Praying for us (II)

Some of you have told us that you follow our blog and pray for us from time to time. This means a lot to us, so this is a blog entry just for you, to give you an idea of things you might like to thank God for and to pray for over the coming month...

Like Jacob having his wages changed 10 times under Laban's employment, Mark has had his academic program changed almost as many times in the past month. There is still some confusion as to exactly what it is he needs to complete in order to qualify for his degree. There are administrative requirements connected with this, with cut-off dates. It would be an excellent thing if the powers-that-be could come to a firm mind on the subject and communicate this to Mark before these dates kick in. On the other hand, Mark is finding the opportunity to engage with a variety of the early Fathers and to attend lectures, and sessions with his supervisor very stimulating.

We've been really grateful that our experience of the health system has been easy and useful in the lead up to our baby's birth. We've found the midwife/doctor arrangement to be sane and helpful. The only concern with the baby's health has been the possibility of it being too big (which is natural and normal for a Moore College baby, but they can't know that), but scans have shown that it is only slightly bigger than average. These are all things we are grateful to God for, so please join us in thanking him for his mercy to this little one, and to pray for its safe delivery in the near future.

We would really like our boxes to be delivered. Although we have everything we need to survive, in our boxes are useful things like gloves, beanies, etc, our doonah (all particularly useful now the weather has started to reach below zero), books for Mark's study, recipe books, baby clothes and other paraphenalia, which we would enjoy using. If we had an arrival date for these items, it would help our patience. However, Customs has had them for 3 weeks now, and the shipping company has told us that they want to go over this whole shipment, with no sense of when this process might be completed. We could get a phone call tomorrow, or in several months. We'd prefer to get the phone call tomorrow, if it's all the same to Customs. Meanwhile we have to decide whether to 'waste' money buying things we already have or hoping that, for example the boxes come before the baby is born so that we have some clothes for it.

We had a truly enjoyable couple of days at York (you may have noticed), and another couple of days away at Cardiff (which you'll hear all about...). We don't expect we'll do many other trips for quite some time, so we were grateful to manage these two and get a sense of the world beyond Oxford. We are grateful that God enabled us to have these refreshing, interesting trips, and that there were no complications with the pregnancy or accidents in travel.

Jennie has started to make progress on her various projects, but (possibly unwisely) is involved in three Bible study groups, which is not a bad thing, but along with sorting out various administrative details and preparing everything for the arrival of the little Baddeley, it chews up a lot of her week. Of course, the increasing immobility and tiredness which accompanies late pregnancy also contributes to this. She does enjoy the reading and thinking she is able to do, and is particularly looking forward to getting more involved in the translation work on Revelation.

We miss our friends in Australia. We are grateful that we know some kind people at Oxford. We, being eccentric, find making friends a long-term activity, and this is sometimes discouraging. We have enjoyed catching up with old friends who are over here and who we would probably not get the opportunity to hang out with this side of heaven unless we were here. All of this is very different to the people-intensive context we were in just two months ago, and so sometimes we feel disorientated by it. We would value the wisdom that comes from above as we negotiate the highs and lows of this and work at understanding how to love English people on their terms.


Once again, thank you for your prayers. JMB&MDB