Blast from the past

Today our "stuff" caught up with us in Australia. The movers arrived at about 10am, a few hours into the heaviest of this summer's many downpours. Fitting then that the arrival of our goods was also accompanied by a flood of memories. We opened up our bedding and remembered the many nights we spent in Long Beach. Seeing our night stands again transported me back into our little apartment on Spring Street, which we haven't even thought much about since we left it three months ago. Of course, some of the memories go even deeper than that--Annie unpacked our bedding and said "Oh, here's the blanket that Grammy made for me". Of course, this memory stimulant carries a lot of bittersweet freight, since it has been less than five months that her grandmother has been "absent from the flesh and present with the Lord".

I spent most of the evening before and after our weekly Bible study by unpacking my boxes of books. This was very fulfilling--I need these books because I've got a lot of writing to do in the near future. However, it was also fraught with not a little introspection on my part. As I pulled the books from boxes and stacked them (two rows deep!) on the built-in shelves in our college flat, I was reminded of so many of the decisions I've made, and experiences I've had, over the past decade.

There were some books dating to my community college days: the beautiful King James Version bible that I bought when I was still in Arizona, faithful attending the eschatology-focused Calvary Chapel there. I did love that church--as unhealthy as I realize now that it was. I sure did learn a lot about the Bible during that time, too. Then there are some of the Arabic books I bought when I was studying that language for two years. I remembered thinking about how I might go to the Middle East and practice my skills, something that I did when I lived in East Jerusalem for six months. Of course, I also felt a lot of disappointment when I reflected that I never got very good at Arabic.

Then there were the books that spoke of the first couple of years I spent at Biola. Biblical commentaries, New Testament monographs, and especially my tattered Greek textbooks. These were great years. I made new friends, I lived completely on my own for the first time (other than the six months abroad), and I found out that I really loved studying the Bible, theology, and philosophy even. I discovered a thirst for knowledge that was nearly insatiable. As I looked at those ratty Greek books, I thought about the caffeine-fueled late nights studying Greek and reading books that were above and beyond the requirements for my classes. I remembered the hot summer I spent house-sitting in Garden Grove, with all my free time (I was working with jr. high kids at my church) going to memorizing the principal parts of every Greek verb in my text book. I longed to gain a level of mastery so that I could do research and teach others.

Then there were some of the first theological texts I ever bought and read--a copy of the first volume of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics, Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology, and a ratty underlined copy of Calvin's Institutes. These were heady times--I realized that I didn't only want to study scripture, but I wanted to reflect upon its meaning for the modern world. This was the beginning of a new era for me. Of course, this was also the time that I started dating the woman who is now my wife, Annie Temple. These books reminded me of the joy and stress of that time. I was trying to date Annie well, wondering whether or not I should get married, wondering whether I could be a good husband. And these were good times: discovering what it was like to be loved, and learning to love another person in a way that I hadn't before.

Then there is a particular theological text--Kevin Vanhoozer's Drama of Doctrine--that I was reading right at the time that I was offered a full-time position at my church. It was the summer, and I was planning that fall to take a full-load and finish my bachelor's degree. I was still working part-time at my church. I remembered how, in July, I was abruptly told that the youth pastor, my boss, was quitting. A couple of days later, I was offered the job. $50,000 per year plus benefits. I would have to cut back to part-time and take the entire school year to finish my degree. I wanted to say no--I did not want to do youth ministry. But I had $30,000 in student loans, and more importantly--I had a girlfriend that I really wanted to make into a fiance and, ultimately, a wife. I took the job. My first sermon series was loosely based on Vanhoozer's book: I taught the students how to understand the Bible as a drama that unfolds in five acts. That first year of youth ministry was hell on earth for me...I was going to school part-time, starting in my first fulltime ministry position with little to no support and a lot of external and internal pressure. Oh, and I was planning to get engaged and then planning a wedding.

