Sam has arrived tonight, so we now have a full house!
This morning the three of us got up and ate breakfast together, before Mark and Jon headed out to Hope early to get music gear sorted out.

I enrolled for my course for the third year yesterday. I will be starting on Tuesday with a lecture at 10, and then I am on Wednesday morning, and er...that's it.
My course gets very thin in terms of contact time in the third year; I will end up being in lectures and seminars for six hours per week in the autumn and spring terms.

I got my course books through Amazon yesterday morning. For my unit on the twentieth century British novel I will be reading through Howard's End, Mrs Dalloway, Voyage in the Dark, The End of the Affair, The Unicorn, The Driver's Seat, Brick Lane and Lighthousekeeping. I know, before you ask, that the final two were written in this century!
I am looking forward to getting started. At the moment I am also reading War and Peace. It's a massive novel, and I just felt that I wanted to actually read it, rather than remain terrified of the fact that it's sort of become a shorthand for lengthy 'classic' novels. So far it's a really fascinating read, dealing with a period of history that I know next to nothing about (the Napoleonic wars and the Russian state in the early nineteenth century).

I have been thinking this morning about my course, and my attitude towards it. It's difficult sometimes not to lose some of your passion for reading when the process becomes so formalised by your studies. I haven't read much over the summer, but what I have read has been excellent; in July I read Philip Yancey's What's so amazing about Grace? which changed my thinking and the way I live our my faith, and in August Brother Yun's incredible testimony The Heavenly Man. I knew little about the Chinese church beforehand, certainly I knew nothing in detail. The book is certainly worth reading for anyone as a testimony to the power of God, not just in brother Yun's life, but in the lives of the members of the Chinese Church as a whole, and all our lives as members of the body of Christ (1Corinthians 12). It's a fantastic book, and praise God for the amazing things He has done in China through Brother Yun and so many other faithful followers of Christ there; the accounts of the persecutions faced by the Christians at the hands of the Communist state are astonishing, unbelievably stark and terrifying, but ultimately witness to the triumph of Jesus, who has won the battle and saved all of us from our sins.

It's Friday, and I will be enrolling for my third year of University this afternoon. I had a bit of a problem with my fees, in that the University didn't actually specify how much needed to be paid.
The last few days have been hectic, with a Fresher's week being a really busy time for the Christian Union. We ran a stall at the fair, handed out copies of John's gospel and the brilliant CD that a couple of people from our CU and the Royal Northern College of Music have made together. It looks fantastic, although I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. We also put on a free lunch (sandwiches, crisps, buffet style etc) and talk from Howard Kellet, the leader of my church. I got real nervous about the planning side, and I must admit I totally lost my cool when Howard was late and I couldn't get in touch with him on his mobile. The attendance was great, and I just hope and pray that God will work in the hearts and minds of the people who attended.
Yesterday I was back at work, which was fine, and then came back and spent a bit of time chatting with Mark, my housemate. He's just moved in, and it's been great having him around.

This morning I have been working on some stuff for my Poststructualism course this term, reading Catherine Belsey's 'Critical Practice', which I started last Friday.
That's all for now; need to get enrolling sorted!

Phew, just got in from work and wanted to test this!
Had a decent day at work, quite a quiet one in terms of sales.
Am hopefully off to a friends masquearade party this evening, although I have no mask to speak of!
Tomorrow is the first Christian Union meeting, and then our fresher's fair events kick off on Wednesday, when we will have a stall at the Student's Union and will be running a free lunch and gospel talk at a nearby bar. The pastor at my church, Howard Kellet will be giving the talk.
I need to go and cook tea now, and then sort out what to do about this evening...

It's been a hectic couple of days since I last posted on Thursday night.
I spent most of Friday in the library, reading over Catherine Belsey's 'Critical Pratice'. It's a really interesting kind of introductory text on Literary Theory. I'm not sure I've ever really grasped the basics of Theory in the last two years of my course-I've rather ducked out of engaging with a lot of the harder, more abstract stuff, and I didn't end up doing especially well in my unit on Critical and Cultural Theory last year, ending up with an average of 64%. I haven't read the whole book yet, and I think I am going to need to study it more closely in the coming weeks.
My Amazon stuff came through on Friday too, but I didn't end up getting hold of it as I was out when the delivery came-annoying! Hopefully someone will be around to take delivery of it tomorrow.

