New year, new opportunities

Having just posted a new blog I noticed this one (below) written at the beginning of the year. We must have saved it to post later and just forgot! Whilst it's a little out of date now, for a sense of completeness (for our own sake if no one else's!) then we'd thought we'd post it anyway.

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Funnily enough, 2012 felt as though it ended in almost as much of a blur as 2011, only this time for very different reasons! While December 2011 was full of getting used to having a new baby, November/December 2012 was full of travel (Matt with work to Thailand and Cambodia, and Liz and Levi to Devon), catching up with life on all our returns, and ‘big’ birthdays (30th and 1st!).

Now we are into 2013 we are excitedly looking towards the year ahead. We start by moving house (worryingly, something that is becoming an annual occurrence), although thankfully just within Thame this time. Liz is looking forward to being slightly closer to town, Matt is looking forward to having his own proper office (or spare room!) and Levi will enjoy a bit more space to spread his toys around!

Matt is already straight back into busyness at work helping prepare for another event at the beginning of March. This will require him to return to Thailand at the end of February for 10 days, returning just in time to teach on another course at the Wycliffe Centre at the end of March. It is good that he is currently enjoying the new challenges his role presents!

Liz has also started an NHS course on Chronic Fatigue management. She is looking forward to learning more strategies to help her manage her condition and getting to know some others in a similar situation.

Thank you for your continued support of us throughout 2012. To keep in touch with us throughout 2013, including finding out more about how you can support our work directly, please sign up for our quarterly updates.

Places

Visiting Sheffield again the other week reminded me that it is still a place I love! I had kind of forgotten about it, but there are so many reasons to love it - the greenness, the proximity to the Peaks, the many steep hills that aren't nice in themselves but give great views, the 'villagey' areas with their very different identities that mean that though it is a big city it doesn't alway feel so. I love that with a city (especially if it has good transport links) I can easily access many facilities, especially lots of shops! I guess I am a city girl at heart...! Of course the fact that so many of our good friends still live there helps a lot too! I was musing with Matt as we drove through Chatsworth on the way home, whether a big reason that I look so favourably on Sheffield now is because we have so many good memories there from university and 'early marriage' days. Who knows if it would be the same if we lived there now...?

Either way, I am grateful for all the places that God has brought me to (and through!) in my life that I don't think I would otherwise have known. Having been a 'home-bird' for my adolescence with no desire to 'go off travelling' (ironic, eh?!) and loving my home city Exeter so much, it is rather surprising that I went so far from home for university. Equally, with being so happy in Sheffield and the many opportunities on offer there I think if it hadn't been for Wycliffe we may not have ever left! Instead we have had the unusual and exciting experience of living in Tanzania and currently have the contrasting experience of living in Thame, which is a lovely place to be a mummy. As I look with a sense of slight foreboding to the likely possibility of moving place next year I guess I should look back with gratefulness at the amazing places God has brought me to so far and use it to inspire me with faith for the future.

Reminders

Let’s face it, my day-to-day work really isn’t that exciting. Thankfully I’m someone who often thinks about the ‘big picture’ and so I can be encouraged to keep going because of the part my work plays in the bigger picture. That said, every so often even I need a direct reminder of why I’m doing what I’m doing – if you like, the chance to ‘complete’ a task and to see a result! My trips to Asia, such as my time in Thailand in early March, serve as just such reminder.

My latest trip was split into two parts. It started with a visit to a government school near to the border with Myanmar. The school serves a minority language community that, despite having moved from Myanmar to Thailand many years ago, still struggles to be recognised as Thai. The community exist largely separate from the surrounding people groups and because of this they mainly use their own language (their ‘mother tongue’) at home and for daily activities. Because of this the children’s ability in Thai is very limited and so the school is trying to help the children by allowing lessons in pre-primary and the first couple of years of primary school to be delivered in their mother tongue instead of just Thai. It was great to see the children enjoying learning, but the trip also helped me to understand better some of the challenges such initiatives can face. Minority communities, and the institutions that exist to serve them (such as this school), face very real challenges in terms of resources and opportunities. That is why my team, LEAD Asia, are trying to support this kind of work (and ultimately why I do what I do!).

The second part of my trip was based in Bangkok where we (the LEAD team) facilitated an experience-sharing event around the topic of ‘Identity Based Community Development’ (for more about what this means see here [http://wisbeys.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/exploring-identity-and-development.html]). It was such a privilege to be in a room with 60 people from all over Asia sharing about how they are successfully addressing language and culture in their education and development work. Whilst we did introduce a few new tools/techniques, the majority of the time was spent facilitating the sharing of knowledge between participants themselves. In fact, one of the most exciting things for me to see was actually AFTER the event had formally finished! One morning, on the way to breakfast, I walked past two colleagues from different countries sitting at the end of the corridor excitedly explaining their work to each other! Our events are attended by people who are part of what we call our ‘Community of Practice’, if you like ‘a group of people who do the same stuff’, and they represent all kinds of different organisations and types of projects. Seeing these participants discussing in such energised ways encourages me that there really is a ‘community’ after all.

Now I am back in the UK the real work begins! As part of the funding we are required to write a report, a guide, explaining the discussions from the event. Although it is going to be challenging to summarise such rich and diverse discussions, I am looking forward to sharing people’s experiences, challenges and encouragements with a wider audience. We will try and do justice to the excited conversations that took place!

Before then, however, I am in the middle of teaching on the ‘Language Project Planning and Implementation’ course, helping 23 students think about how they can better plan, monitor and implement their work (literacy, development, translation etc.) so that it brings about change in peoples lives. This is particularly exciting as, once again, the participants come from all over the world and bring a wealth of knowledge and experience. This not only enriches their own learning but also challenges me to think about how these tools can be used in different kinds of situations. These connections, both with the students themselves and the communities with which they are working, again help to remind me why I do what I do. Thank you for continuing to be a part of that with us.