I am under no illusions about the subjectivity of such lists, but I am honoured (if somewhat bemused) that James considers my blog to be so good. And thanks too to both of my faithful readers for faithfully persevering with my ramblings!

However, there are some excellent blogs out there, and James does link to some other really good ones. Go and have a browse.

You can also see some of my own favourite reads from across the spectrum of blogworld in my side-bar. Two friends' blogs that I like to visit often are:
* Voice in the Desert - by my colleague Steve, fellow missionary in Burkina Faso, and
* Distinctly Welcoming - by my friend Richard, reflecting on Christian engagement with our multifaith society.

We are based at the Horizons France base at Bourg St Andeol, where we have a lovely small apartment in the Horizons Centre. Lynne will be studying at the Universite d'Avignon. Her courses start on Tuesday. We went there yesterday to have a look round the town and find the university. Unfortunately, you can no longer dance on the Avignon bridge without paying.

Photos coming soon.

Back in the UK, we have friends looking after our house while we are away, but still need to rent or sell it asap. Please pray for us in that.

Many thanks

Housing
We have the building plans
a) for the houses for the teachers at the Gorom-Gorom School, and
b) for our house and office in the Oudalan Ministry Centre.

All of these will be built in the DWF Woodless Construction style. This uses traditional building techniques to build houses entirely out of mud, including the roof, which is a dome or vault. Such houses save on scarce wood, encourage local industry by using local skills and materials, and provide good internal comfort, staying warm in cold season, and cool in hot season.

Brick-making should have started by now, and the goal is to have all these houses built by the end of April.
See more at the APT website here

Classrooms
We hope that work on the classrooms will also start very soon. We are awaiting the final designs and costing. We still need more finance to build the whole school, but think we have enough to make a start by building the first few classes. If you want to contribute towards the building of the school, please click below:

The lovely little cottage where we stayed, and Lynne greeting the sheep in the field out the back.

Inveraray and Ardrishaig

Inveraray

Tarbert

Tarbert

The Kintyre Coast

The Kintyre Coast and Campbeltown harbour

Lynne and the drive home.

And thank you for all your prayers, support, and love.

May you know and celebrate the true joy of Christmas this year - the Good News that is for All People - that God has brought his presence and kingdom to earth through Jesus the Messiah.

God bless you and give you his peace through this season and the coming year.

With great help from dentaid (www.dentaid.org) Lynne has been able to buy a portable dental chair, and portable dental unit (above), as well as some education materials and other tools (below). Now all we have to do is try and get them to Burkina!

Once we start the clinic, we will need more materials, as well as drugs, and fuel for transport. If you want to help support the mobile dental clinic, you can do that by clicking on the picture below:

Two families - one in the US and one in the UK are sponsoring the class between them.

There are 35 children in this second intake. The sponsorship will ensure not only the teacher's salary and the running costs for the class, but also a meal a day for each child.

Thank God with us for this provision for the children, and please pray for them and their teacher, Mr Bamogho, that they might know God's blessing throughout their time at school together.

Please click on the image above if you want to know more about the Gorom-Gorom school. There you can find out more about the vision for the school and the construction plans, as well as the class sponsorship scheme. Or click below to donate online towards the building of the school. Thank you.

APT is the charity that Lynne and I have set up to facilitate all the work we are doing with the church in Burkina Faso, and at the new site you can find out more about everything we do, including:

• evangelism and church planting
  
• the gorom-gorom school
  
• the Oudalan Ministry Centre and our plans to develop it
  
• mobile dental clinic
  
• church partnerships

... and much much more!

Online Donations
You can also now Donate Online to support the work of APT or one of our Current Projects.

There are still some minor adjustments to make, and we hope later to add other bits, such as a shop where you will be able to buy "alternative gifts" through the website. In the meantime, do let us know what you think.

Many thanks to David Nelson from Mossvale Community Church for his wonderful work on the website design!

"Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow."(Is 1)

"Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness..." (Matt 6)

Christ calls us to leave the sin and emptiness of destructive self-gratification that shapes so much of our life, and to start living for something greater. His call is not just to believe in him so that you can go to heaven - his call is to leave self-centredness and to live a costly life of discipleship to bring freedom, healing, and salvation to others. He calls us to stand with the poor, weak, and vulnerable, to stand for justice and truth, to live passionately, purely, and sacrificially to bring God's kingdom of peace and justice to a needy world.

We have only to look at the news to see the suffering and injustice that break the heart of God, whether it is a billion people living in poverty, girls trapped in sex slavery, children taken as soldiers, racism, aids, corruption in high places, homelessness... and you can name many other issues. The God of love and justice cares about the poor and suffering, and calls us to join him in standing up for them.

These are all battles that are worth fighting, but at times it is overwhelming - you cannot fight every battle... But you can do something.

Don't reduce the life-changing gospel to just one aspect of its outworking in social action. But if your life is truly changed by the gospel, if your life is ruled and shaped by the suffering servant, you will find somewhere you can make a difference in the world. Pick a fight - find an injustice that wounds the heart of God, a people suffering, or beaten down by the sin of others, and get involved. Fight for something that is worth giving your life for, and not just for your own comforts and concerns. There are so many fights to be fought. Somehow, somewhere, give yourself to bring God's justice, peace, healing, and freedom to others.

