Just caught this great testimony on I am Second from the Christian rapper Lecrae – he’s a little easier to follow on this than on Chase That.
He reminds me of a good few of the young men we see around here in the parish. Our prayer is that some of them experience God’s transforming love in the way Lecrae has.
Posted in Faith | Tagged artist, Christian, Christianity, Church, conversion, faith, fatherlessness, gangs, God, hiphop, I am Second, IamSecond, Inner city, Jesus, Lecrae, music, rap, singer, testimony | 1 Comment »
It’s been a bit stressy here in the Vicarage the past couple of weeks and I’ve struggled to get my head into gear to write a blog post. I miss it though, so I’m easing my way back in by skiving and posting this piece of kinetic typography. Lecrae is the Vicar’s new favourite Christian artist. Rap’s not so much my thing but I love this version – where I can keep up with the words.
Alas, most of the Lecrae kinetic typography I could find on YouTube had even more spelling errors and I couldn’t quite bring myself to post them.
Posted in Fun | Tagged Chase That, Christian, kinetic typography, Lecrae, music, rap, YouTube | 9 Comments »
Things in parish have been a bit crazy since the new school term began and my blogging habit has rather dried up. But today I’ve just about got my act together and thought I’d share a great recipe for autumn – my mother-in-law’s lentil soup. The Vicar comes from a small town in the Scottish borders with views over heather clad hills and a high street of family run shops. This warming soup is very inexpensive and simple to make and feels like a little slice of old fashioned rural life. Lentils are especially great for those on low GI diets and for diabetics as they are low in carbohydrates and release their energy slowly.
Ingredients
Gently fry the veg until softened, then add the lentils, stock cube and hot water. Simmer for about 20minutes until veggies and lentils are soft. Then use a stick blender to create a smooth soup. If you don’t have a blender, a potato masher will give you a slightly chunkier soup. The Vicar likes to add a lot of pepper – no need for salt because of the ham stock.
Serve with crusty brown bread if you remember to pick some up. This soup is very filling. I often make a double batch, which fills a casserole dish and keeps us going for Vicarage lunches for most of the week. Lentil soup has the strange property of thickening every time it is cooled, so you may have to add a little water on reheating or after freezing. It freezes brilliantly.
Posted in Food | Tagged cheap, cooking, diabetes, diabetic, diet, frugal, lentils, low GI, lunch, meal, money-saving, recipe, rural, Scotland, soup, vegetables, Vicarage | 1 Comment »
So now we’re all back to school and back to the realities of the parish after a great summer break. I’m glad that today the Vicar dragged me up into the tow-un to run some errands. On the way we passed our open air market, where you can buy cheap fruit, mobile phone accessories, underwear, overalls and all sorts of clothing. Everything on the market is pleasingly good value. We bought the Queen a gorgeous deep pink furry fleecy throw for her bed there. She adores it and sleeps under it in preference to her duvet.
The jumper stall is my absolute favourite, though. He sells a random selection of very end-of-line (but still brand new) knitwear, from shops I’d buy from anyway. Over the last couple of years I have bought (or been given) three excellently warming long cardies for Vicarage wear from the market. And today we had a great jumper day, stocking up for the Vicarage winter. The Vicar acquired three M&S v-necks (including a gorgeously toasty lambswool one) and I bought a Next jumper dress and a Monsoon angora/wool mix cardie. Total bill £17. Result. Sometimes I can be cheered up by pretty shallow things…
Posted in Fun, Inner city | Tagged bargain, cardies, cheap, Fun, Inner city, jumpers, knitwear, market, shopping, woollen | 3 Comments »
This week I finally put into action a project that I’ve been wanting to organise ever since our friends the Rocks showed us their fantastic puppet theatre constructed from PVC plumbing pipes. After a bit of internet research we decided that we’d try and make a fairly large theatre, as we usually have two puppets in the sketches that we do in church and school.
A quick trip to our local plumber’s merchants and £34 later (after they gave us a special discount) and we had the piping for a theatre that’s about 2m high at the back, 1.4m at the front (for a kneeling adult or standing child) and 1m deep. Our plumber’s merchant didn’t advise gluing the thin-walled 32mm piping we had, so we had to cut small joining pieces to connect the T-pieces and 90 degree bends.
Yesterday morning we had one of our holiday Cake and Chat sessions. These are pretty much the same as the ones in term time, except they start later (for holiday lie-ins) and we have more kids with us. So we took all the pipes and connecting pieces down to the church hall, together with a couple of hacksaws, and got down to work. Rocky was the man with the saw, and we had a team which included his fiancee Bee and her mum, and various children who particularly enjoyed applying washing up liquid to the joints to make it easier to connect the pipes in.
