New Job!

It feels like the last month or so has gone by in a blur. I've been dealing with the transition of moving from a that job I love to an exciting job that I hope to love just as much; particularly sleepless children and everything else! Meanwhile poor Stuart has been trying to finish his 20,000 word dissertation.

Saying goodbye to Credo has been sad, I had a fun lunch with staff and a goodbye 'moment' at the Credo Partners jazz night. It was awesome to see 'old' grads from when I was a student to recent grads from the last few years. Thanks everyone who came and said goodbye and thank you!

Working for Barneys has been hectic, after 3 weeks of only working one day a week there is a backlog of stuff that I feel like I haven't caught up on because there's always new stuff to do! Add to that the general challenge of learning new things and moving our services to a brand new building, it's no wonder I collapse in a heap after the boys are put to bed.

If only they would stay in bed...

Aston and Stuart rehearsing with the band in the new Barneys building

Zachariah exploring mummy's new office

 

Bec's Prayer Letter - Special Blog Edition

Dear Blog Readers :-)
 
I'm sending this in my second week of leave from Credo, as predicted I didn't quite get everything done before I finished work including sending this update! I'm currently 35 and a half weeks pregnant and enjoying the break at home, although I feel like there is still a lot to do before baby arrives.

Credo News
My Credo colleagues are currently in the swing of Mid Year Evangelism (MYE), there are teams leading HSC study camps, kids clubs, ministering to International Students and even a mission trip to Taiwan! Please pray for them, that God would be glorified.

Credo is also gearing up for our biennial mission in August "More" www.more.org.au baby is due around this time so I will be watching mission activities from a distance via email and the website.


Spires News
We are enjoying a bit of a break at the moment, Stuart is on uni holidays and it's been really nice to relax as a family. Baby Number 2 is due in 4 and a half weeks and we still have a few bits and pieces to organise before then, including finding a name!

Please be praying that all would go smoothly, that we all adjust well to being a family of four and that baby ends up with a name!

Thanks for your continued prayer and support - stay tuned for news of Baby Number 2!

Love From

Rebecca, Stuart and Aston

2011 So Far

It has been quite a while since I last blogged. Life has been pretty busy, and my laptop screen has died which has been extremely inconvenient.

I'm writing this on my iPhone using a wireless keyboard. It's rather weird because my phone is about a metre away from me charging on the kitchen bench while I am sitting typing at the kitchen table.

The main reason for my lack of blogging is our new 2011 routine, Stuart started a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning this semester which he really enjoys (yay!) and I am now working 3 days a week. I really don't know how families survive with two full time working parents, the two of us are 'working' part time and it feels like every day is an effort.

I was at Credo's Easter Conference (ETC) over the long weekend - there were some amazing talks on "the End" by Murray Smith, it was exciting to look towards the New Creation and know that we are part of it now through Jesus' death and resurrection.

ETC was followed by a few days off, mostly just hanging out at home, doing a bit of shopping and yesterday we took Aston to the Powerhouse Museum. There was lots of fun stuff for him to do and he had heaps of fun!

I'm really not looking forward to getting back into it on Monday

However it's not all bad, I am constantly amazed at how good God has been to us. After a year of being unemployed, Stuart is doing something he enjoys and that will hopefully help get a job he enjoys. I love working with Credo and an extra day a week is not painful at all - the extra money has been helpful too. We both get to see Aston when he is awake and spend one-one time with him and God has provided some amazing friends who love looking after Aston on Mondays - he loves them too!

The manic rushing around will be over soon, only two more months until the end of semester and my maternity leave. Hopefully I'll have a month of rest before baby number 2 arrives, and then a new type of craziness will begin!




Aston and Stuart at The Powerhouse museum

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Pottering and Prayerletters

I've been tweaking a few bits and pieces on my blog, finished labeling all my posts and added a countdown widget for the new baby.

It's been fun looking back over the things I've written in the past - feel free to do some browsing yourself.

For those of you interested in current news here is my most recent prayerletter - I would love you to read it even if you are not a praying person.

