Friday, November 24, 2006
New baby
The latest and greatest news in our family is that I am now the proud father of another beautiful daughter - Charlotte Ruth Parker, born Saturday Nov 18, 2006, 9:56pm, 8 pounds 7 and looking absolutely beautiful.
She is a lovely little child, sleeps well and is all I could hope for. I've taken 2 weeks leave, and it is just lovely to be able to spend so much time with her, her big sister Elizabeth, and Ruth. I am a fortunate man!
All is going well, and I'm loving them all more each day.
For a few other photos, have a look at her on http://www.parkerbaby.blogspot.com/
National Youth Ministry Convention
One of the other things that has been huge for me this year is the National Youth Ministry Convention. It is coming together quite nicely so far, but is taking truckloads of work. However, the plan is to get almost all of it locked in this year, so advertising etc can go out early.
Basically, the NYMC will be a national event for Christians that work with youth and young adults - youth pastors, school chaplains and teachers, university workers, Government and community youth workers - the whole lot. The goals are to help them to be more fruitful in what they do through encouraging and refreshing them, connecting and networking them with their peers from across Australia and NZ, plus providing high quality training and professional development.
We started off with noone, and now have been able to bring together an amazing team of people to coordinate it, a broad coalition of denominations and para-Church youth ministry organisations as partners, some great sponsors and an impeccable bunch of speakers. Tony Campolo, Duffy Robbins, Josh Griffin and The Skit Guys are the "big name" international speakers, but the aussies are absolutely awesome too. They are all people who are specialists in their field, have an amazing message and are gifted in communication.
So it's exhausting, but it is worth it. For years I've been hoping that someone would organise something like this in Australia, but it never seemed to happen. Back in 1999 when I was travelling around the world I stopped at San Diego on the weay home and went to the American National youth Worker's Convention run by youth specialties. It was fantastic and I thought for years it would be great to have something that was closer, cheaper and especially more Australian oriented.
Every time I suggested it to people who I thought could do it I hit a brick wall. Finally this year a few events came together and an opportunity was thrown our way to do something ourselves. I asked around a number of people I trust, and this time the fedback was very different - it was all - go for it! So a team was assembled, a proposal put together, and soon enough Geoff Risson at the RMT in the Churches of Christ in QLD gave us the green light for youth vision QLD to run with the idea. However, although we're coordinating it, we really don't want it to be a "Churches of Christ" thing, especially as a good Churches of Christ person doesn't care less about denominations anyhow. I really hope that it can be a demonstration of and encouragements towards unity, not some parochial little event.
So in practice I'm working on this two days per week with youth vision, mostly from my home office. Have a look if you're interested - www.nymc.org.au
(1) comments
Basically, the NYMC will be a national event for Christians that work with youth and young adults - youth pastors, school chaplains and teachers, university workers, Government and community youth workers - the whole lot. The goals are to help them to be more fruitful in what they do through encouraging and refreshing them, connecting and networking them with their peers from across Australia and NZ, plus providing high quality training and professional development.
We started off with noone, and now have been able to bring together an amazing team of people to coordinate it, a broad coalition of denominations and para-Church youth ministry organisations as partners, some great sponsors and an impeccable bunch of speakers. Tony Campolo, Duffy Robbins, Josh Griffin and The Skit Guys are the "big name" international speakers, but the aussies are absolutely awesome too. They are all people who are specialists in their field, have an amazing message and are gifted in communication.
So it's exhausting, but it is worth it. For years I've been hoping that someone would organise something like this in Australia, but it never seemed to happen. Back in 1999 when I was travelling around the world I stopped at San Diego on the weay home and went to the American National youth Worker's Convention run by youth specialties. It was fantastic and I thought for years it would be great to have something that was closer, cheaper and especially more Australian oriented.
Every time I suggested it to people who I thought could do it I hit a brick wall. Finally this year a few events came together and an opportunity was thrown our way to do something ourselves. I asked around a number of people I trust, and this time the fedback was very different - it was all - go for it! So a team was assembled, a proposal put together, and soon enough Geoff Risson at the RMT in the Churches of Christ in QLD gave us the green light for youth vision QLD to run with the idea. However, although we're coordinating it, we really don't want it to be a "Churches of Christ" thing, especially as a good Churches of Christ person doesn't care less about denominations anyhow. I really hope that it can be a demonstration of and encouragements towards unity, not some parochial little event.
So in practice I'm working on this two days per week with youth vision, mostly from my home office. Have a look if you're interested - www.nymc.org.au
work
So work-wise - what's happening?
