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3 months to go

its 3 months until the big day and i cant wait. in 3 months i get to witness my best friend and the love of my life walk down the aisle towards me as we step out on a journey of faith that will take the rest of our lives to truly enjoy to its fullest. and i truly believe that Jesus is with us on this adventure, he has been with us already in the previous 5 and a half months since we got together and even since before then working seperately within our lives for His Glory. a few people have been surprised by how quickly our relationship has progressed but if you were “on the inside” over a year ago (ie working in the Newfrontiers, London office) then it doesnt come as too much of one 🙂

Having worked alongside each other for over a year has had its great advantages but as you know now that i no longer work for Newfrontiers it brings different challenges over the next 3 months. firstly is contact time, now that i am not in the office i dont have anywhere near as much time in contact directly with Marie, i cant just make her a cup of her favourite tea (Peppermint or Earl Gray) and there are just less opportunities to see her. this means that i do have to be more intentional in seeing Marie, i have to pursue like i have never pursued before, i think Mark Driscoll says something like this over on his blog (although aimed at married couples i am pretty sure most of it can apply to not yet married couples) “Men, if you don’t date your wife, someone else may eventually volunteer for the job.” the buget is tight because of studying, freelancing and all the expenses that are incurred as a result of preparing for a wedding but that still shouldnt stop me, its one of those challenges that will be fun and i will only learn good habits ready for marriage

The next challenge for me is communication, i am no longer in the same office or next room from Marie every day, i cant just walk by her desk and say “Hi” or discuss anything and everything over lunch. this means again i have to more intentionally communicate, we have to use the phone more than we used to (hooray for a linked contract with free minutes – Finally O2!) communication is probably often not my strongest point especially if i dont see someone all the time, yes i can articulate myself if i need to particularly on a geeky level but remembering to initiate will often be my weakness. this challenge is gonna be a big one and again i only think God is going to use this next 3 months to build some more strong foundations with the existing ones and only make me a stronger more solid Christian Man of God and it will only set things on the good foundations when we are married, focused on Him.

and thirdly (sounds like a mini sermon doesnt it!) Absence really does make the heart grow fonder! I have only been freelancing for a week now and working mostly from home but i do miss Marie when she is not here, and i cant wait for the moments we can spend together, even when its not just the 2 of us! its only making me love her more and want look after and protect her and cherish her more (sounds like i am saying my vows already!)

will get off my soppy love box now 🙂 in short (and in guy speak) its gonna be a hectic 3 months full of challenges that i am going to need prayer for and to pray about, so would appreciate any prayers you have. I know God is in this because he has been there every single step of the way so far and i really dont doubt that that will change anytime soon either!



Busy month ahead

i have a very busy month ahead of me, some would say a gruelling schedule, so far it looks like this:

  1. tonight (8th) until thursday (12th) – working at newday
  2. 19th – 6th Sept in Zimbabwe! ( i fly through 2 other countries just to get there!)

Zimbabwe will include quite a few things such as

  • Meeting Marie’s parents for the first time (on my own no less – Marie comes out a few days later)
  • 5 hour drive to Antelope park for a friends wedding
  • hopefully if time permits, safari or standing with lions (no wrestling i promise 😉 )
  • being an usher/groomsmen at said wedding
  • 5 hour drive back to Harare from Antelope Park
  • helping prepare for a christian youth conference (Ignite Twenty 10) – hopefully fit in a bet of jet skiing too 🙂
  • helping run all things tech at Ignite Twenty 10 🙂

so all in all i am gonna be busy, but i am going to be having fun all the time, doing what i enjoy mixed in with meeting new people and some fun play time too! i will need a holiday from my holiday no doubt. if i can i will try and blog when in Zim but cant guarentee how the internet will cope out there not forgetting the not so unusual power cuts. i am praying that my time in Zim is fruitful and restful as well as busy. i am praying that all the technical aspects of Ignite go well and that we have no problems.

please pray for a safe and exciting trip



Interesting Statistics

just doing my regular peruse through the backend of my site to make sure stuff is up to date, spam is blasted (not that i get much feedback anyway) and otherwise things kept ticking over, even if i dont have anything to say at the time, i have experienced sites being hacked by not keeping stuff up to date so always spend a few mins checking very regularly.

