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Samuel, Our New Son (Born 24-09-2008)


He was due to arrive on 15th October 2008, but Joelle developed preeclampsia and the doctor recommended induced labour 3 weeks early. Long story short, our first child Samuel Chi-en Keith Jackson was born at 11.19pm on Wednesday 24th September!

His Name:
It might seem long, but each part is important:

SAMUEL:
His first name was the hardest part to decide, but I liked it and Joelle thought it was OK so it 'passed'! I really wanted to give him a Biblical name that was prophetic and came across these verses in 1 Samuel 3:19-20:

'The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up and he let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD'

These verses certainly reflect our hopes for him, that he would grow up honouring God and that he would be a prophetic voice to Taiwan, the UK or wherever else he might be living.

The Bible notes also say that Samuel sounds like the Hebrew for heard of God.

CHI-EN (奇恩):
Joelle chose this, his Chinese name, and I loved it! The character 奇, pronounced 'chi', means 'amazing' and 恩, 'en', means 'grace'. So, the message of his Chinese name is God's amazing grace, both in saving both of us from a life of sin and in giving us such a wonderful child to raise. We hope his name will provide a very useful talking point in the future!

KEITH:
This is the easiest part! His middle name was chosen to honour my Dad. My middle name was chosen to remember my paternal grandfather, so it's nice to continue this little tradition into the 21st century!

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