Hi guys

Sorry for not posting recently but I'm still around, reading your posts from time to time (I never expected Latin to get so much attention). It has been a strange 3 weeks since the death of my uncle. I didn't really know how to react. As my uncle and his family are out in Bangkok my Mum and gran went out but the rest of us stayed at home. I've still to see any of the family and I still think that I'm struggling to believe that it actually happening.

Rather bizarrely work helped. Not only was I flat out busy and had to put in a lot more time in a week where I was expecting it easy (effectively 6.5 days in 5 days with 3 days of courses which are always easy going) but I also got to talk about my uncle as about 10 people in the office knew him from when he worked there (he was the other civil engineer in the family). I'd only known about one person but it turned out to be few. What was good was that they all had good things to say about him. It did make for a few teary trips to the toilet but all in all it was good.

The most settling thing was having good Christian friends around, past and present. On the day I had slept in and was planning on going to HTB. After hearing I still went but the service passed me by. The most important thing was talking to Superherojosh and Scarllet about it and getting a cracking hug from S. SHJ invited me around to his the next day and it was great just to chill out and eat and watch a movie. That was priceless. The following day I went to homegroup and this is where I realised the vitalness of homegroups.

I'd been to church but I have to admit that it did nothing for me. Indeed the joyful singing almost did my head in. I wanted to wail rather than sing. I wanted to ask why rather than just accept. And I just felt that I was the only one who understood. Yet at homegroup I didn't get that. Because there was conversation I talked about the death but I also talked about others problems and you realise that we are all in life together.

And now there's football. It hasn't change much but it is fun to watch (especially Holland's 2nd goal).

Hopefully see you more

Matthew