Allan Anderson
CHRISTMAS 2013
124
Greenfield Road, Birmingham B17 0EG, UK Tel:+44
(0)7979 811 809
Email: allanhanderson@outlook.com
Dear family and friends
It is time to make my annual contact again. Matt,
Tami and I went away to Portsmouth for a weekend and visited the Mary Rose museum
recently opened, the oldest restored ship in Britain and Henry VIII’s flagship.
We also visited my mom’s cousin Joan and her husband Patrick Pearson in Milford
on Sea, both well into their 90s and still relatively well. The picture above
was taken in Portsmouth in front of Lord Nelson’s ship Victory.
I am still living in a flat in Harborne where I have now
been for three and a half years. Matt makes his home here during his breaks. He
is now at the University of Bristol doing his second year of PhD studies on a
fully-funded scholarship. His research is on cancer, so he has gone into the
biomedical field. He got distinctions for both his mini research projects that
he had to do in his first year, and among other things, he now has a green belt
in jujitsu and is treasurer of his club. Tami lives in Solihull and completed
her training as a domestic in Birmingham with the charity Jericho, and has
passed her maths and English exams. I see her just about every week. She is
currently looking for a job, and also hopes to start college next September. We
will once again spend Christmas together this year, Matt arriving back from
Bristol tomorrow. Olwen is likely to return to South Africa during the next
year once the financial settlement is confirmed.
I have had a busy year, especially as I had to take
over the administration of our MA in Evangelical and Charismatic Studies
programme, and this included the introduction of a Distance Learning version,
which began at the end of September with five students: two in Canada, one in
the USA, one in Kuwait, and one in Namibia. A lot of work went into getting
this ready over the summer.
But it was also a time for book publications, as my
new book To the Ends of the
Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity (Oxford, 2013) came out in January (you can google
it) and the second edition of Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge, 2014) came out in November, my best-known book
and ten years after the first edition. I am still editor of the interdisciplinary
journal PentecoStudies. No new book on the horizon yet as I have been too
busy with other things. It is likely that I will not be able to retire at 65
and don’t have to either. I have taken on new PhD students this year, and have
14 altogether at the moment. If they all finish before I retire there will be
over 40 PhD graduates under my supervision from all over the world, one of the
achievements I am most pleased about. I have had two trips to the USA this
year, in May at Yale and afterwards had another few lovely sun-filled days with
my sister Carol and her husband Randy in their idyllic seaside house in St
James, Pine Island, Florida. In October I had a conference on Chinese
Pentecostalism at Purdue University, West Lafayetteville, Indiana. A lecture
trip to Heidelberg, Germany in July and to Geneva, Switzerland a month ago.
The big event was the surgery on my ankle at the beginning
of September. I had an ankle fusion done arthroscopically, with two titanium
screws holding the ankle together. I have just been to see the orthopaedic
consultant (specialist surgeon) today, and he is pleased with the mending
process but wants me to have a CT scan to see what is causing pain at the back
of the ankle (and possibly further surgery). But I am now allowed to walk
without the air boot I have worn for almost two months (plaster cast before
that). I am not walking without pain, but it seems to be better than it was
before the operation, so that is good!
We said goodbye to Nelson Mandela last week, and within
a week of that I also attended funerals of a former Nigerian PhD student, and a
friend from the church we were part of for many years who was also a good
friend to my Mom and Dad in their last years. And our dear Uncle Ralph, Dad’s elder
brother, finally left us earlier in the year at the age of 96.
We wish you a blessed,
peaceful Christmas and a happy new
year. With love from us all,
Allan, Matt & Tami
