Camp, English people and TheraFlu

Hey
So as promised i havent updated for a while and i would just like to take a moment to forewarn you that this blog may not be up to my usual standards in terms of usage of english (not that that means much) basically i am ill, tired and pretty dosed up but we will get to that later...
So since i last (properly)updated...

• Weds - Went to the gym and learnt i can squat with 130kg on a barbel on my shoulders, started some conceptual stuff towards promotion of the place
  
• Thurs - went up to tallinn and hung out with our english visitors (Karina, Kezia Rosie, Emma) for a while and later brought some new shoes...
  
• Fri -left Pärnu for the church camp out in the wilderness
  
• Sat - church camp with guest speaker Karina Martin, started to get ill and came home with Kris, Krissy and Maarja
  
• Sun - church in the afternoon with lots of post camp testimonies, Karina preaching again and lots of general good stuff, Made fire lots to keep the house warm... got slightly more ill
  
• Mon - Took Rosie and Emma to town to eat with Karl while Karina and Kezia went skating and horse riding then went home and chilled... got slightly more ill as did Kezia, Karl, Kata and Alari
  
• Tues - chilled out at home all day due to illness by this point the whole house was ill! Maarja starting to get better, Alari with a temperature of 38, Me feeling better but looking worse (apparantly) Karl just sleeping and Kata staying locked away in her room
• Today - went to town thinking i had recovered (and aware we needed more drugs and water at home) and started to finish this entry in a cafe over pizza at which point i realised i had a headache and couldnt focus or finish my pizza so came home and napped for a while...

So yeah, The camp went really well its always so exciting to see things click for people and to have things click personally... The church is really inspiring as despite the age distribution being a bit bizzare (about 6 people where present at the camp over the age of 30 with the vast majority being under 18 (making it seem a bit more like a youth camp)) everyone really works together and the family atmosphere is brilliant, Karina was great and shared some really important messages as well as giving out a fair few prophecies and lots of encouragement (as did Kezia, Rosie and Emma)
It been pretty annoying to be ill and now (tonight) i really do feel over it mostly which is good as we have a consert this weekend i started today to put all of the place videos up onto youtube which finally allowed me to set up an account for Oma Koht so once i have that all in order i will share the link with yourselves, the idea is concrete now for the advert video which we will need to shoot and edit in record time next week and i am setting myself a deadline to complete the posters which are at the moment only an idea and the newsletter tonight however long i have to stay up as i want the newsletter to be able to happen monthly and we wanted to have the posters for the place up well in advance for a change...

If you could find time in your prayers for the health of the household and myself and that i can crack on with things tonight and this weekend that would be much appreciated!

So on that note i am going to love you and leave you (to get cracking on the forementioned)...

God Bless

Paul


Hayley, Rosie, Emma, Kata & Maarja in Tallinn

Who says LTGs can't meet at 2am?

They can you know...
and it works... and it's good...and I'm tired...
Just thought i would share that nugget of wisdom/foolishness with you all (yes both of you)
I have to get up soon...
Night Night
God Bless

Paul


Outside is pretty...

My best blog ever (today)...

Hoping this one will work first time after last times mess... OK then so the week just gone,

• Wednesday - Valentines day guest meeting at SV - Fun but a bit of a technical nightmare
  
• Thursday - Worked on newsletter (not finished but looking good IMHO)
  
• Friday - Went up to Tallinn arrived quite late so just played computer games and slept
  
• Saturday - BoBs longest ever practice? Practiced a large percentage of the day, had a worship session afterwards followed by a bit more practice, a sauna at about midnight and cake and burgers afterwards to celebrate Jaanus's birthday (no i didn't get much sleep that night)
  
• Sunday - Back to Parnu only to shoot of to Lihula the small village i mentioned before to meet and introduce myself to the church.. it wasn't to painful but i have a large number of questions and kinks in the plans to work out now and going to the church didn't reduce the quantity... Back to Parnu in the evening for the Guys meeting.. had 2 new guys talked prayed and sauna'd which was great
  

