Merry Christmas!

It's just gone midnight so it is now Christmas Day in the UK. So right now many children around the world are either too excited to sleep or too tired from excitement to stay away awake - but either way they wait in anticipation of a day when they hope all their dreams, conjured up over the past weeks and months, will come true in a wonderfully magical day.

But there was a first Christmas Day. And on the eve of that day it could not be said that the world was waiting with any degree of excitement. But what they were about to receive was worth more than all the Christmas gifts exchanged since that day.

In some ways the first and the current Christmas day stand in stark contrast with each other. But on the other hand it could be said we have a lot in common with the world back then. Like the Bethlemhem townsfolk over 2000 years ago so many of us will go to sleep this Christmas Eve with no thought of Jesus. The magnitude of the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise in Christ, God Incarnate will not enter our heads.

As we heard in Church at the Carol Service the Wise Men did not come the simply bring presents to Jesus - and they certainly didn't do so just because God wanted to start a new holiday season, or come up with something to boost the local economy during those hard winter months! The Wise Men and the Shepherds came to worship Jesus - funny how we tend to gloss over that bit and focus on the gifts!

How long will it be until we truely celebrate Christmas? See you at church in the morning?

More Geek Stuff

As most of you already know and as alluded to in the previous post, I'm a geek. This is probably why I found myself reading an article from www.pcworld.com and finding it both informative and entertaining.

Anyway, I know a few of you are a bit like that too. So you might want to read the article about 'The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007'.

My favourite line so far from it is:

"In 2007, the words "Internet security" joined the ever-growing list of self-canceling phrases, alongside "business intelligence," "Congressional ethics," and "Microsoft Works.""

Christmas @ the Castle

I'm still catching up with my blogging so you've probably already read all about this on Dermo's site.

Christmas @ the Castle took place from 7th to 9th December 2007. We spent the weekend at Castlewellan Castle enjoying some good craic and listening to Don Carson teach from the book of Jeremiah.

I must say that in learning from Jeremiah and in other recent conversations with people involved in organisations such as New Tribes Mission I have rediscovered the Old Testament. Its not just that it is full of cool stories but because it teaches so much about our God, his grace and his faithfulness to his promises. In the OT you learn quickly how serious sin is and why it took Jesus, the Son of God to die and rise again to atone (an old word, I know) for it.

Dermo (or David as he is now slowly becoming known) and myself had the honour of becoming the new @ the castle geeks. We sat with our laptops displaying Keynote slides (like PowerPoint but better - made by Apple, naturally), showing video, sorting the sound out and all those techy things that we enjoy so much.

The next '@ the Castle' is in June 2008. Check out www.atthecastle.org.uk for more details.

Manila

Let me start with an apology or two or three. One for not posting for while. The second to Laura for taking ages to moderate her comments. And three, to all of you for posting a picture of my legs. That said, they aren't that bad!

This was taken on the Friday afternoon after we had finally finished our week of training. It was great to relax by the pool for a bit and do a spot of reading (thanks to Dermo of the book!).

The work we had to do there was interesting. I enjoyed the various sessions (even Campaign Management - that is for Katya) and had great craic getting to know people from various parts of the world.

It was an eventful week. There had been a typhoon on the island before we arrived. Then on Tuesday I felt the earth move - literally. Apparently there was a 6.0 earthquake a few hundred miles north of where we were. The building rocked and we decided to evacuate. We were the only ones. As we left the building it was clear that it was business as usual for everyone else. Unused to such tremors we had obviously worried more than we needed to.

Later in the week several gents who were on trial for an attempted military coup back in 2003 managed to escape and hold up a few people in the Peninsular Hotel. Basically they wanted to try again but the army weren't having any of it and barged through the lobby doors in a tank thus ending the protests rather quickly. At this point I should probably mention I was not staying at the Peninsular Hotel - we were in the Edsa Shangri-La.

The hotel was definitely in festive mood judging by the music and the huge tree in the lobby.


Just when we thought all the excitement was over it transpired that seven of us were hit with food poisoning. On the last night I was encouraged to try an oyster - something I had never tried before and based on what I experienced over the subsequent days something I should never ever try again.

I'll just say that the flight from Hong Kong to London was unpleasant for me. Actually it probably wasn't much fun for those queued outside the loo when I finally resurfaced!

Things didn't begin to clear up until Tuesday - that was when I returned to work to discover the wide spread effects of the contaminated oysters.

Sorry I don't have many pictures. I may have a few on my other phone so I may publish more in due course. None of them are of my illness - so you can relax.