Welcome Afghanistan!

Population:
29,928,987 (July 2005 est.)

Population growth rate:
4.77% note: this rate does not take into consideration the recent war and its continuing impact (2005 est.)

Ethnic groups:
Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%, Baloch 2%, other 4%

Religions:
Sunni Muslim 80%, Shi'a Muslim 19%, other 1%

Languages:
Afghan Persian or Dari (official) 50%, Pashtu (official) 35%, Turkic languages (primarily Uzbek and Turkmen) 11%, 30 minor languages (primarily Balochi and Pashai) 4%, much bilingualism

Welcome Canada!

Population:
32,805,041 (July 2005 est.)

Population growth rate:
0.9% (2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 80.1 years

Ethnic groups:
British Isles origin 28%, French origin 23%, other European 15%, Amerindian 2%, other, mostly Asian, African, Arab 6%, mixed background 26%

Religions:
Roman Catholic 42.6%, Protestant 23.3% (including United Church 9.5%, Anglican 6.8%, Baptist 2.4%, Lutheran 2%), other Christian 4.4%, Muslim 1.9%, other and unspecified 11.8%, none 16% (2001 census)

Languages:
English (official) 59.3%, French (official) 23.2%, other 17.5%

Welcome Morocco!

Population:
32,725,847 (July 2005 est.)

Population growth rate:
1.57% (2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 70.66 years

Ethnic groups:
Arab-Berber 99.1%, other 0.7%, Jewish 0.2%

Religions:
Muslim 98.7%, Christian 1.1%, Jewish 0.2%

Languages:
Arabic (official), Berber dialects, French often the language of business, government, and diplomacy

Welcome Turkey!

Turkey

Population:
69,660,559 (July 2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth: 72.36 years

Population growth rate:
1.09% (2005 est.)

Ethnic groups:
Turkish 80%, Kurdish 20% (estimated)

Religions:
Muslim 99.8% (mostly Sunni), other 0.2% (mostly Christians and Jews)

Languages:
Turkish (official), Kurdish, Arabic, Armenian, Greek

Everybody this is my brain. All looks a bit weird really but at least I have one.

Welcome Germany!

Population:
82,431,390 (July 2005 est.)

Population growth rate:
0% (2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 78.65 years

Ethnic groups:
German 91.5%, Turkish 2.4%, other 6.1% (made up largely of Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish)

Religions:
Protestant 34%, Roman Catholic 34%, Muslim 3.7%, unaffiliated or other 28.3%

Languages:
German

Here are some of the photos from our leaving party in the church here from Saturday night.

Andrea and Sofia very happy :-)

We have been seeing which countries check out our blog. Today we welcome South Africa and Thailand. We now have 14 countries :-)

South Africa

Population:
44,344,136

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 43.27 years

Population growth rate:
-0.31% (2005 est.)

Ethnic groups:
black African 79%, white 9.6%, colored 8.9%, Indian/Asian 2.5% (2001 census)

Religions:
Zion Christian 11.1%, Pentecostal/Charismatic 8.2%, Catholic 7.1%, Methodist 6.8%, Dutch Reformed 6.7%, Anglican 3.8%, other Christian 36%, Islam 1.5%, other 2.3%, unspecified 1.4%, none 15.1% (2001 census)

Languages:
IsiZulu 23.8%, IsiXhosa 17.6%, Afrikaans 13.3%, Sepedi 9.4%, English 8.2%, Setswana 8.2%, Sesotho 7.9%, Xitsonga 4.4%, other 7.2% (2001 census)




Thailand

Population:
65,444,371

Population growth rate:
0.87% (2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 71.95 years

Ethnic groups:
Thai 75%, Chinese 14%, other 11%

Religions:
Buddhist 94.6%, Muslim 4.6%, Christian 0.7%, other 0.1% (2000 census)

Languages:
Thai, English (secondary language of the elite), ethnic and regional dialects

I found this website a while ago but forgot to post about it. It is called http://www.spatial-literacy.org/ and on it you can find out where your surname is most prevelant in the UK and it gives you a map signifying the density of your name in a particular county. My surname is Western and here are the maps! The top map is showing the frequency of my surname in 1881 and the lower map is showing 1998.

Well it is Sunday night her quite late and thought that I'd do a quick update.

We finished off the 24 hours of prayer with communion for the four of us and it was fantastic. The whole 24 hours God's presence was just amazing. I spent four hours in the room in the middle of the night 2am-6am and it flew by. I was only scheduled for three but was so impacted that I needed more time in there. I love it!

This morning I preached in the local church on healing and had a response, which was fantastic as the oholy spirit touched people's lives.

I also cooked a traditional English sunday lunch afterwards for Filippo (Cinzia's father) as a congratulations on his retirement from payed employment. He and his parents are amazing people of God and have really looked after us here in Sicily they are applying to join the Mission Order http://www.missionorder.org

This evening has been free time and I've been trawling random blogs going from link to link and leaving a comment on the ones that I find interesting. It is amazing the stuff out there and I can see how it could easily be quite addictive.

Wow seems strange that we are only here for another six days!

We're 19 hours in and 24 hour prayer is just amazing! God is really in the house. What is really encouraging is that there are more people committing to slots than when we did the previous one and also there are people not just from the church here - fantastic!

Also we have just had our hundredth visitor (from our eleventh country, New Zealand - Neil & Nat?) to this blog since I put up the flag counter on the 21st January.

Hello everybody thankyou so much for your prayer support whilst I was in Hungary I have returned 2 days ago. Let me tell you it is great to be home again. I missed Sofia and Cinzia and Andrea lots, and I had a little rest from Tchad.

