Matt

b.1971, married (to Jen), 3 children, IT technician.

Matt was born and raised in Reading, with the exception of two pre-school years, when the family was on a missionary hospital project in Uganda. Life in Reading centred on the Greyfriars Church, a large and vibrant Evangelical Anglican community. Matt had an older brother and two younger ones, and a sister too, which meant that he came into contact with children of different ages. He introduced a number of school friends to the church, without any conscious evangelical effort on his part, for he was a church-going lad but not necessarily a paragon of Christian virtue.

Spring Harvest Festivals were important annual highlights from age 9, with Graham Kendrick in particular making an impression with his music. But it was on a youth camp in Climping on the south coast, which was led by Dennis Shepherd, a Greyfriars preacher, that Matt came to a real understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. There and then, aged 14 or 15, he gave his life to Jesus.

Matt left school at 16 and took employment with a large bank. As his parents planned to move to Cornwall, he applied to be transferred to a branch there. His application was granted surprisingly quickly, but the sale of his parents' house was slow. Matt lived in Cornwall for 18 months before his parents were able to join him. By that time, he felt a need to leave. He never found a church that suited him, the Plymouth one he tried the most being rather given to charismatic experience and dubious biblical teaching.

He left Cornwall and employment in the bank for Tonbridge in Kent, to do a one-year stint as a volunteer for the Barnabas Trust. He welcomed youth groups coming on their adventure holidays, mended showers and cleared forest paths - whatever was needed. His work took him back to the Climping Camp, too, to his amazement and delight. He had not known that the camp, where he had committed his life to Jesus, belonged to the Trust. All his days and evenings were spent in Christian work, either in the Trust's youth facilities or in the Tonbridge Baptist Church. It was magnificient if a bit surreal. But he had to leave after his year there, for it was Barnabas Trust policy not to keep its volunteers any longer than that. It was time again to face that vexed question, what line of work it was that God wanted him to do for a living.

He went to Tuscany for a week's holiday. He enjoyed it there, not least because he was among people who had not known him and therefore had no particular expectations of him. He met Jen. They sat together on the coach all the way back. They were just friends, but when she invited him some time later to visit her in Manchester, he renegotiated the starting date of a proper job he had just got after several temporary ones, so that he could go up to see her.

The proper job was in the finance office of a large utility company in Reading. After doing it for two years, he decided to upgrade his qualifications and got a place through the Mature Student entry scheme on a three-year degree course in Brighton. He did not know how he would take to academic study, having never taken A-levels. He actually spent his first year going off the rails. At the end of it, however, he got a summer job in Manchester, where Jen was. The job was with a large computer company. On the very first day, he was transferred from a temporary routine clerical position to an established post as an IT technician. It was a good summer: he and Jen started to go out and their relationship deepened. He spent the rest of his university days in Brighton during term time and in Manchester during the vacations, where the computer company kept his job for him. The summer after he finished his degree course, Matt and Jen got married and the computer company turned his summer job into a full-time one.

They bought a house on the Wirral and became active in Jen's home church. It took Matt a while to get used to the Brethren church as well as the Scallies, as the lads of the nearby housing estate, where the church did its outreach, were known. They thought him a posh southerner and enjoyed testing him out. One day, when he took them on an outing, they used a game of hide and seek to disappear until 9pm, to the displeasure of their parents, who had to wait for their return till very late.

Commuting to work in Manchester was not trivial, in addition to which Matt's job was not an unadulterated joy when he found himself a manager in charge of 40 IT support staff. Managing people was not really his ambition, since he saw his strength in technical work; besides which, he had to contend with his own immediate boss, whose idea of a motivational talk was to hurl obscenities at Matt's staff. Matt and Jen considered their options and prayed. They sold their house and travelled to Perth, Western Australia.

Jen's job was already waiting for her in Perth, and within a week of arrival, they found a church that was right for them, thanks to contact names and phone numbers they had brought from England. Matt's paid work took a month to find, but it was worth waiting for. Matt enjoyed the workplace atmosphere created by his colleagues' commitment to being on their surf boards by 4pm, the regular out-of-town travel to the firm's mine and processing plant, and the sense of exotic adventure that daily routines could bring, such as when a snake of a dangerous species turned out to be resident inside a computer server. Matt and Jen had a great time in Perth and they could have stayed there, but their visas expired after a year. They said good-bye to their church friends, did a bit of antipodean travel, and came back to the Wirral.

