Life after Death

So we're in the post-Easter period now (both in terms of 2009 and human history in general) and I think that we're also entering a difficult period in the life of a community. At least, that's what it seems like to me. The honeymoon period is over and the realities of work, study and life together are really beginning to sink their pointy teeth into the shoulder-region of our collective expectations and experiences.

That was a rather pretentious way of saying that everyone seems to be feeling a bit tired and jaded at the moment.

Ruth and I have our own reasons for feeling this way. Baby number four will be slithering into the world sometime in the next four weeks (God willing) and I'm beginning to get the old "What Are We Doing?" jitters. Having a new child around tends to irrecoverably change your life again, after having just about got used to child number three. What's more, we're still in Bridging Visa limbo - and probably will be until we've had the new baby and managed to get a passport and medical for him/her - and I'm still learning and finding my feet in this whole teaching and discipleship thing. In other words, I feel very much like I'm in a state of flux at the moment and I'm not really very good at handling that kind of thing. In fact, you might say that I'm not a flux capacitor. What I will say, however, is that I'm a whole lot better than I used to be. I think this is a result of actually beginning to learn from the experiences that God has inflicted on us. I have this sneaking suspicion that He might actually be able to be trusted with everything. Not bad, considering that this July/August will mark the 16th anniversary of me starting my serious attempt to follow Jesus. From those months onwards, I will officially be able to claim that I have been a Christian for most of my life. It's about time that I learned something.

I think that next time that I write, I might share with you some of the changes that have resulted from the screen fast that we shared in over Lent. It was a really helpful time for me. Now, I'm off to watch Je Souhaite from The X-Files season seven. Sounds French.

Easter is Coming...

Well, we're just about a week away from Good Friday so I suppose that I'd better get my Easter hat on. I believe that it's actually called an Easter bonnet.

It's pretty scary to think that the baby is well on its way now. There will soon be six of us milling around trying to get on with our lives. It's hard enough with five, let alone an extra one. Still, it'll bring some much needed balance to the household as we will be able to form two factions of three each - rather than three versus two. If we have another daughter than there will be the further balance of three blokes and three girls. Otherwise, the battle of the sexes will tip even further in my favour.

Calvin is in a play that's been written and produced by the locals. It's for the children to perform, but it's become something of a big production over the years. It runs four performances from Thursday to Sunday, and they get fair crowds at each show. They had their first production today, and Calvin has a speaking part. He's memorised this very complex poem that he has to recite - he's pretty gifted in that regard. Apparently he was due to go on but was nowhere to be seen so they had to go ahead and miss out his poem. It turns out that he had been struck by an attack of the nerves and had to go to the toilet just before he went on. Consequently he missed it. Poor boy. He was a bit upset, but hopefully he'll feel better tomorrow as he will hopefully get his first performance under his belt.

Things are still going well for us here. We're enjoying things in the Aussie country and the community here at Canowindra are great people to share life with. I'm really enjoying the teaching still and benefiting from the interaction with the guys in the classroom. I think that God has been gracious to me really, and He seems to have spoken through me a few times - despite me being new at this. I suppose I'd better make sure that I don't get 'not new' at this, as that's probably when I'll stop trusting in God to make up for my failings. Still, He wouldn't have put me here if He didn't think I was up to it. I guess it's all possible due to Easter anyway, so I hope that all of you who are reading this have a good one!

Fast Times at Canowindra High

In preparation for Easter, the centre at Canowindra is currently going through a 'Screen Fast'. What this means is that we are trying to fast from TV/Computer screens during the Lent period. So why am I updating the blog, you may ask, as doesn't this involve breaking the fast? Well, there are levels of fasting and what I'm doing is not using a 'screen' for 'enjoyment' during Lent. This means no computer, PlayStation or TV for entertainment purposes. As I don't enjoy updating my blog then my fast remains unbroken while I write this...

Actually, the purpose of the fast is to deny these things the level of control in our lives that they seem to have. For some of the students, pulling themselves away from films, video games and Facebook is a really tough thing to ask. It seems to me that we've become somewhat addicted to the screen when it comes to spending our 'free' time. It's also about freeing up some time to do more productive things. So I'll be doing a lot more reading and (hopefully) boardgaming over the next month. I might use the PC for relaxation if it's for something constructive (like writing and the like). I think that this will be a really useful discipline for me, as I lose a fair amount of time each day to browsing the Internet and making my way through the X-Files. I'm currently watching Season 7, so it'll be a month until I can carry on and pick up from episode 9 (Signs and Wonders, X-Philes).

Just to keep you all informed - Ruth and I have finally got our bridging visa, which is good because otherwise we would have had to leave the country today. We're waiting for them to process our application and make a decision, which may well not happen until the baby is born. A decision being made any earlier would require direct intervention from God, so let's pray for that, eh?


Despite having just graduated, my education continues. I spent some time yesterday laying new turf in parts of the garden, all in the name of an easy life. I am looking for a garden that requires minimum care, so Ruth and I decided to increase the grass quotient. It works well, except for the fact that I hate mowing it. We didn't quite have enough turf to do the whole garden, but we did most of it. Some of the fellows came and helped us out - but only for a short while. Most of it was done by myself and Les, one of the staff team who looks after the centre. Well, he did most of it. I was quite happy to watch a 79-year-old lay my turf for me. What are you looking at me like that for? If it makes it any better, at least I wasn't shouting "FASTER! GO FASTER, OLD MAN!" as he did it.