I found a Jonathan Edwards biography by George Marsden. I remember reading this while on our honeymoon in June, 2008. I had just been through one of the best events of my life, marrying a beautiful and loving woman. At the same time, two weeks prior to the wedding, I had dealt with a group of parents and students who were trying to get me fired from my job--a job I can honestly say that I had tried so desperately to succeed at. As I look at the Edwards biography, I remember the joy and sorrow of this. If only I could stay in Oregon with my bride and with Edwards, but I knew that soon I'd return to Southern California. I don't think I had ever been so happy and nervous as during that honeymoon. We were in the throes of wedded bliss, but the global economy melting down as we vacationed, and my job back home was in question.

Then there is the set of the Church Dogmatics that Annie bought me for our first anniversary in 2008. I remember reading through parts of these, longing to get into a PhD program. I was hoping to somehow do well enough in my master's program--in which I was enrolled part-time--that I could get in to Oxford or Aberdeen or somewhere with a fancy name, and somewhere in the UK. I posted a facebook status up about Annie buying these for me. The young Aussie blogger, Ben Myers, posted a comment: "Isn't there something about the Church Dogmatics in Proverbs 31?" Little did I know that this would be my future PhD supervisor, and that I'd move to Australia and take these books, and all the others, with me.

As I looked through the books, I also saw a great many books that were of little to no consequence to me, and actually do not look very interesting at all. Technical books on New Testament history, books on trendy philosophical topics, and books I bought just because I thought that I had to read them if I were going to be respected by people in the academic circles I so desperately wanted to get into. I realized that a lot of these books represented one thing to me: striving. Trying hard to be a certain type of person--more rigorous, more literary, more conversant with liberal theology--none of them necessarily bad, but all for the wrong reasons. For this reason, opening my books scared me. I want to repent and turn from this striving--that's what this new chapter of my life should be about. I realize that I'm at my happiest when I simply try to follow Jesus, and my book-buying and reading habits are disciplined around this desire.

The Good and The Bad

Sorry to you all that it's been so long since either of us have posted anything! It seems like the days are flying past and without even realizing it, it's been ages since posting.

So, The Good and The Bad---it seems like for various reasons we've had a rough couple of weeks. Nothing too horrendous, but one super annoying thing after another. First however, I will start with the GOOD things that have been happening.

Matt has been full on with his role as Senior Residential Tutor here at the college. So far we already care about and love the RT's (Residential Tutors) that he is overseeing. They are a great group of college kids who love the Lord and want to serve God and their community this year. Both of us (Matt and Annie) were able to go up to the Blue Mountains for a couple day retreat with the RT's. It was so fun to get to know them better. We played games, cooked good food, shared testimonies, had Bible studies, and they went on a very long and strenuous bush walk. With many LEECHES latching onto everyone's ankles. They all came home a bleeding mess. All this to say, we feel blessed to be living in this community are are excited about this year with them!

Last Thursday was Matt's 28th birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Unfortunately we weren't quite able to take the whole day and go out and celebrate because he had a huge presentation the very next day. This big presentation was to be confirmed as a PhD student at UTC (United Theological College), so it was kind of important that he do well. We went out to dinner with some friends we know from UTC to a wonderful Italian restaurant and  had a great evening. Good food, wine, company, and a very happy birthday celebration.

For those of you wondering, Matt's presentation went very well!! Praise the Lord. I wasn't there, I thought it might be kind of awkward to be the only non-scholar sitting in a room with lecturers, professors, doctoral students, etc. "Hi, I'm Annie---I'm Matt's wife and just came to watch." While it would have been a very supportive gesture, I decided it probably wasn't appropriate! However, apparently they really liked his researcher and had very little to criticize him on. Great news, considering we've moved here so he can get his PhD.