My time in Hungary has been shared between fun and serious time. I had the privelege to be at one of the most blessed weddings I have ever been to. The man getting married was a friende from when Cinzia and I were at bible college in Hungary and the wedding was there. This guy is almost without family and I am part of his family. His dad died a long time ago and his mum last summer. He is from Kosovo and when the war was on he lost a brother there, his family are all Muslim he became a christian and led his mum to faith before she died. He still has two brothers and a sister, however, they have disowned him over his faith.

Other time was catching up with the leaders of the bible college and having time with them.
It was very encouraging to me to see how God is puting the desire in People's heart to help us here.

We are having the 24h praying and even in that the Lord is blessing us with people from different churches coming and meeting with Jesus.

We love you and bless you
Marco, Cinzia and Sofia

Sofia giving Andrea a nice slobbering kiss, she would rather
kiss the floor than kiss me (and frequently does!)

















Trying to act all grown up at 1 year old

















The packs at the Post office we didn't get them sent off due to total incompetence in the staff on an afternoon. They kept saying it would be better if you came back in the morning when the people know how to send a parcel.

Marco needed to send a parcel to mainland Italy and even that took 30 minutes of faffing and a distinct lack of knowledge! Incredible!!

We'll try again in the morning having reduced our 8 packs to 3 (by joining them together).

Our first 8 boxes are about to be sent to the lovells, we are trusting the Italian postal system
are we mad? We are praying that the boxes will reach Sheffield intact and unopenned. The first batch is about 70kg (155lb). And we'll probably be sending another 60kg (132lb) just before we leave.

Marco was in another school this morning talking about The Book of Hope and that went well.

Tomorrow at 2pm we start 24hours of prayer, please pray for us in this time, and if you have any prayer requests then email them subito.

Saturday night is our leaving party and Sunday Andrea and I will be sharing and preaching to the church here.

Below sofia playing a bit of footy :-)


Hope that everybody likes the flags counter, we are seeing what new countries will check out the blog (yesterday Brazil!)

Also has anybody got 20/20 on the flag quiz (without help or research? I've managed 18 so far)

Other News Coventry Form are going to be sending a team out in March - hooray - to support Marco and Cinzia.

Today is Marco's birthday (32)! So Andrea is making him a cheesecake and an apple pie with custard, I've made him some special olive oil with peperoncino inside and Ciniz is preparing for him his favourite meal (which takes 7 hours of preperation!) So it is all food orientated.

Hopefully, he will arrive home on time after having delays from Hungary to Rome. He's due in at 2pm our time (GMT +1).

Last Tuesday of the month is Banco Alimentario day! This means that we take 5 cars to a giant warehouse and pick up loads of food to give out to families in need. The warehouse is huge and at any one time has over 1 million kg of pasta and 1/2 million litres of milk - incredible.

Below are some of the photos of out stock room after we have unloaded!


Each of the boxes is 24 packets of pasta, we also picked up 1000litres of milk.








Some more milk for good measure.










Bit of cheese grommit? Provolone cheese about £4 a piece, we got a hundred or so.



Odds and ends and Oranges!

Our photos section has now gone and all of the headings that were now now fall under the Tchad and Andrea time in Rome heading in Flickr (the area where you can see the pictures moving around). Over the next few days I'll post a load from our time here :-) Time for bed.

Generally feeling very tired today, I'm playing around with Flickr and am transfering our photo sections there :-)

Got up this morning at 7 (felt like 4) to go to the hospital to pick up a CAT scan to take back to the UK and found a note saying that somebody that works in the hospital that goes to our church will sort it out. Praise God for angels :-)

So have had time ti nip to the post office and find out if we can send large parcels back to the UK from here in our little town and we can! Up to 30kg and is cheaper than UPS so we'll send some stuff back using the regular post.

Almost time for prayers so logging off.

Thankyou for prayers, doctors said to get checked out in UK, so nothing they are that worried about :-)

Praise God!

Ok long time since the last update so will put just a few bullet points up.

Sofia is well again. Hooray God is so good.
We were blessed in seeing a family come to the Lord.
Cluster last night was fantastic with God in the house.
I got ran over! Currently in between doctors visits :-( Heading off in an hour.
Marco is in Hungary for a wedding.
Book of Hope stuff has started.
Andrea is getting bigger our baby is growing!! 10 weeks to go.
God is providing for all our needs.
My parents have sold their houses in Italy and Rosedale (for all that have visited).
I am preaching (for the 1st time) in church this coming Sunday.
Andrea and I head back to the UK on the 4th Feb.

Hello everyone,
I would like to thanks all of you for your prayer for Sofia! We had a very hard night becouse she had more the 40 of Temperature. I don't know if it the same in English, but here is the Highest temperature you can reach.
We wanted take her to the Hospital but it was a little bit dangerous becouse outside was too cold for her. I went to the Medical Center near the house and at 4:00 am a Doctor came to our house to visit Sofia.
He tryed his best but Sofia was crying very badly so he could not help us very much. He gave us some medicin to take the temperatur down, and he left. Cinzia and I started to pray for her asking Jesus to heal Sofia but untill the 9:00am nothing changed.

Tchad and Andrea came in our room and all togheter we prayed again for her. The temperature was still hight and we were very scare and ready to take Sofia in the Hospital.

About 30 min.later, the temperature started to go down and when Sofia weak up she was much much better!!Praise the Lord. Right now she is sleeping and the situetion is undercontrol.

We want thank and bless each one of you for your prayer, love and kindness to us.
May the Lord bless you reachly today!
Marco,Cinzia and Sofia

Well it is 6:50 am we've been up all night waiting for the dawn to break and it just has - hooray. It's time for bed! Been a great New Year party with lots of fun and games :-)

Happy New Year everybody!