So we are on a new adventure from August, we are off to Zim, i plan to continue doing my business from there, Marie is going to be doing some volunteering for a Church out there assuming she has the time to do it and we will both be getting stuck into a new church plant/evening service called One which meets at the SevenArts Cinema in the Avondale area of Harare, more info here: http://www.facebook.com/ONEpeeps

Matt Ellis made a great comment at church yesterday, “It’s a New Year but its still the same Jesus!” which reminded me that although we will be going to a new country, We’ll still be following the same God that is with us in the UK. and just following on from that Andy Tilsley’s talk on Greed and Contentment, he was talking about being content with what we have and what God has blessed us with. These are going to be powerful words when times are challenging in a whole new country.

After his preach Andy got Lydia and the band to sing an old Hymn over the congregation called Give me Jesus, its actually on the end of the podcast itself over here i had the pleasure of editing the podcast this week because of the song, from our Multi-Track recording of the service so have the song on its own. It’s such a simple song that i want to make my philosophy for the year. you should have a listen to it.

Give Me Jesus

This was taken direct off one of the sound desks yesterday and has only had a little processing done to it, no re-recording or over dubbing. It’s a really beautiful track.

Our first week involved seeing lots of family and friends in Harare, with a large family braai at my parents’ house on the Tuesday evening for around 30 people (which was only half of my family!). We also spent hours and hours gathering together all the documentation for Ant’s residency application, going to the Immigration office and being told that a new additional requirement is police clearance from the UK. Blow! That came as such a disappointment to us as we were hoping to sort out Ant’s residency whilst we were in Zim this time round (now that we’re back in the UK, we’re busy getting Ant’s UK police clearance sorted at the moment). Thankfully, our friend Craig is coming over to the UK in February for a week, so he’s kindly offered to take Ant’s UK police clearance back with him to Zim for submission, along with all the other residency application documentation.

On our second week in Zim, Ant went off to Marondera (about an hour’s drive from Harare) on Zam Hols Boys’ Camp for 7 days, which consisted of 56 teenage boys and 15 leaders, a total of 71 males! Originally, I was going to go along as a spouse, but I then found out that I’d be the only female on the campsite, so I very quickly changed my mind! In the end, I went up for just one night with Craig’s parents who were visiting (Craig is the guy who leads Zam Hols Camps). It was great to join them for the evening session of fantastic Spirit-led worship and an inspiring talk by Tariro on the gospel and not living for the things of this world. After breakfast the following morning, I headed back to Harare with Craig’s parents, and looked forward to seeing my husband again in 4 days’ time. When Ant got back to Harare after Zam Hols Camp, he was very tired and sunburnt, but he said he had a fantastic time and looks forward to next time Ant also did a talk on Sin the one evening on Zam Hols Camp, which he said was very well received by the guys, and he got a lot of positive feedback about it. He also led an afternoon Bible Study for the 16-18 year olds on 1 Peter 3, which he said was very interactive and it got people discussing.

On our third week in Zim, we headed to Kariba (about 4 hours drive from Harare) with my family, who have a holiday house there in an area called Charara. The house is a few minutes’ walk from Lake Kariba, so we often went out on my dad’s boat on a game-viewing drive or just for a ride. My brothers really like fishing, so they often took the boat out to go catch fish. There is also a swimming pool, so we’d often find ourselves in the swimming pool for most of the day, as temperatures were around 40 degrees on most days. The heat in Kariba is almost unbearable and the mosquitoes were a real nuisance (Ant especially got bitten the most out of everyone, we think it’s because of his English blood;) but apart from that we had a great time! Christmas Day was nice and relaxed, we exchanged presents, had a delicious and very large Christmas lunch, then relaxed by the pool for the rest of the afternoon.

We drove back to Harare on Boxing Day and flew back to the UK on the 27th. We thank God for a wonderful, relaxing, long holiday!

The film is basically about a couple who after 7 years things are just drifting apart to the point they consider divorce, The main character Caleb Holt (Kirk Cameron) is challenged by his father to take on the “Love Dare” for 40 days rather than just signing the divorce papers and while it starts hard he sticks at it. He hits rock bottom around day 20 when his wife Katherine Holt (Erin Bethea) tells him that she no longer loves him. At this point he speaks to his father who comes down to visit and shares the gospel with him and he gets saved.