After resigning from Spingwood, I had nothing lined up for the next year, except my one day per week youth vision wole (www.youthvisionqld.com). As I said before, my plan was to move into chaplaincy / teaching, and I applied for various courses. However, I was also offered a job with the Australian College of Ministries (ACOM - www.acom.edu.au) In the end I took that job and decided not to study for a while - which has turned out nicely, as I have been busy enough without it.
The role is quite good. Mostly I'm involved in admin work, with a small amount of subject facilitation and marking on the side. I do miss preaching regularly, and have done that say half a dozen times in 2006, but mostly at other Churches. Apart from that, I quite enjoy the job. The first few months I was in way over my head, but now I can at least touch the bottom. It's probably good for my humility to be in so many meetings where I know far less than anyone else there - there are some pretty bright cookies around!
So, I started working for ACOM 3 days per week at the start of January, and worked a bit for Springwood unti the end of Jan. From Feb on, it's been 4 days a week total - sort of.
(0) comments
After resigning from Spingwood, I had nothing lined up for the next year, except my one day per week youth vision wole (www.youthvisionqld.com). As I said before, my plan was to move into chaplaincy / teaching, and I applied for various courses. However, I was also offered a job with the Australian College of Ministries (ACOM - www.acom.edu.au) In the end I took that job and decided not to study for a while - which has turned out nicely, as I have been busy enough without it.
The role is quite good. Mostly I'm involved in admin work, with a small amount of subject facilitation and marking on the side. I do miss preaching regularly, and have done that say half a dozen times in 2006, but mostly at other Churches. Apart from that, I quite enjoy the job. The first few months I was in way over my head, but now I can at least touch the bottom. It's probably good for my humility to be in so many meetings where I know far less than anyone else there - there are some pretty bright cookies around!
So, I started working for ACOM 3 days per week at the start of January, and worked a bit for Springwood unti the end of Jan. From Feb on, it's been 4 days a week total - sort of.
Bad news
Hi
This isn’t the sort of thing you really want to send in an email, but there are lots of people we want to tell, and this seems the quickest way.
Ruth and I went to Redlands hospital on Wednesday to book her in for the baby’s birth. The pregnancy was going nicely and the baby was now 16 weeks old. When the midwife tried to find the baby’s heartbeat she was unsuccessful. We weren’t too worried, as with Elizabeth it had taken ages to find her heartbeat, and the midwife explained the machine wasn’t very good. When two more midwives, both much older, with newer machines, couldn’t find it, we got scared.
We asked for an ultrasound, and using a low power portable machine they quickly found a sac but couldn’t see the baby properly. We asked for a full ultrasound, and after much waiting we were given conclusive results. Although the sac around the baby had grown properly, the baby itself had stopped growing at about 6 weeks old and now had no heartbeat. Our baby was dead.
On Thursday we went back again and Ruth had a curette to remove the baby. The operation went flawlessly.
So far we think we are coping well. Obviously we are absolutely devastated and have been crying a lot. Unfortunately we and a lot of our family have also got a nasty stomach bug, so nausea and diarrhoea are making life more difficult.
We would appreciate your prayers at this time,
Stephen, Ruth and Elizabeth Parker
(Late 2005)
(0) comments
This isn’t the sort of thing you really want to send in an email, but there are lots of people we want to tell, and this seems the quickest way.
Ruth and I went to Redlands hospital on Wednesday to book her in for the baby’s birth. The pregnancy was going nicely and the baby was now 16 weeks old. When the midwife tried to find the baby’s heartbeat she was unsuccessful. We weren’t too worried, as with Elizabeth it had taken ages to find her heartbeat, and the midwife explained the machine wasn’t very good. When two more midwives, both much older, with newer machines, couldn’t find it, we got scared.
We asked for an ultrasound, and using a low power portable machine they quickly found a sac but couldn’t see the baby properly. We asked for a full ultrasound, and after much waiting we were given conclusive results. Although the sac around the baby had grown properly, the baby itself had stopped growing at about 6 weeks old and now had no heartbeat. Our baby was dead.
On Thursday we went back again and Ruth had a curette to remove the baby. The operation went flawlessly.
So far we think we are coping well. Obviously we are absolutely devastated and have been crying a lot. Unfortunately we and a lot of our family have also got a nasty stomach bug, so nausea and diarrhoea are making life more difficult.
We would appreciate your prayers at this time,
Stephen, Ruth and Elizabeth Parker
(Late 2005)
Wow - I have been slack
Wow - a lot of time has elapsed here since I've updated this. I'm tempted to give some entries fake dates, but I can't be bothered. Frankly, I didn;t really feel like updating the next chapter for a fair while, but leaving the last post there doesn;t seem to make sense. So, I've got some free time right now, so here's a bit of catchup from the last year.....
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