Entries by Toby Anderson

Hello again cyberspace

I have just had a wonderful morning. I think Fridays are my favourite morning in the week (after Sundays and maybe Mondays. Tuesdays are pretty good too.Oh, I like them all!)

Anyway, Fridays are great because Caleb and I get to go to playgroup at our church. It's so much fun. We play, eat, sing, play, watch mums make crafts (it's the pre-cursor to parents doing children's homework!). And the highlight for me is seeing lots of great friends. Neighbours, friends from mothers' group, people I always see at the shops. Friends from church. And we're all together and all enjoying life together. And helping each other.

I also get excited when my friends grow to love my church. Them (and their children) see church as somewhere they want to be. In fact, a friend says that she walks past the church most days and her daughter always wants to go inside, because she likes church. And I know it's the people and the love of Christian people that they love. Because our church isn't the most child-friendly in design, the temperature inside is not always pleasant, and the toilets are not nearby. But we have a ball

And these friends are slowly and surely coming to church and the womens fellowship (bible study) group. It's so cool to watch God at work. And I know it's him. Because I don't push, my friends are genuinely interested. And why wouldn't you be? The people are nice, we have food, and we actually talk about and care about the details of life. We pray to a God who answers prayer, and we talk about all those things that you mean to talk about in life but never do - the deep questions from within our very selves. Is there any meaning to life? Does God care? Is death really the end? The deep questions that God answers in the Bible, and in the very fabric of our lives.

Oh, I wish I could freeze time and be at playgroup forever. Praise God for his kindness to us.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with the amount of work I've got to do at college right now. I have lots of contact hours this semester and all the readings and translation I'm supposed to do each week don't fit into my remaining hours. On top of that I have lots of assignments (see "upcoming" section of the side bar) and many of them are due around the same time.

Pray that God will reduce my anxiety, and that I will be able to prioritise my time well. I'm aiming to not let the urgent things displace the important things, such as time with my family and with God.

Already God is answering my prayers in this, as I'm feeling less anxious now that the main ideas for my Deuteronomy sermon are taking shape in my head. MG is being a big help for me, even though she's just coming out of a week of sickness. She's helped find resurces for my Genesis assignment and single-handedly put together our next newsletter.

For those who are less busy right now, here's something to ponder: Compare Deuteronomy 28 with John 9:1-3 and Luke 13:1-9. What do you think?

Every December hundreds of evangelical students from all across Australia gather in Canberra for the AFES National Training Event (NTE) Where they spend 5 days in God's word learning how to nut it out, how to live it out, and how to proclaim it out. After this intense event the students disperse in teams of about 10 all across Australia (not necessarily where they came from) and proclaim God's word in 5-day missions based in churches.

In the first half MG, Caleb and I were in Canberra teaching a small group (12) of students how to understand a passage from Micah in depth - seeing what it would have meant to the original hearers, and what it means for us under Christ. We were very impressed by our group's ability to understand the passage well. The each had written decent talks on it by the end of the week.

Over the last 5 days there was a team from NTE at our church. They got involved in a lot of creative ways to bring Christ to the local area, including a free car-wash. We helped with an Aussie Christmas Dinner on Sunday, particularly aimed at internationals. MG cooked heaps of delicious food and everyone had a great time. There were some Chinese and Nepalese people there and everyone heard a presentation about why we celebrate the birth of Jesus as we do.

Thank God for the NTE conference and all that the 1300 students learnt on it. Also Thank God for the many short missions that happened across Australia. Pray that the local church members will carry on the momentum of the missions toward Christmas and that Jesus will be recognised as lord by many more people this year, and thus God will be glorified.

Full Name: Caleb Toby Anderson

DOB: 2008-11-13 3:28amWeight: 3.53 Kg

Height: 50cm

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Debatable, possibly strawberry blond

Distinguishing Features:
• Extreme cuteness
• Strong legs
• Strong arms
• Strong suck
• Ability to feed continuously with only short breaks
• Ability to sleep for up to 6 hours even while being cuddled by friends and relatives

We recently had a holiday in Jervis Bay. It was great fun, and we got to see the bottle-nosed dolphins that live in the bay. Here are some photos we took.

Us at Jervis Bay

Dolphin at Jervis Bay

After our holiday we had a training weekend for our Scripture Union mission on location in Tarcutta. Each section's plans for January started taking shape, which is very exciting.

Now we are into the second week of a 4-week block of lecture time, with an essay due this Friday. Next week we need to get stuck into studying for our exams which will start on the Tuesday of the following week (we requested to do our exams two weeks before our fellow students because our baby is due in the college exam week). We won't bother trying to go to lectures in the week we are doing exams.

