Committing to Tithe has been really interesting and sometimes It has been really strange to see the reasons my mind has invented to resist tithing! Also I could definitely see that when I had less money it was a lot easier to tithe than when I had more! Something that really shocked me.
Prayers has really been an interesting experience and I think I want to do some more extended posts on Prayer rather than just one paragraph on the blog. I think the overall impression I have is about how prayer can be the easiest and hardest thing to do. When looking at a one of situation it really can be so easy to just suddenly turn to God and speak to him about the situation. However when looking at the long term it can really be a struggle and ensuring that you do turn to God can be a real struggle.
Skype has been a great tool over the last 6 months and I have certainly been glad that I had that option of contact with people back home. There have been moments when I have felt so homesick and then a quick chat has reminded me
Concious developing as a teacher has at times been a hard task. It can be easy as a teacher to just get stuck into the general ruts of day to day teaching and even when you do learn something new about teaching it can be hard to find the time to work out some practical step to bring it into day to day teaching. As such having the weekly sessions at the school has been very useful.
The best step that helped me push forward with my Russian was starting a word exchange with a girl in one of the coffee shops. As soon as this happened I started to stick to Russian a lot more when chatting and as I was finding my new words in a dictionary that looked at the frequency of use I came across many that I had learnt from other sources. My Russian still has a long way to go but I am really happy with its development and My ability to get by in conversations now.
Songs have been a sore point this year, as I have written about frequently, a fear of expressing things and also trying to write catchy, cleaver and well written songs basically lead to an inability to write anything. hopefully I have started to move past this but I shall not be focussing on publishing anything If I do write any more songs. As such I am going to remove this from my aims list BUT I will put a link up if I do happen to write and record a song.
Meals have been going well and I have really enjoyed having people round. It has been so great to get to know people better, and to even introduce some different groups of people to each other [despite the limited accommodation space!] It has also been very good for me for some selfish reasons. It has forced me to keep the flat clean, it has lead to people bringing tasty food around, it has lead to me learning to cook a lot of different dishes. I really hope this continues and I really want to build on this hospitality not just at the flat but at other locations too. More on this soon.
Having the deliberate challenge of 2 posts a week and some general guideline over what I should write has been a really great challenge and has really forced me to dredge my mind for something to write about. On the other hand I completely discovered that when I am reading about the subjects I want to write about then I was inspired and spurred to write about different things. In addition freeing myself from to write about whatever I wanted to has been a real blessing and has been a big factor in the regular nature of blogging. I have really enjoyed it and certainly feel as though the quality of writing and topics have improved and I have also noticed that I have branched into other areas such as pictures and videos.
My overall reflection about charity work is that after a long week it can really feel like the last thing I want to do is some charity activity. However when I actually do end up doing these tasks I notice that it really wasn't as bad as I thought and often I feel more energised afterwards. To some degree I know that in a way this shouldn't matter but it really does help.
It took a long time to get going with the video's challenges but I finally have and I have really enjoyed the ones I've done so far. I've got some footage than I need to edit [and shall this week]. I don't know if these will keep as a monthly activity as it does take a long time to make come up with an idea, shoot and edit into a slightly fancy set up.
So those are my little reflections and a few grand plans for the next few months ahead. I hope you have enjoyed this review. Please do comment with encouragement/suggestions etc.
