things a lot here and when they talk it sounds kind of like slurping tea. I like that. Also pushing isn't rude, which is really interesting. If you bump someone's foot though, it's a really big deal and you have to shake hands quickly or they will probably hit you. It's a bit cold today, which is relief.

Beijing-Ulan Bator 30 hours of fun. Some things we saw from the train window : Wild horses, no roads and the Gobi desert. Camels too. And the great wall of China. Inside the train. Loads of lovely people. I made friends with these Chinese American kids and we played cards a lot. Lots of unrude pushing too.

In China spitting isn't rude. It's not uncommon for middle aged WI style women to "hock a lougie" as the Americans would say. Also a lot of leaning over delicately pinching one nostril and violently cleansing the other at your feet. It's beautiful. Not making noise while you eat is rude too. Slurping is required. Staring isn't rude either. Most of the places we were in China no westerners at all go. In one villages they had never seen white people. So there was a LOT of staring. Everyday someone had to have there photo taken with people. In one school I had to give autographs. It is so weird. They all think we are so beautiful too. The other day I was compared to David Beckham. You have permission to laugh heartily.

Seriously China is an amazing country. No wonder Paddington was so cool. All the rice paddies and noodles and 1.3 billion people. It's cool. In heaven one in four people will be Chinese. On Earth it's about one in five. I'm pretty sure that's relevant.

So I'm in this tiny hut in a village in China watching some American B movie on DVD by the open fire in the middle of the room. There are six boys in the room and a couple of Grand parents. They have to turn THE bulb out to put the TV on. It's a weird world seriously. It's hard not to see westernism as some kind of foul disease which is slowly eroding all variety in the world. Bringing a uniformity stamped and trade marked by a large yellow M and a starbucks logo. It makes me sad, but so too does under nourished and ignored kids and maybe Westernism has something positive to say to them.

Pray for all our health. I got a bit sick and the others are sick now too. Rice three times a day is not great for our pet bodies. Food in Mongolia is way more varied it seems. Last night at a Mongolian restaurant I had shepherd's pie. So weird. How did Shepherd's pie make it to Mongolia? To be honest guys I probably spend at least 80% of the time completely confused.

foreigners aliens strangers in this world, in every world maybe. We're praying to God for all our needs and He never disappoints. The other day we need train tickets there were none. We prayed, then there were six cancellations, all beside each other. He is so good to us. So much more. Helping Angels everywhere. Insight, truth. It's much better to hear in person. So pop over and I'll fill you in.

my trip

2005-05-17T02:35:00.000+01:00

okay quickly now....

12th May Singapore
12th May Hong Kong
18th May Other town in China, bit secret.
Then to Beijing
18th June My birthday Beijing to Finland
6th July Istanbul
Then to Bulgaria
Then to Israel
12th August Israel to London.

see you then.

Pray for love unity in the team, good times with strange people, protection and safety.
I love you all.

friends

2005-05-09T15:32:00.000+01:00

So I'm leaving here in two days to go to Singapore and then on to Hong Kong.

Then to china,
then to Mongolia,
then to Finland,
then to Russia,
then to Bulgaria,
then to Turkey,
then to Israel,
then to Barcelona!!!!! Exclaim exclaim! because there i will seee Lucia again and i shall be the happiest boy on planet earth.

It's a tiny bit sad to leave. I've made some truly amazing friends (this does nowhere near explain how cool these guys are; special amazing thank you to Ben O, Ben D and James) here and got to do loads of stuff I've always wanted to do. I'll still be hanging out with five of them and then we all meet in Israel for ten days at the end and get to graduate on the Mount of Olives, where Jesus originally commissioned His disciples. That'll be pretty amazing I'm sure. Guys, can i just encourage anyone thinking about taking time to do something like this - do it, for flip'ss sake. It's such a privilege to have the chance - take it.

van

2005-05-09T14:20:00.000+01:00

NZ is a blackhole for second hand japanese cars. This is fantastic for people here. They get cheap reliable cars almost anywhere. Everyone has a car. Also their car insurance is most not much more than 100pounds a year. Also fantastically, it's legal to drive with out insurance and the MOT equivalent test's standards are considerably lower thatn the UK.

