2010: the year to come…
Friday, January 15, 2010
christmas and the new year have been and gone, now life begins to settle back into a routine.
a lot of ppl have been asking us what this year holds for the callans, so i figured (with some gentle prodding from skye) that it was time to update the blog again…
we get asked how we are going with the whole change of plans thing from time to time, and while we’d love to be up at port mac training with NTM this year it’s clear that God wants us here for now. a whole bunch of ppl have left or are leaving st marks, so there’s a lot of holes in ministry and in the church community, and we’re hoping to help fill some of these. we’re content to be here and to be more formally involved with ministry at st marks, but it will be hard sometimes as there aren’t many ppl around our age/stage of life to build close friendships with. so we’ll be making more effort with those that we have, and generally trying to help build the family of st marks here.
in terms of work we’re both planning to continue working fulltime, and i plan on continuing with my flight training. i’m not far off completing my PPL, but am struggling a little with the theory side of things. once that’s done, we’ll make a decision whether to continue towards the goal of CPL and missionary flying. it’s something that i still want to do, and we’d both love to be doing it with NTM, but everything’s up to God – if i don’t have the flying skills or the theory-retaining ability then we’ll have to see where He leads.
that’s the two main things that ppl ask ‘bout… other than that we’ll be hitting the beach as often as we can, watching lots of movies, and hanging out with friends!
happy new year!
scrawled bysteve at 4:39 PM 2 comments
2010: plans change…
Thursday, November 26, 2009
tonight we got some sad news. a call from NTM to inform us that the training that we had committed to for 2010 will not be running.
we don’t have heaps of information about what’s going on, but the main reason for the decision from NTM is that there aren’t enough trainers to enable the course to run.
while we are very disappointed about this, it’s good to know that God will direct us where he wants to be – and this is a very clear “NO” for training with NTM next year. we are blessed in a lot of ways… we have a house to live in, we both have jobs, and there are heaps of ways that we can get involved in ministry here next year.
the cancellation of the training course has affected a lot of ppl; our friends in port mac particularly are unsure of what they will do next year now, and the whole team at NTM are finding the situation difficult and disappointing. for those of you who pray, please keep the team at NTM in your prayers, and particularly our friends scott and sarah!
thanks so much for all the support that you guys have been, we really appreciate it! the news hasn’t completely sunk in yet, and we now have to think and pray about what we do in the next couple of years… we’ll keep you informed about that and any other info we get as it comes.
God be praised, his Will will be done. it’s good that we can trust him to have a plan for our lives and we don’t have to worry too much when our plans fail.
scrawled bysteve at 7:13 PM 3 comments
2010: port mac or bust…
Monday, November 16, 2009
so, we’ve made a decision! after much thinking and praying we’ve decided to trust God for next year and commit to training with NTM in port macquarie in 2010!!
very exciting times, very interesting times! we don’t know how God’s going to provide for us, whether we end up at port mac for two years or end up in my parents spare room looking for work, but either way we’re wanting to step out in faith and trust that God will put us where he wants us to be!
training starts on jan 27, God willing we’ll be moving up the weekend before and setting up house at NTM… can’t wait! there’s a three-bedroom house waiting for us on the NTM campus… so plenty of room for visitors!
i’ll give a bit more detail ‘bout what we’ll be doing in another blog; for now i just wanted to share the news cos we’re EXCITED!!!! w00t!
for some basic info on the course have a look here…
the site is in lakewood:
googlemaps link here…
did i say it’s EXCITING???!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?! hehe
scrawled bysteve at 7:22 PM 4 comments
2010: the plot thickens…
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
oops, a month slipped by! exciting times for us!
two big bits of news: the 2010 NTM training course is definitely running! praise God for providing trainers!; and we have been formally accepted by NTM to study with them in 2010!!!!! w00t!
God seems to be opening all the doors for us to head up to port mac next year. we’ve had heaps of encouragement from ppl around us, and have visited a couple of home groups to let ppl know what’s going on. we’ve got a few more groups lined up and are hoping that others will express interest soon!
so… what now?
- raising awareness and support. like i mentioned, more visits to home groups and anyone who wants to hear ‘bout what we are doing. we’re also doing a presentation to all 3 services at St Marks on November 22.
- make a decision about 2010. we can’t financially support ourselves (mostly because of the cost of flying) so we are relying on God and his ppl to get us there. it’s unlikely that we’ll be given all the money we need for the year, so at some stage we’ll have to decide to step out in faith that this is what God wants us to do and to trust him to provide. feel free to pray for wisdom and discernment!
