We are getting ready to return to Bangalore, India, for a month’s intensive teaching at SAIACS, where we have been three times before. We arrive 4th March and leave on 4th April, just after Graduation. We know the place, the routine of college life, and our teaching colleagues. But there will inevitably be many new things for us to discover and learn, and, of course, new students to get to know! And it would be great to have a season at SAIACS without sickness or injury!
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Part of SAIACS campus |
While we have been home we have done some writing for our books and are gradually making progress, but have also had times when other things had to take precedence. We really do need to be able to give more concentrated time to these projects this year.
This year we expect to be home again for most of April, May and June and then away for 5 months in the second half of the year, teaching in Sabah, Latvia and Ukraine as well as attending a conference and having some library time at Tyndale House in Cambridge.
As we once again travel, we would appreciate
your prayers for safety, health, finding of suitable
foods, adjustment to the hot climate, and that we might be able to be
effective in the work and relationships we are given to engage in. Thank you once again for your friendship, your love
and your prayers.
May God bless
you! Stuart and Kathleen
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August 2015
Our 3½ months back in
Vancouver was, in many ways, an unexpected gift. Kathleen was working
half-time to help a church while their senior pastor was on sabbatical, so we
did not need any mission support income during this time. It also afforded us
both a special opportunity to write and also to catch up with some old friends.
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Kathleen teaching on spiritual gifts at the church camp |
Sherbrooke Mennonite Church welcomed us warmly and graciously and we thoroughly enjoyed getting to know many people in the church. We enjoyed a wonderful weekend with the church at Camp Squeah, inland near Hope, and recalled the several other times we have enjoyed that location over the years. To summarize our time at Sherbrooke, one person wrote, “I thank God for the impact God has left on the people and the church through your ministry”.
We have both taken the opportunity to attend one-week academic summer courses at Regent College—at half price, because we are alumni. Stuart brushed up his understanding of Luke’s Gospel and Acts by attending a course taught by Prof. Darrel Bock, and Kathleen enjoyed a course on leadership as a stimulus for her writing.
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| Regent College, Vancouver |
Regent College library was an ideal place to begin to write books, in addition to preparing courses.
Stuart is revisiting the thesis he wrote in 1999-2000, on self-denial in the Gospels, and extending the scope to include early Christian interpretations that led to ascetic practices that evolved into monasticism. In this “selfie” age Christians need to think carefully about the implications of Jesus’ words, “If you want to follow Me you must deny yourself”. Kathleen’s book, a quarter of which she has now written, will be about how the Bible shows God as the primary model for good leadership. She has had many experiences of good and bad leaders, who may be referred to in her book with changed names and identifying marks.
In the last few weeks of our stay in Vancouver Kathleen struggled with asthma and loss of energy and strength. She missed one Sunday of preaching and on two Sundays she preached while sitting in a chair on the platform. Though she has lived with asthma for most of her life, this time
Part of our ITP work that we have not focussed on in recent newsletters, and continues throughout the year wherever we are, is our roles in supervising students who are writing academic dissertations. Many of these are PhD students who do their research and writing in their own locations, and communicate with us by email. They register with the UK-based Greenwich School of Theology, which awards degrees in conjunction with the North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. So we are in frequent communication with students all over the world, and people in the UK and South Africa. The students do their research and writing in their own location, and communicate with us by email.
Three of Kathleen’s students and two of Stuart’s students have now successfully graduated with PhDs, and some were awarded prizes by the University for outstanding academic work. Stuart also reads many manuscripts written by students who are not his own, in order to correct the English and provide guidance regarding format and other aspects. Kathleen has also examined some Bachelors degree students.
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Two of Stuart’s doctoral students graduated
in London last year at South Africa House.
We were able to meet one of Kathleen’s doctoral students face-to-face for the first time at Regent College. He is a Canadian who also attended Regent College (after us) and was teaching in Korea while he worked on his PhD. He has now successfully completed it. It was great to put the face, personality and voice to all the years of email communications.
Other students with whom we are often involved are studying at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology, where we were teaching in 2011. For some doing Masters degrees we are their supervisors (by email) and for others we are their examiners. Kathleen also examined a PhD thesis for the University of Mysore, India, this year and is supervising a PhD student in the Philippines for a Graduate School we taught in a few years ago.
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One of Stuart's Ethiopian students and his family
All of this work continues, to varying degrees, throughout the year. It continued while we were in Canada, much of it still needs to be done when we are at home in Tasmania, and we have the most difficulties with squeezing of time when we are teaching intensive courses overseas and also need to urgently answer these students in other countries. We do, then, often need to ask them to wait. But sometimes the different deadlines for different countries and universities make that quite difficult!
We went from a warmer-than-usual summer in Vancouver to a wintry Tasmania, with a light snowfall in our backyard and much more snow on all of our surrounding hills.
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Our view of Mount Wellington |
Our mere ten days at home were fairly full, as you might imagine. Our house was well cared for by a conscientious house-sitter, who continues to stay there. It was very good to see our children and grandchildren and to see how two-year old Marissa is fast showing her own distinct personality and developing new skills.
We are now in Kota Kinabalu, East Malaysia, where we have taught twice before in Sabah Theological Seminary (STS). We will be here for six weeks (until 3rd October), teaching on New Testament interpretation (Stuart), the General Epistles and Revelation (Stuart and Kathleen), and homiletics (Kathleen). We have already taught about half of our students before. This year they are a mixture of indigenous (from various local tribes) and Chinese, plus one from the Kachin people in Myanmar. Following our teaching in Sabah we will return to the Latvian Biblical Centre in Riga, where we will teach on Jeremiah (Kathleen) and the Gospels and Acts (Stuart). Then we have two weeks at Tyndale House library, Cambridge, before returning home on 21st November.
Thank you once again for your friendship, your love and your prayers.
May God bless you! Stuart and Kathleen
[Note added later: While we were in Sabah we received news that Stuart's brother had died, so we returned to Australia, and were not able to travel to Latvia and Cambridge.]
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