I headed out to the prayer meeting at my church on Friday evening. This week had been the church's 'week of prayer', with meetings on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
I travelled down there on the bus, the first time I had done that for ages. Travelling through Salford seemed to give me a fresh understanding of the mission of the church-with me tending to mostly get lifts to small groups and the main Sunday meetings, I don't feel as connected with what the church is actually doing in the city as I maybe used to when I used to bus it in each Sunday and Thursday evening.
At times it seemed so bleak-particularly in the areas between the large tower blocks near Salford shopping city and the market. It was a sunny early evening, and there was a real menacing calm about the estates, with the massive Union Jacks draped from the odd window. There is a real bleak, desparate quality about the Pendleton and Eccles areas of Salford that that bus passes through.
The church, The Hope, was planted in response to an event in the city in 2000 that many people remember as an incredible time of God moving. It started in Swinton, as the original 'message 2000' had been based there. It has grown in five years, from the first meeting in October 2001, from a small church plant meeting in a primary school building, to a large church meeting on the campus of Salford University. I started going after I became I Christian in August 2005.
The point is, I realised much more clearly the church's mission in Salford, or maybe I understood more acutely the challenge that the church faces, with so many, what I guess would be broadly termed 'social problems' facing the people who actually live in the city. It made me see what God has been doing through the church, and gave me more faith in what He is yet to do too.

The prayer meeting was great-there was a good turn out and a really good atmosphere. We spent quite a lot of time praying for the Eden team, the social action group attached to the Church and part of the 'Message Trust' led by Andy Hawthorne.
I got home and then tried to get stuff sorted for the Christian Union; we were spending Saturday helping frehsers move into hall, bag carrying etc. I spent a fair bit of time on the phone, washed up, and went to bed...

I was at work from 10-3 on Saturday, but recieved the bad news that the Christian Union volunteers had been denied access to the University hall of residence to help out the freshers with moving in; at the moment the reasons behind this were still unclear, although the implication seemed to be that it hadn't been cleared properly with the people in charge of admin in the halls. I couldn't be present on the day as I was still at work, but heard a little about it later. I think we will have a chance to discuss it all in much more detail on Tuesday, so I will wait until then before I try to make sense of it all.

Also on Friday my mum had gone into hospital to have an operation to remove one of the bones in her foot. She then had a plastic bone replacement inserted, which will mean she's on crutches for the next six weeks. This is rather complicated in my mum's case, as she has rheumatoid arthritis and doesn't have a lot of mobility in her hands or legs as a result, making using crutches a bit more difficult.
She came out of the hospital on Saturday, and I nipped home this afternoon to take her some Whittard chocolates and see how she was. She seemed fine, coping with the crutches very well, and my Dad now had quite a long period of holiday from work to look after her, so it's looking rather good at the moment. If this operation proves a success in the longer term, she may also have both her ankle bones replaced next year. This would require a lot more care, as she wouldn't be able to walk at all then, possibly even with crutches.
Hopefully she will be able to have the operation-if she can it may increase her mobility to the point where she is almost as she was before she developed the arthritis, over thirty years ago. But we aren't at that point yet, not by a long stretch, and it's probably better to deal with that when and if it arises.

I decided to start this having looked over a friend's blog and begun to feel like it might be useful for me to have somewhere to post my thoughts. I don't have a clue, at this stage, who is likely to read this; I'm trying not to have that in mind. I don't mind the idea of honesty, but I'm not so keen on being maybe too candid on here. I believe there's a difference between the two.
I should give some information about myself from the outset. My name is Robert Wager, I am twenty-one years old, twenty-two in December, and am in my final year studying for a degree in English Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University. I live in Victoria Park, which is just outside the city centre, in a house shared with four others.
I was born in Stockport, and brought up in Bramhall, a suburb in Cheshire. I went to school there, spent my first nineteen years there, and left there two years ago. I lived in Halls of residence for a year, and then have lived in two shared houses since that time.
I attend a church in Salford; I first became a Christian when I was twenty.
I can't drive, I don't have a passport and I work at Whittard. I have one brother, 27, married and no sisters. My mum is a former nurse and my dad is a software engineer. I am writing this in a monotone voice, just to get rid of some of the facts in my head. I don't know where to start.