Surveys

Hi. Lizzy here again

I've been thinking about surveys lately, because it feels like I've been surveyed a lot since we came to New Zealand.
First off we've been selected (well, Mothy has) to take part in the "Migrants’ Experiences of New Zealand Longitudinal Immigration Survey" by Statistics New Zealand. Which basically means a nice lady comes to our house every year and asks him lots of questions about what we think of living in New Zealand - our jobs, friends, health, and how long we're going to be staying here.

Then because we're foreigners in a foreign land we got interviewed a few months ago by Jon for his PhD, and he was asking us about our experiences of racial discrimination and other such fun subjects.

Also our friend Kerri is just about finishing her masters thesis on volunteer tourism, so we both got asked lots of questions about different trips we'd done in the past. Me to France, and Mothy to Poland.

In addition I got polled on the phone a few weeks ago, with regards to the general election which will happen later year. It was quite bizarre, cos I'm hardly the most politically astute person around, but I tried my best. The questions were all fired at me in a very dull tone of voice, by someone who was stupendously bored of asking the same question and tapping in the same answers all day long. Most of the questions needed a response in the form of "strongly favourable, somewhat favourable, no opinion, somewhat unfavourable, or strongly unfavourable". Honestly! When do you ever tell someone you're "somewhat favourable" toward Helen Clark? The best bit was when I was asked what was the single most important issue facing NZ this year. Spiritual apathy was my eventual response, and for the first time the clicking of the keyboard on the other end of the phone fell silent! Hah! Now they need to make a new category.
Or probably I'll just be "other" I guess.

But what really got me thinking was the report I've just read by Martina, a German masters student who used our church home group as the basis of a nine week ethnographic research project, on how the group meets each of four basic social needs for its members. Her report makes quite fascinating reading, especially as an 'outsider's view' of what us crazy Christians get up to.
See? I'm doing it already! One of her observations was that how when the members of the group were chatting they 'very often distinguished themselves from non-believers by mentioning whether or not this person was a Christian'. Does that make us sound horribly prejudiced, living in a Christian bubble, and them-and-us cliquey? I fear it does.


Overall Martina was really really positive about the group though, and said how much fun it was, and she was surprised at how much she enjoyed attending the group. Which can only be a good thing, surely. (She also referred to a 'young couple from the UK' at one point. That's nice!) The four needs that she observed the group met were the need for spirituality, support, socialising, and a sense of belonging. This is true for all of us of course, as we are such an international group, with many people far from their homes. In her words the 'small social group even becomes a surrogate family'. Which is kinda interesting as isn't that what the Bible says we should be?
Naturally she wasn't able to write in her report but I really do hope and pray that while she was busily observing us at Bible study, and joining our fun meals together that at least something of the gospel became clearer.
I believe that the reason that the group does meet these human needs must be that God himself meets them through his Holy Spirit and his Church, and I hope Martina comes to realise that too.

Monster garage sale

Lizzy here.

Today was the auspicious occasion of the annual Lincoln Baptist monster garage sale, raising funds for overseas missions. The event is 21 years old this year.

Here are my fellow book-stall-holders Prof Richard Dewhurst, and Dr Errol Wood. (I reckon I'm getting so much more intelligent, by hanging out with people with PhDs all the time).

(This picture was before we allowed the hoards inside the hall).

It's usually pretty busy for the first hour, when the serious bargain hunters are getting stuck in, but then by 11.30 we were telling people to fill a bag for a dollar.

It's a good way to recycle stuff, and help the student community get set up for the year, as they arrive in Lincoln this week, and need furniture for their flats.

These are our friends Matthias, and his daughter Asha, looking for a bargain.


And here's Pam - our wonderful missions team organiser, and Kaye, the latest addition to the Missions Linc team. They've done a great job of selling kitchenware, as you can see. Not much left at all.


Everything was sold or packed away to go for recycling by 1pm, and then it was time to start counting - grand total profit for 2008 was $4800. Not bad eh?

It'll be interesting to see what happens next year, as Lincoln Baptist has just been given our 12 week notice that we'll have to find a new venue to meet on a Sunday (and also for our next garage sale of course), as the community centre is apparently due for demolition very soon.

N week, O week, LUSA & LUCF

Acronyms. Don't ya just love them?!

LUCF is the Lincoln University Christian Fellowship; they've been working hard to build good relationships with LUSA - Lincoln University Students Association. And as part of that growing relationship we're helping out with N & O weeks.


