Mountains and Skopje

Throwing off everything that hinders

Sunday night at "Glasnost", Alpin rallied the troops with a battle cry to get fired up with the vision for God. It inspired me. Hebrews 12:1 says "Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out before us." (NIV) Sometimes we need to just reclarify where we're going and throw off everything else that gets in the way. To go with passion.

Mad Journey

29 hours, 4 countries, 2 cars, 2 trains, 2 planes and 2 buses, 15 hours waiting at airports, a bus breaking down in sub-zero temperatures and I returned from Holland to Skopje. Rather tired. And disorientated.

The English are Coming

In England there was some concern at Bulgaria joining the EU as it might mean many of them flocking to England to find work and money. So I was a little surprised in Sofia to see a headline on a Bulgarian newspaper: "Помощ! Идват Англичаните!" - i.e. "Help! The English are coming!" Apparently lots of English people are going to Bulgaria and buying property there. I met several on the plane. I guess the EU works both ways!

Throughout Holland

Well, I travelled a lot around Holland and had a great time with great people, especially my friend I was visiting. We went to Andijk, Enkuizen, Appeldorn, Veenendaal, The Hague, Volendam, Marken, Andijk. I'll try and add photos later.

Nederlands

I'm in the Netherlands now. I like it here. However it is very flat and there seem to be lots of canals and bicycles (probably because it's so flat). But that's not a critism!

Roaming

In the next week, four countries, three flights and a bus journey: England -> Holland -> England -> Bulgaria -> Macedonia.

On Sunday I went to Fareham to visit and at about 1am on 1/1/2007 I wasn't sure where I was going to sleep! I had prayed earlier in the evening, something like: "Lord, I feel too tired to organise something, please help me get somewhere to sleep!". In actually fact I had three offers, but for one reason or another I turned each of them down (e.g. getting in too late after a party, sleeping on the floor of a church building etc). So at the party I asked one of my friends, could I sleep there, which he was happy with. In fact, the next morning he remembered how a couple of days before he had been feeling so lonely that he prayed "Lord, please bring me some company!". So it was nice being an answer to prayer! A good start to 2007!