Google Recent Visitors Map for antsomerset.co.uk

Google Recent Visitors Map for antsomerset.co.uk

i was briefly looking from my wordpress stats and saw the map of recent visitors and was quite intrigued by the places where some people have been visiting from.

people have visited from as far and wide as china and chile or canada. so apparently i do reach a global audience, the most common posts they seem to hit are my geeky ones, so it looks like they are set to continue for now 🙂

its been an interesting 2 weeks for me. I had a number in mind of how much to put into the Newfrontiers brighton conference offering, and during the thursday night worship and prayer time, i felt God tell me the number needed doubling. I thought my original number was sacrificial! i was thinking at the moment how was i going to do it, but Marie told me “God will bless you more than that”

the reason i didnt say much about this before now is because i realise that in the last 2 weeks i have had more freelance work than before the conference and have including some new semi regular clients – semi regular in the sense that they dont take up my monthly server management services but keep asking me to do server stuff for them 🙂 God has blessed me more over so far with work that has already paid back what i gave into the offering!

One particular project i am working on which is quite exciting is helping a church friend improving the SEO ranking of the website for her business, you should all take a look over at uneon.co.uk 🙂

Quite a few exciting things in the pipeline over the next few weeks and months including Zim in less than 1 month!!!

for those interested in the plugin i use for stats on my blog, i use wibstats by a fellow christian Chris Taylor

DISCLAIMER – i dont just choose wordpress plugins because the author is a christian, i choose the best plugins available for the job and for that Chris really deserves some credit with his Wibstats plugin



A Busy Week :)

been a very busy week for me :), i have spent the week in Brighton attending the Newfrontiers “Together on a Mission” conference and specifically the Mobilise stream, for the first my first time in 3 years i had the privilege of attending as a true delegate rather than spending lots of my time working. as i had in my previous 2 years.

Started my Tuesday attending the main sessions but had it distracted by a server issue that i had to respond to, it turned out to be a massive VPS.net issue that took lots of servers offline all day, what made things very stressful was that i couldn’t respond to it quickly and resolve it quickly because the internet connections and the mobile coverage in Brighton seemed to be rather bad.

Wednesday and Thursday were great days and so was this morning, lots of good solid bible teaching, some major prophetic words for Newfrontiers and some great times of worship. if you want some great reading for the content of all the main sessions, do check out Adrian Warnocks Blog

I got to spend lots of time with Marie this week and got to eat out quite a lot and even enjoyed 20 minutes on the beach one lunchtime, the weather was very good all week which was great, and i manage to recover my wallet which i lost on a tube train the previous sunday (with all of its contents intact 🙂

got some good stuff to do this weekend and lots of good stuff over next little while, and in 5 weeks i go to Zimbabwe!! i travel out on the 19th August for my friends wedding and do help some other friends with preparation for a youth conference in Zim the week after.

lots of other bits and bobs to share at some point but this is long enough for now 🙂



He Rose – Jeff Johnson

every so often the band at church will get a selection of new songs to listen to and to learn, as part of the Sound team we also get the list of songs so that we can also learn the songs and the arrangements to enable us to mix the songs better and facilitate the worship times much more effectively. i was listening to the songs and this song really stuck out, the list of songs was a great list with a lot of really really powerful songs but this one really spoke to me at the time.

He rose is a song about the victory of the resurrection and how it is applicable to us in todays’ world, its written by Jeff Johnson and he says it was written straight out of a Beth Moore bible study.

A prophecy foretold
A King born unto man
A love the world had never known
But He was crucifed

(pre-chorus)
But on the third day, He rose again
That’s when the meaning of my life began

(chorus)

He rose, Jesus He rose
My life’s been forgiven
This world holds no power
He rose, Jesus He rose
My life’s been redeemed
This prisoner’s set free
Death where’s your sting? He rose

Death made into life
I have been made new
I’m no longer bound by sin or shame
It was crucified with you

Bridge –

Scorned and broken He was nailed to a tree
Crushed to bring Godglory, and set the sinner free
Death was beaten, Satan seized of all his power
Hallelujah, Jesus won the victory