Go on... pick a fight!

"Evil prospers when good men do nothing."

More Than Conquerors
The impetus for this post came from my friend Simon Guillebaud, who has been working in Burundi since 1998, and set up Great Lakes Outreach in 2003 to work for the spiritual and physical development of the country. He has been living for Christ in a war zone alongside radically committed Christians bringing the life-changing grace of Christ to a needy nation.

Simon has now written a book and has just produced a dvd with 13 short films, called "More Than Conquerors". The book and dvd are to "stir up, envision, and challenge followers of Jesus to embrace a costly authentic discipleship." You can buy the book or dvd at the More Than Conquerors website. I will be buying copies, and will review it here in due course. In the meantime, you can see a preview of one of the films here: http://www.more-than-conquerors.com/preview.html

In the province of Oudalan where we work, there are three main people groups: the Fulani, the Tamacheq, and the Songhai. All are Muslim peoples, with a respect for the Jesus of the Quran, but with little understanding of his power to change lives today. Over the last couple of years, we have begun to reach out to a number of Songhai villages, and are now beginning to see people getting hold of the truth of Christ, and deciding to follow him for themselves.

Pastor Matthias has moved into one of the villages, and now has two Songhai men in his church. Pierre and Seydou (right) and Pascal have been visiting four other villages at least every two weeks, and a few individuals have now been baptised. Potentially there is another pastor getting ready to move into one of these villages after the millet harvest is in.

This week, Pierre, Pascal, and Seydou have had a team of Brazilian, Nigerien, and Americans working with them, going into all five villages to teach about Christ. They have found a lot of openness, and in one village three men made the decision to follow Christ.

Please joining us in giving thanks, and pray for

• Pierre, Pascal, Seydou, and Matthias as they continue to bring God's love to the Songhai
  
• The Songhai Christians, that they may grow in the love and grace of Christ
  
• The new pastor hoping to move into the region, that God opens the door for him

Please click below if you wish to donate online to support this work. Thank you.

New Class Starts
I spoke to the headmaster, Nicodeme, by phone this week, and he says that the new teacher has arrived, and they have built another temporary classroom next to the first one, and they are starting classes.

We had hoped to have started building the school proper by now, but unfortunately, the start has been unavoidably delayed. This has been frustrating, but it is encouraging to see Nicodeme, Pastor Daniel, and the church in Gorom-Gorom pushing on so enthusiastically regardless. The essential thing is that the children, who never before had the possibility of going to school, are now getting access to a quality education in a loving Christian environment. Please pray for the teachers and children, that they may know God's blessing this year.

Building Project
The reasons for the delay in the construction project have been various, and partly a result of trying to do everything as well as possible, and of keeping the church in Burkina and partners in Europe walking together in the way forward. Our desire has been to offer an approach to the school construction which is innovative, but without imposing western ideas. Some of the ideas that we have been suggesting have been very new for Burkina, and it may be that some are not appropriate. We hope though that the end result will be not only a quality school, but one that reflects the heart of God's love for the marginalised and dispossesed. Please pray that we may together make swift progress now on the construction project.

Class Sponsorship
We have been hoping to find sponsorship for this second intake, and it looks like we may have found it. Please pray that this will work out - we know it is difficult for people to make such commitments at this time of worldwide financial difficulties.

To find out more about the school sponsorship project and the construction project, please go to the Gorom-Gorom School page.

It is the story of Danny Temple, a computer-hacker and parkour enthusiast, in his pursuit of hidden gold, stolen from the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu in "the most daring heist in African history". Danny and his friend Omar have to use their hacking and parkour skills to find the gold and escape the attentions of a fiendish Facebook-based group that is after them.

As with his previous novel, The Yellowcake Conspiracy, Steve's combination of cool contemporary technology with historical West African cultures provides the catalyst for a thrilling adventure. Leaping and racing from roof-top London to cliff-top Africa, the book - again like "Yellowcake" - begs to be made into a film.

Steve uses remarkable economy of words, not only to maintain the pace and excitement of the story, but also to imbibe you with the worlds to which he introduces you. There are no long boring descriptive paragraphs, yet you find yourself caught up in the Malian scenery and culture as the story runs and vaults past riverside villages and mud-brick mosques. Steve's familiarity with, and love for West Africa gives a respect and authenticity to this Malian context that is lacking in so many other books and films. And the fascination of western teenage boys with the world of computers and free-running will make this an adventure into which many will be able to imagine themselves caught up.

If you are looking for good books for teenage boys, try this. You can buy it on Amazon here.
See more of Steve's writing here

Over the last couple of months, Burkina Faso lost their chance to seize the group's World Cup place through their two defeats by the group's heavyweights, Ivory Coast, including a 5-0 thumping in Abijan in September. Ivory Coast are reckoned by many to be Africa's best chance at the World Cup in South Africa 2010.

Burkina Faso have improved over recent years and dominated the match against Guinea. They are second in the group having won all their other matches, but they still seem to have a way to go to break into Africa's top tier. The game was played in Ghana due to political problems and turmoil in Conakry.

Allez les Etalons!