Now that he is saved he has a new heart to continue on the Love Dare through to completion and beyond even though he hasn’t been shown any appreciation up to that point. The film culminates in the (somewhat expected) ending of his wife coming to him and saying “Something’s Changed in you & I want that too!”

While my brief synopsis doesn’t really do much for the story or the film itself I can say it was excellent and quite moving in places, I dont want to give too many of the story points away, but at times it was humorous, especially the tabasco sauce drinking scene! and at times it was very moving, when Katherine suddenly realised who paid the $24,000 to supply her Mum the right bed and wheelchair she needed after suffering a stroke.

I did particularly like the similarities in the middle when Caleb was asking his Dad, how can he (Caleb) love someone despite constantly being despised and rejected – Remind you of Jesus much?

For sure the acting is not hollywood level, but its not bad either, it’s pretty respectable and it did lack the cheesy cringe factor that I’ve witnessed when seeing some other christian videos, they even apparently filmed it on location in 30 days!.

Watching the film left me with an interesting thought and in many respects a warning to myself and probably any other married couple – marriages don’t just break up overnight, they break up slowly over a long time, so subtly perhaps that you probably don’t even notice something is wrong until its often too late. In fact the DVD extra features includes a music video and the film itself has as part of its sound track, the song by Casting Crowns – Slow Fade, heres the chorus:

It’s a slow fade when you give yourself away
It’s a slow fade when black and white have turned to gray
Thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid
When you give yourself away
People never crumble in a day
It’s a slow fade, it’s a slow fade

This really got me thinking how easy that could happen to Marie and myself if I’m not careful, it’s not one big mistake that would cost me my marriage one day, its would be a systematic and constant assumption that “everything is fine” or making compromises for things that really shouldn’t be compromised in the first place.

For example in the film Katherine talks about the “trash” on the internet that he views, and there are further references to it, and it basically means looking at porn. while i would consider myself blessed that I don’t struggle with that temptation anymore it got me thinking is there anything that I do that might be considered to be valuing more than my wife? it’s a good reality check to make sure I am keeping anything like that in check, like the desire to always have the latest Apple gadgets like the iPad or Working too much.

The film is a good reminder that marriage is hard work and there are times when it’s not easy and it’s not just about feelings sometimes but just as much about making conscious decisions to love someone even when its hard, probably one of the cheesiest lines of the film was “Just because you fireproof your home, it doesn’t mean fire wont come to it” such a great reminder that yes as you work on your marriage, it doesn’t guarantee you safety from tests and trials but it should warn you not to get complacent

So I guess my review ends with a warning to any married couples out there to keep checking on your marriage and making sure there’s nothing that would cause you to make compromises on it or your partner. I’d actually recommend the film as well as a good watch too!

The film ends with this song, Love is Not a Fight by Warren Barfield, and I think it does a fairly good job of summing up what love (and by extension marriage too), i thought i would post the lyrics up:

Love is not a place
To come and go as we please
It’s a house we enter in
Then commit to never leave

So lock the door behind you
Throw away the key
We’ll work it out together
Let it bring us to our knees

Love is a shelter in a raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
And if we try to leave, may God send angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it’s something worth fighting for

To some, love is a word
That they can fall into
But when they’re falling out
Keeping that word is hard to do

Love is a shelter in a raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
And if we try to leave, may God send angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it’s something worth fighting for

Love will come to save us
If we’ll only call
He will ask nothing from us
But demand we give our all

Love is a shelter in a raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
And if we try to leave, may God send angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it’s something worth fighting for

I will fight for you
Would you fight for me?
It’s worth fighting for

For example, the other day when I was on my way to work during rush hour, I knew the tube would be packed as it is every morning, and that I’d have to stand up, packed in like a sardine. I was in quite a grouchy mood, and I was thinking about how much I miss the chivalrous well-mannered men in Zimbabwe who offer up their seats to women, so that women don’t have to either stand or sit on the floor (depending on the situation). Anyway, I got on the tube, rammed in by people on all sides of me, and the man sitting in a seat nearby stands up and offers me his seat, and he sounded English! Now that never happens to me when I’m travelling on the tubes, and the fact that it occurred just at the moment when I was grouchy and complaining about it in my head, how ironic, that’s God’s humour So of course I gladly accepted! (Thank You God for giving me a seat even though I didn’t ask You for one

