Hilary Term

Last year I said several times that Brandon would blog about his course and the things he was doing.
I wasn't intending to lie; it just...didn't happen. He was too busy and I didn't feel I could write on his studies as well as he could. But it's going to have to be written from my perspective, because Hilary term is even fuller than Michaelmas was.

As a quick reminder, Brandon is now in the second of three terms of a program named The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, fondly known as OCCA (and said like this: Ocka. Not O-C-C-A. If you want to know more about the program, click on the link to the right of this post.) He's studying alongside 18 other guys and girls from 9 countries.
Here's a picture of the whole group, taken last term:

OCCA 2010-11 with Wycliffe Hall in background

 He spends a lot of time with these folks. Here's a screen shot of a typical week of his life, aka google calendar:

Isn't he organized?

This was his calendar from about 2 weeks ago. It's a bit different each week, but here are some pretty common themes:

•  In general, he has lectures Monday - Thursday, at differing times each week and with various tutors/guest lecturers. If you can read some of the titles above, you'll see classes like "Missiology", "Apologetics Workshop", and "The Rationality of the Christian Faith". Friday is generally a free day for study and writing (although this particular week didn't pan out that way).  
• Every other week, they write an academic essay that requires a good bit of research outside of class.  For example, the one he turned in this week was titled, "Why did Mark write his gospel the way he did?" All the students were, of course, to read Mark's gospel, but they also had to cite several academic sources in their papers. 
•  Friday nights he helps with an Alpha group at St. Edwards, a prestigious co-ed boarding and day school in Oxford. Alpha is a program originally developed by a church in central London in the late 1970s to present a basic outline of the Christian faith to new believers. It was adapted for non-Christians in the 90s and is now used in 163 countries. It involves meeting weekly for a meal followed by listening to a speaker on subjects including how God guides us and why Jesus died. Brandon's part is to help with table discussion after the talk. 
• Also on Friday evenings, Brandon and I help with an informal Bible study here at NOOC. 

This spring he'll also have 2 missions with OCCA: one at Sheffield University in March, and another in Leyland the first week of April. Both of these places are located in England and will last about a week. (I'm actually going to Leyland, too!)

It's not all work and no play, though. He's participating in a ping pong tournament here at NOOC on March 1st.  

But for now, Brandon's spending a lot of time right here:

As always, prayers are appreciated.