OK so exciting bits, reading progress and prayer requests then....
BoB seems to be as a band taking things more seriously! We are restarting planning what we say in between songs again which always has a positive effect on the quality of the message which we share, the practice was good i remembered how to sing so hard that i lose my voice (which might not sound like a positive but while my voice lasts, improves the sound tenfold) we worked on a new song which is exciting and worked out some new intros which we can convert to songs hopefully at some point... and most of all we had a great time together as a band praying and worshipping...
The newsletter is coming on nicely which i am pleased about because normally when i am doing design work on the laptop i get distracted and decide to check out myspace or BBC news or.. well anything but getting my head down really.. and while i was working on the newsletter this time i didn't experience this which was nice for a change...
The Guys group is growing which is nice to see so quickly and on the back of no real physical attempts to bring more people in just praying and inviting, pray that it continues growing so naturally and that we can really work on each others character's and pull each other up on our issues..
Reading then, I am in the last tiny bit of Organic Church now and i strongly recommend reading it, Mine will be passed on to Maarja tonight when i finish it and when she finishes it it will be on to Alari but if you would also like to read it then you can form an orderly line and we can work something out (as in let me know)..
I have got rid of the backlog which i had built up with the daily bible which means i am back on track for finishing inside the three months.. Its proving beneficial (i feel) to be reading in a more structured manner for a change helping me basically by just not giving myself a choice about picking up my bible and taking time to just read and seek God...

So anyway Prayer wise this week is going to be quite packed, I start on the posters and ad materials for the place outreach meeting tomorrow and start on some video pre-production work for the same thing as well.. so pray for focus i guess... Thursday i am going to Tallinn to meet Karina, Emma and Rosie (who are coming for the camp) and to hopefully find some new shoes (which don't absorb water from the sole).. Friday till Sunday pm we have the church winter camp so pray that everything goes well with that and that everyone has a great time that we can grow together...

That's about it i guess.. So i will probably update on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday next week...

God Bless

Paul


everything i learnt from zoolander

Ramble, ramble, ramble

It been a while since I updated which is due more to apathy than busyness for which I am sorry, I have been cracking on with my reading organic church is getting close to being finished, which is good because it means I can pass it on (it has its own little waiting list now!) and the backlog (one year bible reading wise) is shrinking and shrinking as I am making at least my four days worth a day each day now...

So what have I been up to since last time I updated? I hear you ask...

Well here are the key points (blogger managed to destroy this post once already, wasting all the info I did want to share! these are the bits it saw fit not to eat up and or turn into random links)

On Friday a substantial bunch of the young people trekked up to Tallinn as I mentioned for a big meeting... Personally the meeting wasn’t me or maybe (again) I was too caught up in my own mind to get into it... But a lot of young people turned up who were very on fire and you could tell God was working on so many people and filling people up which is never bad...
Even though I didn’t enjoy the evening as much as I no doubt would have could I have experienced it without getting too lost in my thoughts it had some pretty exciting results and has given me and pets a lot to do and consider...
I and Pets both realized how useful better sound equipment would be to the youth work and the church as a whole as what we have at the moment is really impractical and lacking quality... meaning we often have to beg and borrow equipment from others when we want to put anything on...
We also had some exciting conversations in the evening about trying to drum up more funding for the youth work and outreach shows which we put on as finance has always been a bit of a limiting factor, so it sounds like we are going to start putting a bit more effort into arranging our events and giving people and local business a chance to help us out financially which is most definitely needed... (This linked in a bit to trying to improve how we give out information about what is going on another kick for me to get on with getting a newsletter running!)

Sunday, church was good, I was asked to sing at the last minute which normally throws me a bit but which went well... Boys group was really good we prayed for a big list of people who have fallen away from church and various non Christian male friends who we want to reach out to in a more effective way than we have been so far...
After boys group me Karl and Pets took a sauna and had some really good accountable conversation which led me to suggest (in broken Estonian) that us 3 could be an LTG and keep each other accountable each week which was well received and hopefully will be something we can introduce in the boys group once it picks up momentum...
Today I am doing some reading and working on a design for the newsletter and hopefully some content...
Plan for the rest of the week....

• Wednesday - Torva youth work down south

• Thursday - finalize draft for newsletter and show to Alari etc

• Friday - Back to Tallinn possibly for some BoB practice and song writing...

Sorry for the ramble I really need to keep more on top of this (or just learn to only write the interesting bits) thanks again for your prayers the wallet still hasn’t turned up but my new card is at least on its way over to me so I should have some money again soon....

God Bless

Paul

Me walking on the water under the bridge

Monday and Tuesday, ehk siis esmaspaev ja teispaev (Ristole :D)..

