Oops...
By this point, some of you are probably wondering what I've been doing. Some of you have probably given up all hope that I'm ever going to post again, and most of you probably couldn't care less, but whatever. It's been 2 weeks, stuff's happened, I don't even remember what I put in my last post, so sorry if some stuff here gets repeated, but just a quick summary of "stuff I been doin.":
- Caught "Fresher's flu"
- Got so sick I went home
- Broke my record for most sleep in a night (12 hours)
- Broke my record for least sleep in a night (3 hours)
- Wrestled with Cardiff university "Eduroam" network after my tablet would not connect
- Decided I hate labs and everything it stands for (again)
- Missed assignment deadlines due to overcomplicated computer system
- Run out of food (twice)
- Been sent back to uni with almost out of date milk which then needed to be thrown out
- Attempted to write blog posts several times but never had anything to write about
- Realised 2 weeks have passed and I've not posted
So yeah, that's you mostly caught up on what I've been doing for the past 2 weeks, it's really not very interesting, but for some reason there are people who want to know, so hey, who am I to deny them that?
One thing I haven't mentioned though: Churches.
So far I've been to two. Cardiff Vineyard and River City.
Ruth and Adam came down two weeks ago now to "do church in Cardiff" and honestly, I was very grateful that I know people who would come all this way just to make sure I'm OK. I'd been making excuses to try and get out of going, but you can't exactly turn down people prepared to drive for 2 hours to make sure you have a church connection, so I went.
We ended up in Cardiff Vineyard, as the closest church to Uni Hall, and it seemed like quite a nice place. At a guess I'd say there were about 150 people, so it was quite nice as it wasn't too big. After the service they had a student lunch, and anyone who's been to university knows free food is good. We played mind games, and ate food, and talked about random stuff, and it turns out that there is someone from Christ Church Abingdon who goes to vineyard, not that I can remember their name, or knew them before, but hey, small world right?
Of course, Zoe was the main attraction of the student lunch, since random toddler in the middle of students stands out a bit, but hey. My verdict on Vineyard? Pretty good, and definitely somewhere I could settle, but not necessarily a place I want to settle without trying others first.
Which brings me to today.
So, I skipped a week because I was ill and at home, but the trip to Vineyard made me resolve to try and find a church to settle in, so this morning I set an alarm for 8:30, dragged myself out of bed and walked all the way down to the union for the church walk. I was supposedly meeting Jordan, but as I later found out he was asleep until 3 in the afternoon, so that didn't happen, but after trying to contact him 4 separate times and receiving no response I decided to abandon what little fragments of a plan I had and just go to a random church, so I loaded up my Fusion student linkup app and was looking at church locations, and then I saw the message from River city. The River city student rep looked kinda lonely at the time, so I decided to go with them see what it was like.
River City is a really small church, about 30-40 people, they are very informal, which I liked, and they have a start time of 10:30, but actually start closer to 11, giving people plenty of time to get there and get settled. Good news, since it's a 45 minute walk from my hall. The church has a really nice atmosphere, despite not being very big, and even not having its own building (meeting in the music college), and I suspect I might go back there at least once, if not to stay there.
I've been thinking, both today, and for a while now, that sometimes it's the little things that make the biggest impact on us. Admittedly, if you were to ask me I'd have said the most impactful thing that has happened to me was Soul Survivor 2012, and that isn't exactly small, quite the opposite in fact, but since then I've come to realise that God can be there at least as much in the little things as he is in the big. I went to both New Wine and Soul Survivor this year, and if you were to ask me which one had the bigger impact I'd have actually told you New Wine. While it's not technically a smaller event (there were 14,000 people on site at one point) the way its set up means that at no point everyone is together, so a lot of the meetings are quite a bit smaller. On top of this, I actually went to New Wine on the stepping stones team, (Hence the abundance of stepping stones t-shirts, for any of my flat mates that got this far on my blog).
I've just realised that I've been trying to write this post for 10 hours, and I can't work out exactly how to phrase what I wanted to say, so honestly, I'm just gonna give up at this point, it can't really be expressed as words on a screen. If anyone wants to know exactly what's going through my head, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to express it, but I can try and explain it at some point if I see you in person. Sorry for the abrupt ending, I just don't know where I'm going.
Oh, one thing I can tell you though. I'm going to EPMF 2016! I wasn't sure it was going to be possible, but I've managed to find trains at sort of the right times, so more on that when details are confirmed, but it's something to look forward to.