A fun picture to make this post a bit more exciting!

It's been a while

Wow, Aston is now 4 months old - it feels like so much has happened and yet not much has happened all at the same time...

I have neglected this blog page, I seem to spend much more time on Facebook and Twitter than blogging, mostly because I can access them on my iphone whereas blogging via iphone is a bit more tricky.

Believe it or not I'm back at work 2 days a week and so far (2 days) it seems to be working. Aston gets to hang out with Daddy on Mondays and with Aunty Belinda on Tuesdays so he is happy. FOr more about my work with Credo check out my AFES page

Hopefully I'll come back and blog a bit more often...

38 weeks & 3 days

Here I am at 38 weeks & 3 days - only 11 days to go according to the countdown on the right... Assuming Jellybaby is born exactly on his due date which is not very likely...

So, what's been happening? I've survived 2 weeks of maternity leave, it's been both nice to be at home and not have to worry too much about work stuff and also hard because uni is starting and lots of exciting things have been happening. 250 people signed up to join small group bible studies - awesome!

I've also spent the last 2 weeks obsessing about and learning to drive - I had 2 driving tests and managed to pass the second one - yay, so now I have my red P's and theoretically can drive a car all by myself... I haven't actually been out by myself yet, I'm still a bit scared, but I will soon, I promise!


Time off has also meant time for organising Jellybaby's room, I've washed all the clothes, sheets etc and put them away - he has so many clothes already! They're so tiny, it's hard to imagine anyone would actually fit into them... I can't wait to try them all on him.


I made the cot up today, we've decided he will sleep in his cot from the beginning as the room is very close to ours - you have to walk through it to get to us. I know I've made the cot up all wrong for a newborn but the blanket and sheets are so cute I couldn't resist putting them on.

I've also started reading through Barneys prepared readings for lent I've never done anything for lent before. It's always been one of those weird Anglican/Catholic things that seemed old fashioned and unnecessary. But I decided that as I have time (at the moment anyway) and I havne't done anything structured in the way of spending time with God lately, that it would be a good thing to start.

It's been fun so far, we're reading Matthew and it's been good to read some of the things Jesus said and see them as part of the bigger picture of His life and ministry. It's also fun to know that there are a bunch of other people reading the same thing, hopefully we'll get a chance to talk about it together.

Well, this is very long post to make up for my lack of posting over the past couple of months - hope you enjoyed it!

Latest News

It has been so long since I've blogged, I'm really getting quite lazy... To add to my laziness instead of actually writing what's been happening I'm going to redirect you to my latest prayerletter for news. For some of you this may be the first time you've seen what I do at work from "the inside" - enjoy :-)

And just to make this post look a bit more interesting here is a new ultrasound picture of the Jellybaby at 28 weeks. I think it's amazing how much detail you can see! (in case you can't see it, there's an eye, a nose and two little fists)

Have Faith in God

I've been thinking a lot about Faith lately, or maybe Trust, or maybe both...

A few weeks ago we (I!) drove up to Cessnock to attend the celebration of 20 years of Dad and Mum working at Cessnock Congregational Church It brought back many memories...

Dad spoke about the '6 little old ladies' who stepped out in faith and agreed to support a minister with a family of 6! They knew that it was time either for the church to start to grow or to close down for good. It's amazing to see how that step of faith has borne fruit over the last 20 years. They had faith that God knew what was best and that God would provide.

On our first Sunday in Cessnock our family doubled the size of the congregation! There are now up to 50 or more people (including kids) at church on a Sunday... In the beginning Dad was paid hardly anything and had to work 2 jobs, now the church can afford to pay him almost a full wage.

Mum and Dad had faith too, there were times when they had no money. Mum would make omletes out of eggs we collected from the geese who lived on our rental property because she had no money to buy anything else. As kids we thought it was fun, and I don't think we ever really knew how hard it was for them. I guess it could have been so easy for them to walk away and find a bigger church with better pay but they trusted that God had put them in Cessnock for a reason and He did.

