As I sit here right now, I am completely surrounded by
bugs. These bugs aren’t scary
individually, they are tiny and 
harmless. However, the intimidating aspect of these insects is that they are
EVERYWHERE. I am talking hordes. The desk I am sitting at is covered with
little black and white flakes. They love
light so they are landing on my computer screen at this very moment. They are scurrying around on the walls and
the ceiling and the floor. When I open
my mouth, they fly in. When I lay down
to sleep, they descend upon me and cover my entire body as I tense up and try
to pretend they aren’t there. One night,
we turned the light on in the bathroom and turned all the other lights
off. We waited in darkness for each of
the bugs to fly toward the light and once they did we sprayed them until they
died. This picture is just an example of how many bugs there actually are. This is no exaggeration folks and this is not
dirt on the floor … these are dead bugs swept into a pile. Gross huh? I am actually used to them at this point but thought it would make a fun
story to tell.
I apologize for not blogging much this month. Time and internet were both hard to come by
these past few weeks. I will do my best
to fill you in as much as possible without taking up to much of your time. Below are the highlights of my month spent
Down Under:
is much different than I anticipated. We
are seriously in the middle of the bush. The closest town of Katherine is 15 minutes away and has only one main street. We are surrounded by crocodiles and snakes and
wallabies. If you have ever watched the movie “Australia” it is pretty much
dead on – at least in the area where I am staying. I have actually loved the opportunity to
experience The Outback and “rough it” for a couple weeks. One thing Australia definitely has to offer is
beautiful sunsets. I have never
experienced anything like the night sky here. The sun seems to set in every direction and makes me feel hemmed in and
protected by my powerful and creative God as His beautiful colors encircle
me.
people here are also different than I expected. Everywhere I look I see a lack of hope in the eyes of the
Aboriginals. Most of them do not have
jobs and spend each day getting drunk. There is a lot of anger and violence here and we often hear them
screaming at one another when we are in town. We had the sad experience of finding two people who serve in a local
church we have been attending drunk in a ditch one night. They had chosen to skip church that evening
and drink instead. It broke my heart to
see them in such a state, knowing their love for Jesus and yet being held
hostage to the desire to conform to their culture. Because drinking is so common here, the
police often pull people over and ask them to take a breathalyzer test. We have been pulled over 4 times since
arriving and have had to take a test each time. They also enforce seat belts which are hard to come by in the back seat
of the Troopy so we have to share when we get pulled over. It’s always quite interesting.
Radiance had many ministry opportunities this month. We hung out with the local youth group one
night and fell in love with the teens there, we went into surrounding
communities and told testimonies at their church services and prayed for healing and freedom over the congregations, we put on an afternoon program for the children of Manyallaluk which
included Bible Stories, games, fingernail painting and more, we frequently visited Kalano which is an assisted living home and the residents there forever touched our hearts. We also did a lot of behind the scenes work which ranged from cleaning (a large bus, a
Troopy, and the entire farmhouse), gardening (for a church whose vision is for
their garden to provide healing, rest, and food for their congregation), and even searching through the bush for the beloved dog of our contact, Liz which was a scary experience in the midst of the snakes and the great unknown.
Painting Nails
corners. As we did so, spiders we
thought were dead began to scurry all o
ver the ceiling. Dozens and dozens of spiders ran above ourheads as we squealed, sprayed bug spray, and hit them with brooms. We then noticed a foul odor in the apartment. We followed the smell and discovered hundreds
of little bugs dead inside a window sill. I don’t even know how to describe how bad these bugs smelled. We were gagging as we scraped them out of
the ledge. Here is a picture for your
viewing pleasure … and this was taken after we were half way finished.
