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.