New faces
This term we've been very pleased to welcome Scott Stadalsky (staffworker) and Megan Kibbey (associate staffworker) in Dundee; Hannah Johns as an intern working for the student department; and Soo Young Lee, as a student intern.
Student events
There were three summer teams of students and doctors to countries in Eastern Europe; we had a great summer school in Cumbria, and a good number of CMF reps attended UCCF Forum for leadership training. We also ran a freshers' day in London for the first time, as well as our usual student leaders' training in October. Please pray for Christian freshers to get stuck into their church, CU and CMF groups; and that through them many others would hear the Gospel and respond!
Demand triples
Please pray for our International Medical Students' Conference (6-10 February). We've already received three times the number of applicants as in previous years, and are therefore planning to increase substantially the number of places, to about 30 delegates from up to 20 countries. This is a crucial opportunity to support and equip medical student leaders from across Europe and Central Asia.
Plus the National Student Conference (10-12 February), of up to 400 people at Swanwick. John Lennox is our main speaker.
Scottish connections going for growth
Scott Stadalsky joined us in August as student staffworker in Dundee.
Scott – tell us about your professional life to date
After my degree at the Medical University of South Carolina in 1999 I proceeded to the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Centre in Memphis where I received practical training in the specialties of Paediatrics and Internal Medicine. For the last eight years, I practised General Paediatrics in Charleston, South Carolina. We hosted students from the local medical university regularly as volunteer clinical faculty for the Department of Paediatrics, which provided opportunities with students we would not otherwise have met.
What are your aspirations for the student staffworker role?
To resource and coordinate a relational ministry outreach to the medical students in Dundee. We hope to invest our time, prayers, and resources deeply in a small group of students facilitating their spiritual growth, who then do likewise.
What appeals to you about this job?
It is exciting to see lives transformed by the Gospel. To witness the spiritually blind receive sight and the deaf receive hearing is amazing. We have experienced this in the past and are convinced that the Lord has similar plans in Dundee. As many of the cleverest students choose to study medicine, the questions they pose and ideas they hold keep us on our toes, challenging us to 'always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have'.
What do you do to relax?
I am married to Jennifer and we have twochildren, a five-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son. We enjoy travelling and especiallycycling and hiking. This winter we hope tointroduce the children to skiing.
Briefly, how can we best pray for you?
1. That we would continue to trust Godfor all things.
2. That we would grow in our walk with the Lord.
3. Continued transition for the family.
4. Opportunities for student contact, and forstudent interest.
5. That the Spirit would be moving in the heartsof the students here.
Juniors' conference
I've just returned from a fantasticCMF Junior Doctors' Conference.It's a great privilege to observe whatGod is doing through CMF's junior doctors.Much of my time is spent on conferences –over the past year that'sincluded three SalineSolution training courses,and the Scotland Juniors'Retreat, on the banks ofLoch Tay – leading sessionson Isaiah 30.My work with CMF ispastoral – it's getting alongside people, hearingtheir challenges, struggles and joys, encouragingthem and walking with them.
Juniors' labour of love
Foundations is a book conceived byjuniors, written for juniors by juniorspast and present and addressingjuniors' issues. There are over 70articles by 40 authors, peppered with punchytestimonies, prayer points and 'think it through'questions which provide an opportunity forfurther thought.
The attractive hardback design is quite differentfrom anything we have ever produced. It's meantto be picked up and dipped into again and again,and left out on the coffee table to be read, sharedand re-read. Our aim is to provide a Christianmedical equivalent of the Oxford Handbook ofClinical Medicine, with concise, accurate and easyto-find information on a wide variety of subjects.
This book has had a long gestation; eight yearsfrom start to finish under three editors – CarolineBunting, Rachael Pickering and LaurenceCrutchlow. As Peter Saunders says in the forward:'It's been a long time coming and a real labourof love. But I'm sure you will agree it's beenwell worth waiting for.'
Order online at www.cmf.org.uk