It's a busy time of year for everyone at SMBC; This afternoon I had to study in the dinning hall because all the desks in the library were taken up (FYI there are 62 desks in the library), and for us this busyness is compressed by 2 weeks. Our last exam is on 7 Nov. After that we only need to be concerned with our baby. It's very exciting. Many of our friends have just had babies, and they're very cute. It's a bit scary too, but I 'm definitely looking forward to it. We've rearranged our house so what was the study is now a nursery and the living room doubles triples as a study and dining room - which actually works out pretty well!

Pray that we'll get all our college work done in the next few weeks and that we get through exams. Pray for MG's final month of pregnancy and for the birth.

I'm working on two essays this week. The first which is half done is a response to Hebrews as if I was an original recipient. The second which I'm yet to start is What is the rationale for the ruling against mixed marriages in Ezra-Nehemiah?. I don't really like writing essays because it's hard work, but once I get into it I actually like it because I learn so much from researching and I end up knowing a lot more about the topic, and I really love learning stuff.

The last essay I wrote was about how chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation (The letters to the 7 churches) fit in with the rest of the book. Here's my conclusion:

The whole book of Revelation provides a big picture of what God is doing, into which the present afflictions of the church can be placed. Chapters 2 and 3 contains the messages of the glorious Lord Jesus as He addresses specific churches directly and indicating He knows their situation, their strengths and their weaknesses. It is exhortation to continue under pressure with the rest of the book as motivation to do so: The upcoming judgment of the world and victory of Christ. As their current situations are placed alongside God's grand plan for the world, these messages also allow the hearers to see that their suffering as part of something much bigger. Finally it provides them with hope, through the promises to those who overcome, as they see into the future a new Jerusalem where there is no more pain, and so they can push on toward that goal.

This week is a research week which means there are no lectures and we have time to catch up with reading and assignments. MG and I are working on New Testament assignments. Mine is abut how chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation (the letters to the 7 churches) relate to the rest of Revelation and MG's is a similar question on chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians.

This week SMBC is also hosting a conference about teaching Acts, which means two things for us:

1. We're allowed to come to a talk from Acts each morning, which is useful for getting us out of bed.


2. We get really nice morning tea.

I've noticed that the use of laptop computers has been on the increase at SMBC. I just had a look around the library and 45 out 59 students working here at the moment are using laptops.
As you might have guessed, I'm procrastinating from doing my essay. Gotta go, it's time for lunch.

We've both recently finished writing an essay about Oliver Cromwell and his impact on the religious and political life of 17th century England. Did you know that England had no monarchy for a decade? That during this time the Baptist Church came about because of Cromwell's tolerance for religious splinter groups? That ever since then England has had a constitutional monarchy instead of a monarch with absolute power?

Anyway, although church history is a really fun subject, I've noticed that it's really difficult to write history essays. The reason is because you generally have to decipher the causes and motives behind the actions of individuals and groups who are no longer alive. Generally causes and motives are a blend of an unbounded number of variables and all you've got to go on are descriptions of the events by people who weren't there and possibly a few things the people involved said or wrote that are distantly related to the topic and very specific to some particular context.

Even so, church history is still a very interesting subject, and I'm enjoying it thoroughly.

Sorry we haven't put anything up here for so long. I'm going to try to be more regular with making posts from now on (not knowing whether anyone still reads this). We're hoping to put out another newsletter this month, but I might pre-empt it a little by giving you a brief rundown of the highlights of this year.

Main thing is that Mary-Grace is pregnant! The baby is due in November. This will mean a lot of changes to our lives starting from net year. Firstly MG will finish her study and graduate with a Graduate Diploma (leaving open the option for continuing study later), while I will go on for 2 more years and get a Masters. Secondly we will probably change churches and I might be a student-minister. We will strive to keep ties with our Christian family at Christ Church.

I'm very excited about becoming a father, but it is a scary thing too. Pray that we will both be able to make the necessary adjustments, and be good at raising children to love God.

We both passed our first set of exams, and are now in second semester, where we have sensed a significant increase in the pace of our study. Pray that we wont fall behind, particularly as we will be taking exams early, so they don't clash with the birth.

We still thinking and praying about what our long term ministry will look like. We hope to gather some close friends around us to pray with us about our future. Let us know if you're interested.

Our April newsletter is out.
You can see an archive of our newsletters here.

I've just changed the blog software from Wordpress to Serendipity, because I think it's better.
It all started when a new version of Ubuntu was released. I felt like my server needed a fresh install of this operating system, to clean out all the junk. While I was at it I thought I'd improve the blog software, and so here it is. The whole process didn't cost any money, but it did take time (which I should have put into working on my new testament essay about people's responses to Jesus at different stages of His ministry) but I think it was worth it.

I imported all the entries from the old blog, but the pictures didn't come through. Sorry.