Ruth

Well, it's over a month since she was born so high time we updated this (thanks Bec for the prod, which reminds me to ask you for any suggestions on subjects you'd be interested to read entries on. The current economic crisis for example, and how to pull through. Or the ridiculous habit of the English media to talk up England's chances at a major sporting event. Or whether the youth of today are to blame for being the youth of today that they are.)

Anyway, Ruth is very well! She came out very happily and has been largely happy since, though the last few days she's been a bit more unsettled and keeping Dawn awake more at night. I have realised that my night time feeding efforts with my three girls have not been as sterling as they were with Joel back in the winter of 2002, and I have become adept at sleeping through her 3-hourly wake-ups. She looks like all our other kids did, give or take an ounce or two, and has an impressive ability to fix one with a rather impassive stare, which really makes you feel as though she is sizing you up.

C Day

Unless Dawn goes into labour early, Bod will be dragged into the world at the QMC Nottingham on Tuesday, 4 May. Watch this space (and other ones too) for developments.

Apparently girls are better

When we had the last scan in January the doctor told us that Bod (baby number 4) was a girl. We’d had a thing in our family that Joel and I needed a boy so we’d be even, but that of course we’d be very happy with any kind of baby. Expressing this to the doctor at the time, he said we should be totally happy that we’re having another girl, because (so the saying goes) if you have a girl she’ll bring you a plate of food or a glass of water, but if you have a boy all you’ll get is a kick.

At first we told this to others thinking it was mostly ironic with a grain of truth, but given the number of times our Greek friends have said pretty much exactly the same thing since, I’m now thinking that it is spoken as absolute truth without a hint of irony! Just this morning our neighbour said the same thing to me, and elaborated with illustrations from her own family (one boy, one girl, now both grown up and both thoroughly nice people) and from her mother’s home town, Sparta, where ‘only the boys are children’ – i.e. the girls are expected to pull their weight from the off but the boys are princes. Houses are passed down always to the boys, the girls leave home with nothing.

It’s another illustration of just how ‘eastern’ Greece is.

Here’s another one, while we’re on the subject – we’ve spoken to a couple of older students this week about possibly joining us on some kind of fledgling Relay scheme. Both are positive initially, though we’ll see what comes of it. One, however, said something that you’d never hear in the UK. ‘My parents will be supportive [that you might hear] but the rest of my family might not be [i.e. uncles, grandparents etc].’

So what you might ask? Well, which graduating students in England would consider the opinion of grandparents as decisive in such decision-making?

It's not that this is either a good thing or a bad thing, though it might be one or the other, but that it just makes the whole process of influencing the decision-making of students more complicated and definitely slower. (We make no apologies for that part of our work! I needed influencing when I was a student - and still do - and it's no controversy that Athenian students also need influencing for the gospel. The influence of the extended family, however, is so much more significant than northern Europeans are used to.

Implications for us? It reminds us of the value of close family, because we are not islands. It reminds me of the need to become wise as I grow older so that I can be of good influence on my nephews and nieces and grandchildren, as well as my own four children - the alternative that I will be of no influence or actually bad influence.

(And that's the subject for another post - how much help do we get in our churches regarding our growing old? Almost all of us will do it and are doing it already, but how many of us will do it well?)

Other implications: we need more patience for it takes longer for people to change their minds or make up their minds. We need to see people not as individuals but parts of a wider network. And we also need to see how the gospel should critique (not criticise) the extended family culture, because the students we work with are still to be held accountable in the end for their choices and opportunities and effectiveness and productivity in their knowledge of Christ.

The harvest is plentiful, but...

We've just been talking with our friends and team mates Joel and Bekah, and did a quick sketch of the needs and opportunities in student ministry in the Hellenic world. I thought I'd jot it down before bed.

Let's imagine that we had in our house this evening five people or couples or families who were:

1. Willing to set aside 5-10+ years
2. Up for learning a notoriously tricky language (especially for anglophones)
3. Flexible enough to learn the ropes of life and work among Greeks
4. Committed to Christ and his gospel word
5. Keen to proclaim him among students (most of whom don't want to listen) and disciple the small number of those who already know him
   

then we'd hire a big van and drive from Athens to Patras to Ioannina to Thessaloniki to Volos and back to Athens, leaving one in each place with the remit to get stuck in for the long haul. We'd also put one on the plane to Cyprus.

And that's just scratching the surface.

The reality is that, even if we did make God's plans for him, we don't have any of those people at the moment, either Greek or non-Greek. In 10 years time we hope to have some Greeks but perhaps in rather fewer years we might have some non-Greeks (ξένοι) and so I thought I'd put this up here, to begin actively floating that boat...among those who might read this...perhaps this little thought might enter your minds, or the minds of faithful people you have influence over...perhaps...

Be prepared, in season and out of season

I was at class this morning (increasingly rare due to other pressures, not least uterine) and at last had the opportunity to greet a chap who's joined since the beginning of the year. His Greek sounds perfect (he's half Greek) but his spelling is atrocious, as I could see from the amount of red ink on his spelling test. That's not important. What is important is that through a simple introduction, and his (to be expected) surprise at our being here, I was able to explain what we do in simple terms.

His immediate response? 'I've never read the Bible but I'd like to! Something about it interests me.'

What exactly interests him I don't know, and maybe it's purely intellectual curiosity, but I'll be giving him a Greek NT on Friday and have asked if he'd like to read it it with me. I think one thing that roused his curiosity was when I said that we meet with students wherever they are - at uni, in homes, in town centres - because there are no restrictions to reading the Bible!

We'll see what comes of it, but I was reminded of Paul to Timothy in 2 Tim 4 - be prepared.

For our encouragement

I just read this post from the Gospel Coalition blog as it had been 'liked' by our team member Tim. As you'll see from the title, it's all about ways to encourage missionaries (though we don't like that word very much!), hence the title of this post.

It's not that we're feeling particularly discouraged at the moment, but almost all of the advice strikes a chord with me (as long as you read UK for USA) so, for our encouragement, which we need and value, have a read of it!

A new year, a new effort to blog

It's now an embarrassingly long time since we wrote anything on here. However, it's a new year, I'm writing a new prayer letter, and it suddenly became crystal clear that this would be a useful and easy thing to do.

In the letter I'm currently writing is the above family photo. We're inside a church which is inside a tree!

Here is the only webpage we've found about it, and be warned: the blog from which this is taken is an enormous archive of all sorts of articles about Greek Orthodoxy. We are not responsible for the content of other websites!

However, I thought I'd put this up as a useful insight into the wonderful (sic) world of Eastern Orthodoxy at a folk level. The information on these pages is not 'official' teaching, but may as well be in that it is all accepted as part of the fabric of the faith. Have a look if you're curious!