We also love to walk around the neighbourhood, particularly Bournville

The University is well known for this area of study with the legacy of Prof Walter Hollenweger, later continued by Prof Allan Anderson who initiated the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies within the Department of Theology and Religion.

We lived at Asbury for almost four and a half years of our time in Birmingham (Jan 2014-May 2018). Initially we planned to stay for around three to six months and tried to rent a house, then my wife found an international community for wives at Christian Life Church, only around ten minutes walk from Asbury and a Bible Study for international wives at Jill’s home (again within walking distance). At Asbury, we were living in a large room with a shared kitchen and bathroom. This gave us more chance to meet new people who stayed in neighbouring rooms. Most of them were staying for shorter periods for internships, volunteering or exchange programmes. However, we enjoyed meeting a number of new people from various backgrounds (i.e. French, Vietnamese, Chinese, Romanians, Nigerians, Indians, Pakistani, and others) and we still keep in touch with some of them. The spacious common room at Asbury is also available for residents to reserve for different activities. Sometimes we booked the room for monthly fellowship with the Indonesian Christian Community or just invited some friends for dinner. The loveliest thing about living in Asbury is the green and quiet neighbourhood, almost for the whole day we could hear birds chirping and see squirrels jumping around outside the house.

We also love to walk around the neighbourhood, particularly Bournville.

We actually love the countryside and smaller towns rather than a bigger city like Birmingham. But here we could easily find almost any ingredients for Asian foods (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian, Pilipino, Malaysian and Indonesian). There are some quite large Asian stores around the Selly Oak area and the indoor and outdoor markets at the city centre (just take a bus from the nearest bus stop, five minutes’ walk from Asbury) provide various meats, fish, seafoods, vegetables, spices and herbs for Asian foods. The prices here are often better than at the big grocery stores.

Finally, the management at Asbury House was also very helpful and responsive to any problems or unexpected situations we encountered.