Keeping Up With the Andersons

Hey guys

It's great to find people reading our page. It's slightly anonymous though, since I'm not sure who you are.  Love to hear back from you all sometime.

Anyway, a few things are happening for me at the moment.

The biggest is that I had my wisdom teeth out yesterday, and am sleeping, and aching a lot. I'm praying that I'll be back on board Monday or Tuesday. I'm very thankful to God that I haven't felt lonely or crazy...you see, Toby's away with the science students this weekend (yes - we forgot to compare diaries when I booked the teeth removal!) and I would normally really feel lonely, even if I was able to hang out with other people. And so far, I'm not. Fantastic.

Another thing I keep having to pull myself up on at the moment is comparing myself to others. It is very tempting to be assessing your ministry by looking at others, especially when they're good at what they do. But the only one who I seek to please is God, and he is the only one in whom I find my value...and when God's Spirit reminds me of that, I find freedom and creativity, rather than angst and competitiveness. I was reading about workaholism in the career section of the Herald today. And the key issue the lady identified was finding recognition and meaning in your workplace success that drives workaholics. Please pray that God would keep me (and you) from that. I'm glad that God has given Toby one of those unique personalities that doesn't worry about what other's think. It's of great encouragment to me.

As one of the senior staff at uni once said - all we do is for an audience of 1-God.

Last weekend I was away with the Econimcs and ACES gang for the weekend and we got stuck into Ezekiel...it was brilliant. I really felt like people desired to get into the Bible and really love and serve each other more.  Many people were struck particularly by the second talk, which dwelt on the attitude of the King of Tyre (Ezekiel 27) - he boasted in his achievements. And God took those blessings away...and then what? Our hope and meaning is to be found in the only true and living God. He is God, we are not, we are his creation, and now lovingly adopted into his family through Christ.

I have only one week left to finish my talks. I hope I have a bit of time to practice them before I give them. I'm going away this weekend on the EU Science weekend away. Pray that I will be able to get everything done in the next week.

Last week was the easter break, for us a break from students (except for some social events) but not a break from work (although MG took a couple of days off). I spent most of the time working on my talks on servanthood, but I still have a way to go on those.

Now we're back at uni and ploughing on with the regular activities. I feel partly refreshed by the break, but not wholly. Both of us have been sick recently with completely different things.

The first part of semester was taken up with getting things going. The rest of semester is a long stretch in which we try to maintain what we're doing without becoming worn out. The adrenelin of the start of the year has worn off, but we need to have stickability. Please pray that God gives us the energy to keep persevering, and His perspective in our jobs so that we recognise the importance of what we are doning and are motivated to put all our effort into it.

I will especially need lots of God's energy because I'm going into a period of three weekend aways in a row: church w/e away, EU Science w/e away and EU Pharmacy w/e away where I'm giving the talks.

The  Science  weekend away  is coming up in a week and a half and I'm pretty excited about it. Last year we had only one first year come, but that was mostly because it was held too early in the year. This year I'm quite hopeful about the first years. They seem to be a fairly closeknit group. I'm hoping that many of them will be able to come to the w/e away and become tied into EU Science by the bonds of relationship. The topic for the weekend is love. Please pray that loads of first years will come, and pray for Malcome Gill who is giving the talks.

Here you can find an archive of all our supporters newsletters

• 29 December 2005


• 4 April 2006


• 7 June 2006


• 17 September 2006


• 7 November 2006


• 9 April 2007


• 19 June 2007


• 1 October 2007

Hi guys

A few people have asked us how we're going with our fundraising this year, so here's a brief update:

Total cost to employ us: $35,640

Our target to raise : $31,695

(This includes 75% of the total cost + a shortfall from last year + some administrator costs)

What God has already provided from you guys: $30,105

That's 95% there! Thanks so much.

P.S. Generally supporting the EU grads fund goes towards administration and 25% of our (all staff) income.

Well, Katoomba was great - one of the speakers talked about divine intersections...the fact that we have God's Words and our lives intersect with others each day and we have the opoportunity to share Christ...and that "Hello, my name is Mary-Grace" is the best opener for sharing Jesus.

Anyway, it's my birthday coming up, and Tobes and I went to the local Italian that's just opened up. When we first got there, we were the only customers and they were trying to impress us . Whilst we were eating a family came in and sat next to us...and they were pretty chatty. Lovely. But it just felt like a comfy family atmosphere...we all lived 5 mins walk from each other. Anyway, after we all got to know each other a bit, they said they had some international students staying with them...homestay. And one of them would love a 1+ hr a week English tutor/someone to chat to...and the 'dad' asked Toby if he'd like to do it. Now, life is busy, but we said we'd think about it, but it really seems like a divine intersection...this guy follows Allah, has been in Oz for 2 months and this family is really open to talking about Jesus...wow.

Please pray that we would make a good decision and that we would continue to be open to God's divine intersections in our lives.

God bless this Easter

We both just got back from the Katoomba Easter Convention. We were there Friday to Monday, staying in MG's grandmother's house in Wentworth falls. It was really encouraging to hear three sets of talks from three different speakers all centered around the theme of suffering as a Christian. Each speaker had his own unique style. Many people loved the heart-felt ramblings of the british Robert Ames, but I much prefered the precise and structured talks from Steve Young.

I learnt lots of things including how helpful psalms 42 and 43 can be to people with depression and was reminded of the significance of confessing sins and the total forgiveness we can recieve through Jesus.

Pray that MG and I will continue to reflect on what we have learnt over the weekend and to apply it in our everyday lives.

I haven't told you guys much about ACES yet, but I will...there are about 45-50 people involved in our Asian-Australian Christian EU group (ACES used to stand for Australian-Chinese Evangelical Students - but there's Korean, Jap, Viet etc students, so the name had to change).

We are having our social this Thu night...should be a blast...and we're recruiting heaps of ppl for our combined Ecos/ACES weekend away in a couple of weeks...

Just one story - there's a girl in my ACES group, and I really felt like she was opening up to me (she's in first year). She admitted to me why she came to the group (mixed motives) - and wanted to change her attitude so that she could come to concentrate and learn from God's word...she really wants to learn so the particular week she felt really distracted she came to two of my small groups! I would find it boring being in my group twice but she seems to have really enjoyed getting into God's word...and after all, that's what I'm doing...not pointing to myself, I'm not a 'guru'...BUT I POINT TO JESUS!

Keep praying for my ACES groups, especially my Monday crew...many of them are first years. I really want to help them grow in Jesus and come to trust him more and more this year. Please pray for them with me! Thank God that the assistant leaders are gold and there are some other great senior students in the group.

This week the guys in Ecos have banded together to run a stall...I'm amazed that it has come together...definitely my co-worker's hard work!

We have students rostered on for 2-3 hours mid-morning Tues, Wed, Thu - we'll have a table with information outside the economics building. The aim is to get people thinking about Jesus in the Economics faculty. We'll also be advertising the EU-wide think week talks - designed to make people think

And to top it all off, a mass of students have put together a testimony booklet, explaining how Jesus has changed their life! I'm so excited...because stories are interesting, relevant, and people can't refute them in this post-modern world.

I'm just praying that people will read them and be touched and come one step closer to a relationship with Jesus! Woohoo!

They are such encouraging stories - I can't post them up but please let me know if you want me to email / send you a copy...it'll also help you to get to know some of the awesome students I get to work with.

P.S. Update on Ecos 1st year bible study groups...we had 25 at our groups last week! Praise God!

Also, here's some of us finishing the Walk 4 Bibles on Sat...please sponsor us, so we can send more Bibles to our family in China.