Smith, Craig and Claudia
profileCraig and Claudia are currently living in Redhill where Craig is a maths teacher in a secondary school and Claudia is a school chaplain. Craig has previously worked with Crosslinks in Zimbabwe. They have two children – Leo and Bethany. Craig would like to teach and help train teachers in Africa and there is a possibility of a placement at Bishop Barham University College (a constituent college of the Uganda Christian University) in Kabale, Uganda. Claudia would be interested in school chaplaincy and using her counselling skills alongside her prime role within the family.
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email may be sent to csmith[at]crosslinks.org |
May 2007: "Over the past months, Crosslinks has been exploring the possibility of a three year placement at a university in southern Uganda. Craig would be training maths teachers (and maybe doing some maths lecturing!) with Claudia having a chaplaincy and counselling role. These possibilities are still to be confirmed, but if they do go ahead the work could make a big difference. Poor training and subject knowledge of teachers, alongside difficult conditions and low pay all add to low retention rates of teachers – especially maths teachers. As well as developing their skills, as future role models it would be great to see future maths teachers have a strong faith in Jesus. Likewise Claudia’s role will be an important one as she seeks to use her chaplaincy and counselling skills with students and the wider community. Alongside these things, we would also be working with the local church. The roles sound very exciting and exactly what we are hoping to do.
In preparation, we will do some cross-cultural and Bible training at college. We thank God that we have been accepted onto the one year certificate course in Biblical and Intercultural Studies at All Nations Christian College in Hertfordshire. In particular, it is a real blessing that Claudia’s sister, Gemma, will be taking the final year of her degree there.
We are both really excited and thank God for His leading and guidance. As you can imagine, this is a big step for the family. We have both handed in our notices at work. Our next steps involve preparing to let out the house, moving up to the college in September and visiting churches to develop partnerships and seek support for our work in Africa. Over these coming months, we are wanting to draw together people who feel led to support us both prayerfully and financially over the training year and the years in Africa. It is enormously important to us that we build a good foundation of prayer support among our family and friends, both for us as a family and for the work that we will be doing."