This time a job was not easy to find in the area. Matt took one in Newbury, not far from his native Reading. They settled happily and made friends in the Baptist Church (where Jim was then the minister). When Matt became redundant after a company merger, he found another job, which turned out to be the most interesting he ever had, involving as it did setting up IT networks for live interactive TV shows.

God blessed Matt and Jen with a son. It was not a trouble-free pregnancy and Jen went into labour six weeks early, on the weekend of Matt's younger brother's wedding in Manchester. Instead of being there, Matt listened to the wedding vows over a mobile phone, terrified that the connection might fail and cause unwelcome ringing in the church. But Jen gave birth to a healthy baby son. Less than two years later, God blessed Matt and Jen with a baby daughter. Again, the birth was early but the baby was in good health.

The advent of the young family, however, brought some disadvantages of its Newbury location to the fore. Living on the edge of a woodland was nice but devoid of facilities for young children, and the absence of a wider family was making itself felt. Matt and Jen prayed a lot and then decided to move to York, where Jen's brother and his family had put down their roots. Reluctantly, Matt went to see his boss to give a notice to quit; and the boss offered him a deal where Matt would continue to do the same work from home at York, with just periodic trips to Basingstoke.

In York they attended the Crossroads Church at first, before moving on to YCC where the times and facilities for children suited them better. Their short time in Crossroads brought them two important and lasting gains, however: information about a house that was for sale, which they have bought and been living in since; and, the Godfrey family that have thus become their neighbours and close friends.

Matt's working-from-home contract was convenient, in that it enabled him to take a share of looking after the children, but it came to an end after 7 months, falling prey to another bout of company takeover, rationalisation and outsourcing so common in the IT world. Matt got a job in the York headquarters of a large company. By this time, Jen was in her third pregnancy. That it had its problems was something Matt and Jen were used to by now, although Matt struggled from time to time with the extra duties it brought him in looking after the children. Again, Jen went into labour early and God blessed them, a baby girl was born.

This time, however, God also tested them. Jen had to be whisked away from the labour ward to an operating theatre and her new-born girl to a baby unit in Leeds, as there was no place left in York. Matt did not know where to be for the best, whether in Leeds to see his baby girl or in York near Jen. He travelled to and fro over the next few days, with the help of church friends who chauffered him, for he was too exhausted to drive himself. In York, the news from the operating theatre that Matt was told was that Jen would probably not pull through. He spent much of his time on his knees. He was desperate, having lost a hope that Jen would live. But curiously, he never felt angry with God; on the contrary, he felt Him to be closer than ever before.

God did not leave him alone. Matt's elder brother was the person better able than anyone else to give Matt the emotional support he needed, and he suddenly turned up in the hospital car park. He had heard the news on his way to work in Reading, and had turned the car around straight away, to drive up to York instead. Church friends turned up to pray and to offer help, as did Jen's family. Throughout, Matt knew that his two older children were safe and sound, under the care mainly of family and friends.

Jen had her second operation and it was a success, death loomed no more. Matt went home and before collapsing into bed in sheer exhaustion, he put the computer on to read his e-mails. Thus he learned that whole prayer groups were formed to pray for Jen, in Australia and Indonesia as well as in England. Church friends had put out the news of the crisis to their networks and many people prayed, in all corners of the world. Now he knew that prayers save lives. Turning up in YCC the following Sunday was another moment when he realised just how supportive and loving the fellowship in Christ was.

The crisis provided an opportunity for Matt to talk to his work colleagues about his faith. None of them have come to Christ yet, but Matt knows better than to be disappointed when his evangelical witness is not instantly followed by a conversion. It was only just before last Christmas when a friend of his from university days contacted him with the news that now he knew and accepted Jesus, years after hearing about Him from Matt.

Jen has recovered fully and all three children are a great delight. Matt sometimes finds himself struggling when he is in sole charge of them, but enjoys fatherhood immensely. By a flexitime arrangement with his employer, he stays at home every Wednesday, when Jen is out at work; that is the hardest day of his week, or sometimes it feels that way. But he has enough energy left to be a leader at BOING, a YCC youth club, after which he joins the midweek training session of Yorvick Blades, a Christian outreach football club. There is no certainty, however, how long the current arrangements will last. His employer is about to outsource the interesting IT work and keep only the most routine functions inhouse, after making almost a half of the staff redundant. Matt prays for guidance on what work he can do that's interesting, within the York area and allowing time also for his family and church commitments. For a break he likes an occasional weekend re-union with his brothers and sister, or skiing in deep powder in the Alps.

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