Today’s the day! Download firefox 3… If the page works…

Note to self: don’t tell everyone in the world to download something on one day if your server can’t cope with the pressure.

Update

I used to check Peter Shackelford’s blog every week to see if he’d updated. But alas, the man got married and dropped of the edge of the world. Well, that was for a while, and he’s been back for a while now. Apparently he runs a sort of international charitable film thing. I had a quick look today, and although I didn’t look long enough to find out what it’s all about, I did get to see some really brilliant short interviews and short videos taken in Africa. Peter and Amanda’s blogs look to be really brilliant, and I’m looking forward to reading more of them.

Footbridge Films Blog
Footbridge Films Travelblog

In addition to adding these links to my sidebar, I’ve cleaned up some of the old ones, and added some new ones. \/ Look down there \/.

I know I don’t post often, but it’s not like you’re hanging on my every word, so that’s alright. However, it is much to my distress that A certain someone no longer updates their blog. Now, Ally, I know you’re busy. But the truth is, you already have a first, so it’s not like it’d be impossible just to give us a little post.

My brother Mark, as you probably know, is George Verwer’s Go-fer this year. Take a look at George’s website for some of the latest updates on what George and Mark have been getting up to.

Of particular note is this video below. George was saved through Billy Graham 53 years ago, and for the first time he has been able to meet him. It’s a real blessing for Mark that he was able to be there too.

If you get the opportunity, please pray for Mark. Here I’m assuming there are some people who read this who don’t know all about my family already, but I will carry on. He will be preaching for the first time in his life this weekend. He will be standing in for George in a meeting, and I’m sure at the best of times that will be a challenge. You probably know that Mark’s not a confident speaker, but he’s definitely someone who could be an encouragement to the people he speaks to. He has to speak in a big missionary conference on the topic of ‘What is God doing in short term missions’, and another topic at a church, which I forget.

Monika just left to go back to Tenerife today, after visiting her Sister in Belgium. We were able to see her for a few days at the start of the Easter holidays, which was a great encouragement.

Another encouragement we received over the holiday was a visit from the O’Flahertys. The O’Flahertys are a wonderful Christian family, and the times we spend with them are always times we can thank God for.

Now, I believe there’s something of a group photo somewhere…

I lent my camera to the boys, and unfortunately that’s the most people I’ve got in one shot. However, it’s got to be said that that photo has character… (I’m terrible at spontaneous portraits, I’m glad someone just messes with my camera every now and then).

Ich wurde am Montag wegen neuen Software die ich eingekauft hat erfreut. Ich bezahlte 38.95 Pfunde für ‘Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate’. Das Tolle ist… Wenn man ein Student ist, kann man dass auch machen.
There’s this great thing where you can get Office 2007 Ultimate for as little as £38.95, which is not that much really. You’ll have to be quick, because the offer ends soon. I got it, and it’s genuine. Anyway, if 20 of you buy (which, knowing I only have 1 or 2 readers, and only 50% are students, is rather unlikely), I get 10 pounds. But either way, it’s worth a look. The offer is also valid in America.
If you study languages, you’ll have to buy language packs as well, so be warned. I only study german, so I was willing to pay a bit extra, but if you study Spanish, German, Catalan and Mandarin, you’d have to buy the ultimate language pack. That costs a pretty penny, so you should probably stick with Openoffice and get all that free.

Lot of stuff has happened since I last updated in any interesting way. Some of the most significant were my trips to Imperial College London and Bath University.

Imperial College London

I visited Imperial sometime in November. Imperial is every bit as shiny as it looks on the prospectus. After having a tour of Imperial, I had my interview, which, thankfully, was nice and early so I could look around London before I left. I was taking pictures outside Imperial on the street with my really massive camera, when I was approached by a friend of someone in ICRacing, in order to help in a photo shoot they were doing. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I took a lot of pictures:

I spent quite a bit of time after taking these pictures making the panoramas etc. with Damjan and MJ afterwards, preparing the photos to be used etc. I found out after adding MJ on facebook that she is in the CU, which she tells me is very geared for evangelism and also a church that I have been told is very strong on the word (independant adjudicators being my dad and Ben Epps). I shouldn’t have to say this, but enough people have asked, so… I don’t intend to marry MJ. I hope that’s established now. The point is that I’ve found out about the CU and a good church.

Bath University

Both my parents went to Bath University, and my dad studied the same course I have applied to. Bath, like London, is the home of several good churches. The one I have been recommended most is Widcombe Baptist. A strong, Bible believing church, and, if I’m not mistaken, the one my dad went to. Anyway, on to the pictures:

I also have pictures of Cambridge, but we’ve spent quite a while already, and they didn’t give me an offer, so we’ll move on.