Another example, when I was 22, I went on a Zambezi Holidays youth camp to serve as a leader. For those that don’t know, Zam Hols is the Zimbabwe equivalent of Newday (except on a much smaller scale), where youth from the Newfrontiers churches gather for 7 days during the school holidays for worship, teaching, bible studies, games, water sports, abseiling and much more. Anyway, I was really excited about serving on Zam Hols camp, and I was thinking ‘Phew! Praise God I wasn’t one of the leaders who got asked to do a talk or bible study! Yessssss!’ However, a few days before the camp, I got asked to lead one of the bible studies, and the topic I got given was ‘sexual temptation’! Apparently they hadn’t yet found a leader to take that slot. At that point I had never done a talk or bible study before, let alone on a topic such as this, so I was like ‘God that’s not funny’ but I think He thought it was! Apparently it went well, and somehow God got me through it, phew! (this example is slightly different, as God gave me something I didn’t ask for, and that I definitely didn’t want!)

A final example, many years ago, I think when I was about 19 or 20, I remember thinking how nice it would be to get married to a businessman and do bookkeeping in Zimbabwe. I never prayed for that, it was just a thought. And the irony is that I’m married to Anthony who runs his own business, and I’ll be doing his bookkeeping in Zimbabwe in a few months time

Now I’m not saying that prayer isn’t important, because I firmly believe in the power of prayer, but what I’m saying is that God knows the desires of my heart and sometimes He gives me things that I want or think about even when I can’t be bothered to pray for it, because He’s so kind and good and gracious and wonderful and loving!

So it has been a while so fair bit of news to share I think Finally on my final year of my degree, just 5 modules and a final year project and I will be done with studying for the foreseeable future, given that fact its obviously clear I passed all my exams in june and august. its been a busy summer for me and for STS. I finally got round to going limited as a registered company which has some tax advantages and other benefits Not forgetting a debit card with the company name on it! there’s been lots of work coming in which has been really a blessing to Marie and I.

I’m keeping this fairly short as I’d like to try and do more updates than my once every couple of months routine, so I’ll move on to upcoming changes. there’s only really 2 changes, firstly Marie has been considering blogging about stuff that she is passionate about or just plain wants to talk about, and we thought why not put it all here, because that way this will get more content over time and doesn’t have any extra expense! So soon you will be seeing posts from Marie Somerset, do read and enjoy them because I’m certain there will be some good pearls of wisdom in there.

second change which probably quite a few people now about by now is that Marie and I will be planning to emigrate to Zimbabwe by September 2012. Yes folks that’s less than 11 months away! we had been taking the first 6 months of this year to pray about the long term future and where God is calling us be it Zimbabwe or the UK or anywhere else in the world. God made it pretty clear that Zimbabwe is the place we should be to raise a family and build my business (no Marie isn’t pregnant yet!). There is going to be a lot of challenges ahead for us and some tricky decisions to be made, like do we ship everything or do we sell/get rid of stuff and re-buy new stuff in Zimbabwe? down to what church we should be involved in, we’d quite like to get involved in one of the Harare church plants but that is still to be decided, ultimately we want to do what God wants us to do so we are still open to prayers on that. we really would appreciate your prayers and thoughts over this next period of time while we plan, co-ordinate and ultimately move from the UK to Zimbabwe. Initially the biggest hurdle in our way is that I need to get residency status this December when we travel for Christmas. because Marie was born in Zimbabwe and is a resident herself it should be a straightforward process, however we are not dealing with a straightforward government so we do need specific prayers that the right people see the documentation required and have the grace and wisdom to grant the application

I will leave our news there for now, perhaps next time you might see a post from Marie.

