I have just returned after two weeks break. We went as a family (that is Elaine, myself and the four youngest children) to Crete for a week and then spent a few days with family in Darlington. It is the first time as a family that we have been on a holiday abroad which involved flying and we really enjoyed it and the children had a whale of a time. We stayed in a place couple of kilometres from Rethymnon. It was very hot a couple of days in the 40’s and in the 30’s the rest of the time.

While in Darlington I was able to visit Xcel Church in Newton Aycliffe and was deeply moved by the testimonies of a group who had just returned from a visit to LA and had been involved in outreach with the homeless on Skid row.

Last night I sat and watched a BBC programme on the children of Zimbabwe – if you can get a chance to watch it do so, it is so heartbreaking to see the way that Zimbabwe has become a ruined nation, with very little hope for its people and nothing but extreme poverty for the children. The Church needs to pray fervently that God will miraculously step in and intervene in this nation so that its future can be changed to a nation with hope and a future.