O week is Orientation week - the first week on campus for the new academic year and the new undergraduates. In readiness for that, LUSA has been making 4000 packs to be handed out at registration time. It's been wonderful to see that LUCF have managed to work with LUSA to get an orange LUCF flyer into the packs. The flyer details the LUCF, some LUCF O week activities and includes a LUCF church guide with details of the ten or so local churches attended by LUCF members. It's fantastic to think 4000 Lincoln students will see the flyer. We're under no illusions - most will go straight in the bin (hopefully the recycling bin!) But for some it will cause them to seek out LUCF, or for others wonder if Jesus is worth investigating.

Last year a Christian American exchange student called Jesse arrived at Lincoln (who later in the year was involved in a horrific accident -details here), despite the advice of a Christian friend of his back in Idaho, USA, who'd said 'Lincoln Uni - don't go there, there are no Christians there'. Jesse's mate was wrong - there are Christians here; many less than Idaho maybe, but still God's people meet. We as LUCF failed Jesse's mate by not making our presence known enough, and that, in part, was the impetus for 4000 orange LUCF flyers in the LUSA registration packs.

All year LUCF has been taking opportunities to partner with LUSA (such as cleaning up after events), and now that support has been reciprocated, with LUSA supportive of LUCF events such as Jesus Week. Jesus Week 2008 is listed on the LUSA wall chart and LUSA diary that every student receives. We long for LUSA officers and staff to get to know Jesus themselves, and see this as a great step in that direction.

Earlier in the week Rob (TSCF Mintern in Lincoln 2008) & I spent a few hours with LUSA officers stuffing these thousands of registration packs with all the O week material; LUSA calendar, brunch bar, ads for washing machine hire, wildfoods festival, dominos pizza discount card etc etc AND LUCF orange flyer. It was monotonous work, but a chance for good conversations with LUSA.
So here's a photo of Rob stuffing those packs. The LUCF flyers are the bright orange ones.


This has been so encouraging and we praise God. We also ask God for the situation to change for our friends in the next uni, Canterbury University. My colleague Scott reports that it's a very different situation for the TSCF groups there.

Please do pray -
- For University of Canterbury Christian Union with their frustrations surrounding O week
- For LUCF to take the opportunities presented to them (they don't always realise how good they've got it!) in putting up flyers, speaking to newbies, handing out LUCF pens & TSCF bookmarks.

Happy Birthday Mothy and Lizzie

February 10th was the birthday of one Timothy Hodge, and also of Lizzie Charters, our good friend and neighbour in Lincoln.
Lizzie and her husband Stuart (the chap in the picture above who isn't Mothy) moved to Lincoln just over a year ago from the UK, as Stuart got a job lecturing in computery stuff at Lincoln University. Lizzie is a wonderful violin and viola player, and we get to enjoy her playing at Lincoln Baptist.Here she is with her visiting-from-the-UK-sister, and her visiting-from-the-UK-friend.


Lizzie had organised herself a very civilised birthday party with delicious BBQ food followed by croquet and Pimms on the lawn - followed by more delicious food and birthday cake. As you can maybe see above Lizzie kindly added another candle to her cake, so Mothy could have one to blow out.

Croquet is actually more tricky than you think. But the birthday boy and girl seemed to get the hang of it the best, and showed everyone else how it should be done.
I (Lizzy) (Hodge) really enjoyed hanging out with Lizzie and Stuart and other good friends we've got to know in Lincoln, sitting in the sunshine and chatting. And drinking Pimms and then being able to wander home after a lovely afternoon!

Thanks Lizzie and Stuart!

Nelson - Scripture Union

TSCF Staff & Families conference concluded on Feb1st. On Feb 4th I was again driving over the Lewis Pass to Nelson - the six hour drive is getting familiar to me! I'd been invited to join with Nelson Scripture Union for Equip, assisting last year's school leavers in the transition to university. In addition, whilst in Nelson, I took the opportunity to meet up with some church leaders and TSCF supporters.

Equip was a huge encouragement to me. All involved had been leading school Christian Unions and to see their desire to live for Jesus in the next step was wonderful. I talked from Daniel 1, showing the similarities between them and their new situations at uni to Daniel and his mates at the University of Babylon. After that, Andrea gave her 'top 5 tips' for uni first-timers - these were spot on and born out of her experiences as a first year at Massey Wellington in 2007.
I was especially encouraged to hear her excitement in recounting how her friend became a Christian and how God used her in that. God is at work here - often in small ways (Milo, the Nelson SU worker, apologised for small numbers at Equip, but the vigour and love for Jesus in that small group is worth far more than the many), but definitely at work.