There is a price to pay for a nice garden. If I'm not the one that has to pay it, then all the better.

Third Time Lucky...

Hey everyone. Well, the big news is that we finally got our visa application off. It will have arrived on Friday, which is good news because our current visa actually runs out in seven days. As always, everything runs to God's timing and not ours. I think we're beginning to learn our lesson about trusting Him to sort everything out in His timing - so hopefully now He'll stop doing this to us.

The other big news is that I graduated yesterday. For the third time. I've already gone through this with King's College and Spurgeon's, so as you can imagine, it was a nice change to go through it again on the other side of the world.


However, I was a little disappointed to find that Aussies do the graduation thing the same way as we do in the UK. I was expecting a bit of local flavour, you know, maybe corks hanging from the bottom of the tassle on the cap or something.

I also wasn't too pleased with the way that the cap made me look. It's not exactly a flattering look, especially for one with such a hairstyle as mine. So I decided to take matters into my own hands...


After all, "When in Rome..." and all that. After two previous graduations it was nice to do things a little differently this time and acknowledge my Aussie hosts by wearing an Akubra hat. CRIKEY!!


Spot the Englishman. It's like Where's Wally? but totally different.

Anyway, I had a really great time at the graduation. I enjoyed it, and felt very pleased that I've cleared this final hurdle. Canowindra is going really well - I feel that this is what I've been working up to for the past two years and that I'm finally doing what I came to Australia to do. I'm excited about what I'm doing and what I hope that God will do through Ruth and I while we're here. As I've said in a previous blog, there's no better place to be than where God wants you. Now that the visa application is off I can focus on the next few months of teaching and discipling, as well as the baby coming in May. We'll see what God does now!

How's It Going?

This is just a quick update - trying to keep to my "little and often" pledge.

Thanks to all of those who expressed concern over the Victorian bushfires. We are nowhere near the affected areas of Victoria or NSW, but we did have a couple of days of light fog which was caused by the smoke from bushfires drifting hundreds of kilometres in our direction. You may have gathered that the public response over here has been quite amazing.

Things are well with us. We're still waiting for the final few things to come together before we can submit our visa application, but these are all things that are in hands other than ours so there's nothing that we can do about it at the moment. That's fine by me, as it allows me to develop my skills in laziness. I'm not getting much chance to do that at the moment.

When I've been disciplined enough to put aside a little time for reflection and reading I've been thinking a bit more about the idea of stories and their role in God's purposes. It's a subject that interests me considerably, and I like to think of the way that our lives unfold as part of God's bigger story. One of the things that I came across that I really enjoyed was a quote by G.K. Chesterton. Apparently, he said "You cannot finish a sum how you like, but you can finish a story how you like." That's pretty good.

Now I just need to make the time to start reading my new book - Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories by Algernon Blackwood.

Hottest Place on Earth

We hear that the UK is currently covered in snow drifts that have run the country to a standstill. The irony is that New South Wales was, apparently, officially the hottest place on the planet yesterday with temperatures of 47 degrees recorded in some parts of the state. It didn't get quite that hot here in Canowindra, but it was 40 degrees and that's still pretty hot. Hot enough to make picking watermelons a little bit harder than it might be.

The first few weeks with the new students have gone well so far. They're a good bunch and I'm looking forward to seeing how this year pans out. Calvin's been back at school for a couple of weeks now, and he's really enjoying that too. It's going well for us. We're hoping to get the final stages of our visa application sorted out in the next week or so too. I suppose that this is the final calm before the storm really, or at least that's how it feels.

Of course, the baby's birth is getting nearer and nearer and we're still not sure about names. We've polled the children and the depths of our own imaginations and we're currently looking at one of the following names - "England", "Bon Bon", "Action Man", "A Little Boy" and "Will". Obviously the children all think that it's going to be a boy. How interesting.

You might want to get your votes in before it's too late.

Picking Watermelons

The new students have arrived and we've begun Orientation. I've not been around much for the first couple of days, so I haven't really begun to get to know the students. I'm not taking my first lecture until next week, so I've been preparing that and trying to get up to speed with the lectures that will follow after my first one. It's going to be quite an intense time, but I think I already told you that, didn't I?

Ruth and I went to Canberra on Tuesday (oh, and the kids came as well) for our medicals. It went well, but we've got no air conditioning in the car so the journey was...let's just say 'highly uncomfortable'. I was the only one having an X-Ray (the kids don't need one and Ruth is pregnant) so had to face, once again, the indignity of having my body zapped with radiation and then the radiologist coming out a few moments later and saying "Yeah, we need to do another one because your chest is too big for the machine". The same happened to me in the UK. So, I'm being doubly irradiated every time they X-Ray my chest purely because I happen to be a stunning Adonis. Well, or freakishly malformed. One of the two.

Speaking of 'Adonis', I've had a few shifts on the farm. We've been doing watermelon picking. We start our shift at 6:30am, and finish at 12pm - so as to avoid the blistering Australian sun. For that period I am picking watermelons. Watermelons can grow to 20 kilos plus (Calvin was weighed for our medicals and came in at 20.1 kilos) so I'm spending a few hours heaving my children around in the heat. A few more weeks of that and I'll have the bronzed body of a Greek god and arms that could crush a human head like...well, like a ripe watermelon. A perfect set of skills for teaching and discipling in a Christian community, I'm sure you agree.

Anyway, I'd better get on with it. Those lectures won't write themselves.