Time for an update on what has been going on in our lives. The first bit of news is BIG!

Our sovereign God caught us all by surprise when we learned in July that his good plans for us include a fifth child! We thought that four children were more than enough, but no we really are expecting yet another, probably in March. Having broken the news to the rest of the family and thought things through, we realise that we need to find a house with a bit more space. We have put our house on the market this week, so please pray with us for a buyer. We can’t afford to pay much more for a different house, especially considering that the total costs of moving now amount to around £15000 – half of which is tax. We don’t have any significant savings, so our mortgage will need to increase substantially. Apart from moving, we will also need to change our car before the baby is born since we currently only have a six seater. We really would appreciate your continued prayers particularly for Margo in the pregnancy, but also for the whole family as we go through lots of change again.

Luke's first day

• Paul’s trip to the US in June was helpful for his IT work and Margo survived without losing her sanity. AIM’s new online personnel placement system which we have been talking about for so long is finally close to being launched. AIM’s reorganization into regions is going well, but we would appreciate prayer for the upcoming International Council meetings.
  
• Christopher took his French GCSE a year early and achieved an excellent A* grade. He is now beginning year 11 and will take about a dozen more GCSEs next summer. He and Emma really enjoyed attending a Christian event called Creation Fest in Devon with their cousins. Emma begins year 10, her first year of GCSE courses.
• At the other end of his school years, four year old Luke was very excited to begin at Holy Trinity Primary School last Tuesday. He was very tired by the end of the week but is very happy to go each morning.
• Eliana, our little two year old whirlwind continues to keep us all laughing and on our toes as she rushes around the house organising and disorganising everyone and everything. Keeping things in a state ready for prospective buyers to view the house is a big challenge!
• We took our car through the channel tunnel and drove down through France for a relaxing family holiday in Spain with Margo’s parents and her sister’s family. While we were there Margo reached the big four-o milestone! ... (continued)
  

Here's a problem for those who dismiss prophetic books like Jeremiah as having been written long after the events they describe - from today's Times :

The British Museum yesterday hailed a discovery within a modest clay tablet in its collection as a breakthrough for biblical archaeology – dramatic proof of the accuracy of the Old Testament.

The cuneiform inscription in a tablet dating from 595BC has been deciphered for the first time – revealing a reference to an official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that proves the historical existence of a figure mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.

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Social networking sites up to this point seemed to be either full of Brazilians (Orkut), people trying to get headhunted for a new job (LinkedIn) or 13 year old girls with awful camera phone pictures and a talent for writing with non-alphabetic symbols  (Bebo/MySpace). You may have gladly let those pass you by, but if you haven't joined Facebook already then perhaps it's time to jump on to its massive wave. For me at least Facebook seems to be somewhat less of a place for meeting new people than restoring a loose link with friends I had almost lost touch with. The statistics on FB are phenomenal - these are from Trendcatching last month:

• 25m users, growing 3% per week, which is 100,000 new users per day (up from 7.5m users in July 2006), projected to reach 50m by end of 2007
• The fastest growing demographic is the 25 and over age group
• 1% of all time spent on the internet is facebook
  
• 50% of registered users come back to the site every day.
• 60 billion page views per month, 50 pages per user every day
• 6th most trafficked site in the U.S
• 1 bn photos hosted on the site, 6m uploaded each deay, 70k photos served per second, making facebook the biggest photo sharing site on the web
• 1-2 m people are on facebook simultaneously at any one time
• $100m per year advertising deal with Microsoft
• Internal valuation of $8bn, based on projected revenues of $1bn p.a. by 2015