On Saturday morning, before I had to work at 2 PM we went with our friend, Tom Swanton to the beach. It seems like 9.5 out of every 10 days we have had here have been RAINING! This was a beautiful, sunny, warm, gorgeous summer's day! We had coffee, banana bread, pear and raspberry bread at a little shop by the beach. Then we walked up and down the beach and up some cliffs for a beautiful view. It could not have been more perfect, except I had to be to work soon, so we couldn't stay as long as we would have liked! We keep hoping for more beautiful days so we can finally go and explore this Australia that we live in, but alas it keeps raining on all my days off.

This begins the---BAD--- portion of this post. The rain! While it does keep the summer heat at bay (which is nice because we don't have AC), it greatly impairs our ability to go do things on my days off. It's been quite frustrating for me the past few days. I'm working on my attitude. But, we really want to go to the ZOO and go on a Harbour Cruise!!!! We've been waiting for weeks to do these things, and it keeps RAINING!

Onto other not so great stuff. I will list it as briefly as possible. Please bare with me, I don't want to seem all negative. Which is why I listed all the GOOD stuff first!

-Our shipment from America. It's still not to us yet!! :( It arrived to Sydney on Feb 19th and had been sitting there waiting to clear customs. We got an email last night saying that it has cleared customs, except for our bike! Which Matt spent hours upon hours and a lot of money fixing up this bike before we moved. We only have one car, so we thought having a bike would be a good idea. Our options----pay $380 to have it steam cleaned OR $231 to have it destroyed!!! Are you kidding me?!?!?! It's maddening. I'm sure the bike really isn't worth that much. It was a birthday present I got when I turned 12 I think. hahaha. However, it's a great quality bike and I loved it for years! I don't want to destroy it, but on the other hand I'm not sure it's worth almost $400. Plus, we don't have that kind of money to throw around right now anyway! We have to make a decision soon though, or we will not get our shipment delivered to us.

-Our car---we purchased a decent, older car, from some friends. Of course there are risks in buying an older car. However, we don't have money for a more expensive car, so we are content to drive an older one. It just needs to work! It broke down on my way to work on Saturday. OH NO!!! Thankfully I was able to ride with someone to work and borrow a car. However, $1100 later---and now our car is in working order again. :( More money spent that we really don't have at the moment.

-Our mobile (cell) phones! By now all the kinks are pretty well worked out. However, Matt spent countless hours trying to get an account through a couple different good cell providers down here. And for various reasons we weren't passing the credit checks. Basically, it boiled down to they wanted 3 months work of pay check stubs!!!! Are you kidding me?? We need phones now! Can't really wait 3 months! So, now we have Vodaphone and I think it's going to work out fine. Matt has a new iphone 4s. I am using my iphone 4 we purchased in the States. It was just one mess after another for about a week, until we finally got Vodaphone to accept us.

Alright, enough complaining. We have honestly both felt a little stressed by the continual unforeseen expensive expenses that have happening on a weekly basis. It's been frustrating. I keep reminding myself (although it doesn't totally negate the frustration) that our money is not really ours---it's the Lord's! He knows what's happening, even when we don't. We made the move to Australia not knowing how we were going to pay for everything----and it still kind of feels like that. But, we have a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, I have a job that I love---so why am I complaining???

Right, I don't really know, except it feels good to get the complaints off of my chest.

Now, onto living life, loving Australia (rain and all), and serving our eternal King who has given us the gift of salvation even though we are rotten sinners who don't deserve it!

The End. (of my post)

Who'll Stop the Rain?

It has been a dreadfully long time since we updated our blog. Please accept our apologies. Part of the reason is certainly that we haven't done too much that is of mass interest in the last couple of weeks. There are two reasons for this:

First, we have been imprisoned by the continuing torrential onslaught. We have just survived the wettest and coldest January in Sydney in over thirty years. Further, we have apparently moved to Sydney in what is the wettest two-year period on record. Unfortunately, the rain shows no sign of abatement. My typing is this very moment drown out by the collision of raindrops with the plastic roof of our patio. Keep in mind, we live in the southern hemisphere, so a January with 26-27 days of rain is equivalent to a July with this much rain in the northern hemisphere!

