Becoming an ordinand (with a baby)

As Laura Faturoti moved through the ordination process—pretty sure she was going to pass her BAPs and halfway through looking at colleges—she found out she was pregnant.

‘I was kind of thinking, I’m not sure this is going to work. I might need to put this off.’ But Laura already has two older children, age 9 and 10, and had wanted to see the family moved and settled before secondary school.

She was twelve weeks pregnant when she and her family came to visit Trinity. During both her interviews, with principal Emma Ineson and doctrine tutor Justin Stratis, she mentioned her pregnancy. ‘They both said, “That’s fine—we’ll do whatever it takes to make it work.” Trinity was the only college to respond like that.’ As they drove away from the college, she said, ‘It just felt so right for all the family. The spouse stuff was not all geared toward women. For me and my husband, Ebun, it was important that this was something we did as a family. It is really important that we all had the time and space in these two years to be formed in this, and that’s why residential training was the only option we looked at.’

Laura had spent fifteen years working in Chatham, the second most deprived area of Kent, as a probation officer with forty to fifty people on her caseload. ‘The rewarding thing was when people wanted to change, and being able to give them the skills to change and move on—it’s providing a valuable service both to them and to the community they’re from.’ But increasingly Laura felt like she was only doing half a job; she would reintegrate people into society and think, But what have I left you with? She wanted to help restore people’s souls along with their life skills.

She started to look into a new career in community or youth work. Her friends asked her why she wasn’t training to become a vicar, and she said no to the idea repeatedly. Then she began to consider it.

Laura gave birth to Levi just two weeks before induction at Trinity, and the newborn has attended a full course load with his mum for the first term. ‘Who on earth would do this?’ Laura says now. ‘But we’ve done really well. There’s no way I could do this without a massive amount of prayer. There are a lot of people praying for us. And everyone here has been amazing. So many people in lectures have come up to me to say what a blessing it is to have Levi in class. Once, in Howard [Worsley]’s lecture, Levi woke and started to scream. I was hurrying to quiet him, and Howard said, “That is a fantastic reminder that Jesus came as a baby and disrupted everything.”’

Laura and her family will be in Bristol, living and serving in the Fishponds area, for two years, with no idea where God may lead them next. ‘The uncertainty is really hard—it’s hard especially as I think of our children. We literally just sold our house and came here. But through all of this God has a plan. We’ll do this, and we’ll trust him for the next step.’

From Trinity’s Autumn 2016 Newsletter