Church has a new website up, mostly done by Craig Spickernell, who is one of our "Timothy" workers.

New website is here: http://www.newlifechurchonline.co.uk/

I especially like that we're now posting talks etc. to the website, so you can download them and listen at your leisure. :)

My mate Nick has a great site for his climbing club, and this is a blatant attempt to increase his Google ranking.

http://www.themmc.org.uk

I happenned to pick up a headline from reddit just now (www.reddit.com), saying that Coretta Scott King has died. She was the widow of Martin Luther King.
I read someone quoted in the article (http://thefuturum.com/blog/?p=404) as saying

“It’s a bleak morning for me and for many people and yet it’s a great morning because we have a chance to look at her and see what she did and who she was.”

Now, I'm a senitmental old thing, and I couldn't help mentally rewriting that to say:

It's a bleak morning for many people, and yet, if I could hear Coretta's voice whispering over the morning wind, perhaps I would hear her encouraging me: "It's a great morning because it's illegal to advertise a job 'for whites only'. It's a great morning because there are no longer black seats and white seats on buses. It's a great morning because it is no longer tolerated to question a man's intelligence, ability or patriotism because of the colour of his skin." We are not there yet, but it's a great morning.

Yes. It's a great morning.

One of those insights

So, I've been reading through 1 Samuel.
This is because Martin's been doing some teaching therefrom in our occasional Men's Meetings. (I can't decide if "Men's Meetings" sounds testosterone-laden or just a little bit too touchy-feely). Anyway...
Reading about Samuel, and about how upset he was (and God was) that Israel wanted a king rather than a judge, it hit me that the judge, not the king is the biblical model for leadership.

A King

• Is king because his father was king
• Is king for life (unless physically deposed)
• Has authority because of his throne (ie. his own authority)
• Is answerable to the people
• Is lord over the people first
• Is a servant of God second
• Passes his throne to his genetic son

A Judge

• Is chosen specifically by God
• May be chosen for a specific purpose / mission
• Does not have a throne as such
• Has authority because of his appointment by God (not his own)
• Is a servant of God first
• Is ruler over the people second
• Does not pass his position on to his sons (can do, but not necessarily)

A King, then is permanently above his people, whereas a judge is lent authority not his own by God. A king is over the people, but a judge goes before the people.

... just some thoughts for next time you're looking at how leaders in the church should behave.

;-)
><>

OK, so this is now about a week old, but here goes.

Last Tuesday's cell group was men only (say that in a nice deep voice, now). The ladies were going to have their own meeting on Wednesday, but it was cancelled due to a centimetre of snow (bless). Anyway, we chaps turned up, all masculine and testosterone-laden to do chaply things, and the proceedings are documented below...

1 March 2005 Ellis Cell Group (Men) @ Ellis

Dependence on God

How do we continue pressing on?
How can I get more into God? Closer? More like Jesus?
How can I please God?

We started by brainstorming a simple question:

What do we do with our time? What stuff fills our lives?
We came up with a list like this:

• health
• work
• leisure/sport
• family
• wives
• children
• sex
• *time management*
• friends
• (men's) meetings
• church
• cell
• yoof
• alpha
• transitions
• music/worship
• travelling
• diy
• domestic engineer / management
• worries
• planning
• quiet time
• holidays
• finances

(We'll come back to that list in a minute).

Let's look at a bit of a bloke-thing:

I am not self-sufficient.
This is a big thing for a bloke to accept.
In our culture, there's a big bloke thing that:

• I can cope
• I don't cry
• I dont' ask 4 help
• I can do things on my own

There is a danger that I can carry this misconception into my christian life.
That would be a Bad Thing, because I am completely powerless next to God. I can't do anything. This is the gospel of grace: I have nothing to offer God. In order to get anywhere as a Christian, I have to accept God's help for everything.

So, we looked up Philippians 4:13, which says:
I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

What is the "everything"?
It's all the stuff I do - all the stuff in the brainstorming list above.

How does my relationship with God affect all that stuff?
How does all the stuff affect my relationship with God?
Is God involved in everything I'm spending my time on?
Am I involved in stuff God's spending his time on? Or just in my own stuff?

For example, what about finances?

• My attitude should be different from that of a non-Christian.
• God provides; I trust him.