Guys do you see what this is all adding up to?

For the last two weeks my friends and i have been the proud owners of a 1983 Nissan Vanette. It's got three seats up front and a bed in the back. Along the side in large blue letters is written: SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND and there's a "smile jesus loves you" sticker on the back window. Not my doing, but i was pleasently suprised. We bought it for $NZ 350, that's around 140 pounds. Bargin. It works well aside from not being a big fan of cold mornings. I've been on trips to the ice cream shop and camping. Three of us slept in the back, it ws cosy and well fun. This truly is comfortable camping. It came with a whole heap of camping stuff too.

SO MUCH FUN.

We took it away, had a fire and talked to eachother and Jesus. We cooked chicken and potatoes. I love life, seriously. No joke. I prayed for this van. I prayed for chocolate and Someone randomly gave it to me within 15mins. God will give you the desires of your heart. We asked for a van and this girl randomly phoned here offering one for cheap as. It's crazy.

Raise your expectations.

an itinerate itinerary

2005-05-01T10:09:00.000+01:00

Loads of these dates are wrong, but the destinations are right.

16th Sept
Ba flight BA 243
LHR, terminal 4 1400
Mexico City 1915

1st Oct
American Airlines flight AA1066
Mexico City 0650
Dallas Fort Worth 0931

American Airlines flight AA2193
Dallas Fort Worth 1245
Belize City 1436

11th Nov 05

American Airlines flight AA2104
Belize City 1523
Miami 1821

American Airlines flight AA2111
Miami 2325
Lima 0500

02 Dec 05

Lan Chile Airlines LA531
Lima 0715
Santiago 1235

Lan Chile Airlines LA756
Santiago 1500
Rio De Janeiro 21200

23 Dec 05

Lan Chile Airlines LA755
Rio De Janeiro 0815
Santiago 1310

7 Jan 06

Lan Chile Airlines LA841
Santiago 0930
Easter Island 1250

26 Jan 06

Lan Chile Airlines LA834
Easter Island 1210
Santiago 1900

Lan Chile Airlines LA801
Santiago 2325
Auckland 0425 (28 Jan 06)

28 Jan 06
Quantas QF4103
Auckland 0730
Christchurch 0850

Topics, films, 19, alpha

2005-04-19T13:45:00.000+01:00

God has a Father heart and He is Lord of lives. This is two topics we've looked at over the last two weeks.

Built a human pryamid. It was saturday and we were at a team building outdoor adventure place. The ultimate highlight was Hwai Jiin whose from singapore and is tiny. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, from the top of the pryamid that she was "Not okayyyyyyyy!!!!!" It was very funny.

Been doing some dancing. Definately having my second teenage years. Wasted my first being very confused. Now I'm just having a laugh with 19 year olds.

Gave my testimony at a local Alpha course, which was so much fun. Really fun because i made a friend. He works on a dairy farm and i'm going to visit it!

Two films:

We made two films over the past week or so. Found a camera a computer and a friend to do it with. Ultimate fun, seriously. We interviewed people on the street about God. They loved it, we loved it. It was the first serious film i've made. My film buddy is Ben. He's really good at loads of stuff. He can interview people well and is so good at editing. We stayed up really late and all. The other film, i didn't really make but helped with. Some friends wrote this song for one of our speakers and i filmed it. It was called "Shut up and Die" and was about the Lordship of Christ. Strange? not really.

Still sunny. Went down this freezing river on a body board and did some baking. Also enjoying the occasional trampoline.

It works

2005-04-02T23:16:00.000+01:00

Faith that is. A brief methodology.

Day one

Hitch hike 3hrs across the south island with a guy who loves animals. Increase $30, sleep in motel for free. Bump into other team. Attend mass. Meet a nun. Pray for food and accommodation - receive.

Day two

Free breakfast at church. Meet people at church. Give you lunch. Three families and one lovely old lady get together and plan a day of fun. Use the snorkel God told you to bring swimming in lake Kanerie. Go to a gorge with five friends and ample new friends. Encourage thirty people in the faith. Stay at a new friend's house with five friends. Cook dinner. Food given to you by an old lady. Have fun. So much fun. Sleep, praising God again and again. Enjoy friends and cousins.

