Independence Day

Greetings one and all! May I begin by first wishing my American friends and colleagues a happy July 4th! I find the day a silly idea to be honest but I'm more than happy to celebrate with you. Because of America having a united day off, it means that my ticket for America STILL hasn't arrived or even been paid for. Slightly worrying considering that I fly out from Heathrow at 8pm on Thursday. I do wanna go, really I do, but there's a part of me that is hoping that the ticket doesn't come through at all. I know that I will love going out there and it will be a life long memory, but I am missing out on whole summer with friends from St Albans. My conclusion there is that I want to go to the States, but it's no biggie if I don't.

Guanabana update: 2 cans on Sunday night!! I went down to Soul Survivor with my youth group on Sunday but came back with some St Albans peeps. We decided that because Tim was hungry we would go to H&H where Gizmo was meeting us and Fraser also pleasantly graced us with his presence. We'd already had the first round of Guanabana when Fraser came and asked if anyone wanted another. It would have been rude to say no! 2 in the space of an hour - beauty! I must actually mention at this point that Timmy bought my first one because I only had money for a Chicken Roll Naan Bread due to the collection at SS. Cheers lad!

9 Goal Year Update: <--- Nice title eh! This of course relates back to my blog about the goals I have set myself for the year and so every so often I shall update y'all. And please do challenge me on them! Friday was July 1st and I thought this was an ideal time to start the year long Bible reading. And I did, and it was good! I bought a biro and a highlighter so that I can mark out any verses that I like, and there's a few marked already! I have had to buy another pen though cos it leaked in my jeans and has stained it at church! 4 days gone and I'm loving getting into the Word, this could be awesome! Another of my goals was to be in the right church - whatever that means! I went to Vineyard in the morning having been to Burn (the youth Vineyard service) the week before. Sometimes you get one of those feelings about a church andyou wanna know more. Well that happened on Sunday. The service was good and challenging (same thing in my eyes) and the people are great! The leader came over and said hi to me (which impressed me hugely), a middle aged woman (oops - forgotten her name!) had a chat with me for about 15 minutes and I saw my hero Jon Day there. I shall be attending again, but after the States though.

Live 8: Wasn't it cracking!? We had a bbq at Giz's with about 25 of us, an interesting collection of people! We watched 12 hours of it and didn't get bored. Highlight for me was Kaizer Chiefs in the US rocking it up for English music around the world! I felt happy in the thought that the concert was raising awareness of the issues to do with justice and could imagine households around the country debating it at points, just like we did. At church on Sunday, the speaker spoke a little about it all. The main thing I heard was how disappointed he was with the answer to the question "where was the church at Live8?" Great question. And the answer: "nowhere". What a wasted opportunity to show our feelings on justice and get behind the event. It's almost as if we see all this good happening because of Geldof and Co, so why does the church need to intervene. But we need to be there supporting and show God's love for the poor through our actions. We didn't though. *slaps the wrist of all the leaders of the UK church*. So as Christians what can we do now? We can damn well pray! and hard! Vineyard are having a prayer morning on Wednesday (the start of G8) and I shall go along to that so that as a church we can shout out for justice and healing. I urge you all to pray on Wednesday and if you don't know what to pray for then just worship God with a pure heart. We need change. NOW.

You can come out now... I've finished my rant. I'm in Gillingham right now seeing Activate for the last time this year. I love these guys, they are awesome and I wished I'd spent more time with them this year but I know that I've got friends here. Gillingham will always be close to my heart as I have so many memories as a youngster here from seeing the other half of my family down here. Seeing Granny at her house, spending Boxing Day with my drunken cousins and Auntie and Uncle and watching the mighty Gillingham and Brighton play here (long story). So here's to you Gillingham and Activate. Here's to chav's, to YFC, to cheap record stores, to the Medway and to friendships!