Progress in TSCF work in Lincoln, Nelson and indeed nationwide, is slow but steady, and of great lasting significance.

A big thanks to Milo for inviting me to participate in Equip and to Aunt Maureen for her wonderful hospitality!

TSCF staff & families in Nelson

At the end of January, I was at Bridge Valley camp for TSCF staff & families conference. This is an annual event that is half vision setting for the year and half just being together - and it's great that all staff are there, as well as as many spouses and kids who can make it. This was my fourth such staff & families conference and definitely the best for lots of reasons -

• The summer weather. You'd think late January should be great weather but in Rotorua two years ago it did nothing but rain and rain and we almost got flooded out, but this year sunny Nelson lived up to its billing. Great for us, not so great for farmers - all the paddocks nearby were very brown.

• The site. I admit I had my doubts about going to Bridge Valley. With about 20 kids I thought it much better to be on the sea of lake front rather than up in a valley; and the only other time I'd been to Bridge Valley was last June and it was ice cold. But I was so wrong - an ideal site. Great times playing with the kids in the (green!) lake, on the water slide, in the kayaks, on the shooting range, the standard of food - all excellent. Here's my colleague Jane and her daughter Sasha on the go-kart - who's enjoying it most?

• The guests. It was a joy to welcome John & Beris Butt, students from Otago in the 1950s, and hear their reflections on student work through the decades and their encouragements into today. It's wonderful to have them in the wider TSCF family, supporting us on the front line of the work. It was a real joy too, to welcome Daryl Bay, a local church pastor, as he took one of our morning sessions teaching us from Luke 7:36-50, where a woman wept over Jesus feet and dried them with her hair. It was superb to delve into that passage and for Daryl to teach us so clearly about how great Jesus is - thanks Daryl!
  

• The team. This is the only time of year the whole staff team gathers in such a relaxed manner, and certainly the only time TSCF staff & families are all in one place. It's great. We increasingly feel like a team, and we pray that we will continue to be friends sharing the gospel in universities and with each other. It was sad to farewell Andrew Barlow, team leader from Otago. I've learnt much from Andrew and will miss his wisdom and experience. Yet it was exciting to welcome five new colleagues - Scott, Anna, Gillian, Gina & Ben - from 4 different countries, and working in 3 different cities across NZ in varied roles.

Here's a photo of us all - lifted from the blog of our director, Nigel - his reflections here

And lastly, here's my wonderful, smiling, supervisor Val Goold. Looking forward to working with you this year Val!

Routeburn

So, summer holiday blog part 2....

When down south my brother Andy & I went tramping along the Routeburn Track. We travelled west to east, unlike most, starting from The Divide, near the Homer Tunnel on the Milford Road. It's a three day tramp, so our wives became latte ladies on route to driving a long long way round by road to get to the other end.

This is where the hut was on the first night.


A waterfall along the way, with a wet Andy. We tried to imagine what it'd be like in the rain, but we couldn't. Trampers should allow for at least one wet day on the Routeburn. Ours was day 3 which worked out well. Unsurprisingly, on this blog are photos from sunny days 1 & 2 - day 3 we got soaked!!



Tired at the end, soaked from the rain, but happy to have spent 3 days in the Alps on a fantastic tramp. Thanks bro for suggesting it!

Reminiscing re holidays

Lizzy here
Although we're well in to the new year now, I've been looking at holiday photos and I thought I should share some with the world.

We had a great time with Andy and Louise visiting form the UK. (For those that don't know you'll surely be able to tell, just by looking, who is related to who).


We spent Christmas day in the Catlins. Here's the view, waking up on Christmas day.



And in case you're wondering the rest of the holiday was equally stressful, wandering by lakes, eating lovely food, luging in Queenstown, reading books, and crocheting. (In trees).


The boys also did a beautiful 3 day walk - but Mothy can write about that later. Me and Louise were too busy drinking coffee and shopping so I can't report on that part of the trip.

So then it was quite a shock to the system to have to go back to work, but fortunately it was only for 2 days and then our good friend from the Salford University era, Liz P, came to visit and we had another holiday - this time to the Marlborough Sounds (via Kaikoura).


This was also involving lots of walking through beautiful scenery, dolphin watching, lovely food and wine - and lots of laughs.

Here at Trig K are Lizzy and Liz (modelling the latest in head wear for sunsmart behaviour).



It was good to get back to Lincoln feeling nicely rested and ready for the year ahead.