Introducing... Rosa Hunt (and family!!)
 Hi my name is Rosa Hunt and I have just finished my first year as a student at SWBC in Cardiff. I haven’t always been a Baptist…I was born in Malta and given a very traditional Catholic upbringing – wearing veils to Mass, fasting during Lent, confession once a week – the works! When I was 15 the Maltese government started closing down the church schools so my parents sent us to a Catholic boarding school in Surrey. One evening I attended a confirmation service for one of the younger children at the school chapel – I distinctly remember being in a very unspiritual frame of mind because I had a Physics A Level practical to write up. So I was totally unprepared for the great and powerful wave of God’s love which flooded over me in that service – I now know that I experienced the power and presence of the Holy Spirit but at the time I had no idea how to respond.
One year later I went to University and there I met many young people who helped me understand how to respond to God’s love and what it meant to be a Christian. One of these was a very nice boy called Francis, and I knew he was going to get on well with my family when my mother said “Are you sure Francis isn’t a Catholic? He’s very nice…” Francis and I got married in 1991 and two years later we moved to France as Francis had received a research grant to do his PhD in an ex-mining town called Ales, not far from Montpellier.
Contrary to our expectation we found an extremely lively local church in France, EREI or Eglise Reformee Evangelique Independante and there we made friends who I am sure we will love and be close to for the rest of our lives. It is just great that wherever we go in the world there is a ready made family waiting for us in God’s church. Our older two boys Joshua and Christopher were born in France, and I shall never forget the young mum I shared a room with when Josh was born telling me how lucky I was to have daily visitors from the church whereas she hardly ever saw anyone. Francis and I helped start a small Sunday school in the church called Les Petits Poissons and we were amazed recently to hear that the group had gone from strength to strength and now regularly produce their own CD of Christian songs for outreach. It’s really exciting to see how God can use the small things we give him. And our house group was prophetic, because when we left France they gave us a present of a mining lamp, to remind us that God’s word is a lamp for our feet. That mining lamp was made in Aberdare, just minutes from where we now live…
When Chris was 1 we moved back to England and settled in Cottenham, near Cambridge, where we became members of Cottenham Baptist Church, mainly because it has a great children’s ministry, and soon after Timothy and then Daniel were born. In the summer of 1998 I felt a call to be baptised as an adult, and soon after that was called to leadership in our local church. I also joined the Village Preachers’ Association and to this day I love the experience of visiting new churches, meeting God’s people and sharing God’s word with them.
In 2005 I started developing a nagging feeling that God was calling me to full time ministry, and time and again people in the congregations I preached to would suggest it. I was very reluctant to consider this, so I did a deal with God: next time I preached, if two people suggested that I went into ministry, I would talk to my Regional Minister. Sure enough two people came up to me and said just that, but as they were husband and wife I explained to God that they only counted as one….so I did a Jonah and took up a teaching job at the local comprehensive instead. It was a complete disaster – my heart was not really in it and I became ill and depressed, handing in my notice after about a term and a half. A few months later I had a chat with my Regional Minister and found myself filling in a form for training at Northern Bible College at Manchester – with four children to look after, my only route into ministry was to study over residential weekends in Manchester. It would be hard but this time I was determined to go where I felt God was leading me.
Then out of the blue everything changed. Francis got offered his dream job as a Maths lecturer and researcher at Glamorgan University, just minutes away from his beloved Brecon Beacons – and only 20 minutes’ drive from South Wales Bible College! I put in a new application form, and have now completed my first year at SWBC. I have loved every minute of it, the thinking, the challenges, the friendships, the opportunities to serve. We live just south of Pontypridd and have been attending Temple Baptist Church where we have made many good friends and been involved with PONT which links Pontypridd with Mbale in Uganda. Francis and I had the enormous privilege of going out to Mbale last October. We have also started up a café church for local youngsters with other families from our house group. The children love Wales, and they all want to play rugby for Wales when they grow up…
And that brings me up to date here at Bethel. I am really looking forward to spending time with you; thank you so much to all of you for welcoming me and my family, and an especial thank you to Simeon and Jonathan for taking on the additional job of supervising me. I will be here from the 30th June to the 6th July, then from the 14th to the 20th July, over Holiday Club week and then from the 8th to the 21st September. I look forward to getting to know you all better, to learning from you and serving you in Jesus’ name.
Here's the rest of Hunt clan!
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