Investing for the future

As a colleague said this week during the introductory class of the ‘Multilingual Education’ module:

“As staff here in Gloucester we really like this course, partly because it’s a subject that we’re passionate about… but also because it comes at a time of year when the seasons are changing and summer feels just around the corner.”

She couldn’t have been more right. As we start the final taught class of this year's Masters programme here in Gloucester, it feels somehow fitting that the trees and flowers should be bursting into new life. In our small class of five students we have a wide range of backgrounds, work contexts, and expectations represented. What they all do have in common, however, is a hope that the seeds of time and effort that they are investing now will one day burst into flower, both in their lives and the lives of the communities they work with.

Although it is often a privilege to see students mature in their understanding around a topic, teaching can also sometimes feel like a major responsibility. The students we have with us are keen to learn and to find answers to their many questions. It can feel disappointing and inadequate to so frequently have to answer with: “well, it depends". Because, of course, the kinds of issues we are wrestling with are complex and vary so much depending on the context. They involve difficult issues such as how people actually learn to read/write multiple languages and what a multilingual curriculum should look like, and even more difficult issues like how people feel about the languages they use and what the government thinks education should actually be for!

Of course many of these issues, although we might be able to identify some of them, are well beyond our control. We can influence some things, but beyond that we must trust that bigger change is possible and will come about through hard work and prayer - at the right time. Indeed change is a funny thing, something that is often impossible to see in the moment but clearly identifiable when reflecting back on a period.

As we enter another big period of change as a family, looking ahead to becoming four, we give thanks for all the things we have learnt as a family of three. We give thanks for you and your support of us and the work we are involved in, and we look forward to seeing the new seeds in our and your lives burst into flower at the perfect time.

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Seasons of life

It feels like we are entering a new season here in Gloucester - thankfully one that is very exciting! In October, when I (Liz) began volunteering at a local school and Levi started playgroup life suddenly felt very different. For the first time in a while I was able to look up and out from my daily life of details and had space to think, dream and to help others (aside from fulfilling the needs of a toddler that is!).

Now, at the start of a new year (well, kind of!) we have learnt that 2015 will bring another big change - we are expecting a baby in the summer! We receive this news with both excitement and trepidation! For a while we have wanted to make our family a four, for Levi to have a sibling to care for and (hopefully!) play with one day. But at the same time we have both had to wrestle with the fear that we will feel like we are going back to the challenges we faced in 2012 when Levi was a newborn. Anxiety, illness, depression, loneliness, and exhaustion are not things which we are in a hurry to repeat!

Of course the challenge is for us to remember that things are different now to how they were three years ago. Now we are settled in Gloucester rather than moving to a new place, we have friends and support around us, we are getting established in a church, my health is better than it was then and we have learnt a lot in the last few years. It is still scary but we know God will carry us through as He did then and He gives us hope for the future. I choose to believe we are not going backwards; this is a new season and God is doing a new thing!

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Relationships and roots

Yes, I did say 7 students. One works in a sensitive context.

This week saw the end of the latest block of Wycliffe training. Since early September I have been teaching on the literacy and education Masters programme here in Gloucester and this year we have had 7 students to enjoy getting to know. Although I enjoy all of my teaching commitments for differing reasons, there is something quite special about this course. As this is one of the first courses students take on the Masters programme, most (although not all) of them are new to literacy and education, new to Wycliffe and new to overseas service. It is always a privilege therefore spending this formative time with these individuals and families, getting to know them, sharing my experience and knowledge with them, and encouraging them for the future.

They will all soon be heading off to different places around the world to put into practice what they have learnt (some returning to somewhere they've lived before but many going somewhere new). It is our hope and prayer that these people will be able to put into practice what they've learnt, both in terms of skills and character. I hope to stay in touch with them during this next phase of their life, supporting them as they need advice, and hopefully seeing them again in a couple of years time when they return to complete their Masters studies. Indeed, already my thoughts are beginning to turn to the new year and a new group of students. In January students will be returning to complete their studies, many of whom I will remember from a couple of years ago. Although I won't actually be teaching again until April it will be great to see them again around college, to hear their stories and to share life again.

Gloucester looking particularly pretty.