Second, we have been busy with work and, especially, moving to our new place. Speaking of our new place, that is something to write home about. We are now residents at Robert Menzies College (RMC), an Anglican residential college affiliated with Macquarie University. This is where I (Matt) am working as a Sr. Residential Tutor (a part-time pastoral/residential role). The college consists of four "blocks" (soon to be five), a common building replete with a recreation hall, large dining room, and administration offices, a house for the master, and a chapel. We live on the first floor at the corner of "C block". We have a two bedroom, one bath apartment, with a fairly generous "walled garden" (read: backyard). There is not a lot of natural lighting and the rooms are pretty small--especially the kitchen! We were at first a bit worried about our capacity to make the place comfortable. After a little bit of effort, it is really starting to come together quite nicely. We're pretty much done until our personal goods arrive in a few weeks.

If it ever stops raining, I'll take and post some pictures all around the college. For now, here is a quick tour of the inside of the apartment. (I hope Annie won't mind too much that I made absolutely no effort to clean things up!)

The living room. The sofa to the right has a pull-out bed and will eventually end up in the study/guest room (below). Thanks to our friend Tom for helping me pick it up. The red coffee table is something we found on the side of the road and painted. The black sofa was a find on "Gumtree" (Aussie craigslist), thankfully the owner was willing to deliver. You'll notice the window seats; Annie is responsible for sprucing these up so nicely. The small desk against the wall, will eventually give way to our dining table (which is currently at sea). We'll also put a light-colored rug down when it arrives.

Here is a view to our patio and part of our backyard. As you can see, it's very lush. As you will also notice, it is raining!

View of the hallway and the door out which you just looked.

The study/guest room, which awaits its sofa and the arrival of my books (They won't all fit in here, obviously. This may prove to be a problem. We'll see.) The dresser is another thing we found and painted. It's really nice, other than that the drawers stick quite a bit.

My desk. You can see this blogpost in incipient form if you look closely at the computer screen. I got the desk and chair at Costco--they're great. Also, you can see that I have plenty of reading light, which is essential for staying up late at night.

Here's our kitchen--it's a bit messy at the moment (and what's up with the trashcan lid being left up like that?), but you get the idea. It's pretty tiny. But when you consider the fact that we can eat meals in the dining hall, it's more than enough space for us. You'll notice the large cupboard on the right side of the picture. That is another piece we found on "Gumtree"; thanks to our friend Dean for helping us pick it up!

The view out our bedroom window to the common grass area. As far as I gather, no one ever really goes out on this grass. It looks nice, though.


Our bathroom. Epic.


Little side table/dresser that we found and painted up. This salvage piece came out the best, by far. The red is darker than it looks in this picture.


Our bedroom. I told you I didn't clean up. This will all look quite different when our belongings (including our own bed) arrive in a few weeks. But you get the idea.

New Perspective on Nursing...

I've completed week #2 of work! happy happy! This week seemed to pass by so much more quickly than week #1. I feel more adjusted to how things work on my ward, what expectations are, where things are located, etc. However, I am still adjusting to the MANY differences between life as an RN in the US vs life as an RN in AUS.

Here's a few reasons:
--We mix up our own medications! I was apparently spoiled by having the pharmacy mix everything for me in Socal. Little did I know that I would be mixing all my own antibiotics before giving them! It's really not that difficult of a task, just takes a little practice and getting used to.

--I do vital signs like they are going out of style!!! Except, they are called 'OBSERVATIONS.' I suppose that name kind of makes sense, but it feels strange coming out of my mouth every time I say it. Nurses are responsible for taking their patient's vital signs---again I was so spoiled by the nurse assistants at my last job!

--Doctors are pretty much always called by their first name. Seems so strange calling a doctor by their first name. Also, there are residents ALL OVER THE PLACE!

