Keeping Up With the Andersons

I've accepted the offer to give the talks at the weekend away for EU Pharmacy Faculty. The topic is servanthood and I have to write three talks. The weekend away will be the first weekend in May.

I'm a bit nervous about this as it will require a large amount of preperation time, so I need to make sure I set aside the time each week and actually work on it. I'm pretty good at procrastinating on a good day, and right now I feel like I'm very busy with heaps of other things.

I've set up a timeline for myself and asked my trainer to keep me accountable to it. Hopefully he will be able to read over my finished talks and give me feedback before I deliver them. I'm sure the talks will be recorded so after I've given them you'll be able to download them from this website.

The passages I've chosen are Jesus washing His disciples feet from John 13, Jesus telling His disciple the greatest must be servant of all in Mark 10 and the description of Jesus being humbled and exulted in Philippians 2. Please pray that I'll be able to give enough time to preparation of these talks and that I will be faithful to God's word when I give tham. Pray that the talks will be challenging to the Pharmacy students.

Last week on wednesday I made sure I wore my EU t-shirt so that the people coming to the first week of the God's World course would be able to spot me. However God put my t-shirt to more valuable uses than that...

Earlier that dayI was just about to walk from one end of the campus to the other, and lamenting the fact that I had to make that walk so often, when an international studnet rushed up to me to ask me how to get to the library. I offered to walk her there. She told me that the reason she picked me to ask directions of was that she found that people wearing the EU t-shirt tended to be very kind and friendly.  On the way there we got to talking about the EU and what it has to offer, and to cut a long story short she's now doing a God's World course. Pray that she will continue in the course and find out about God.

Later that same day I was again walking through campus when I was stopped by another person, an Australian student this time. He wanted to know how they could have made such a terrible spelling mistake on the front of one the buildings. It says "FACVLTY OF MEDICINE" Anyway, I ended up walking and talking with him, and he also asked me lots of questions about the EU. I invited him to our public meetings. Pray that he will come.

It's very refreshing to go along to the Internationl Students Meeting each week and to chat to the students afterward. Religion is not a taboo topic for them and they discuss Christianity almost like it's a fantastic free product and one of the many benefits of coming to Australia. A typical conversation might look like this:

Toby: Hello Frankie, how long have you been in Australia for?

Frankie: Hello Toby. Three weeks.

Toby: Are you a Christian?

Frankie: No, I do not think I understand it enough yet. But now I have a Bible I am reading it each night to understand more.

Toby: Would you like to come along to a course that we are running that will help you understand the Bible and Christianity, so then you can make a decision if you want to be a Christian.

Frankie: Yes! Thank you so much. Is it okay if I bring some friends too?

The course we are running on Tuesdays and Wednesday for these students is called God's World. It covers a Gospel outline similar to Two Ways to Live but not the same.

I ran the first week of the Wednesday group last week. I had six ISM girls on my list of who to expect, and although two girls couldn't make it, seven girls showed up because some of the girls had brought their friends. They seemed to have a really great time.

One of them loved Christian songs and requested that we learn them, so as well as introducing the course I taught them the first and last verses of Amazing Grace and the meaning of grace as it is found in the Bible. They made me sing it for them.

Pray that over this semester as we meet each week I will be able to effectively communicate the concepts described in the God's World course in a way that international students can understand.

There were 12 of us all up at our first year Economics small group last Tuesday. Now you might not think that's a lot of people, but when I tell you that last year we had one Economics first year group with about 5-7 of us, and this massive group is one of 3 first year groups, then you'll be excited.

Numbers are fickle, but I am so thankful to God that he has provided these wonderful  first years. Please join with myself and the Economics student leaders in praying that these first years will grow in their knowledge and love for our Lord Jesus...please also pray that God will use them to impact their faculty so many more students, many of them focused on career, many of them international students, will hear of Jesus' claim on their money, career, live and love. Please pray that many would come to trust Jesus.

Please keep letting us know how we can pray for you!

Last weekend was a baptism for Yi...a girl who came along to ISM last year and became a Christian.

It was such a joy to see her confess her faith in Jesus her Lord.