Day three

Debate what to do. Pray loads. Talk to strangers. Relax on the beach. Praise God. Visit an old lady, with whom your friend left her shoes. Have tea. China cups. Cake. Full bellies. Visit an old folks home. Enjoy the elderly, let them enjoy you. Have fun. Pray for strangers. Have dinner with old lady. Stay at her house. She's 86. Let her tell you stories of how she hung out with queen. Look at her photos. Love her. Stay at her house out of respect.

Day four

Hitchhike to Ross. Pray, walk, pray pray. Ask for food. Receive from a stranger a bag of bread and cheese. Get a lift with Glen. Stay in a motel. Pay, but only two thirds the price. Have a banquet of cheese on toast. Praise God. Pray with friends, for friends.

Day five

Visit natural hot pools. Find them through praying. Needle in a haystack. Meet people in cars. Leave for a glacier. Pray for food. Ride gives you a bag of food, uninformed, unprompted. Praise God again and again. Hear from God. Deny it again and again. Give up hope. Learn and learn. Sleep in front of the altar in a church. Praise God.

Day six

Hitch hike. Chat with a Czech lady. Arrive back to Hokitika (the land of many returns, in maouri), Ask for food and a place to stay. Pray for chicken. Pray for Hot tub. Meet another team. Let them buy you lunch. Go to their place to stay. Enjoy the company of an american gentleman. In his palace. Enjoy his chicken. Enjoy his hot tub. Praise God again and again. Brighten his day. Love him. Pray with him. See Glow worms again.

Day seven

Do work in his garden. Enjoy the company of many friends. Relax. Hitch a hike. Chat to strangers. Get home in good time. Praise God.

From here on enjoy your changed life knowing that by the Grace of God living in NZ for $10 a week and seeing stuff is possible.

I can't really say all that happened, this is merely a sketch. All the amazing stuff all the heart stuff. I felt like i learned so much in three separate directions, but i can't really define even one of them.

Passover

2005-03-25T23:12:00.000Z

It was passover yesterday.

We had this big dinner called a Sedar and our Messianic Jew (Jew for Jesus, or as his T-shirt says - Jesus made me Kosher) friend Will lead the procession. I'd love to tell you about how all the stuff the Jews traditionally do is acutally all about Jesus and for tells the future. But I don't fell i have time now, and i suspect i never will. Set yourself a challenge - find out!

The highlight of the dinner came for me as some one asked me to pass the Bitter Herbs.
I wittily replied: "Would you like me to pass them over, ha ha ha, passover them!!"
It was funny trust me. But having a strange accent as i do, i barely need to burp and it's funny.

Here's a joke i just made up:

Why was Jesus crucified in Jerusalem?

Because if He was crucified in America, it wouldn't be easter.

God Bless

Faith Week

2005-03-25T23:11:00.000Z

From tomo (sat) morn to sat evening next week i will be kicked of the YWAM base with two friends and NZ$30. that is around 12 pounds. We're going to hitch hike around, follow God's lead, preach the gospel.

NZ to Israel

2005-03-22T18:10:00.000Z

Over Asia. Hong Kong, China, Mongolia, Trans-siberian train to Moscow, up to St Petersburg, across to Helsinki and down to Israel.

Imagine the amount of Scrabble you could play on a seven day train ride. Also chatting to strangers, which is fast becoming my most favoured hobby.

In the team:
Conor (Irish, that's right I've become Catholic)
Ben (Texas, 20, dreadlocks, fun, leader 1)
Heidi (Finish, 20, great leader 2)
Ken (Half Aztec Indian (native American), 20, mountaineer, deep thinker and cool)
Laura (American, 35, ex air force)
Hwai-Jinn (Female, 26, Singapore (which is a country, not an airline), accountant and Manderin speaker)

So that's us. They're a great bunch of people and we should work well as a team. It's a little bit too exciting. Not certain what we will be doing yet, but we have contacts in the areas who are helping arrange stuff.

Sheeeeppppp!

2005-03-22T06:21:00.000Z

How can i explain how fun it was as i held a sheep by the face today and ran a shearer across its belly. The wool fell away in reams of yellowy white fluff. It was vaguely like licking an ice cream. The newly exposed flesh was a transluscent white, beneath which you could see a pinky red. It looked like chicken.

