No. 3

For those that haven’t caught the news yet the Faulks clan are due to grow to 5 in March with the arrival of Child No.3. This morning we had a scan and below is one of the resulting pictures which is surprisingly clear for ultrasound images.

There was another one which had a hand with the thumb sticking up kind of saying everything’s OK in here but I didn’t get a very clear copy of that one.

School Days

Last Thursday Ian wrote about his visit down to Moorlands to see how they are equipping leaders of the future. Yesterday I was invited to a graduates lunch, a small gathering in Swindon to meet up with other graduates in the area and hear about some of the exciting things that are going on at our old college. There certainly are some exciting things happening, major redevelopment work with new facilities and accommodation on site, the library now has twice the capacity of when I was there and it was pretty good then (for a non reader anyway!) wireless internet throughout the site and a level of training that is absolutely superb, if you are looking for a gap year opportunity (or want to run a gap year and be able to offer some academic training as well) right up to MA level and all with a very practical outlook. They are also working on improving their level of support to graduates as well so that the Moorlands experience is not just something that lasts between 1 and 4 years but actually continues to support you in ministry and throughout your ministry. Great work, Thanks for the info and the Lunch it was great to meet up with others from Moorlands both new faces and old especially good to see Dave Edwins my old Evangelism lecturer and I also want to thank Moorlands for the fantastic training and I’m sorry I didn’t always appreciate it at the time.

The talented Mrs Faulks

We are currently in the middle of birthdays in the Faulks household, Jonah was 2 on Friday and Zac will be 4 tomorrow this means that Saturday was party time, 20 children in a local church hall – manic! But I was really impressed Zac had said he wanted a construction site birthday cake, what a challenge but Gill rose to it and I was so impressed with the result I just had to show off so here you go:-



The talented Mrs Faulks!

Higher Higher

Having started the campaign ‘Dave for No.1’ last week it is great to see Dave Walker back on the first page after a Google search for his name, also now on the first page of a search for Simon Faulks! But he is still not No.1 so I shall say it again Dave for No.1. Please add a link to your webpage or blog to Dave Walker’s Cartoon Church and help get him to No.1. Thank you.

Too much caffeine!

Found this link on ysmarko, absolutely fantastic just how much caffeine is too much? apparently 322 cans of coke for me!

Pictures and links

I cant believe it, I was invited to join one of these online community things, I was hesitant but decided to do it as it sounded quite good, you then find out that you only really get to use the features if you pay £24 a year (minimum). Anyway I wont be doing that, on my profile I added the same picture as I use on the blog today I received the following email:-

"Your profile image which was uploaded to your membership on 09-Nov-05 has been removed as it was deemed inappropriate for the site."

I’m left speechless!

I can however speak on another subject which is one of useful links:-
www.talkingdonkey.co.uk a YFC resource site, that has some good stuff for secondary schools work, they do also encourage you to submit your ideas! Also from YFC is http://helpfullinksforschoolsworkers.blogspot.com. Another good place looks like www.myfishbites.com again lots of recourses for secondary schools work.
Lastly if you have young people (or older people for that matter) who are struggling some kind of addiction, any kind so it could be smocking but equally it could be East Enders or telly or McD’s anything, in fact I guess you could also use it the other way round, if you want to take something up like daily bible reading, have a look at www.thebigcoldturkey.com

On the road again

After the cold and frustration of Friday night, I’m pleased to announce the bus is now back on the road!

The end of evil

At last my reply to the email I received a few weeks back to the question about the origin of evil is finished and available if you would like to read it you can download it here (I have done it as a down load due to the length approx 2,000 words). The file itself is a PDF if you do not have Adobe Acrobat to read it you can download it from here.

I would love to know your thoughts! Happy reading!

Dave for no.1

Dave Walker is a man of great talent, of which you can find out about over at www.cartoonchurch.com, He is also a fan of one man campaigns, some of which can be highly successful! However the problem at the moment is that his ranking on Google has dropped and after attempts to raise his profile, it seams that he has dropped further as at the time he was at the bottom of page one, a quick look this morning and he was not on page one at all. I am sorry Dave, I feel partly to blame as it seams I had my link pointing to your old blog on the wibsite, I have now updated this to point to Cartoon Church but I shall now be launching a campaign myself to raise your ranking, I shall call it Dave for No1!

The joys as a project such as this!

I’m not sure I really have a lot to say, it is currently 11pm on Friday evening, I am sitting on the bus, cold, waiting for a tow truck. One of the joys is that when you have a bus of a certain age it will inevitably go wrong every now and then, and now is one of them. I have just been out running a good session in one of the villages we cover, we had some really good conversations with them this evening and then on the way home I got about a mile outside the village and lost all power. Needles to say sitting in the middle of nowhere on a November evening, with no heating or anything (apart from thankfully my coat!) I am now getting rather cold, and a little board. I have tried playing around with some web design but don’t have the books I need with me!

Finally got home about 11:35 last night, the bus abandoned in a car park just down the road from my house. Hopefully we can get it fixed for Monday when we are due to next take it out, the local bus company think they have the part we need (fortunate as they are hard to come across because of the age, they needed one over the summer and happened to order a spare!) Anyway thanks to Bob for the rescue, sorry to get you out of bed and lets hope we keep going a bit longer!

Sleep

This morning our youngest thought it would be fun to wake up at 5:30, we managed to get him back to sleep, for about an hour, we tired again and eventually he slept again, then come 7, 7:30 and beyond he is fast asleep and didn’t get up till around 8:15, long after we had had to get up AAAAGGGGHHHH! But I love him dearly.

HELP!

Being the incredibly well prepared youth worker that I am tonight I am supposed to be leading a session on ‘other religions’. Having just scoured my shelves for useful resources it turns out I have none, or if I do they are in the books out on loan. Anyone have a good ideas or website that might help?

Cheers

Evil part 3

I have finally finished writing my response to the question I receive on evil a couple of weeks ago, it has kind of turned into a short academic paper of around 2,000 words. I still need to get it grammar checked and then probably re-write half of it but it should be available soon, it will probably be a downloadable PDF as it’s a bit long for a post!

Jonah the prophet

Having posted yesterday about my son’s singing, I got home from work yesterday and sure enough in the lounge was a great big dog, admittedly it was a friend visiting with her new guide dog, but what a strange coincidence!

Update: I tried to post this yesterday but for some reason things were not working, hence above referring to something that happened two days ago as yesterday! It’s good to be back up and running again!