DISCLAIMERS:

• I mention 2 companies below, Amazon and Made.com it’s by no means their fault that I have had this experience (although the decision to use HDNL in the first place could be debated) it is solely HDNL/Yodel causing the problems. Amazon and Made.com are good quality companies and i would recommend either of them
• It’s quite possible this is a localised HDNL issue (New Cross Depot, London) however not a lot of my reading over the internet fills me with confidence that it is only localised but rather likely a systemic company/country-wide plague
• THIS IS A LONG EMAIL – You have been warned
• REDACTED a couple of items that would be otherwise exposing personal information unneccesarily

UPDATES:

• made.com been in touch with me due to my comments on twitter, they are chasing from there end and are doing much more than is required to help me out – that is what you call customer service
• 27/10/2011 – 8AM: one of made.com’s items finally arrived at 21:40 last night, totally missed the delivery window and…. after 9PM!!!!, still as of yet not even acknowledgement of my complaint
• I got an actual email response from Yodel dated – 2nd November 18:32, the from name was Amazon which is slightly misleading (i might report this to Amazon), its just a generic letter of response and “assurance” that they will investigate it

To Whom It May Concern,

This is the second time in almost as many weeks that I have had a package going via Home Delivery Network (HDNL), to arrive shockingly late or not at all. So far in the case of the second time, I’d like to record a catalogue of failures from my 2 current experiences and ask you what you are going to do about it. I’d like to point out that out of around 8 dealings with HDNL, I have only ever had one package arrive within the set time on the set day, but even then the delivery driver had a lack of care for the package, but I am not referring to that incident.

1st Delivery/Order – Amazon.com

I ordered several goods via amazon prime, which entitled me to free next day delivery. One item, being sent direct from Amazon, was sent via HDNL. It was ordered on a Sunday and dispatched on the Monday. I expected to receive the package on the Tuesday and took time off work to be able to receive it. The package did not arrive on the Tuesday and at 7pm I called the call centre. I was advised that you were very busy and that delivery drivers were delivering until 9pm, despite your advertised delivery time of 7am to 7pm. I called later at just after 9pm to be told the same information, as the only information the call centre had was that it was still out on the van.

Needless to say it was not delivered on that Tuesday and I had wasted a whole day waiting in for a package I expected to arrive. I called on the Wednesday morning at about 9am once the delivery status had been updated to scanned into depot again, and they just told me the vans load until 11:30am, so they couldn’t say what was happening. They also said they would need a day to recover the package so that I could go and collect it, as I required the item I had ordered on that Wednesday (which is why I ordered next day delivery) so I said no. I also was advised that the driver “did not attempt delivery” which meant they would today, as drivers are “not allowed to ‘not attempt’ delivery more than once”. The advisor also as good as guaranteed that I would receive the package on that day.

I called up at 7pm when the parcel had still not arrived, and was advised that they were very busy and were delivering until 9pm – again your automated service still said 7am – 7pm. I also expressed my concern that I was told the exact same the previous day, and the member of staff was fairly blunt in saying there was nothing she could do about it because the depot was closed. When I asked to speak to the manager, she put me on hold and then took my contact details and advised me a manager would call back – this never happened.

I called again at 9pm as the parcel had still not arrived, and the advisor had no information and could not contact the depot or driver.

The package arrived at 22:15pm. 5 mins later and I would have actually have been in bed! Also the package was supposed to be signed for, however the driver literally just handed me the package after I opened the door and commented “its a bit late isn’t it?” and walked off, no signature taken or anything.

2nd Delivery/Order – Made.com

I ordered these packages some weeks ago and was prepared for the wait originally. I received an email from them on Friday 21st October advising that they were dispatching the goods to the courier. I received an email on the Monday 24th to say they were due to be delivered on Tuesday 25th. I clicked on one of the emails to reschedule the delivery to the Wednesday, which was more convenient for me – I wrongly assumed this was for both packages, however it looks like it was only for one of the 2 packages. Your system is obviously lacking the ability to realise that if 1 package to the same destination as the other is rescheduled, it should ask to reschedule the other.

I got an email Tuesday morning saying you were going to deliver between 4pm and 7pm, so I rush home in order to be able to receive it, however it did not turn up within that window. I called at just after 7pm, but before I did I checked the tracking status of one of my orders (at this stage I only assumed there was one order in your system and not two)

Lo and behold it says the package had been delivered. I have checked with my neighbours and they have not received a package for me, and I was also at the property at the delivery time and was no more than 3 metres away from the front door for most of the delivery window time, so would have heard someone attempting to deliver and heard a van drive up or away. I called to complain that I have not received the parcel, and they told me all they could do was email the depot because it was closed at 6pm. I asked to speak to a manager and was told I couldn’t. I asked why not and was told they were “busy dealing with escalations”, so I asked for the call to be “escalated”. The advisor took my contact details and told me a manager would be in touch – as of yet no manager has been in touch.