When you grab a sheep and hold it between your legs, it sits quite confortably on its bum and kind of looks around. For a split second you could imagine it sitting in some kind of sheepy hairdressers, shooting the breeze with the stylist. No doubt complaing about a husband or boyfriend. Using his name a lot, loudly. Or perhaps discussing sofa options they have recently been presented with.

Needless to say it was fun. I am still covered in sheep juice. Their wool is so geasy it's untrue. Apparently, i am reliably informed, the grease has medicinal properties. Forgive me if i don't lick my knees.

Palm Sunday, A Holy high Five

2005-03-19T23:19:00.001Z

Went to church today (called St Andrews) with three of my room mates. One English, one American and one from New Zealand (semi british land) sound familar? We weren't late though.

Lord of the trees

2005-03-19T23:12:00.000Z

In my own special way i am an elf.

I spent a mysterious time climbing, travelling, floating through a giant hedge. They call it a hedge here, but we would probably call it a forest. We climbed giant limb to giant limb, beneath the canopy, high off the ground like some kind of naked Ewoks. Shirts ripped, skin tore, but onward we pushed. But lo there was a gap in the trees and we had to gently roll across the upper canopy. One girl, an elfin gymnast monkey barred her way across beneath. Truly a death defying feat. Until finally we had reached our quarry........it was known only as....the end. Yes and went we had reached the end, we did descend. And return to base camp, sweating, bleeding and with a degree of rash. But now we were men. Stacy was less pleased than ben and i at this.
Amen.

Jesus and Caves

2005-03-12T22:54:00.000Z

What i learnt from it was that: You can and your supposed to.

We were being taught by this lovely woman from devon who lived and worked with Asians all her life in their countries in their familes. She'd seen really cool things happen. Miracles including raising people from the dead. Now there's a headline for you.

I learned that Jesus did stuff by the power of the Holy Spirit and commissioned us to do the same. In fact he said we would do more miracles than him. Jesus lived for 33 years and did miracles and stuff only for the last three. I reckon this lady has, in a sense, done way more than he did. Which is cool, because then she is obeying him. Jesus had to learn stuff like we do. He even had to develope his relationship with His father.

I guess this is crazy in a sense. If you read the Bible having it in mind that nothing has changes since Jesus' time, your world rocks slightly. This lady and others like her are living this Jesus life and it excites me. I'm going to give it a go from here on in.

The caves weere beautiful inside, even though no one was there to see them.

Caves and Jesus

2005-03-12T22:46:00.000Z

Strange title i guess, but it's two things i want to talk about.

We ventured up this cave today. It was all underground, like most caves, but unlike most caves it had a river flowing through it. Actually I've just realised most caves do have rivers in them. Anyway the water was up to our waists and freezing cold. We had to climb up all these rapids and stuff. It was so cool.

We spent the week learning about living your life like Jesus did.

Taking risks

2005-03-12T10:59:00.000Z

Played risk tonight.

Didn't win.

Life's all about taking risks.

Outreach options

2005-03-03T06:51:00.000Z

These are the six outreach options as given to us today.
The idea is we pray about which ones we would like to do and make a top three.
Then the leaders choose the teams. We're not allowed (sensibly) to discuss it with the other students and we don't know which leaders are going where. It's so exciting, check this out.

South America: Chlie, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Spain, Israel.

Africa: Perth, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt, Israel

Middle East: Hong Kong or Bangkok, India, Oman, Dubai, Bahrain, Jordan, Israel.

Asia #1: Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, Moscow, Russia, Turkey, Israel.

Asia #2: Indonesia, Thailand, India, Nepal or Pakistan, Egypt, Israel.

Asia #3: Hong Kong, China, Mongolia, Russia, Turkey, Israel
And possibly Ukraine or Romania or Bulgaria

Really not sure yet. Asking God a lot.
Conor

Swimming in the Pacific

2005-03-02T21:56:00.000Z

The waves were big. Supper big. I got totally flattened by one and scrapped my otherwise soft elbows. Then i learned how to duck under them and it was better.