Hey everyone,
Still no sign of the wallet which is rather a bummer i have been in touch with the police now and the British embassy the later of which actually seemed sorry for me and helpful as apposed to the police who basically told me how stupid i was keeping my wallet in my back pocket and having so much cash on me... (fair comment in a way)
So yeah Monday and Tuesday have been cheap...
On Monday i stayed home in the village searching for my wallet, cancelling cards and catching up on a bit of reading (Organic church is now definitely worthy of a recommendation)
We also had a planning meeting for the Lihula village youth work thing. Me, Tiimar, Alari and Aivar seem to be the team at the moment, it was kind of interesting but i probably should have given a little more input as there are now a few issues bugging me... as in i would quite like a musician on the team for worship to happen...
Early night on Monday spent a fair chunk of time contemplating my wallet loss situation not so much wallowing in self pity more just beating myself up about wasting such a chunk of dosh in such a (no doubt) avoidable manner...
Wednesday (yesterday) i went to school with some Norwegians to plug some youth meetings at the church Kenneth works with, Life centre (elu keskus) which are happening tonight tomorrow and Saturday. It was quite good fun hanging out with the Norwegians who were almost all my age and they paid for my lunch which was (very) nice after which i went to the police station and (in Estonian) explained the situation, gracefully accepted the ridicule and wrote down a full report of what happened (which i think i might have future dated by accident :-S)
I went over to get coffee with Maarja and Hanna and then watched some films at Hanna and Risto's place, (the Prestige(which was brilliant) and Nacho Libre(a current favourite of mine)) in the evening i enjoyed a sauna with Karl and a nice cold non-alcoholic beer *blah* its extra cold out here at the moment last night being no exception hair i can confirm does freeze when wet and your feet can lose skin on ice when its cold enough (which it was).. sitting outside (paljas) when its -27 after being in a room of 100degrees is strangely one of my favourite things sitting in the snow looking at the stars unwinding is sublime... Thank you God for snow, stars and sauna...

Tonight i am either going to Torva (where a similar thing to what we are hoping to start in Lihula is already underway) or to the youth meeting with the Norwegians depending on transport situations...

Thanks for you comments and prayers, its nice to know this is not just a soliloquy...

God Bless

Paul


Snow...

Backlog

Hey so things got a bit hectic the last few days so i couldn't update till today, unfortunately in the village where the gig was i couldn't find any Internet or much spare time but i am back in Parnu now so here goes...
Blog news first i guess... i now have google ads on my blog which might generate a bit of finance depending on how many people are actually reading this and how many people see something interesting over on the ads...
On Wednesday i spent a lot of time travelling around to get to the gig i went into town and met some people from this mission team which has kind-of evolved out of the bible college one or more of whom might be forming a team with me to take to a small village and start some kind of youth group then just going back and forth between Papsaare and pets's place packing stuff and being forced at the latter into eating fish soup (not good) so then we jumped on the bus and went to Tallinn ready to pick the guys up from the airport... we hung out a bit and met my Canadian friend Steve in town before going back to his place... At Steve's we watched the latest episode of prison break (very good) and a film called Jesus Camp (worrying) and then went to another friends place to sleep the night ((and watch another film) making a total of 3 films in one day including the one on the bus)
So Thursday we picked up a car and went to the airport and met the band we had flown in from the UK for the gig "Art Ways 2007" the guys from "where on earth" where really cool and we had a great time hanging out the next few days around Tallinn and Kohila into the bargain the guys gave an awesome show despite being really ill, i would recommend them for sure they have myspace and a website www.whereonearth.net and myspace.com/whereonearthband...
Friday was the night of the concert which went really well, took me about half the gig to get used to being on stage again but we had great fun and it looked like people enjoyed it which is always good where on earth played as well and where well received i think if we get the opportunity we might invite them back for a slightly longer period put together some tour like last summer but take a second band... we will see
Saturday after taking the band to the airport i hung out in a mall in Tallinn with Kenneth and Maarja which was pretty fun i tried on some funky clothes and Maarja tried on lots of hats while Kenneth refined his preach for the evening... the meeting in the evening was really awesome 7 kids gave their life to god which is just excellent...

In the meeting it really hit me a bit that i really don't know how much longer i am meant to be out here and that i should really stop guessing and inflicting time limits on this, suffice to say when i get back in may the first thing i will be doing is renewing my passport i don't feel i can safely say anymore that the time is right to end my time here...

In considerably worse news i seem to have lost my wallet which is quite a pants situation to be in as it had about 4-5000eek in along with my cards, drivers licence, national insurance, European health insurance and so on...
Pray that it turns up 5000eek(220GBP) is a large chunk of my budget besides which the soonest i can get a new card is at least 2 weeks which could essentially leave me with about 30eek(1.20GBP) for the next 2 weeks = not good

God Bless

Paul



Where on Earth doing their thing....