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My blogroll rocks! (Part 2)

Monday, 29 January, 2007

Now where was I? Oh yes ...

Elsie remembers meeting me more than I do. According to her, it was during SOCM (Campus Bible Study's School of Christian Ministry) at the session that Lewis took for some reason (he was given only 5 minutes' notice). She noticed that I was wearing a wedding ring and thought it strange that I was so young and already married. I remember being blown away by her friendliness and her exuberance. I got to know her better through various Christians in Arts events, and our friendship continued to endure even after I left UNSW and went to Wollongong and came back, and after she graduated, entered the workforce, left the workforce and started MTS. I've been praying for her for years, and it's been great seeing her more often now that we're meeting up to read the Bible week by week. She's such a good friend. I really thank God for Elsie.

George is another awesome friend who is also from UNSW. I met her while I was a temp in the Research Office at UNSW. I didn't know she was a Christian until the day I happened to be hanging around outside Campus Bible Study one time when it met in Matthews A. She was so excited to find out that I was a Christian too. That was in the middle of 2000. Eventually the job finished at the Research Office but I continued to see George at various things—CBS, the staff postgraduate group (which met all through the summer which was fantastic because there usually wasn't anything on for Christians on campus like us who weren't students and didn't usually take leave during those times) and so on. George is such a generous and open-hearted person. She was the one who taught us to drive, and even though it would take her several hours to get to our place in Kirrawee by public transport, she would come on the occasional weekend to take us driving in Sutherland cemetary. We really owe our mobility to her because she trained us in the very early days when we would continually stall and kangaroo-hop the car. She would yell at me for being too timid and yell at Ben for not indicating. We're only road-worthy because of her.

When we moved to Wollongong to start MTS, George was one of our best supporters. It must have been hard for her because when we left, the general staff contingent at UNSW went right down. But we managed to keep in touch—she's been reading my blog since 2002 and we were able to catch up at various things. I now count her as one of my closest friends.

It's so funny—recently I found the first piece of paper that Greg ever gave me. It says at the top, “Do Arts students make better Bible readers?” and underneath I've scribbled “Ryken, The Complete Literary Guide to the Bible” and “Postcards from Palestine”. It's from a SOCM seminar that Greg led on the subject. He was quite disappointed to find that only two of us were studying English (myself included). He read us Les Murray and a sonnet by John Donne, and afterwards I chatted to him about working in Christian publishing (this was back when he worked at MM). He gave me his card and told me that maybe one day they would be able to hire me. God certainly has a sense of humour because now I work for both him and MM.

Guan was another UNSW-er. I actually met Haoran first because he was friends with Karen. (At the time he was going out with a girl who is now at college with Ben). I don't remember meeting Guan. Maybe he can fill you in on that one. I just remember him being there, hanging out with the Christians in Arts crowd in Elsie's era. When Word by Word first began, Guan was there, and he became a regular, going on to pen the occasional article for Hippocampus Extensions (check out “The Resolution of the Image of God”—but after we've fixed the problem with our database). I really miss him now he's no longer working at MM.

Hannah is a Wollongong friend. When I met her, she was going into second year Arts. She went to my church and we hit it off pretty much immediately because she was very outgoing and friendly, and liked talking about deep and important things, like politics and social action. I learnt a lot from her. She was always challenging me to do good things that I found uncomfortable. I don't know why she doesn't blog more because she's quite a good writer too (and certainly, academically, she's one of the smartest people I know) but I think it's because her life is rather busy. She speaks French and Japanese, and she's very good at getting alongside international students and making them feel welcome.

Haoran was at something that Karen organised, I think. I met him through her anyway (I don't remember that meeting at all—maybe he can fill you in). When I came to UNSW for the first time, he was one of the few people I actually recognised, which was great because I felt rather lost in the sea of CBS-ers. Like Guan, he became a regular at Word by Word, and occasionally wrote articles for HE.

I met Haydn at the same time as Cade—at my first CBS faculty Bible study group. He also became a regular Word by Word-er and contributer to Hippocampus Extensions. I interviewed him about the death of his mother and he said some wonderful things about grief, trusting in God and helping someone who is going through that whole period.

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