--For the most part they use all the same types of equipment as I used when working in the States, although I think about half or more of thing are called by different names. I won't bore you with all the examples---and honestly most of them aren't in my long term memory yet.

--Ok, there also is not a NURSING CARE PLAN or a full HEAD TO TOE ASSESSMENT flow sheet/papers/computer stuff of any kind that I have to fill out each shift.This seems to be one of the strangest things to me! (for any nursing friends of mine reading this, I am sure you are dumbfounded by this. for my non nursing friends, ahhh you probably don't know what the heck I am talking about!)

--I don't clock in an out. We are paid a salary! hahahaha! So, if my work is done 20 minutes early and the other nurses don't need anything and my patients are fine----I'm outta there for the day! kind of cool.

--We work 8 hour rotating shifts----days/evening/nights kind of bizarre, but so far it's a nice change of pace from my 12 hour work days! I only have to do 4 nights a month, so it's not terrible.

--There are certainly some differences in what nurses can and can't do. For instance, we aren't allowed to insert IV's----just when I was getting good at them too!! It took a long time to feel confident in my IV skills, and now I can't do it. However, we can remove chest tubes, without the doc there. Blows my mind.

--We don't wear scrubs. DEVO!! (short for devastating/devastated) Instead, navy blue pants and light blue polo shirts---everyday!! I could wear a skirt if I wanted, but that just seems like the wrong attire for a nurse.

--There's no such thing as code blue. (or any other code for that matter!) Like, orange, gray, silver, pink, purple, white, etc. You can call an arrest emergency (basically a code blue), but not sure what they do if there's any other type of emergency. I hope I don't have to find out!

--As a recap, everyone at work is super helpful and friendly. I seem to get asked the same 20 questions each shift, like why are you here? where are you from? blah, blah, blah. I got my answers down pat! However, I'm looking forward to growing in friendships with some of my new co-workers. Most of them don't know the Lord from what I've learned in conversations----so I hope and pray the Lord will use me to shine for him and share the message of salvation with them!

--And lastly, I love working with kids instead of adults!! They are so much cuter. Some of them are just so adorable.

oh, and did I mention this----I get 6 weeks of paid holiday a year! oh my word!!! seriously!?!?! Might be rough to move back to the USA someday!

"Real Life" and Weekends

We are in week two of "real life" here in Sydney. I'll spare you all the dull details. Here's a brief rundown:

Annie is working 7:30am-4pm, Mon-Fri. Last week was her first week on this schedule, and this week is her second. Next week things get more interesting as she mixes in some evening shifts (2pm-10:30pm). Work is good, although it almost seems too easy. We're counting on that being too good to be true.

I (Matt) am studying from the house we are sitting. My schedule is roughly similar to Annie's, except for the fact that I usually also studies from 9pm-midnight each night. I've had five work days here so far, and I've made it through about five books that I needed to read. I'm just getting my bearings again. Writing commences very shortly.

After a long week of "newness" we were pretty tired, and itching to do something fun. On Saturday we took the train from Epping to Central Sydney, and spent the day exploring part of the city. It was fun and educational, too. We visited Darling Harbour, China Town, Hyde Park, the Hyde Park Barracks Museum (where convicts were housed in the first half of the 19th century), the Royal Botanic Gardens, and the Opera House. After a long, feet-blistering day, we made our way back to Epping and had a nice dinner with our friend Tom. Here are some pictures of our day:

I suggest going to this place. It's cool.

One of many nice paintings of early 19th century Sydney.

I talked Annie into getting the roast duck. :)

I was pretty obsessed with this ship. Unfortunately, you have to pay admission to go on board. We'll do that some other time.

These guys wanted a picture with Annie. I decided to allow it.

I am sitting in my lunch break at work. Lots of orientation--manuals, policies, emergency procedures, etc. however, I have just been informed that we do not do IV insertions!! The residents do the IV starts. Man, I am in a state of shock! All for now.