Q & A

My friend Taylor nominated me for a Liebester Award so now there a couple of questions for me to answer.  You can check out her beautiful blog here.  Below are the questions she asked with my answers!

1.    Why do you blog?

I adore writing and am often seen scribbling down thoughts.  This particular blog was born when I headed off to Czech for three months last summer and now it serves as a way to keep in touch with friends and supporters who want to keep up on my life as I currently support raise and then as I go on to the mission field full time.

2.    What dessert best describes your personality?

Oh wow.  Is there a dessert that can describe an introvert who loves people?  Or a psychology graduate who has probably had to summarise her personality too many times?  I adore baking but I’ve got a rather exact personality so I follow recipes quite carefully…  Maybe my favourite, apple cinnamon crunch?  Great with ice cream, comforting on a cold day. 

3.    What is your ideal way to start the day?

Quietly and slowly.  It doesn’t matter if it’s with the sun shining through the windows or if it’s with the drumming sound of rain, I adore waking up with enough time to wake up slowly, reading in bed quietly for a while and to slowly get ready for the day. 

4.    What is your favourite room in your home?

Probably my kitchen.  Baking is a great de-stressor for me and I enjoy putting on loud music, making something and dancing to process.  Add that to different memories of sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and conversation with different friends down the years… The kitchen has probably been my favourite room of all the houses I’ve lived in. 

5.    What’s your favourite word?

That’s a tough one, as I love a lot of words.  I’m known for saying “brilliant”, “amazing” and, the very Northern Irish, “wee” (meaning small, of course), a lot but for the purposes of this question the answer might have to be onomatopoeia just because of how it sounds. 

There are also a million, glorious Northern Irish sayings and phrases that make me smile because I sometimes fear that I’ll lose them from my vocabulary – shenanigans, red up, and others that are so unique I can’t even seem to find them on Google so I won’t post in case I misspell them.

I also adore the word redeemed for all that it means.  What a powerful description of who we are because of Jesus.

6.    What’s the thing you spend the most time doing each day?

Writing.  Writing emails and support letters.  Writing to friends and supporters.  Writing blog posts and text messages.  So that also means a lot of time on the internet! 

A close second would be reading.  I’ve dipped in and out of lot of great books recently.  So, technically I’ve only finished two books in 2013 so far!  A little ridiculous and I clearly need to work on finishing some.

7.    If you could hop on a plane tomorrow, where would you go?

Well, aside from Czech... I’d adore to travel to New Zealand. 

8.    What movie have you seen the most?

Probably Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce’s fight for the abolition of the slave trade, The Shawshank Redemption or something goofy like You’ve Got Mail, Return to Me or Ever After. 

9.    Who/what is the thing you trust the most?

It feels like a corny, almost cop-out of an answer but it’s got to be God.  I just finished reading a book called Believing God which is about the fact we need to not just believe in God but to believe Him, to believe He is who He says He is, to believe we are who He says we are and how deeply believing and trusting in those things should and will change how we live.  A great challenge!

10.Your last meal – what would it be?

I’m assuming it could be a three course meal so it would be…  A really great Caesar salad to start, with the right ratio of lettuce to dressing to croutons.  The main course would be svíčková, a Czech dish which is beef with a creamy sauce with bread dumplings.  I’d probably finish it off with lemon meringue, with some fresh fruit on the side.

11.If you could invite three people to dinner, who would they be?

Oh, wow.  Dead or alive?  These are some incredibly tough questions!  I think I’ll go with KatieDavis, a girl around my age (I think) who is doing incredible things for God in Africa (her book will hopefully make it on to my kindle at some point).  Brennan Manning would be my second choice – his book The Ragamuffin Gospel is one I read every year and I’d love to hear more stories.  And my third choice would be…  CS Lewis.  Because I’m pretty sure there would be some great stories from him too.