We Do Adventure

Tonight we are officially at the end of our Novi Most summer activities for another year. We had a parents evening to finish things off, giving them a chance to see what their young people had been up to over the last two months. We crammed a bunch of activities into a short video to tell the story, although there was plenty of good stuff that didn't make the cut. It's been another summer where we've seen lots of young people get the opportunity to try new things and have some great some great experiences they probably wouldn't have got on their own. For us it's encouraging to know we have happy parents of the happy young people we've been working with. As we said to them this evening, now we have a bit of a break and we start to think what's going to make this winter special when our activities start up again in October.

I guess it was iTunes that began the new music Tuesday thing. I'm sure the back in the days when Our Price existed you'd go and buy new singles on a Monday. Times change and Tuesday's it is. While I can have few complains about iTunes' service the Tuesday thing is slightly annoying. Monday's are often a day off – we work most weekends – and therefore an ideal day to go previewing new releases. Obviously, I'm ultimately the winner the way things are as the chance of impulse buying a new release is effectively removed. And for that my wallet is thankful! Throughout this summer Tuesdays are our music day. We didn't want to stop music courses altogether over the holidays so we set aside Tuesdays as the day to teach. This morning I've taught keyboards, guitar and bass guitar. I will be back in this evening for more lessons. All of us on the Novi Most team in Jajce teach music, all of us have students at different levels. Some came to us with a little ...

Despite the pretty picture you see here we, like much of Europe, is waiting for summer to really start. This was two weeks ago, at a Novi Most team retreat in Gradac, on the Croatian coast. It was warm enough to swim, so we did as we don't get so many chances to get to the coast now we live in Jajce. Back at home we have begun preparation for winter - yes, already! Five metres of chopped wood arrived yesterday. It's now neatly stacked in the area our our front door. When summer does arrive it'll dry it all out nicely so it's ready to burn. The church building where we run our Novi Most courses has new double glazing which should both keep out the cold and hold the heat for longer. We can look forward to warmer teaching this winter. But, having said all that, we want to enjoy a long, hot summer first!

This time last year I uploaded a video showing me chickening out of a first swim for summer 2011 . We were in Gradac, Croatia, for a Novi Most team retreat and trying to make the most of a few days by the coast. This weekend we were back in the same place for the same reason. However the outcome of the 'will I, won't I?' swimming question was not the same. In an relatively uncharacteristic act of bravery in the face of less-than-warm water I took the plunge...remembering, of course, to take the camera with me so the pain was not in vain. That much was to be expected!

After spending last weekend joking with friends from Mostar about catching up on Herzegovinan rain we have had some of our own this week. It has to be said that, in our experience at least, the rain in Jajce does not fall with the same intensity it does in Mostar. Nor is it so unrelenting. The flipside of this is the summer sun does not shine so long, or so unrelentingly, in Central Bosnia. If the mid-forties are your thing Mostar is undoubtedly the place to go. It's the kind of place where anything below 30C at 11pm on a summer evening starts to feel cool. If you prefer summer highs to hover around the mid-thirties then you'd probably appreciate Jajce's climate. But back to the rain. Yesterday Jajce was alternating between quick, heavy downpours and bright sunshine. As you've probably realised by now, this is good rainbow weather. And so it was, when I was walking home from work that I was treated to a small shower and a great view. I had hoped to get a better vid...

My last post might have made it sound like anything in Jajce involving water and tourism was experiencing something of a hiatus at the moment. Of course, that isn't the whole picture. This evening, for the first time, we rented a boat from outside Hotel Plivsko Jezero and spent a lazy hour soaking up the early evening sun on the lake. As you can see for the video, the boat had a small electric motor, running off what was basically an oversized car battery. It was slow and almost silent. Although my last experience in a boat involved a powerful engine, an exciting turn of speed and vast stretches of Finnish water I think Jajce's lakes, and this evening's excursion, benefit from their lack of the noisy elements of watersport. Tranquil would be a word well used to describe the experience. This little adventure was part of an unintentionally aquatic finale to our Novi Most summer activities with young people in Jajce. Yesterday, we had the first social gathering between...

A couple of years ago Poppiholla, Chicane's take on a Sigur Ros track, was undoubtedly my song of the summer. This year that title is likely to be taken by something of the Hurts' album Happiness. Both of these are unfortunate confessions to make before today's big announcement for they betray a fondness for electronica and retro-styled synth pop. However, unashamed and undeterred, I will offer this suggestion for your summer fix of pop punk rock. Peace & Love is the latest recording from Gilgal, they band which Rowan and I form two-thirds of. It is one of those relentlessly energetic tracks that demands repeated plays at high volume. You could drive fast to it, dance crazily in front of the mirror to it or take your choice between air guitar or air drums. (Full disclosure: I'm the guitarist but when it comes to air instrumentation I am almost exclusively a drummer.) It may not be the sound-of-the-summer but it is certainly a sound-of-the-summer type song. B...

One swallow does not make a summer but could two be the sign of sunshine to come? The online weather forecasts don't agree at the moment but we live in hope. Whatever the weather it was quite a surprise to see these guys outside the window as I was getting breakfast. Perhaps it is evidence of ageing or a sign of the power of parenting that such things catch my attention. As if to prove either point, this morning's bike ride around the lake was a head turning affair. I am pleased to say I didn't run over three of the largest snails I can remember seeing. Spotting the first, bang in the middle of the trail I was riding, had me stopping to gauge just how big he was: head to tail easily as wide as my fist. Maybe that doesn't sound so impressive to you but it was to me! The wisdom of Wikipedia indicates the bird swimming on the lake could be a sign of summer. The margin for error comes from the vagaries of their distribution map and the accuracy of my identification. Ne...

At the beginning of the month I wrote about our Novi Most 'camping' trip up Jahorina, one of the Olympic mountains outside Sarajevo. We had a great time as this short video shows...

I feel bad; bad because weather is the sort of subject you resort to went all other conversation has run dry. Yet it deserves a mention in its own right and so, undeterred, I will venture into the well-trodden preserve of polite small-talk. I have an old CD from an American alternative-rock band called The Choir . I think I liked it; certainly one particular lyric sticks in my mind. “Never trust a weather girl, she smiles as she kills you.” Now, I’m wary of reading too much into other people’s lyrics, but today I’ll use it as a commentary on the unreliability of weather predictions. We’ve had two holidays where we were promised no rain and unbearable heat. It rained most of that week in the south of France and the weather was meek and mild in Tulsa, the first time we visited. (We visited again during an ice storm that plunged Oklahoma into a state of emergency!) Now we’re in Mostar, promised the hottest summer we’ll have ever experienced. It’s barely been spring yet and we’re now into ...

The video pretty much tells the story. Faith Camp is Kingdom Faith's annual family camp; the Move is the youth work there, and has been for the last 15 years. I've worked every one of those years. But for the forseeable future this summer instituation will no longer be part of my life. Cue tears!