So what about our place in our families?
With our wives, we are a couple (duh). One unit.
Within this unit, we have responsibility and authority.
If I pray with and for my wife, it will affect her relationship with God (and mine too).
But it is difficult to pray with my wife, because there can be no pretence there. It's a humbling and vulnerable activity because she knows me, so I can't fool her.
This is difficult for the typical man, because we are used to hiding behind an external appearance of strength.

Also hard for men in our society is the idea that we have authority.
The bible makes it clear that we have spiritual authority.
This is a right to say and do stuff as we see fit. That's a very uncomfortable idea in our society, but the fact is that any team needs a leader, and in our marriages the leader is (or should be) us men.
We must take responsibility for our wives and families.
For example, we need to take responsibility for our finances - this is not the same thing as bringing home the bacon: it's not about who earns the money, it's about who takes the responsibility for our financial well-being: who decides how much we can afford for what?
It's easy to hand this over to the woman, but that's wrong. Why should she be burdenned?

Authority is something I have from God.
It's not from me - it's not about how good I am, nor how skilled I am.

Part of building a healthy family involves prayer for and with both my wife and my children.
My job is to establish a RELATIONSHIP with God.
This builds spiritual authority, both imparting more of it and making me a credible leader, because if my wife sees me submitting to God, she will have no trouble submitting to me.
But my relationship with God can only be on his terms, not mine. This can be a tough one.

How can I build this relationship?
"The Look of Faith."

• I need to pray - to listen to God.
• I need to study the bible - to see Jesus.

It might help to look at my family in the same way I look at my job.
We don't have too much trouble seeing that at work we have people we have to submit to, and people who have to submit to us. The people who work under us are not worth less than us, and we're responsible for them. That's not a hard thing for most men to see, but accepting that a similar situation exists in the home can be very difficult.
Our "job" as head of the household has been specifically and personally given to us by God.

The bottom line is:
I have to remain *dependent* on God to do all this stuff.

God is above Man
Man is above Woman

This means that a woman has to submit to both her husband and to God.
A man has to submit to God, but must be over his wife, taking responsibility for her and her wellbeing. So while a woman has to deal with 2 relationships which are in the same direction (submission), a man must deal with 2 relationships in opposite directions. This is not easy. (is it supposed to be?).

• It's hard to be a (good) man
• A wife just has to get the submission thing sussed
• It's meant to be harder to be a man than a woman
• We often abdicate this difficult and let it fall on our wives
• This makes it harder to be the woman
• We men have the choice in this: we can abdicate or step up and take our responsibility and authority.

So I have to ask:
Where do i look?
Whom do i trust?

One thing is certain:
THERE WILL BE TESTS OF OUR RELIANCE ON HIM
But remember: God tests for strength (Satan tests for weakness).

Romans 12:1-2
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Finally, Pray for:

1. The renewal of my mind
2. A deepenning relationship with God
3. Vision as head of my family
   

Had coffee with Kevin today. He's a top bloke, and possibly my closest friend, simply by virtue of the fact that we have a coffee together for an hour most weeks. Just spending this kind of time with someone is what I find I need to foster a really good kind of depth of friendship. It gives us time to talk about big things and little things, spiritual and profane, programming and accountancy. What annoys me is that I don't get to do this with anyone else. The closest I come is with Rich & Dunc, where we meet every other week. That's cool, and I hope it will develop into a similar sort of thing, especially as we meet over food before doing the "spiritual" thing.

Anyway, one of the things we were talking about over coffee today was making some kind of notes while reading through the bible, so that you don't get into the slightly embarassing situation (as one of us did) of saying "I've just read Joshua, and some bits of it really spoke to me, but now I can't remember any of them."

My solution has been to blog about my daily readings. That is to say, my _ideal_ solution is to blog. I actually managed to do this in practice for a couple of days in 2002. I must press on and make this happen. (I actually enjoy blogging - and reading blogs - it's just on my level).

There's no time like the present...

I didn't actually read the bible on the train up this morning. I was praying (or at least trying to). However, I managed to get in Revelation 4 while waiting for Kevin. Rev 4 is where John is transported to Heaven and sees the throne of God. It's a visual description of what he sees - not a very clear description, though: he obviously struggles to put the vision into words. There's lots of use of phrases of the type "something that looks like xxx." - ie. it's not xxx, but xxx is the closest thing I can think of that looks like it. There's a fair bit of that in Revelation (and apocalyptic writing in general, I think), and it helps to bear in mind that the writer is trying (and possibly failing) to describe something really very very _wierd_.

