Domestication!

Can I just say - how domesticated am I being today?! I made bread!! I was absolutely chaotic, but the end result is really not that bad! What I had to show you though was how I am cooling it down - I don't have a cooling rack, and only realised this as I was taking it out of the oven, so looked wildly around my kitchen and got the inspiration of using the plate shelf!!! oh, better go, the beeper's going off to tell me that the loaf is ready too!

Our God is an Awesome God

On a completely un-related note, I just wanted to say how AWESOME God is. As I was driving through the forest today, the beauty of it was just incredible. It was just such an awesome reminder of the beauty of our Creator. He has the power to create and be Lord over EVERYTHING in this world, and yet he's interested in ME.

"The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad;

let the distant shores rejoice.....

....His lightning lights up the world;

the earth sees and trembles.

The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,

before the Lord of all the earth,

the heavens proclaim his righteousness,

and all the people see his glory."

Psalm 97 v1-6

I absolutely LOVE that passage. The God of THAT MUCH majesty, has chosen ME to be his child. His power is so AWESOME, and yet, "he knit me together in my Mother's womb". He knows my thoughts, my deeds, he knows what my future is, he has plans for me. I need to rest more securely in that - stop worrying about where I'm going, when I'm going, who I'm going with, and just REST IN HIM.

THE FOREST

Today is a beautiful day! The sun has decided to make an appearance, and I got to come home from work early! I was on a course - 'in the forest', and it finished at 2 which was fantastic (and I feel I deserve it - I worked out the other day that I average a 9-10 hour day at school!! Craziness! What do I do all day?!)

But going 'into the forest' was definitely an experience! It's part of the Forest of Dean which boarders Gloucestershire and Wales. It's very hilly, village-y and farm-y. Apparently everyone in the Forest is related to each other because (apparently) when you're born in the Forest, you stay in the Forest. I'm sure that's not true, but it is definitely another example of the different cultures that there are within the English culture! I had to find some random school to go on my course (a dance one, very exciting, got to pretend to be an umbrella and rain!), so of course I "multimapped it"! I got the directions and the roads looked pretty normal, and off I went.
All was fine until I had to turn off the main road. From there the road just got narrower and narrower and steeper and steeper. I had to turn into a road called 'High Street' which in my naivete (how DO you spell that?!), I thought would be a fairly main road, and when I came to it, I actually drove past it twice because I couldn't believe that this farm track was the high street! It was SO narrow, and seemed to go straight up, I couldn't believe that my car didn't slide back down again! I was so scared thinking, what if I meet another car?! I haven't been in 'the country' long enough to fully understand the etiquette behind meeting another vehicle in a country lane, let alone one that seemed to be leading me up the side of Everest! To top it all, it was really foggy and I couldn't see very far!
By the time I got to the top of it, I was SO relieved and shaking! I couldn't believe it had affected me that much!
Then I get to the school, signed in and told to go to another entrance to a kind of youth club thing for the course, so off I went. It was about 8:45 by this point, most of the kids were in school (it was a high school), apart from quite a large group hanging around the door I needed who seemingly had no intention of actually going IN to the school! But I thought, this is cool, I will go round them, which I did. Then, just as I'm going into the door, they bundle themselves (and me) inside and start screeching 'they're coming, they're coming'. Whoopee, had just stumbled across what seemed to be a Forest Turf War!!!!! Inside the club were two rather nervous looking teachers and the course leader! Thankfully it got sorted out. When I finally got to sit down, I was completely shell shocked!!
Welcome to the Forest!