In my opinion, university is worth thinking about just for the open days. With the exception of Manchester, I had a most excellent time at every university I visited. I can’t help it, but most of the decision I made was based, rather than on raw fact, on the fact that I simply liked some places more than others. So what decision did I make?

1. Firm Choice: Imperial College London
2. Insurance Choice: Loughborough University

I think that’s all I have to say for now, except that tomorrow I’ve decided to have a birthday, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

I have a huge amount to be thankful for. Four brilliant universities have made me offers. So here’s the rundown, in no particular order.

Imperial College London

MEng Mechanical Engineering with a Year Abroad or MEng Mechanical Engineering

Offer: AAA

Photo: Nuno R.

Loughborough University

MEng Civil Engineering with Sandwich Year

Offer: BBB

Photo: robep

Manchester University

MEng Mechanical Engineering with Sandwich Year

Offer: AAB

Photo: magutosh

Christ’s College, Cambridge

MEng Engineering with Gap Year in Industry

No Offer

Photo: sparkypics

Bath University

MEng Mechanical Engineering and German with Sandwich Year

Offer: AAA

Photo: Nitin Parmar

As you can see, that’s all my unversities accounted for, and I’ve officially been rejected for Cambridge. I am actually quite thankful for that. If God had wanted me in Cambridge, I’d have got an offer. It’s less complicated now, and I don’t have to weigh up Cambridge/Imperial College. I am incredibly keen on ICL at the moment. And God timed me getting an offer from ICL before my rejection from Cambridge. If it had been the other way round, I’d have probably been a bit depressed.

If the protracted silence proceeding from this blog hasn’t made you give up hope forever, mayhap this post will come to you like rain in the midst of the desert, but perhaps more likely like rain after the sky has been ominous all day, and you hoped beyond hope it wouldn’t crack.

Doug: Wait! I’ve got a great story you should hear.
Max: AAAAAACCCCCHHHHHHH!
Sam: Keep it short, kid. My partner’s got a low tolerance for long stories.

So, what’s been happening to me?

First of all, as a follow on from my previous course. I know what and where I want to study. It must be a miracle. I said it would have to be in my last post, and I’m not going to swallow those words now.

I visited Oxford, and I was so thankful, because it was the most beautiful city I’d ever been to, and both me and Emma wanted to go there, it felt perfect. I was particularly interested in Magdalen College. This is the same college as CS Lewis went to. It has the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen, and a deer lawn, and that really does it for me.

Perhaps that’s where I’ll go, but I really don’t expect it will be. Ignoring for now my results, let me tell you about Cambridge.

Cambridge’s Engineering presentation really inspired me. So much so that I’d say that even if I never go there, the inspiration was absolutely invaluable. I fell in love with Oxford city, but as for the engineering course, I’ll have to say Cambridge’s course was much more inspiring.

The impression I got at Oxford was that engineering was something they did extremely well, but it wasn’t a major department. The course seemed shrouded in mystery, and as much as I asked, the lecturer didn’t seem to understand I was looking for some inspiration to take up his course. I wasn’t told about any specific final year student projects, normal daily timetables or anything.

In Cambridge everything was laid out on the table, from the application process to the course contents. Cambridge do a general engineering course, and you don’t specialize until the second year, but the specialisation that inspired me most of all was ‘Geotechnical Engineering’. This is the point at which geography and engineering meet. Earth dams, tsunami-proof houses and landslide-proof pipes were all projects chosen by students. In my estimation, this is the best academic preparation for the mission field I can get. It gives me incredible joy to think how useful to God I could be with such skills, and that studying geography wasn’t wasted.

In addition to all this, Cambridge has a languages center as part of the engineering department itself, so I could carry on my German, and myabe take up another language too. Who knows? It’s in God’s hands anyway.

Now I get to my results. The sad thing is that they are not good enough for me to get into Cambridge yet.

1. German: A
2. Maths: A
3. Physics: B
4. Geography: C

I’ve dropped geography in response to these results in order to focus on the subjects I am good at, and thus raise my chances of getting to Cambridge. I prayed about this decision. I asked for peace before, during, and after making it, but now I must admit I am not certain of it. It doesn’t cause me to lose sleep at night, but I don’t know what God’s will is at all. I’m sure it’s not too late to change back, but God will bless me either way I’m sure. My mother told me, “Don’t worry about what God wants you to do all the time. God gives you desires, what do you want to do?” I want to be useful to God, but I felt so ill-equipped to make that decision, I feel so far from God. I wasn’t trusting him like I should have, and I knew it. Maybe God gave me those results to make me drop it, or maybe it was a challenge. Who knows?