In Credo small groups we have been studying the book of Hebrews, which is full of so much great stuff! There is one passage though that is quoted more than many others, Hebrews 11, here the writer of Hebrews lists many famous believers from the Old Testament who had faith in God even when it seemed like things weren't going their way. They knew God had a plan for the Salvation of the world, that he would build a new kingdom and they knew that they probably wouldn't see that kingdom before they died but they lived as people who belonged to God's kingdom anyway.

I often struggle to see that far ahead, we have a much more accurate picture of the kingdom in Jesus than they did and yet it still seems so hard... I get dissatisfied with my life, distracted by the little things, scared of what others will think of me...

So, I've been thinking (and praying) alot about faith lately...

GAPP

Some of the fun things I get to do in my job :-)

http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/sydneystories/students_fill_important_gapp/

Back at Work

Holidays are fun...

But...

Time away means having to catch up later...

It's now 619pm and I am still at work waiting for the Credo Handbooks to print...

However...

About an hour ago we thought we wouldn't be able to finish them by the deadline...

God is good...

A Long, Full and Awesome Weekend!

The Easter long weekend was pretty full this year (even more full than usual)! As well as Credo's anual Easter Time Convention (ETC) I also went to my Grandfather's 90th Birthday party!

Here he is cutting his cake, there were lots of people from my family there, many whose names I still don't remember...

It was slightly surreal to leave ETC which feels like a big family event away from the rest of the world and go to another big family event...

ETC as always was awesome, lots of brain stretching teaching, this year on Christian Ethics, and lots of community building fun!

The staff and grads team won our annual Faculty network soccer cup - yay!

Now I am back in the real world attempting to write an essay for Bible college - the last essay (and the only at university) I wrote was in 1998 on mammograms... I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all...

Routine and Me

The older I get, the more and more I realise I am ruled by routines, not just ruled in a being controlled sense but ruled in a "I think routines are awesome and hate not having them" kind of way...

Which makes me wonder why I enjoy student work so much when every 3 or 4 months I need to create and get used to a whole new routine!

At the moment I'm enjoying waking up around 7, having breakfast while reading my "60 days of Prayer for Purpose", praying, heading to the gym and getting to work at around 10am. (Except for Tuesdays when I go to kickboxing class at lunch so skip the gym in the morning.) I know that at the end of February Uni will start and my routine will be turned upside down and I will need to start again. The other thing I know is I don't need to stress about it now - but I am *sigh*.

It's exciting though :-) uni starting back, new small groups and first years to meet, ETC and I have enrolled in a subject at SMBC so I'm looking forward to my first experience of Bible college.

Back to Work

Today was my first day back at work after 3 weeks of holidays and I actually enjoyed it! To tell you the truth I was even looking forward to it, last week I kept thinking about all the things I needed to do, plans I wanted to make for this year, people I needed to call . I had to stop myself from working in the holidays! It's amazing what a few weeks rest will do, at the end of last year I was so over working, I seemed to be tired and grumpy all the time and had almost convinced myself I was a bad staffworker and should maybe do something else.

The sermon last night was on rest, Malcolm spoke about how Christians need to take time out and have good rest and to trust Jesus to look after all the things that keep us busy or worried - it's so true! You can listen to it here (when it's been downloaded in a few days).

I did have a bit of a late start to my working day though, my plan was to be at the gym by 830 and at work by 10 (gotta love flexible working hours). However, it took such a long time for me to pack my bag this morning - it hadn't been packed for a whole 3 weeks, I left late and was halfway to the bus stop when I realised I'd left behind a rather important item of clothing (the hazards of showering and dressing at the gym) and my water bottle. I came home again and ended up arriving at the gym just after 9. I got to work at about 10.30 and spent most of the day cleaning the "Credo Corner" and rearranging the cupboard. I still haven't finished but hopefully will be done by the end of tomorrow.