And so it goes on. Being involved in teaching of this type is certainly a real privilege, but also a challenge. New friendships start and end - or sometimes just pause - on a regular and frequent basis. It is hard sometimes to see people go, but at the same time I know these relationships have been good for a time and that these people are now going on to fulfil a real need elsewhere in the world. It is partly for this reason that we are so grateful for the roots we are putting down here in Gloucester. Although we've only been here 9 months we already feel more settled than we have done for a long while. The welcome we've received from our neighbours, at college, and at our church has made a completely new place feel completely like home. We have blogged many times in the past about the challenge of moving house and the time it takes to feel really settled somewhere. Whilst things are never going to be perfect, it is with much thankfulness that we can say that sometimes, just sometimes, things just work out.

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My new chapter

Someone told me recently that everyone lives inside a virtual box. The 'box' is your experiences. If you don't push the sides of your box and challenge yourself by experiencing new things then eventually the box starts to shrink.

I was amazed by how much I could relate to this.

Moving around a lot and so not being able to put down roots fully, having ME and depression, and being a stay-at-home mum, meant my box was closing in on me and with it my confidence. This is despite taking my toddler out almost every day to new places with new people and getting settled in a new city! By the time the end of the summer holidays came around I was getting desperate. I needed to do something for me that was challenging, but that would also give me life.

And so I found myself walking into the local primary school to do some volunteering, testing the boundaries of my box. This is my new chapter, maybe it's not hugely groundbreaking (as I've done this job before - albeit in another city and not for 7 years) but I needed a manageable step. I am currently swinging, almost daily, between anxiety and excitement as to what this new chapter might mean for me. However, I know God has opened a door here for me that I need to walk through.

I read this in 'Barefoot in the Kitchen' by Alie Stibbe: "Even adversity can become comfortable after a while. But God demands that we face up to the tension that exists between willing acceptance of our situation and the necessity of facing new horizons." Too true. My last 'Women on Friday' group before I left Thame was a bible study on doors, a slightly odd topic but it struck a cord with me and I felt God saying he had a 'door of hope' for me to walk through in moving to Gloucester. For this reason I feel confident that God has some exciting things in store for me in this next chapter!

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Living in the present moment

This is one of the things I am learning, or trying to learn, at the moment! I’m sure it is a challenge to many people, especially in our busy culture where we are often rushing on to the next thing, to appreciate what we have at the moment. I find that all too often I am thinking back to yesterday (what I enjoyed or more often what I would like to change) or worrying about the future.

I thought that I learnt this when I was ‘incapacitated’ with ME/Chronic Fatigue a few years ago, that I needed to focus on the positive, take from each day what I could and regularly count my blessings and what I’m thankful for. But I seem to be learning it all over again now. (I find this happens, God gives me lessons for the exact situation I am in and the same lesson looks different when I am in a new situation… Either that or I am very forgetful and a slow learner!)

You see, things have changed and that in itself is something to be thankful for. I am no longer in the state I was two years ago, just a few months after giving birth when I would crawl through each day and lie down at every opportunity. At that time I was battling depression and anxiety but also struggling to stand long enough to hang up washing or make a cup of tea. Now my fatigue has improved so that I am not constantly crying out for strength and energy but I am still not able to do some things I want to do, such as walk into town and back, and I still have a rest in the afternoon.

It is all too easy now to be wishing I could do more. (We are so hard to satisfy as human beings aren’t we? We always want more!) My mind can fill with anxious thoughts instead of focusing on God and what He has for me now. I am looking to the future and getting excited/nervous about when Levi starts at nursery and what that might mean for me and how our lives will change. In some ways this is fine and I do need to plan for this, but at the same time God has given me this present moment to live in and enjoy. Levi will never be 2 and a half again and I will never have this time again when it is my main role to look after him. I am so blessed. Because of this I try to immerse myself in what he is doing and learning and experiencing and to live each day as God would have me live it.

How are you blessed? How is God calling you to live in this present moment?

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Since moving

Taking a well earned break!

