The light at the end of the tunnel

My first blog post was written on 17th July 2008, when I decided to blog my way through the Methodist Foundation Training and Candidating process. It served it's purpose well and provided a way for many friends to follow my progress and offer their encouragement and prayers. In fact it was such a good way for people to follow my journey that I decided to continue it after my acceptance as a Student Minister, it felt very right to finish sharing my training journey with those who had followed and supported me up till then.

It is now January 2011 and the light at the end of the tunnel has appeared!! A journey that started in April 2006 when I was Accepted 'on Note' as a Methodist Local preacher, is about to end another stage and change direction once again.

The last five years have seen me start and finish Local preacher training, get accredited as a Methodist Local preacher, start and finish Methodist foundation training, candidate and be accepted for Presbyteral Ministry, finish three years of formal academic and ministerial studies and start the fourth and final one. I have done two big Church placements, three pioneer placement, two pastoral placements and explored and studied many other things without formal placement. It's a wonder I've had any time to write on here at all!! There is still much work to be done before the end of the academic year and concentrating on work and not getting "demob happy" will be my greatest challenge yet because.......................................................

A week ago the reward for all my hard work, sacrifices, busyness and stress was revealed with the results of the deliberations of the Methodist stationing committee. From the 1st of September 2011 I have been appointed and the Minister at Cheam Methodist Church, and one of a team of ministers at Epsom Methodist Church. It is great news, the appointment fits like a glove and is more than I could have hoped for in my dreams. My family and I will move to Epsom to begin the next chapter.

2011 First Post

The first post of a new year, and typically ages since the last one!! However maybe this time I have a better excuse than usual. Eight weeks ago I underwent the second stage of a MACI operation to rebuild my knee, this was done using cells taken out during the first stage op and grown in a lab to create an implant. It is the second time I have had this done, the last time was about 5 years ago. It has been a very slow healing process, eight weeks on I still have a full length leg brace on for much of the time and am still restricted to walking with crutches. However my pain levels are already below the pre-op ones and all the early indications are that the procedure has been successful once again.

Having had two general anaesthetics in 6 weeks and large doses of pain killers, much of the last eight weeks has been somewhat hazy!! I now have large amounts of college work to catch up with and need to get back into a serious work routine as quickly as possible.

It is now only 6 months till the end of my final year as a Student Minister, the next months are destined to be busy with college stuff and the end of year panic over deadlines. There is some other stuff going on as well - but I'll save that for a new post!!