- finishing my PPL. there’s a LOT of studying to be done before i can go for my licence, and not a lot of time for it to be done in. i’ve also had to cancel a lot of flights due to the weather… at the moment it’s ok, but if i miss many more i’ll be cutting things a bit too fine.
that’s ‘bout it for now, feel free to shoot me an email or ask questions on facebook if u wanna know something! and if you’re a praying person, please remember us in ur prayers!!!
oh, almost forgot, here’s a link to our flyer if ur interested! the outside first, and the inside of the flyer…
scrawled bysteve at 6:43 PM 1 comments
2010…?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
so it’s been ages since i last posted… a lot has been happening in the background but i haven’t blogged for a while because we’ve only just got something concrete to talk about!
in my last post i mentioned that we’ve been thinking and praying about training with NTM in 2010. since then we’ve talked to a bunch of christian friends, talked to our senior minister, and talked to NTM about it. we’ve got our ministers blessing to go and our applications are in with NTM!!!!!
there are a few things that have to happen before we are able to go: our application has to be approved; NTM needs to finalise trainers for the 2010 course; and we need to raise support for the year or two that we’ll be away.
NTM is a little under-staffed in the training area at the moment; they’re looking for another full time couple to be involved in the training. Unfortunately we may not know whether the course is definitely happening until Oct 31 :-(
because we’ve been paying for my flying training we haven’t been able to put money aside for the training course. because of the continued cost of flying and potentially having kids in the next couple of years we’re very unlikely to be able to support ourselves through training regardless of whether we go in 2010 or sometime in the future. if we don’t go next year i’ll most likely continue working towards my commercial pilots licence and then start flying commercially or do an aviation mechanics apprenticeship – neither of which are likely to provide us with extra funds for training later.
so please be praying for us!! and praying for NTM! if God wants us there, he’ll provide the means…
[for a bit more info on what we’re doing and who we are, check out our newsletter!! i couldn’t find anywhere to upload the pdf on short notice so it’s currently two jpg pics… page one here and page two here]
scrawled bysteve at 5:15 PM 6 comments
YSCN –> YORG and more (MUCH more)…
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
nav 2 is complete! two weeks back i flew out of camden to orange via katoomba and bathurst, returning past oberon. it was an awesome flight; it’s cool to fly over the mountains (such as they are) and some ground features more interesting than the flat area around camden! finding some of the runways can be interesting, it’s hard to pick one paddock from another! flight time was around 2.5hrs… slightly quicker than driving ;-)
one more nav and then a check flight before i do my first solo nav!! after that a few more navs and i’m ready for my PPL flight test!! crazy times… the main thing that’s holding me back is my theory. i want to sit my PPL tests before the end of the year, so i need to cover more than a module a week, which means i’ll have to be giving up some more time for the books
katoomba and three sisters from the air:
orange airport:
so why the deadline? well one reason is cos i need deadlines otherwise i’ll never get anything done. the other reason is that skye and i are thinking about the “MUCH more” that is mentioned above…
we are thinking about going to study with NTM for a year starting in january!!
as part of the long term plan to fly mission support for NTM somewhere overseas we need to do 2yrs of training with NTM. originally we were thinking that i would finish my flight training to a commercial level and then look into training, but now we’re thinking about doing a year in 2010, coming back to sydney(ish?) for up to 4yrs while i do more flight training and then finishing our NTM training. huge changes, massive possibilities, and totally relying on God for guidance and provision. we can’t afford to do it ourselves so we’d be relying on God through family and friends etc to pay for everything. we’d also be leaving jobs to live up at NTM in lakewood for a year then looking for work and a place to live afterwards.
at this stage it’s not set in stone, but it’s something that we are seriously thinking and praying about. it would be awesome to go and spend a year training… please keep us in your prayers and think about whether you can support us in any way! if you’re interested in finding out more about the course check out the prospectus or for general info on NTM click the pic below
scrawled bysteve at 3:49 PM 5 comments
driving me around the bend…
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
as anyone who knows me knows, i love cars. one particular car that i love is the subaru forester, particularly the GT and XT – the turbo’d versions… a good compromise between sensible and wicked fun
i hang out a lot at ozfoz.com and we had the forum’s 1yr rally over the weekend… we had a show n shine, a cruise and then dinner on the saturday, and for anyone who stayed the night there was another mini-cruise to hornsby AMF for some ten-pin bowling. i only did the saturday cos i was flying on sunday, but it was awesome!!!
got to see a bunch of guys that i know and meet some new ppl from the forum… they’re a really good mob, very eclectic mix of personalities and types who all love driving. and i got to catch up with my best man (mark) who i haven’t seen in ages!
the best part of the day was the cruise… absolutely awesome to go blasting along some nice winding roads on a sunny afternoon!!
a few pics to make the post more interesting ;)
the crew – around 45-50 foresters all up!! a group drove up from melbourne, two flew up from tassie and one from qld!
my foz – MY00 GT
chris’s genuine STi foz
dane’s teamMOOsecret foz, custom k-mart book-contact camo just for the rally… looks unreal
loch’s amazing GT, such a gorgeous machine
the lineup for the ferry on the cruise
scrawled bysteve at 12:58 PM 0 comments
