Timothy Owens,
20 Braytoft Close,
Holbrooks,
Coventry, CV6 4ED
(024) 7668 0670
5/7/2000
Phthrrt!! 112
Greetings to all in general and you in particular,
Time for another letter.
Been a long time, hasn't it?
Hope you're all still awake.
Well, as you can see, there's now three of us. Four including the lodger, and when the in-laws were staying with us, it was seven. Rachael Louise Owens was born on May 24th, 7:22pm, weighing 7lbs 12oz. She now weighs over 9lbs, and that's in four weeks. So far she can stand up (heavily supported) and move her head round, as well as all the standard things that babies come equipped to do, such as wake up at all hours and yell for no reason. Fortunately she's been generally easy to handle at night. Usually.
It was a difficult delivery, we nearly had to wake Bronwyn up in order to push; she was so tired. The first midwife was quite supportive, and used gentle encouragement, then the next shift came on and we got the ones that had been trained by the KGB. They used psychological warfare and threats ("the doctor will be here soon, better push now or he'll bring out the plunger"). Afterwards, I went off and made the phone calls, and came back to see Bronwyn happily chatting away, while another woman sewed her up again. Yes, I cut the cord. Chewy, isn't it? Had to grab hold of it in order to get through it. Wiped my bloodstained fingers on the towel.
Rachael now has more cards than both of us do at Christmas. She also is well equipped in clothes for the next six months. No scratch-mittens please, we have at least a dozen. The in-laws brought a bagfull of stuff from friends and family in New Zealand. The bag was three feet high and two feet wide. How they got it on the plane, I'm not sure. Mostly clothes and blankets for Rachael.
Rachael now has a small corner of the web site, mostly full of photos until she learns to type. It's at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/timnbron/rachael.htm
Geoff is at last providing his archive of vintage Phthrrt photos for the web site, including Wonderkate, Pulling Through Your Friend Through The Banisters and The Argument With The Toothbrush. Any other offerings are most welcome.
Well, it seems there's a lot of names on this address list that we haven't heard from for years, so it might be time to put out an appeal...
WHERE ARE YOU?
Thank you. Please send us a letter and let us know what you've been doing all these years. Yes, that means you. No, really. I mean, you might think all these things are unimportant, like changing jobs, moving house, getting married, climbing K2, visiting Mars, but believe me, we'd love to hear from you again. Even just a short note. A quaver, maybe. That'll do. Especially if your name is Tim Dudley.
Send me your news and I'll put it in the next Phthrrt for us all to laugh at (oops) read with great interest.
Well, that's about all from us.
Now for Moray's latest letter:
Hello everyone!
When I found that quotation earlier this year, I knew it was time to write a new prayer letter, but even so it has taken a couple of months to get organised enough to put fingers to keyboard. In common with many people, I was quite ill over the Christmas / New Year period, and travelling down to London with mum to visit my aunt and uncle did not help. The 'flu hit me as much emotionally as physically, and it was well into February before I began to shake the effects. Which is when I saw that marvellous quotation in one of the ever-increasing series of Star Wars novels that have been appearing over the last few years. <
Some of you might find Star Wars a rather unlikely source of spiritual guidance - or at least, helpful spiritual guidance, but watch what happens when some ordinary Biblical techniques are applied to the phrase. Firstly, in Hebrew and in Greek, one word can be used for both "wind" and "spirit" (ruach and pneuma respectively). And secondly, a name in the Bible is usually more than a convenient label; it is a description of character or purpose. So what it comes to mean, crudely, is that if you want to feel God's presence, you need to remember who you really are - and act like it. I thought about some of the names we have, and it is worth meditating on their implications: "child of God" is an obvious one, but what about "heir of God"? Even the simple name "Christian" denotes belonging: the Greek suffix -ianos was applied to slaves and members of a household, soldiers in a particular company, or adherents to an emperor.
The week before Easter I went on another sailing holiday around the west of Scotland. We managed to get further north than we did last year, as far as the island of Coll. We also saw puffins nesting on Lunga in the Treshnish Isles, and managed brief walks on Mull and Iona. One night we anchored in Loch Tarbert in Jura; at the end of the main part of the loch is a narrow, twisting channel, barely navigable, which opens out into a beautiful and sheltered bay. The weather was good for most of the time, but there were occasions when it wasn't (the force 8 round the Mull of Kintyre comes to mind), and for the first time in my life I was seasick. Being ill is bad enough, but when it is caused by external conditions over which one has no control and from which there is no escape, it becomes a remarkably unpleasant experience indeed, and one which I would heartily recommend be avoided if at all possible. Still, there is nothing like a brief period of abject misery to show you what abject misery feels like, so even that could have some benefit, in helping to put other sources of minor grief into perspective. I suppose.
Work is going well, with plenty to keep me occupied. There are a couple of major system upgrades coming up, which we will need to get working ourselves, then package up so that non-technical system administrators will be able to install them without difficulty. Yes, I know the phrase "non-technical system administrators" should be a contradiction, but if beggars can't be choosers, neither, it appears, can missionaries. In Carlisle we are still short of programmers, and one senior member of the team is leaving later this year to take on other work within OM, so please pray for new people to fill the gaps. In a similar vein, OM as a whole is desperate for people like accountants, book-keepers, secretaries and PA's. Those aren't the sort of jobs you might associate with missionary work (which is probably why we're so short of them), but are nonetheless needed. From 16th to 20th May a number of people responsible for developing OM's computer systems, including myself, will be running a training course for our system administrators (and each other) in the different parts of the systems that we have been working on. It should be quite fun, and I hope everyone involved will benefit.
Finallly, please pray for our Petra development manager, Phil Boucher, his wife Hazel, and their daughter Amy. Since Amy was born last year, Hazel has been struggling with depression, which is not an easy thing to cope with.
That's all from me and the team here. I look forward to hearing how all of you are doing, and catching up on your news.
Shalom,
Moray