It’s hard to believe we’ve been living in Gloucester for over two months now! It is starting to feel like home and Thame is already starting to feel a long time ago. There are some things we miss about Thame (aside from many good friends, our favourite local supermarket would feature highly!) but we have been very blessed in Gloucester so far. We have been able to rent a slightly bigger house with a spacious garden for less than the house in Thame. We found the house after just one day of looking, and it has turned out to be just what we needed (and more besides!). The location is great for us, being within easy reach of college, the doctors, a supermarket and several toddler groups. I (Liz) have met some lovely mums who have been very friendly and helpful as I’ve settled in. There are also more than enough toddler groups to keep Levi and I occupied each week!

Levi loves the garden!

It also seems as though Levi has really grown up since we moved. Of course the ‘big’ bed does remind us of that fact. His speech has also come on in leaps and bounds and often he barely pauses for breath! He provides a continual commentary on life and repeats what daddy says to mummy and vice versa, which can be helpful but also rather testing at times! It is lovely to be able to communicate with him and makes us realise just how much he is taking in! (We better be careful I think!) He also seems to be getting a lot better at playing imaginatively and independently with his toys, though when there are people around he still does like to have their full attention. Mostly he is a lovely boy to have around and most importantly seems to behave well when he goes to play at other people’s houses!

Teaching always seems to involve colour!

Since we have been living here Matt has also been busy teaching on two courses - ‘Language Project Planning and Implementation’ and ‘Multilingual Education’, the second of which he is currently in the last week of teaching. He also has made a trip to Thailand and continued with his other work activities. Alongside enjoying the interactive nature of teaching, Matt is also enjoying starting to engage in the community at Redcliffe College. It will still take some time for him to settle into a routine that works well with his wide range of responsibilities but it is a nice challenge to face!

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Why we're moving (again!)

To answer that question we need to go back to our time in Tanzania (and probably before, though we'll stop at Tanzania for now).

One of the things we both enjoyed most when living and working in Mbeya was the opportunities we got, both structured and informally, to share our knowledge, experience and passion with colleagues, friends and others we met (you can read some old posts from that time here, here and here). Some of it you would recognise as 'training', standing at the front of a workshop introducing new concepts to try to help others innovate and develop the work. Much of it, however, you might not immediately recognise, such as the times when we were chatting through problems with colleagues in the office or at home. Whatever it looked like, in my book it was all about learning.

So when we returned to the UK I (Matt) knew I wanted, if possible, the opportunity to keep on being involved in these kinds of learning processes. One way to do that was to do some teaching on the Masters course I had recently completed. At the time this was being delivered at the Wycliffe Centre between Oxford and High Wycombe and so we decided to relocate to Thame to be near enough for me to be involved in this way. In summer 2013, however, these training courses moved to Gloucester to be taught at Redcliffe College and so we are following them there.

Training, of course, is only part of my role, with the majority of my time spent focusing on supporting language, education and development work in Asia (you can read a nice article about what that actually means here). Over the last couple of years, however, I have loved having the opportunity to constantly access and relate the theory that I encounter when preparing to teach, with the practice that I see and work with in Asia (I try to explain some of the impact of our work in this post, and the subsequent series of blogs entitled 'Connections').

Although the process of moving isn't fun, we are hopeful that Gloucester can be a real home for us as a family for the foreseeable future. That said, given that Gloucester will be the 7th place (don't ask about houses... that's even more!) we've lived in since leaving Sheffield (just 7 years ago) another move wouldn't be out of character...

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New Chapters

Moving once more has got me thinking. Maybe it isn't all bad...

I’m a pretty undisciplined person — I know that.

I also know that discipline (much like most other things in life) is something, that when exercised regularly, you get better at. But then I’ve never liked exercise.

So it’s at times like this, surrounded by boxes and dreading the thought of moving AGAIN, that I try to be thankful for these natural ‘new chapters’ in our lives. For many (most?) people there are no such natural breaks in life. Most people don’t find themselves moving every few years, being forced to clear out and reassess their lives (literally and metaphorically). Instead they have to choose, consciously, to stop and look up.

Given the way that life relentlessly keeps on moving forward it is a miracle to me that some people do this—clearly they’re the disciplined ones! I know if I wasn’t forced to I probably wouldn’t.