After being flattened i learned something profound. I was just about to head to shallower water then i realised that:

Just because something's scary, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.

Life skills challenge:
Do 2 things today that scare you.
God Bless

Christchurch

2005-03-02T08:57:00.000Z

Christchurch is a total rip off of Cambridge.

Punting.
All the names.

It's a really nice city. We did a three point tour. Down from New Brighton pier up to the hills and then down into the heart of the city. As we are YWAM we sang and prayed at each location. At first i was very confused about why and thought, arrogantly that this didn't fall in line with my personality, but then it was fine. We were just singing some songs. And they were nice songs and everyone really loved it.

People loved it so much they talked a lot to us. Then some of them wanted prayed for and then some of them wanted to become Christians too. It was so simple and nice.

Out of the eight boxes

2005-02-27T09:44:00.000Z

So the world's quite big.

Until yesterday i had only ever been in eight boxes on the world map. Now I've been in loads of them. The flights were absolutly epic. Sat beside a nice coupleon the way over who totally took it upon themselves to look after me. Didn't stress me out at all. We flew over the tip of Greenland and down through Hudson Bay. Over Ice sheets and then down over the snow capped rockies. It was so amazing. I felt quite sick for North America, but felt better by L.A. Most of my brain power was expended trying to work out what time it was where. And why it was shorter to go over Greenland. The answer lies in something called a Great Circle. You move, the Earth moves. It's a complicated dance.

My Address

2005-02-27T03:08:00.000Z

Youth With A Mission
PO Box 47,
Oxford,
Canterbury 8253
New Zealand

Write to me. Or write me.
I love it and I love you all.

a mini update

2005-02-27T03:06:00.000Z

I went to church this morning. Shocking lack of Matt Redman (very popular songs about God guy) songs. Didn't know what to do. Had lunch at these people from church's house. SO good, so nice, loved it. The guy was a farmer who had lived there all his life. We had loads of very grown up conversations about farming and land and stuff. I really enjoyed it, bit sad, felt old.

Classes start tomorrow, which is exciting. The people here are quite serious about God, but there isn't too much spiritual chat yet which I'm loving. We have at least one feminist. Yeah! American feminists are always good for a laugh, so easy to annoy. Played volley ball.

Oxford

2005-02-26T20:45:00.000Z

Guys I've made it....I'm studying at Oxford.

Oxford is beautiful. Seroiusly, it's like leaving in the Leadmines. Which if you've never been, may sound bad, but it's actually beautiful. It's all windbush and sheep. Seriously a lot of sheep. The YWAM base is nice. It's quite bustling and there's always people everywhere.

Oxford is small. Oxford is Conlig/Strathkinnes small. There's like a newsagents, which they call a Dairy, a bank, a post office and a library. (people mention the library, that's how small it is) However the Bank the Post Office and the Library are all in one building. And the building isn't big. I suspect aswell that the opening hours are such that the building itself only opens on the overlap between each of the equivalents would be open in UK. So about ten minutes just before lunch I'm guessing.

The people are good. You don't really realise how proud you are of being British until you are in a minority. Two other physicists, which is great. Lots of Americans. They're fun. I think we'll enjoy our time together.

Praying people:

personal space, or rather coolness with not having much
good relationships with roomates Ben, James, Tyler, Ken and David. Great guys.
Thank God that no one snores.

We have to decide quite soon about our outreach, like where to go so

Wisdom and openness to hearing from God
Provision of funds for us all.

Scrabble Scores

2005-02-23T12:07:00.000Z

So far I'm kicking ass

14th Feb
Alex 67
Ruth 89
Conor 173
Cathryn 120

20th Feb
Conor 398 "sulker" and "exits" 69
Lucia 189

22nd Feb
Conor 279
Rob 245

Newsletter no. 1

2005-02-07T21:54:00.000Z

Dear Friends,

On 24th February I will be flying out to Christchurch, New Zealand to begin a six month discipleship training school (DTS). The school is run by a worldwide organisation called Youth With A Mission (YWAM) to give people a flavour of what it would be like to be a missionary overseas and the essential training required.

The course comprises two phases:
A twelve week lecture phase, where we will learn from the Bible, worship God and receive teaching. An eighty day outreach phase, where we will be backpacking around the world connecting with different travellers we meet and assisting different missionary projects.

