Sometimes I start these blogs with an idea of what I want to say. Tonight I have no idea what to say. I have made several phone calls home in the last week and each person wants to know how amazing Australia is. Well it is amazing… the beauty is unreal, the things to do are endless, and the wildlife can keep you interested for hours. What I do not know how to explain is the indigenous lifestyle. It is nothing like I expected.
You all are probably tired of me talking about how I left my expectations behind and finding out each month I actually had them. Reality check, I think its going to happen in each country. So for Australia… I thought Sydney, I thought Hillsong, I thought Steve Irwin, and I thought Surfers Paradise. Well these things are here and once you leave these areas, and other tourist hot spots, you start to find the real Australia.
We have been working with a missions organization called IMLA. The organization exists to assist local churches in the aboriginal communities. At first I was not sure what the real purpose of this ministry was… today I found out. When we first arrived in Mareeba, our team was debriefed on the ministry we would be doing and about the people we would be working with. We were told that many aboriginals seek alcohol and drugs for their “needs.” Many teens drop out of school at a young age and get right into this lifestyle of drug and alcohol abuse. There are laws and preventative measures to keep kids in school but the aboriginals are sometimes forgotten.
We have been working for the past two days at the church, remodeling a house on the property. The church has a community service organization that allows troubled teens to come and work for their service hours. Some of these teens have been working with us on the house but it has been very difficult to talk with them because they run away any chance they get. What breaks my heart is that they have no motivation to do anything… they are in desperate need of someone to love them, they are in desperate need of someone to care for them, and they desperately need a Savior who can and will provided all their needs.
Tonight was the hardest night so far on the race. Our team was all excited when there was a bus load of kids that showed up for youth night. Everything started out great, I was even a target for the soap loaded toilet rolls, then as the night went on, I started seeing what I never thought I would see. The teens we had been working with (probably around age 14) had already been drinking and who knows what else. The dark field next to the church was full of these teens who were getting drunk and high. The overall attitude is that there is nobody who cares. The teens are even afraid of the cops because they are targeted all the time by them. So I sit here and wonder what’s going to happen because I care. I am only here for two more weeks. Can anything happen? I guess this is what the reality is.