Of course there is a lot to be said for those who keep on with things despite the sameness of it all. Often it is all too easy to just throw in the towel and start afresh — the lure of the new can seem all the more impressive out of the corner of your eye! However, when this faithful ‘perseverance’ turns into lazy ‘comfortableness’ we know we have a problem.

So as we face all the challenges of another new start–building life in a new place, making new friends and getting to know new places–I try to remember to be thankful for this natural ‘new chapter’ in our lives. It is a time of fresh starts full of forgiveness, opportunities and, if I let it, full of thankfulness as well!

What things act as ‘new chapters’ in your life? How do you avoid your own personal groundhog day?

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Depth and breadth

As we have talked about before, many of the great things about the life we have chosen come with associated challenges. Moving around frequently and relying on relationships with friends, family and churches to do this work, means that we have got to know a lot of great people over the last six years. This has been both a privilege and a challenge, because as our relationships have grown broader this has inevitably meant that many have remained shallower than we would have liked.

Over this Christmas period we both decided to take a break from email and Facebook, to focus ‘inwardly’ on each other and our families. As our breadth of relationships span many different places, we often find ourselves spending quite a lot of time communicating with people electronically. Again this brings many benefits, allowing us to stay in touch with people we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise (often in completely different situations and cultures), to share in their joyful times and to learn from their difficulties. However, it also brings challenges as we find ourselves constantly looking ‘outwards’ to others lives, trying to ‘stay in touch’ and communicate well about what we are doing. Not doing so doesn’t just mean we lose touch with friends, it affects our ability (financially and otherwise) to carry on doing this work.

As this new year begins, I want to find a better balance of ‘distant’ and ‘local’ focus. As we move to another new place with new people and opportunities I want to be able to focus, with my family, on developing this ‘local’ community. At the same time I want to continue to appropriately invest in the electronic ‘distant’ relationships that we already have. I’m not yet sure what this means but maybe it will involve continuing to reduce our online activity for a time, trusting that our existing relationships will continue through mutual commitment and effort (using the phone or visiting in person!).

As we prepare to move to Gloucester later this month, we prepare to face these kinds of competing emotions again - great opportunities alongside real challenges. Times of change are always unsettling and tiring, but they also bring natural times to reflect on the status quo and to reset our priorities. Please do bear with us, and stand with us, as we do this once again.

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Transformational development

The article in WfL

A couple of months ago I (Matt) spent some time chatting with a colleague at Wycliffe HQ about my role, the kind of work I'm involved in supporting in Asia, and the connections between that and Wycliffe's other areas of focus. Just this week many of you will have received a copy of that article through the post in the latest edition of 'Words for Life'. In case you haven't, or you would like to read it in electronic form, you can access the magazine online here. The article is on pages 12-14.

I'm pretty happy with the final result. Although there is quite a bit of text (along with some really nice pictures), we would encourage you to read it. It is always helpful to have someone else work with you to better explain what you do and why, so hopefully this will provide a nice change to our normal 'voice'!

As it says at the end of the article, to continue to be involved in this work we need financial and prayer support. Because my work expenses (like flights, accommodation and other travel expenses) are covered by centrally sourced funds, I am able to continue to travel to Asia and support the work in that way. However, over the last few months we have been reminded by the Wycliffe office that our gift income has not covered all our day-to-day costs. We appreciate the support of each and every one of you reading this, both in terms of prayer and financial gifts. So please pray with us about this as we really need to see this 'hole' in our finances filled before we move to Gloucester in the new year.

If you, or anyone else you know are interested in financially partnering with us you can do so easily online here. Or if you would just like to chat with us about what that might involve we are always happy to do that. Email us and we can arrange a time.

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Sharing: who you are and what you know

Meetings in Bangkok

What do an air-conditioned office in Bangkok, a sparse pre-school classroom in rural Bangladesh, a grand hall at the University of Oxford, and a sleek conference room in Paris all have in common? Aside from all being places I have found myself over the past 4 weeks (the last month has been pretty varied to say the least), they are also all places in which I have spent time with different people and learnt something new.

