Allan Anderson
CHRISTMAS 2012
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Dear family and friends
It will soon be Christmas and time to make contact
again. I am still living in Harborne where I have been for two and a half years.
Matt returned from teaching English in Korea in April (the photo above is on his
return) and is now at the University of Bristol doing his PhD studies in
Complexity Science on a fully-funded scholarship. Tami is now happily settled
in a training job as a domestic in Birmingham, with the Jericho organisation, a
Christian charity. She turned 21 in April, so both our ‘children’ are now
fully-fledged adults! We will spend Christmas together this year.
I have spent the past four months in Langley, greater
Vancouver, Canada, where I have been Visiting Scholar at Trinity Western
University, at the invitation of Dr Michael Wilkinson. I taught two five-day
graduate courses there and gave two lectures. This enabled me to pay for my
accommodation. It was a good opportunity to isolate myself and write. I
completed three articles, finished the proofs and index of my new book To the Ends of the Earth, (available
for pre-order at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ends-Earth-Pentecostalism-Transformation-Christianity/dp/0195386426/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354962273&sr=1-1).
I am also hoping to complete revising for a second edition of An Introduction to Pentecostalism, which I am contracted to finish by the end of
December (this month). Apart from a few smaller publication obligations and being editor of the journal PentecoStudies I will then be in a position to start something new,
not sure what yet but have some thoughts!
British Columbia is a beautiful part of the world and
I also managed to see a little of the Lower Mainland around Vancouver and
Vancouver Island. In particular, I was very pleased to be able to visit Marj
and Cam Connor in Comox on Vancouver Island, three times when I was there. It
took almost a whole day to get there with buses and trains but covering such
beautiful scenery on a $15, 1 hr 50 min ferry ride that I didn’t mind at all! They
are doing very well for a couple in their eighties. Marj is my dad’s sister.
They took me to several beautiful places on the island, including Cathedral
Grove (where 800 year old Douglas Fir trees are, an awesome place, in the
proper sense of the word!), Little Qualicum Falls, Port Alberni, and Campbell
River. We also saw scores of sea lions who had settled in one of the bays not
far from where they live, but no orcas or dolphins spotted when I was there.
The only other wildlife I managed to see was deer, a black bear at a distance,
a chipmunk, racoons on a busy street at night, and a few squirrels and birds.
I have done a limited amount of other travelling this year, including attending the Society for Pentecostal Studies conference in March in Virginia Beach, another conference at Yale in May, after which I took a week’s leave to visit my sister Carol and her husband Randy Speelman in St James, Florida (on Pine Island near Fort Myers). One of the highlights of being there (apart from reunion with my family) was swimming with dolphins off the beach of Cayo Costa, an island that can only be reached by boat. Then I spent a week in Ontario in August before going to BC, where I saw my mother’s sister-in-law and family Joan, David, Stuart and Chrissie Starbuck, and my Anderson cousins, Mike and Penny, and Edward and Natasha. I also spent a night with Roger and Christine Hitchcock in their beautiful house on Lake Ontario. My cousin Stuart took me on an extended tour of southern Ontario, covering hundreds of miles. If Ontario were a country it would be the fifth largest in the world – Canada is enormous and most beautiful!
We wish you a blessed,
peaceful Christmas and a happy new
year.
With love from us all,
Allan, Matt and Tami