I called yet again this morning and was advised of the 2 parcels and I was advised such: for the parcel that was “delivered” but not i was told they have to contact the depot and interview the driver, and it can take up to 48 hours and that I should contact the seller: made.com
The second package they advised me was damaged and awaiting further advice, and the advisor didn’t really know what to advise me to do. As of yet I have not received either of these 2 packages and I actually need them for people to sit on tonight!

So from my details above, here is how HDNL/Yodel totally failed me:

• First order arrived a day (and a half) late
• First order management never called me back
• First order the package arrived at 10pm despite being given two sets of information separately
• First order didn’t get me to sign for it

• Second order, two separate items, wasn’t made clear in emails
• One item is supposedly damaged
• One item was marked as delivered, but it looks like driver never bothered to deliver it
• Advisors have no info or means to contact depot
• Has still not arrived

I also have lost earnings as a result of waiting for packages, I am a freelance IT consultant and any time I need to stay off work and wait for a package is actual lost earnings, because I do not have things like annual leave, so to earn money I have to work. If I exclude the days when I arranged to be present to receive the goods, I have so far lost:

Order 1: 1 day
Order 2: half a day and counting

If I was to be working 9 – 5 during that lost time, based on the above figures, I have lost overin potential earnings due to the failures of HDNL and Yodel.

I also have the following questions of HDNL:

• why do you deliver until 7pm but your depots “close” at 6pm, how is this even possible?
• why do you have to deliver until 9pm and then not actually update your automated systems to advise of this?
• why do managers not call back customers despite being told this would happen?
• how are you going to repair your reputation with myself?
• how is it acceptable to deliver packages after 10pm when your stated delivery time is 7am to 7pm?
• how is it even possible for your drivers to take too many packages to deliver that they are not able to complete there delivery round within the delivery day?
• is it acceptable to provide so little information to the customer?

Until I actually get a satisfactory response, I will be advising friends, family and other acquaintances to immediately cancel orders from suppliers that send via HDNL/Yodel, and/or to get their suppliers to choose alternatives to yourselves. I will also be forwarding trimmed down versions of this email to made.com and amazon.com and suggest they find alternative providers.

For your reference, my delivery address is:

Regards

You won’t relent until You, have it all
My heart is Yours
You won’t relent until You, have it all
My heart is Yours

I’ll set You as a seal upon my heart
As a seal upon my arm
For there is love that is as strong as death
Jealousy demanding as the grave
And many waters cannot quench this love

Come be the fire inside of me
Come be the flame upon my heart
Come be the fire inside of me
Until You and I are One

I don’t want to talk about You
Like You’re not in the room
I want to look right at You
I want to sing right to You

ChristChurch has been good, Marie and I got to witness Andy Tilsley being officially “prayed in” as an elder and the general comings and goings of church life, Marie has joined the crèche team to help combat the current and further impending baby boom! and they couldn’t keep me away, am back serving Sundays on the sound team now technically called the tech team (excuse the pun) which encompasses the visuals team also which i think is a brilliant move purely because the 2 teams were quite small on there own and trying to organise social events was rather difficult because normally what ended up happening is 2 guys end up meeting up for a beer (which is not a bad thing!) rather than 5 or 6 people meeting up having a meal and enjoying good fellowship.

Marie has been the usual busy with working for Newfrontiers, carrying on as usual despite all the ongoing staff changes that take place regularly, she is still knitting a woolly green scarf for me for Christmas, hopefully its ready in time although i wont need it because we are going to Zimbabwe for Christmas again, Woohoo!

Studies have finally concluded for the summer, I am still awaiting results and have one exam to do in august – due to the bad organisation of Uni which I have probably mentioned before. i had to spend 4 weeks at uni after my exams attending lectures which apparently had been the plan since the beginning of the academic year but we weren’t informed until mid way through our exam period despite several people including myself asking for clarification several times throughout this year (i think that shows how badly organised the uni is) in fact some were so badly caught out because they had already booked flights home for the summer and couldn’t attend the lectures. gladly though its all done, i cant wait to get this degree over and done with purely because it holds very little relevance to my day to day freelance work, and any content that did is already going out of date, that’s how fast paced the IT industry really is.