That’s all for now, I might write some other post another day. God Bless

I have now finished my AS Level exams, I will be receiving my results sometime in the Summer. I now have three weeks at college which I will have to be using to prepare for next year. Apparently, I have to start thinking about university now. There also remains the task of choosing courses for next year. At the moment I’m expecting to carry on with all the courses I’m doing, but it does need prayer.

I really don’t know what I will be doing next year. I have absolutely no confidence in my planning ability for the future. God will have to do something pretty miraculous whatever happens, because I am stumped. The choice seems so vast. I’m not sure about any of the courses I wanted to study. Please pray that God would put the right choices on my heart.

On Friday the 22^nd I will be visiting Oxford with Emma and some other people in the College’s able and talented group. I found out today I will also be going to Mark, Jonathan and Alastair’s joint birthday party, which is also a leaving party for Jonathan and Monika, who are heading to Tenerife; and Henna, who is leaving for Aberdeen University. I had previously expected to be returning too late, but it turns out I will be back shortly after 7, leaving plenty of time.

I have started reading “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs for my Geography course next year. I’ve never really read a book as part of any course before (except English of course), and it’s an interesting novelty. I feel like a real student or something.

I have a lot on my mind, and I am not doing the best spiritually either. Perhaps it is a good thing that now my greatest desire is to be holy, but it doesn’t feel like it. I suppose I can take comfort in:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Because I no longer have a feeling of assurance. God’s Word is all the assurance we need, but on the other hand, it is nice not to doubt you are saved, but I know I do not seek the presence of God in vain. Even if my sin does stand in the way.

I have gone through such feelings many times, and come out stronger, but it is hard to see that. I know I have nothing to be depressed about, but depression can be a trial like any other, even in the absence of anything to actually be sad about. From an objective perspective, my life is fantastic.

We might as well make it official, I don’t want to blog for a while, perhaps forever. There are a number of reasons I want to stop:

The only news I have any right to post on here is about myself, but that’s not very interesting, because whenever I think about myself for too long I end up getting depressed. To be honest, I absolutely hate self-examination now. I know I’m a sinner, I found that out a long time ago, but I’ll never be able to glorify God if I’m focussed in on myself. Frankly, when I look in at myself, I hate what I see.

The conclusion of the above paragraph is that I must focus outwards, and I have seen some absolutely amazing things happening over the last few weeks. God has been showering down his blessings in ways I’ve never seen before, but I find it very hard to write about such things, because most of them are answers to prayer concerning other people. It is for them to share such news, not me, and it would be wrong for me to share it.

It is other people that are really making me happy at the moment, so I want to talk with you, not tell you about me. Most people know about me. I also want to spend more time doing actual college work, and talking to one person in particular.

If you would really like to stay in touch, I would love to talk by e-mail or MSN.

MSN: fatpiegibbon [at] hotmail [dot] com
E-mail: peter.roberts [at] gmail [dot] com

If you are looking for someone to read, I recommend Confessing Evangelical. Some of Ally’s lenten guest posts look good too.

I wanted to write about my birthday, I wanted to write about my trip to London, but that’s going to have to go on hold until Saturday. Right now though, I do think I have a bit of news that gives me good reason to post in the middle of the week.

I now have a girlfriend. Unfortunately, I do not have a particularly good picture of her, so for now you’ll have to make do with a picture I stole from her facebook site.

Her name is Emma, and she’s a wonderful Christian girl, I thank God he didn’t leave me alone until I told her I loved her.

Everybody hates me, nobody loves me etc.

I’m having a bit of a Germany flashback here. I want to go to a cool city (i.e. London), but most everybody is busy. T__T I’ve tried Joe West, Dave Heath, Jannais O’Flaherty and nobody, nobody is free. I’m determined that this will not turn into a repeat of my Heidelberg experience. I don’t want to repeatedly pester someone who I know is free to come down (that time it was Jessika).

I think the fact that cities are absolutely nil fun on your own is evident. If you want to come to London for two days (Friday and Saturday), and you reckon you have something like the same taste in museums and cultural sights as me, please tell me.

This would also be a good option if you want to see Ben and Liz Epps, because I’ll be staying with them overnight.

This is my birthday present from my parents, and it’s pretty much the most flippin’ awesome present ever given to me by a person. I wouldn’t want to waste it.

Update