Hope you enjoy the photos. Please continue to pray for her to grow as a Christian.

Yi and I after the baptism



Yi being baptised

Our server is the computer that stores our blog and other stuff and serves it out accross the internet to whomever wants to view it.

It is sitting in our study under Toby's desk. It is a Mitac PC with 2.5 GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM. Thanks to Jason Au for aquiring it for us at no cost.

It is running Ubuntu 7.10 as its operating system. A distribution of GNU/Linux.

Here are the current stats:
CPU Temperature (°C):
Motherboard Temperature (°C):
Fan Speed:
Time since last reboot:

We've finaly got ourselves a domain name, so you don't have to type strange numbers into your browser. Just go to www.tobyandmg.com and you'll reach this page.

First-year small group Bible studies are starting up this week. There are 4 main aims for these.

1. To help people get a good understanding of the Bible and to be living it out in their lives.


2. To help people become more evangelistic


3. To help people see how they can serve God and each other while at university.


4. To introduce people to new friends and help them become integrated better into the EU.

Thank God for such a great opportunity to encourage other Christians and help them grow in maturity. Pray that the students will be brave enough to show up for the first one. Pray that people will become comfortable in thier groups and get to know each other well. Pray that we are able to care for all the group members and train the student leaders well. Pray that God teaches us by His Word.

One of the things we are learning about at staff training is Biblical theology. God reveals truths to us progressively throughout history, so people in the past necessarily knew less about God and His plans than we do know, and we know less now than we will know in the new Creation.

When Genesis was written it was not revealed that God created everything through Christ, so Christ is not mentioned there. However this does not make Genesis untrue, neither does it introduce inconcistancies in different parts of the Bible, but later revelations build upon the truths of earlier revelations.

We learn many intresting things like this at staff eQuip. Thank God for our wise senior staff, and that they can share their knowledge and wisdom with us.

This Sunday night, the first girl who became a Christian at our International Student Ministry is getting baptised. She rang me earlier today and asked me whether I'd like to be her sponsor. (I had to do some research to work out what that meant). But I am glad to be able to stand beside her and testify to God's work in saving her. It will also be a way of standing with her through this year and beyond, to pray for her and to help her continue to grow in Christ. What a priviledge.
I'll endeavour to put up some photos after the night happens.

Today was the students first day back. It's a very exciting time as things that have been weeks in the planning are actually starting to happen. The AgVet faculty have already started small group Bible studies. The other faculties will be starting those next week.

We had the first of our weekly staff training time "eQuip" and we got to meet the new staff from other ministries that we share this training with: People who work with St Barnabus church and other people who work at UTS with the Christian group there.

The next thing for me to do is to find times to meet up with all the small group leaders this week to make sure they are all up to speed before the groups start next week. I was able to run a formal small group leader's training day earlier on, but not everyone was not able to make it.

I've created a feature on the database that will store people's timetables and find common times to schedule meetings in, so hopefully this will make my life and other people's a bit easier at this time of year when a lot of effort usually goes into finding times to put regular meetings.

This year I'm going to really try to focus on pastoral care and try to make sure that every single person is properly looked after. Pray that this will be the case and that the student leaders will be able to take on a fair bit of pastoral responsibility this semester.

We just finished O-Week yesterday. What a blessing that was! We had 100 or so of us - all wearing EU t-shirts - all over the uni. Our aim was to ask everyone to study the Bible with us this year. We were able to talk to over 300 Christians who wanted to join with the EU this year, and study the Bible. Pray we can really love them and get to know them and that they'll grow whilst at uni.

We also had almost 300 people tell us that they wanted to find out more about Jesus this year! Wow - what an opportunity!

Pray that there will be enough workers from EU to care for these inquirers and that God would bring many into his kingdom. Many are overseas students from Mainland China, some are from other countries - Bangladesh, Indonesia, Parkistan, as well as the blessing of meeting PNG, Islander and african Christians!

Some local students also want to investigate Christianity.

Pray for us as we call them, seek to meet with them and share Jesus. Many of them we'll be inviting to the International Students Meeting on Thursday arvos, so please pray for that.