So what can we say about what John sees in heaven? The creatures near the throne are endlessly saying:

"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!"

Endlessly. All the time, they are declaring God's holiness, acknowledging that he is The Almighty. That's what happens in God's presence. There's nothing else you can do. I am, frankly, very unhappy about what this shows about my life. I do not live as if God is Holy and Almighty. I must change. I will change. I will live as though God is Holy and Almighty and as though I am in his presence. Will you?

We had our Yoof Cell last night. A bit of a poor showing from the ladies, it must be said: the gentlemen (Ben, Mike, Fat Mike and Sam) dealt with their absence with great fortitude.

We had a look at Galatians, in particular, chapter 5, where Paul talks about how things that are wrong are pretty obvious, and are completely opposite to what we do if we're walking with the Holy Spirit. Above all, the test for our behaviour is not a written law, but love.

So if we're being loving then we are automatically fulfilling God's law, and nobody can tell us we're doing the wrong thing.

Being the proud father that I am (of Benjamin, 23 months, and another due to arrive in May, who is known in the family as "Holly" for reasons we won't go into now), and being also a geek, I naturally wonder how I can teach my children about computers, IT, the internet, and all that stuff.
This isn't because I want to push them into becoming like me (heaven forbid!?), but because I want to teach them stuff I think is cool and because this particular cool stuff is going to be very handy stuff for them to know as they grow up.
As it happens, Benjamin doesn't need any encouragement to use a computer. In fact, anything with buttons holds a magnetic attraction for him.
A mouse which has buttons on top _and_ a light underneath is just too much to handle!
Keeping him away from a keyboard is just impossible. It's cute _some_ of the time, and intensely frustrating when I'm trying to actually use the PC.

"No, Daddy, you need to press _this_ button." ...Of course. How dull of me. Why didn't I think of pressing ESC in the middle of a download?

Well one of these years I'd like to get him into a little programming - not so he can grow up to be a programmer, but so he can understand computers (?and understand is father?) a bit better.

I'm thinking that the best way to go with this is LOGO, which has been out of mainstream fashion for a couple of decades, but I know teachers who still rave about it. I've even read (although I haven't been able to confirm this yet) that LOGO is part of the National Curriculum.

What do you, oh esteemed reader, think?
How can I teach my children about IT?
Is it ever too soon to learn programming? Or should Benjamin have written his first compiler before he goes to school?

Went to the dentist this morning (cracked a tooth on Sunday).
The tooth didn't hurt - it's just that there's a really sharp edge which catches my tongue, and felt like it was shredding it into tiny pieces. No matter; the marvellous Mr. Foy sorted it out with a temporary filling today. The bad news is that it will have to come out at some point in the fairly near future. Still, the pain has gone! (enabling me to see clearly now ;)

I have started meeting regularly with Richard and Duncan. We're working with alternate Mondays at the moment. Last night, Dunc was ill, so it was just me and Rich. I wasn't there at all. I'm feeling yuk cos I've cracked a tooth. I'm going to the dentist tomorrow to sort it out. I can see a crown in my future, but it's not a crown of spleandour!?

This year's birthday present arrived on Friday. 5 disk LOTR (Return of the King) DVD. The only bad news is that Sq wasn't in when it arrived, so the postman took it back to the depot. Usually they just leave it in the cupboard outside the front door, but perhaps he thought it was too valuable. Good point.

Lovingly, Sq went and picked it up on Saturday morning. We have now watched most of the film. :0) Much extra stuff (I think it must be up to 4 hours now!). I definitely feel that I need a video projector in order to truly appreciate this kind of thing. Ah me, poor age, the problems I have to deal with.

