The sun, the Son and a haiku or two.

As ever, it’s been a while – mostly I’m not going to apologise because I had, y’know, exams. But they did finish about 3 weeks ago now, and yet you still haven’t heard from me, why you ask? One part laziness, one part genuine busyness and two parts my housemates have been jetting off home for the summer and I didn’t want to lose a second before they disappeared from my life for three months.

Okay, dramatic, but hopefully you can forgive me, just like you always do!

Before I fill you in on my life since we last spoke I have some admin. Firstly a shout out to Opemipo – I bumped into him on my train journey home for the Christmas holiday and he mentioned that he reads my blog, as ever excitement unfolded on my part, so Hi Opemipo, I hope you’re still reading! Secondly, Tom O’Dair gets another mention, two for two aye? In response to his comment, and as a general update on my last blog, I’ve not finished Eragon and I’m not really planning to. I just got bored, maybe it’s because I’m just too old for it now, but I managed to be utterly consumed by Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom Trilogy though and that has a pretty similar reader demographic. Maybe it's just got a dull and generic storyline? I’ll probably write a comparison of the two when I’m back in Kent for summer and my life slows down a bit.

So no we’re caught up on paperwork, I’ve got three things to tell you about – the sun, the Son and a haiku or two – I just love it when I come up with a snazzy title!

The sun came out just about when my exams started, of course. I didn’t sulk too much though – spent the day before my first exam lying out on the grass with cider and revision notes. My exams went pretty well and, in colossal contrast to A-levels, stress didn’t really get the better of me – yes personal growth! With one or two disappointments, I’ve managed to get myself a 2:1 for first year. Forgiven me for neglecting you yet? Thanks.

I’ve decided I can’t really work the Son into a coherent or natural sounding sentence – it just worked well in my title. But basically, church has been immense this term at Uni. I’ve starting doing a bit of cell leading since Easter – for those of you not down with church jargon – a cell is kind of like a bible study group, but the term bible study excludes worship, prayer, mission, fellowship (and all sorts of other church jargon), so we call what we do 'cell groups'. It’s be a great experience, but also kind of strange because I’ve ended up co-leading a cell made up mostly of people 2 or 3 years older than me. But more than the actual leading side of it, I’ve learnt a lot about just being available to support people. Having some kind of title related to it has made me more aware of reaching out and serving the people around me. Ooooh, here comes another shout out – Lizzie Briggs – I don’t know if she’s come across my blog or not, I guess we’ll find out! I met Lizzie because she joined my cell and we hit it off pretty quickly and I’m very thankful that cell leading has led me to meeting her.

There’s a whole bunch of other stuff that’s been going on in church this term – I went on a student work training day, we’ve done a really challenging series on the Holy Spirit at G2 and we looked at Daniel in at Christian Union. I would like to tell you about all of these things, so I might compile some sort of post over the next few weeks, so again, watch this space.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter, are friends with my on Facebook or check my ‘book blog’ from time to time in the vain hope I’ve uploaded a new chapter… might have noticed that throughout June I’ve been writing a haiku or two... or ninety! Well, it’s the first of July now, so I’m done. I’ve done it; I have written 90 haiku in 30 days. I wanted to write a blog about this sooner, but let’s be honest the best intentions have never done my blogging any good before! It’s not too late now though.

The reason I’ve been writing 3 haiku a day through June is to raise money for Student Linkup. Student Linkup is run by Fusion, which is an organisation that supports student in churches all over the UK. Linkup runs for three months – 90 days – through the summer, helping school leavers ‘link up’ with churches in their new university cities. I found G2 through Linkup, so I wanted to get on board to help Christians starting university this year. Each day of Student Linkup costs about £200 to run, so Fusion has asked students/church leaders/parents etc. to do a 90 Challenge to raise money to fund one day of the Linkup summer. I decided to challenge myself to write 90 haiku in June.

If you’ve been noticing my haiku popping up on the internet but haven’t hit the donate link yet or this whole challenge is news to you – I really want to encourage you to take a look at all my haiku here, where there’s also a link through to my sponsorship page. If you like my haiku and you really want students to settle into church at Uni, please donate what you can, sponsorship is going to be open until the end of July.

After a brief survey of all 90 haiku I’ve learnt two things about myself; first, when I say am/midday/pm I actually mean midday/pm/night because that’s how my body clock works and second, I do nothing but eat in the am period of my day.

Okay, so this has inevitably been a long post – I’ve given you two spoilers about posts to come; book reviews and thoughts about what church has challenged me with in the last ten weeks. I’ve also given you some homework, take a look at my haiku and drop a couple of quid onto my sponsorship page.

As ever, leave me a comment or tweet if you have something to say and I hope you’re kicking off summer well – wherever you are! xo