That’s the facts. And now here’s the theory.

I first felt lead by God to do a DTS about a year ago. Although many other options seemed more sensible, the idea of doing a DTS kept presenting itself. Every time I prayed about the dreaded NEXT YEAR any fourth year student faces, God seemed to confirm the DTS idea. Sometimes it was in 20ft high letters, but mostly in a whisper to my heart. Beautiful scenery is important to me and travelling is just about my favourite thing, so when I heard about this particular DTS in NZ my heart began to race. I wanted to go now. To an impatient person ‘Now’ is the bit of time in between you and your dreams. That bit of time was longer than I had expected, more like eight months rather than three. I had originally planned to go in September, but my finances were in a bad shape and I didn’t have that sense of peace which I experienced about DTS in general. I was confused and pained for a while. After deciding to go in February everything kind of made sense again. It’s good to be wrong sometimes, it’s the best opportunity for learning something new.

So I’m leaving in about ten days now and I’m excited. I feel God has taken me by the hand leading me through each step to bring me to this point. The closer I get to going the more I feel I need Him, which feels right and good. It’s a strange paradox that the more things are out of your control the more peaceful you feel. I guess it’s like being a kid. Do you remember how stress free it was going out to a restaurant or to the zoo with your parents? No worries about paying the bill, attracting the waiter’s attention or even finding the toilet. Simply put your requests to your father and he’ll see to the rest. How amazing is it that we have such a Father at whose table we sit and whose means are infinite.

I’m not sure what comes next, but this feels like an essential step, in a sense, in my growth as a Christian. I hope to learn more of God’s heart for me and others, but also practical skills in helping others. Working with God like this I hope to learn more my own calling, because we all have one. Wonderful people – who have asked to receive this and others - friends, it excites me to be going through this with you. I’ve prepared a few suggestions for how you can pray for me.

NOW

Practical preparations: Thank God for how He has brought me from idea to reality. For provision of good flights, other material things, jobs and donations. Pray that God would continue to provide and help me to be a good steward of all the things He has given me.

Spiritual preparations: Thank God for how He has held me up through good and bad times over the last few months. Please pray for
continued protection over my head and heart
Good use of my remaining time at home
For my family and Lucia, who I will miss a lot.

PHASE ONE 26th Feb 2005 – 20th May 2005

Please pray for…

A deeper revelation of God’s love for us and for others.
Good relationships within the team. For understanding, openness, vulnerability, bonding, ministering to each other, healing.
Guidance as to the exact locations of our outreach and how God would have us spend our outreach time.

PHASE TWO 21st May 2005 – 12th Aug 2005

Please pray for…

Protection as we travel in to difficult places.
Provision of funds and materials necessary to help.
Rejoicing in the face of persecution.
The Holy Spirit to be our strength and our source of energy.
The love of Jesus to be evident to others through us.
Peace in everything we face.
God to be Glorified at all times and Christ exalted in all we say and do.

I want to tell you about how I love being part of the true vine Jesus. It’s from John 15 and it’s wonderful. God comes to you, flows through you, renews you and uses you. Being part of Him we bare much fruit. Apart from Him we can do nothing.

Thank you so much for even reading this. As you know I really appreciate your friendship and support. I hope to write to you again soon, but if you want more news and to pray for more things check out my website thing given below. I hope to be adding to it fairly regularly. Until then…

Take care
God Bless,

Conor Hull
8 Stewart Road
Newtownards
BT23 7AZ
e. conorhull@hotmail.com
t. 02891 815820
m. 07742 030 292
www.conorhull.blogspot.com

2005-01-18T15:20:00.000Z

www.ywamoxford.org

newtownards

2005-01-12T11:05:00.000Z

T minus about four and a half weeks until i leave for New Zealand. How exciting. Biggest news at the minute is that there are two other people from N. Ireland going. Also a girl from London, i found out is my Aunt's niece. That means we share an auntie Sheila and uncle Mark, but we aren't related.

Wild.

Finances not quite together yet. Should have enough for the first three months.

Praying people:

Peace, love joy, in the Holy Spirit
Thanking God for all His provision, praying for more.