Feeling better today. Throat still a bit dodgy, and I still feel a little bit weedier than normal, but it's definitely getting better. :0)

I re-read the bit about Matthew Levi on the train. You know what else struck me? In all 3 accounts (Mt9, Mk2, Lk5), it starts with "As Jesus was going somewhere, he noticed Levi, sitting in his tax collector's booth." It started with Jesus going about his Father's work. Most crucially, Matthew only got called because Jesus noticed him. I mean he didn't notice Jesus. What if Jesus hadn't noticed him? (I know that's the wrong sort of question, but still...). This is an example of what Jesus describes elsewhere when he says "You didn't choose me; I chose you." I don't know that I like the thought that Matthew's savlation (and my salvation) is contingent on Jesus making a choice. It makes me feel very out of control - very insecure. The truth is, though, that I am out of control, and I should be jolly grateful that it doesn't rest with me (cos I'd mess it up). Jesus isn't just the means of my salvation, he's the motivation and the very origin of it.

Yesterday on the train into work, I suddenly realised that my throat hurt a bit. I felt worse as the day went on, and went home with a slight temperature and a general feeling of weediness. Fortunately, my lovely young wife is v. understanding, and was undemanding and supporting.
:)
<3
I manfully worked my way through the steak she cooked for tea :)
After tea, I just about managed to stay awake through an episode of "Jeeves and Wooster" (I had the first series on DVD as an anniversary present - did I mention my wife's overall loveliness?).

So today I was feeling about the same as I got up, but have managed, through sheer determination, grit and Great British Bloody-mindedness to haul myself up the the metropolis and into work. While sitting on the train, I dragged out my Bible, and read the bit where Jesus tells Matthew Levi to follow him. It's one of those 1-liners in the bible where the brevity of the account belies the enormity of the event. Matthew's sitting there collecting taxes, and when Jesus says "follow me" ... he does! What's that about, eh? I mean, I can see why a fisherman (Peter et al) would be prepared to give the wandering preacher business a go: fishing isn't top of the economic ladder, is it? But Matthew's a tax collector: not the most popular of occupations, true, but he must be raking it in, right? So in a moment he's basically chucked in his old way of life (well, chucked away everything, really), and gone out completely on a limb. And remember, he doesn't have our advantage of 2k years of hindsight; he didn't know that Jesus was going to be someone great. All the information he had was standing in front of him. And what he saw was enough to make him put everything on the line. He was a rich man. A rich man typically loves riches more than life. Matthew gave up his riches.

Why?

In my mind, this event marks out Matthew as one of the heroes of the New Testament. I hadn't seen it before today, but now he's one of my heroes because he didn't hesitate to throw away what he couldn't keep to gain what he couldn't loose. [Appologies to Jim Elliott]. I'm not like that. I like to know all the facts before I step away from my comfort zone. I don't want to be like this, and by God's grace I won't always be this way, but for now Matthew is my hero. :0)

The weekend was pretty good, but a bit full:
Cat & Richard pitched up on Friday evening (with dogs) to stay until Sunday. It was, as ever, nice to see them! Jones wasn't too happy with admitting Misty and Rowan to his territory, and there was a bit of fisticuffs (and not a little whining Friday night), but they seemed to pretty much sort it out by Saturday.

Sat. lunchtime, we (humans!) all headed out to "The Spotted Dog", for which Sarah & I had won a GBP 40 voucher in a raffle. We had a jolly nice lunch, and the total bill was only GBP 60, so we thought we did rather well. Definitely recommended. :)

Sunday was fun. Church was good. God was there, and I was prayed for by a number of people, inc. Mark, Dave (who anointed me with oil) and Uffuk. I wanted prayer about the whole fear / confidence thing - basically, I think God thinks it's time for me to be free of fear of man. nuf sed.

After church, I was priviledged to be a small cog in a logistical operation the likes of which we have not seen since Market Garden. A large clan, including 14 related people from church and a number of their relatives were off on a mega-holiday together. I went to Gatwick with the Kings, and drove their car back to TW. I now have to drive it back to Gatwick in a fortnight's time and leave a message for them @ left luggage. Their flight arrives at 02:30 or some equally uncivilised hour.

Interrestingly, their car is a Fiat Multipla (1.6 petrol, basic spec). We're wondering vaguely about getting a bigger car (as we're hoping for another child at some point), and we'd like to get a people carrier. Dave raves about his Multipla - perhaps we should look at one? Having one for 2 weeks is certainly a good opportunity to check out that option. :)

After scooting back from LGW, we had lunch with the NCT crowd. OK, but I would have preferred a nice nap!