Meetings with my team in Bangkok were excellent; I came away with a long list of action items to pursue and a better sense of who I work with. My visit to Bangladesh was really helpful; I got a chance to learn about my colleagues’, their work and home situations and to understand better how my work could help support them. Delivering a paper at a major education and development conference in Oxford went well; I heard lots of interesting presentations and was able to have some very helpful discussions with both new and old contacts. And my time in Paris–representing our organisation at a UNESCO meeting for NGOs with which they are in formal partnership–gave me another opportunity to understand the broader context for our work. Although each situation was as different to the other as could almost seem possible, each gave me the opportunity to meet different people and expand my knowledge and understanding in a new way.

Conference in Oxford

A major part of my role at the moment is to coordinate ‘community of practice’ events in Asia. These events provide an opportunity for people working with language, culture, education and development in Asia to get together and share their experiences, joys and challenges. It would be easy to say that those events, when people are all sat in a room having set aside time to be together, are the times when we really ‘learn’. And of course they are (well, we hope they are!), however, my experiences over the last few years have taught me that it is often in the everyday times of life when we learn the most.

UNESCO, Paris

It is the routine events or meetings, the casual chats with friends and colleagues over dinner or a coffee, and the chances to visit new places and experience new things that provide the best opportunities to learn and share. It is in these everyday moments that I have found myself learning the most about myself, my relationships with others, and ultimately the role I should be playing in my life and work. I guess it is my hope that through each of these experiences and interactions I am both learning from others and sharing what I have learnt with others. If so, my learning has the potential to be so much more powerful than any specific event, affecting anyone I meet wherever I am.

Pre-school classroom in Bangladesh

I also love these personal encounters not only because they often teach me the most, but because they ‘level the playing field’. We all have a unique story to share and experiences to learn from, whoever we are, wherever we’re from and whatever we’ve done! We don’t need to be trained teachers or have done something really unusual or exciting, we just need to be willing to share ourselves and our stories openly with others.

So, who have you met and what have you learnt, and shared, today?

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Complicated

I often find it difficult to explain to people what I do, what my ‘job’ is, or even how I spend my time! A lot of the time that is because I just don’t know HOW to describe it in a way that will actually mean something to people.

This might be because they’ve never been to the places I’m working in or focusing on, or never met the people I’m working with. It might be because the topics I’m focusing on (Multilingual Education… Identity Based Development…) or the questions I’m wrestling with (How do people really feel part of a ‘community of practice’ and learn from each other?) are unfamiliar to them – after all they haven’t spent months studying them or hours discussing them with colleagues. You see, every concept needs a structure within which they can be understood. Without that structure or ‘context’, they are just empty words with no real meaning.

Other times, however, the sheer variety of what I find myself doing makes it difficult to communicate! If you like, the WHAT gets in the way as well as the HOW! Take this week, for example. I have been:

-communicating and arranging with colleagues about attending a reading conference and advocacy training in Kenya in August;

-engaging with MLE teaching sessions on topics such as ‘primer production in situations where there are multiple languages’ (causing me to reflect back on and share our experiences of working in a nine language cluster project in Tanzania);

-working with colleagues on preparing a funding proposal for work with two communities in Bangladesh (communities where over 80% of households live on less than $2 a day);

-reviewing abstracts for an international conference on language and education in Bangkok in the Autumn;

-continuing to plan towards the next Asia-wide learning event (community of practice event) to be held later this year;

-marking students papers on the theoretical basis of MLE in their given work contexts (which included Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, and Indonesia).

Just one document I've read this week...

How do I explain that to people?! Of course not all my weeks are like this, in fact some weeks I spend the whole time writing one conference paper or working on a funding proposal. However, as my work regularly involves diverse activities and contexts it is pretty difficult to describe them in a way that people can follow and understand. Granted most jobs have a range of tasks which can be quite complex to explain, but I guess the difference is that often in those situations even the job title itself helps to bring clarity, since people tend to understand the context or have some familiarity with the subject area (‘Oh yeah, my brothers uncle used to be a…’, for example!). That’s not often the response I get when I say I work on issues around language, education and development in Asia!

Ultimately, I guess what it really boils down to each week is that I am trying to make the best use of the skills and training I have been lucky enough to receive to come alongside and assist people around the world. Learning together, sharing knowledge (both ways!) and encouraging each other onwards towards the future.

Want to know more? Drop us an email – I’ll try and explain as best I can…!

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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.

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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.

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