Once we’d assembled everything, we found that the frame was still a little wobbly (especially at the beginning when we were still missing the strut for the middle of the front). We will be applying some silicone (the sort you use to line the side of the bath) to the T-pieces, which should stop the rotation that caused the wobble by fixing the connectors to the pipes.
Bee and her mum have kindly offered to make some proper curtains (today’s were a random selection from my materials box) and also a kit bag to carry the rather unwieldy piping, so we are hoping to have everything looking pukka in the next couple of weeks. I’ll blog the first official appearance of the theatre so you can see the final product.
Posted in Church, Kids | Tagged All Age Services, assemblies, Church, homemade, Kids, plumbing, puppeteering, puppets, PVC pipes, School, theatre | 5 Comments »
We were not only greeted by a scraggy old flytipped sofa in our drive on our return home last week. As we unloaded the kids, the camping gear and wet swimming towels from the car, we also spotted a couple of items which made us think that we might soon again be seeing Gone, our on/off doorstep lodger.
The traditional bottle of Frosty Jack in our flowerbed
We were proved right the next morning, when he sat on our doorstep until lunchtime and tried to persuade the Vicar to ‘do just one small thing’ for him (take him out to McDonalds). After our previous experiences with Gone, we now say that we will take him to Betel to start rehabilition, but that is all we will do for him. Anything else seems only to sustain his destructive lifestyle and terrible cycle of living rough followed by living at Her Majesty’s pleasure. In the meantime, he’s back in our drive, sometimes singing loudly at 6am, sometimes aggressive, sometimes sad and wanting to talk. Pray that we are able to treat him with grace as his behaviour seems so intractable, and pray that his self-destruction stops.
Some information that Gone is too far gone to really make use of...
Posted in Alcohol, Church, Inner city | Tagged alcoholism, betel, Frosty Jack, homelessness, Inner city, probation, rehabilitation, tramp | 7 Comments »
What do you think about as you return from your holidays? As we drove away from the Channel Tunnel, heading back to the Vicarage, last week I was remembering (as always) a poem by Laurie Lee that I learnt by heart when I was at school:
Home From Abroad
Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways,
My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant,
I set my face into a filial smile
To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent.But shall I never learn? That gawky girl,
Recalled so primly in my foreign thoughts,
Becomes again the green-haired queen of love
Whose wanton form dilates as it delights.Her rolling tidal landscape floods the eye
And drowns Chianti in a dusky stream;
he flower-flecked grasses swim with simple horses,
The hedges choke with roses fat as cream.So do I breathe the hayblown airs of home,
And watch the sea-green elms drip birds and shadows,
And as the twilight nets the plunging sun
My heart’s keel slides to rest among the meadows.
Kent was certainly beautiful to look at. Our front drive not so much… (and more on this tomorrow too).
Rocky tells us this was originally left blocking the drive
Posted in Abroad, Fun, Holidays | Tagged England, flytipping, Holidays, home, home from abroad, Inner city, Kent, Laurie Lee, poem, sunshine, Vicarage life | 3 Comments »
Last month the Vicar and I spent some Nectar points on a garden swing. Sitting on it is incredibly relaxing but we had to make some rules about usage by children as we anticipated that over-vigorous swinging might ensue.
So the rule is:
You can only sit on the swing seat IF YOU ARE READING
This is working very well. I occasionally break the rule myself, but as it’s my rule I think that’s okay. Sometimes I just sit there with the Vicar or a friend and talk. But today the kids were on the swing, obeying the rule, which I found very heartening:
Reading (from L to R) Dr Who, Roald Dahl and Harry Potter
Posted in Fun | Tagged Books, Fun, garden, Kids, reading, summer, swing | 4 Comments »
Yesterday we went to Dudley Zoo to celebrate the Queen’s tenth birthday. We loved our visit, as usual, but today was extra special as there were some new babies on show:
Two baby meerkats have joined the colony
We enjoyed a talk on the meerkats and watched the babies playing for ages. But not for as long as we watched the fabulous new baby orangutan:
Baby Sprout and her mum Jazz
A lovely way to celebrate one of my babies being in double figures now.
Happy Birthday The Queen
Posted in Family | Tagged babies, birthday, celebration, Dudley Zoo, Family, Fun, meerkats, orangutan | 1 Comment »
On our Pathfinder Venture this summer we’ll be studying the bible in small groups with the young people. Our leader, Tim Ambrose, has made this great video with some very funny tips on leading a study:
Posted in Bible study | Tagged 11-14yos, Bible study, camp, Children, Christ, Christianity, CPAS, dorms, faith, funny, Kids, leadership, Pathfinders, small groups, summer holiday, top tips, venture, video, Vimeo, young people | Leave a Comment »
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