OK, so I haven't done a lot here for a while, have I? 

Well, I just posted a question I've been thinking about for a while over on Larkware (http://www.larkware.com), and I thought I might as well pop it here as well, so here you go...

----------------------------------

OK, so here's a question for you great and good who visit here. Before I ask it, if any of you happen to have a vested interest in the answer, I'm trusting you to put it aside for a moment... My team is not following most of the best practices we should be. I'm thinking about version control, unit testing, automatic documentation, help files, daily builds, ... I have just read (i) "Coder to Developer" and (ii) "The Pragmatic Programmer". Both books cover best practice, and recommend very similar practices (most of which I am very keen to start following). They do this with quite different styles and at different levels. Which book should I give to my team to read first?

Please don't feel limited to just those 2 books! tell me what you suggest. My team have varying levels of programming experience and aptitude, but they're smart guys, and I hope that they'll respond well to reasonned argument! What other books, courses, websites, articles, etc. can I use to educate them?

All polite suggestions welcome!
Thanks :)
- AJ
><>

 

Yesterday (28th) was our anniversary.
We had the best yet (of 4). :0)

I took the day off and booked us in for lunch at Thackeray's. It's a top notch restaurant in Tunbridge Wells. Their lunchtime menu is basically the same as their evening menu, but the prices are much lower, and we'd often talked about going there. So I organised Amy to babysit for us. I didn't tell Sarah until the evening before. It was all v. fun. We wore our nice clothes and (oh luxury) took a cab both ways! :)

It was a sunny day, and we sat out in their courtyard bit. The food was fab. I mean absolutely amazing. The service was some of the best I've experienced (we were addressed as Monsigneur and Madamme). I have already inflicted detailsed descriptions of the meal itself on too many people, ... but I'm still going to repeat it here:

bread: hot from the kitchen, half a dozen different types of bread roll. We chose the dried apricot ones. As soon as I finished mine, the nice lady popped up and enquired as to whether I would like another. I declined (good call, as it turned out).

pre-starter: we were served an amuse bouche, a fish consomme. I am surely a pleb, but a meal where they bring you stuff you haven't even ordered: how posh is that?!

starter: I can't remember what Sarah had, but I went for the smoked eel. It was a pretty tiny amound of breaded smoked eel on top of a small tower of grated vegetables in some kind of dill sauce. The tastes were beautifully balanced, but - not having tasted eel before - I'm still not sure exactly what eel tastes like!

main course: Sarah had a salmon thing, about which she made positive noises. I chose the assiette of Kentish lamb - a wise choice, if M'sieur says so himself! There was liver, some joint meat (not sure which joint) and some bits I couldn't identify - but they tasted great :0) The meat was all cooked perfectly. I mean it fell apart, but all the tastes were there. Amazing.
They slipped up minorly in that they forgot Sarah's side salad, but they remedied that in about zero seconds, so who's complaining?

sorbet: Next, my lovely new ladyfriend appeared bearing orange sorbet. Again, the real taste was there, not just a sugary cold lump, which is how sorbet often turns out. I think part of the secret was that it was served above absolute zero, so the orange juice and the water hadn't separated out into distinct layers.

dessert: We were both tempted away from the "cheap" menu for dessert: Sarah had a banana tarte tatin, and I had the assiette de chocolat. I really must congratulate myself again on a simply impeccable descision. I recieved: a mini baked alaska with chocolate ice-cream, a mini chocolate souffle (!? how do they do that??) a shot glass filled with layers of different mousses and a slice of chocolate torte. Somehow I ended up with a glass of muscat to wash it down. Oh well.

coffee: So: coffee. "How can they turn a cup of coffee into an upmarket culinary experience?" I hear you ask. Well, they managed: coffee was duly delivered, accompanied by petits fours, brandy snaps and a pile of truffles the size of East Sussex. How I managed to get up the stairs, through the main restaurant and into the cab, I'll never know!


PS. Huge thanks to Amy for babysitting. She did well under difficult circumstances! :0)


why was this our best anniversary yet?

This was the first year when we haven't been cross with each other about something. In the last year, we've talked about and dealt with some things that had come betwen us. We've been really helped in this by the marriage course (http://www.htb.org.uk/marriage/), which was top. I think the most useful thing was that it gave us time with no distractions to simply talk about things we needed to talk about.