Back in the Real World

I'm finally back in the real world, after a week and a half of AFES NTE (ie. Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students, National Training Event) and related conferences. As always NTE was a great time of learning about God and really really tiring! I was blessed with a great mission team though (above) who put in a lot of hard work - and it showed! Another great blessing was my billet family Colyn and her daughter Jo, they helped to feel relaxed in their house and treat it as my own, which is what I needed after a week in student accomodation in Canberra.

UTS had the fun (and immense!) job of ushering 1100 people into their seats on NTE, here we all are in our yellow ushers shirts receiving instructions from our ushering guru, Jodi.

More Mongolian People

Greg gave me some of the photos he took in Mongolia, they are so much nicer than mine. Sigh.

This is Tseegi & Muggi, two of the girls in my class. They were also the best English speakers and would often help us by translating for the rest of the class.

Tseegi's sister is one of the doctors in Ulziit, both of her parents are teachers. She wasn't to be a teacher when she grows up.

They also taught me to "coo" when the horses approach the finish line at the Naadam races.

Must do work...

Have you ever had those mornings when you spend an hour at your computer but aren't really sure what you were doing?

I know I should do work, and I know I have work to do, I guess I should just do it...

In other news, I have managed to stay on top of my exercise regime - I even exercised 5 times last week without going to the gym!

I have had 2 days of extreme socialness, Trivia and the biggest schnitzels you've ever seen at The White Cockatoo in Petersham on Tuesday night with Bible Study; Yum Cha yesterday with Credo SaNers and last night I went to a Nutrimetics training evening with my sister! (No I'm not becoming a nutrimetics salesperson, I just went because she said it would be fun and I got free stuff).

The nutrimetics thing was surprisingly fun, I guess that's what happens when you put 30 women in a room and give them beauty products to play with.

So now, back to work - or maybe I should find a pretty picture to put with this post... This is the younger generation of my family from Left to right, Liz, Chloe with mum Belinda, Stuart, Jono & his fiance Katie :-)

It's all part of the job...

Need I say more?

How Much do I Miss Mongolia?

You may have heard me say, or read somewhere, that I miss Mongolia... I really do, I miss the people mostly but also the simplicity of life in the Countryside and the animals.

Apparently I don't have to miss the animals to much because I managed to bring one home with me-meet Giardia (pictured right) who (or some other similar protozoan) is currently having a party inside my intestines.

I had been really proud of the fact that I didn't get sick while I was away... Oh well...

Someone I really do miss is Zula (pronounced Zola), she is a 19year old Mongolian student who spent her summer teaching English with VETNet in Ulziit. She also looked after us very well during the 2 weeks that we stayed with her.

Zula has an amazing story, her father died when she was young and her family moved in with her Uncle who is very opposed to Christianity. I don't want to say too much online but through some hard times Zula came to know Jesus and finds her family relationships very hard at times. This is something that is very common for Mongolian Christians, opposition from, usually Buddhist, family members.

Please pray for Zula that she will remain strong in her faith and deal with her family wisely, also that I and the others who met her can be a good support network for her even though we are so far away.

Mongolian Pinnochio

I've been back in Australia for 4 weeks and I guess it's about time I wrote something about Mongolia.

Above is a video of the Ulziit Children's Intermediate English class performing their version of Pinnochio at our English Party. I asked them to write a play about English class and this is what they came up with. Stu says this task was too post modern for high school students, let alone high school students who speak english as a second language, perhaps he was right...

I miss my Ulziit class, we spent 2 weeks together, which really wasn't enough time to get to know them all. I hope and pray the time I spent with helps them to understand how much Jesus loves them.

I'm Back!!!

It's been almost a week! What can I say? It's almost impossible to describe four weeks in one blog post and I haven't quite worked out how to communicate everything to you, or even if I should ;-)

For now here are a few links to some photo albums I've created - enjoy!

General photos of Mongolia
Ulziit - the first place we taught English
Naadam - The yearly festival of "Manly Sports"
Burd - The second town we stayed in
How to Build a Ger - the tentlike structure many people in the countryside live in
Making Buzz - very yummy dumplings

The photos have fairly detailed comments and give a good idea of what we did, hopefully I'll get around to posting some reflections of what I learnt.