Work has really ramped up the last month or so, I’ve had the chance to meet and even work with some great teams like Made.com (new web infrastructure), Rackspace (got to see the Rackspace mini and got a goody bag) and have met the awesome GoSquared team and WooThemes just the other week, its keeping me busy which i like and importantly its earning money, I’m actually quite thankful to God for all the work as I had to replace my laptop a few weeks ago (the old one couldn’t take the load i was throwing at it) which cost a seriously painful amount of money which if it wasn’t for the work i wouldn’t have been able to buy.

Other than that, not much has changed, still busy busy busy, off to see my dad and Karen for the weekend next weekend which should be good as we will probably get to go to the village church too so that should be an experience for Marie (its not Newfrontiers!), the weather here has been pretty miserable the last few days but we got a couple of thunder storms that Marie and I both enjoy watching.

some others may have wondered why its taken me so long to get this up and posted but that too is not without a good reason either. I wont bore you with the details but the shortest summary i can give you is that i applied for a phone line and broadband before we left at the beginning of december as a migration to take the existing line on, but when we got back BT had terminated the existing line and BeThere couldnt process that order so we had to put a whole new order in, which means BT openreach have to install a new line, and by install i mean pretty much plug it back in at the exchange. In BT Openreach’s infinitely efficient wisdom, i have to wait a further 6 weeks for the line to be activated (on my birthday no less), the ironic thing is. if i wanted to pay more to get less and went with BT direct, my phone line would probably have been activated in less time by the same external company (Openreach).

so i titled this post, Mobile Broadband makes you efficient, so i better say something about that! all i can say it does. My work relies on having an internet connection to be able to do my job, i need to communicate with clients often over skype or email and IM etc, i actually need to work on remote web servers (its funny how that needs an internet connection) among various other things. my options were pay £35 for access to a BT openzone wifi spot of which there just so happens to be one within reach of my flat (oh the irony) or about the same price for a pay as you go mobile broadband dongle with O2. I found out with some earlier research that the openzone in my flat’s range is not some proper openzone but a slightly dodgy openzone run off the back of someones BusinessHub and tends to only work in my living room or more often than not, only when i didnt want to use it. That left me with only one option, Mobile Broadband.

so it makes me more efficient. Why? because i just so happen to live in that one flat in Zone 1 London that has a very poor 3g signal on pretty much all the networks this means that my 3g mobile broadband is more often than not working on low speed (boy am i glad that SSH is text based and doesnt require broadband!) and it tends to disconnect a lot, not to mention because i am a mac user, i am somewhat shunned by mobile broadband companies because i cant get access to any of the wifi points easily without using bootcamp, so am forced to just stick it out on mobile signal.

so i have to be more efficient for 2 reasons. firstly, speed, because the net speed is so low compared to modern broadband via adsl or cable i cant get as much done as i normally would, this means i need to multi task all my internet usage tasks as much as i can and basically queue up internet tasks to maximise my connected time, especially when i hit into free public wifi or into university (my uni just got hit with about 4GB of iplayer downloads this week alone!).

Secondly, mobile broadband accounts are generally all bandwith capped or charge per MB/GB, i use O2 and they charge about £15 per 2GB for 31 days and i seem to be getting through one every 2 weeks or so. because of this i have to be much more aware of what i do online, this means i have facebooked less, twittered less and more importantly watched less video and less random surfing. you would probably be surprised at how much time can be gained by cutting all that stuff out. its kind of scary that just doing the basics for work uses so much, imagine how much bandwith (and cost) i would be using if i was just surfing and working at full capacity as i normally would, thankfully the iphone has helped in keeping in touch via facebook and twitter so i have been making the most of that data connection as well, but it does highlight how in todays civilisation we are pretty much dependant on the internet for our way of life and keeping in touch.

other quick round up since december. Uni is ok, little boring and frustrating at the moment and i wish it was just over already (only 18 months left), i go on second honeymoon (because one is not enough!) for a week over the week of my birthday, should be a nice relaxing week after the manic start to the year, and i should also return to working internet amongst other things!

will try and post here as i can and as time allows