The most exciting thing about this being our best anniversary yet is that if this year we love each other better than we did last year, then it's possible that next year we'll love each other better still. - that sounds worth looking forward to, doesn't it?

08:25 / 09:25
Got a lift to station (it was blowing and tipping it down) from Will (in-laws staying with us for a few days).

Bump still not happy. makes rather pathetic sobbing sound (cross between moaning and crying, really) when not dosed up on nurofen / calpol. poor little boy :-( His rather lovely mummy was up a couple of times in the night just holding him. Eventually, we took him to bed with us, and all slept most of the night. Still rather tired this am. Sq must be even worse! :-(

08:25/09:30

Still quite tired after Bump's bad time Sunday night.
Have now invested in bottle of nurofen for kids.
It comes with nifty syringe so they don't have to take it from a spoon (slightly tricky if you're very little). The syringe fits snugly into the top of the bottle so you can invert it and draw off just the right amount. cool :0)

Read some of Is 61, 63 this morning.
Don't have a lot of NRG to tell you about my thoughts, but I'll start with some notes I made the other day:

Colossians 1:9+

Paul prays for the Colossians. What is his prayer, in essence? That they be filled with the knowledge of God's will.
This, he prays, will happen by having all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
Sounds cool.

The result, Paul says, will be that they live lives worthy of God, and please God in every way.
So, the way to please God is to be full of spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you are filled with the knowledge of God's will. I guess that sounds sensible.


How do we please God? Reading on, Paul explains:

• Doing good works which bear fruit.


• Growing in the knowledge of God.


• Endurance and Patience ...
  ... which come by being strengthenned with power from God.


• Give joyful thanks to God.

Glory! :0)

Most of this, then, seems to rest on what God does in me: strengthenning me with power, filling me with wisdom and understanding. The way to obtain these, then, is twofold: prayer and obedience.
I don't know about you, but I'm working on both of these ;-)

09:05 / 10:00
cold gone, but Bump was wailing distressingly from the time he went to bed last night. Rang TTDOC. Finally took him in at c. 23:00. Nice doctor diagnosed ear infection. Isn't that what wussy kids get who are ill all the time? Don't want any of that, thank you! Still, could be a follow-on from his cold. Doc said to give nurofen rather than calpol, as it's much more effective for this kind of pain. Dosed B up accordingly, and he slept after some TLC from his mummy.
I slept until 08:10.

Apart from that, had a busy but effective weekend.
Sale thing went OK.
Fun Evening was fab. I really enjoyed myself. My contribution seemed to go down well.
Lots of talented people did turns - most of whom hadn't done this sort of thing before. All really encouraging. Also, I got to know more people - several from the Calvery crew, which is really cool.
I used most of my verbal gags - forgot all props for the visual ones! ... mainly as a result of the general level of hassle of the day. Still, it all went well. Next time (if I get asked to do it again - which, in all modesty, I think I might - although, it's good to give other people a chance too), I must recruit assistants to be in charge of marshalling the acts, humping the microphones, etc.

It occurs to me that I ought to blog my daily bible readings, and my thoughts on them - as well as what God says about them.

So, I've been reading Colossians (after Dave gave a short talk from bits of chapters 1 & 2 about the Trinity).
I haven't got too far. Tomorrow I plan to go into more detail.

Until then...

08:25 / 09:25
throat slightly better.
sq drove me to station, cos poor AJ so ill and it was raining.
I'll walk up to yoof from High Brooms tonite - I'm sure RMump will give me a lift home afterwards.
not sure what to say in my 1-minute talk. Will probably say that we all have a Jesus-shaped hole in us, and that if we let Jesus fill it, life will go right.

Only 3 more yoofs till end of term (plus the last one, but I can't make that).

tomorrow is a bit of a packed day: sale thing in the am (yoof - in the persons of Sq and self and a few kids) are doing "guess the name of the cuddly dog", "guess the number of sweets in the jar" and helium-filled balloons - He He He! :0)
Then I've got the Fun Evening in the - er - evening. Hope my throat is OK - I'll be doing a lot of talking. I'm sure the Lord is well in control, and will work it all out for his glory - which is what we want, isn't it?? 0;0-)