The Faraway Tree

Found this on a site with the top 45 Doctor Who moments. Which are pretty good, really!

Watch this list of reasons we love the Doctor!

Congratulations to my sister EJ and her husband Ken, and happy birthday to little Hannah Jane, who was born at 6:30pm this evening. Blessings on all three and a long and joyous life together! Mwah! I love you guys! I can’t wait to meet my niece! If she’s anything like her parents she’ll be a wonderfully gorgeous person. I’ll post a photo or ten when I have them.

A little sister sent me this, and made the first half of the comment you see in the title.

It’s a bit hard to see the storyline in this trailer – it’s less coherent than the teaser. But it’s our latest Harry Potter fix, so I enjoyed it.

Off I go, back to marking!

Edit: Oh YES! There’s a bigger, better, much more coherent one! Here ’tis!

Check out the Malfoy moment! And the Snape scene: can’t wait, it looks good! Yaay!

So: it looks like I’m going to Thailand for two weeks in June/July next year!

I’ve been thinking about missions for a while now, wondering whether I’m suited to it and when I should go and where. I’ve prayed about it and thought about it and studied my ‘marketable’ skills (English teaching, a love of storytelling, love of current hobbies, ESL bible studies and languages) as well as my weaknesses/concerns (phobias of everything from uncomfortable living conditions, hot weather and creepy-crawlies, through to assault, kidnapping and torture). I’ve looked at the fact that I want to be the closest to God that I can be and I want to give God the opportunity to use me and grow me beyond anything I can imagine. I’ve noticed that the best Christians are to be found in the worst situations. I’ve noted that as soon as I started ‘doing stuff’ for God, my personal spiritual growth was boosted astronomically. And I have come to the realisation that I don’t want to come to the end of my life *not* having a) tried missions, b) done ‘my utmost for His highest’, c) grown as much as is possible in this life by taking every opportunity given to me by God to grow. So how will I know if I’ve done these things? Guess I’ll have to start praying and ‘doing stuff’ for God and see where it will lead me. I’m planning on going to a conference on missions in January; on shortening my plans for Europe to a few months, if I feel that’s a better use of my time and money; and on getting the heck out there for a trial run sometime.

…That sometime just got a whole lot more defined! After all of the above thinking and praying, along came this weekend. First, I almost wasn’t here this weekend. It was 50/50 whether I went to visit my parents or stayed here and put in an appearance at my regular church. By a small margin of obligation and inertia, I stayed. Surfing the internet idly on Friday night, I happened upon a link that sent me to a blog written by an American couple serving in a hill tribe in Thailand, and I found it fascinating and read many of the articles and watched video footage, marveling at how ‘normal’ daily life seemed, despite the differences in practicalities. Today, Sunday, due to avowed “God-incidence”, the missionaries who had been invited to speak two weekends ago at my church had been delayed and spoke today. They have been running business-based missions in Thailand for a few years now and gave us a run-down on why they run businesses and what they’ve been doing for those years. The focus of their speech was on oral learners being 70% of the target audience of missions and the great need for oral storytellers. Then I noticed on their list they had a need for English teachers. Then, at the end, a member of our church got up and announced that there were plans in the works for sending over a team of maybe eight people to build fishing nets for their fish farms, over a two week period in June/July next year. Well! I figured it was time to put my money where my mouth was and sign up, so I did. I talked to the person who announced it, who said they were going to invite me. Then we talked to the ex-missionaries who are going to lead the expedition. Then we talked to the missionaries who spoke, and I learned that their Thai friends are saying to them all the time, “When will you teach us English? When will you give our children English lessons?”. She said, what with the cafe/restaurant/bakery, the farm, the meatworks, the fish farm, the new piggery and all, she just doesn’t have time! She also said that although having a short term mission team was heaps and heaps of work, they knew it was the way people ‘tried missions’ to see if it was for them. She said the itinerary could easily be changed to incorporate the skills of whoever was going over. And then she said that what really was needed in a teacher was not ESL qualifications but creativity, so that concepts could be taught in creative ways – apparently this is not a skill fostered by the Thai education system. I don’t have any idea whether I’m creative enough for that kind of job (I am not a primary school teacher, and I now wish I was!), but I’ll have a go!

Suddenly the world seems such a ‘normal’ place to be visiting. I wonder if that feeling will last long… Something I’d prefer not to last is my admittedly self-centered approach to missions: if you’ll notice, all the above talk was about me. I have the feeling missions is proportionally more about other people… and God. Please pray that God’s will be done in all this! That’s really all I can ask! Thanks, and amen.

My car is paid off! Yippee! To celebrate, I think I will buy myself Season 4 of Doctor Who and a passport. Europe 2010 savings start now…