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I am not going to take credit for composing this all myself. However, I was deeply inspired and touched by what I read along in the Bible along with my daily devotional book and would like to share some of it with you.

2 Peter 1
1Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,
To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

Have you seen a good film lately?

Ok, it's a little sad but I hardly ever go to the cinema - usually because I am quite content to wait for the DVD to come out but now and again there is a film I simply can't wait for and last Friday I went to see one such film: Becoming Jane. As all my friends know I am a huge Jane Austen fan so a film about her and her life is just the sort of film I love.

Happy New Year! This is my first blog of 2007. I had a good Christmas though not my best since I wa really ill and somehow made it through Christmas Day before spending Boxing Dy in bed getting over some serious flu.

I have a confession to make. I love Jane Austen novels. And as a consequence of this I also love Jane Austen films and anything about that period of History and if I had to choose any time to live but now I think I would have chosen the early 1800's. My family obviously have picked this up becasue for Christmas I received no less than five books that are in some way or other related to Jasne Austen! I got three of her novels, a book about Miss Austen herself and Jane Austen's Guide To Dating! It will be interesting to see how (and if) the love lives of fictitious, early 19th Century characters can assist me with my relationships with the opposite sex! So as I enter this New Year, in a way I feel like I have stepped back 200 years as I have quite a bit of reading to do and have wasted no time in getting started.

MERRY CHRIStMAS TO ALL OF YOU!
May God bless you and your families this Christmas and in the New Year!

I was in a shop last week just buying some bare necesities when a familiar song started playing. It took me a few seconds to realise what it was but then I correctly identified it as the song that nearly drove me insane last year. It is a sign that the festive season is well and truly here and that I will be subjected to that song from now until 25 December. Yes, it's that old Christmas favourite Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time.

Ok, I'm pretty sure that most of you reading this have been on an Alpha Weekend at some point and know what an awesome time they can be but I have just been on a great one and have to tell everyone about it.

It was off to the Grand Burstin Hotel which is in glorious Folkestone on Friday evening! And though we had rather a shaky start (missing both the 7pm and 8pm trains and therefore having to wait for the 9pm one) we made it there safely and ready for a great Weekend.

I have been continuing with making my way through the Bible and finding many more beautiful words from the Lord. The book of Daniel is amazing. I will admit I didn't know much about it except the story of the lions den and the firey furnace but there is so much more. It is amazing how God uses different people in different ways but He always triumphs. At the end of the story of the lions den and the firey furnace the kings of the time praise God because they see how He saved His servants. It's not a very long book so even if you are not a great reader I would definitely recommend you read it.

I have been a lodger with the same family for about a year now (how time flies) and though they are Christians they do like to celebrate some of the Jewish holidays and I have now been through a year of them. Passover is the biggest feast and was really meaningful for me because at that time I had just been reading about it in the Bible. We had Jewish New Year about a month ago and a week ago was the beginning of the Feast of The Tabernacle. A tabernacle was erected in the garden and they have been sleepig in it every night. Tonight marked the end of the feast and because it is Friday we also had the Shabbat ceremony to do. I ate rather a lot of food while we went through some significant passages of the Bible - read in both Hebrew and English. After dinner we did some Jewish dancing which is a new experience for me and was a lot of fun. It has been so great to partake in all these festivals and to know that God told His people how to celebrate them and that they were being practised all those centuries ago by the Israelites in the desert. All the details of these featss can be found in Leviticus 23.

Earlier this year I took on the task to read the entire Bible from Genesis 1:1 right through to to the last verse of Revelation. I did not give myself a time limit so that if I wanted to ponder or meditate on anything in particular I could without feeling I had to rush through each book and not take everything in. I am finding stories I never knew existed and some beautiful words of God. When I started I read Genesis in two days and thought it would be easy but things were a little harder once I got to Leviticus but I got through it.