After many days of travel which included airport sleeping, meeting
our Australian family and being totally surprised by the overwhelming
love we received we are finally in our destination of Beswick Australia,
ready to live another month in the World Race.
We were delayed in Brisbane for 5 days after arriving in Australia
and that’s where our “Australian family” came in. We needed a place to
stay in Brisbane for those 5 days, so after sending out a few emails and
looking for contacts in Brisbane we were connected to Peter and Rachel
Doherty who opened their home to 5 noisy Americans and a Canadian. In
that short time we truly felt blessed by their hospitality and spending
time with them and their three children, Sam, Zach and Olivia will
definitely be one of the highlights of the World Race for us. They took
us to see Koalas and showed us the views and sights of the great city of
Brisbane. Staying in a real home with a real family was such a huge
blessing and gave us a much needed rest before we got to the much more
challenging portion of our ministry in Australia.
Our flight from Brisbane to Darwin was cancelled due to a cyclone
(which is our equivalent to a hurricane). The great news about that was
we were placed on another flight with a short layover in Sydney! We
got to see the Sydney Opera House from the plane window. I love how God
uses unexpected delays to give us good gifts! Once we arrived in
Darwin, up in the Northern Territory state, we stayed the night at a
Christian ministry that is a medical center that takes in people from
all over the Northern Territory. They actually have a helicopter that
picks people up who are hundreds of miles away from civilization, when
needed.
The Northern Territory (NT) is very similar to what the Wild West was
in the U.S. and is very different from the rest of Australia. According
to the rest of Australia, the NT is considered the “real Outback” but
when you talk to the people here they say that the real Outback is
further out into the desert areas and much more difficult living
conditions. Something we are learning very quickly here is that there is
real time, and there is “NT time” and NT time stands for Not Today, Not
Tomorrow, Not Tuesday and Not Thursday. So, to say the least, people
value time very differently here. For example, today we were told that
we were going to head into town (which is a 2 hour drive) at 10am. I am
writing this blog at 12:45pm and we still haven’t heard anything about
when we are heading to town. For those of you who know me well, I’ve
operated off of NT time my whole life and have finally found the culture
that supports my time table!
Two days ago we left Darwin and headed to a town named Katherine (I
know, they spelled it wrong 😉 ). There we stayed the night at farm
house with another team. The next day we headed to what will be our home
for the next 3 weeks in a small village called Beswick, about a 2 hour
drive outside of Katherine. Needless to say we are very glad to be here
and grateful for traveling mercies. We are staying in a building that is
used as a government contractor’s quarters, which is a cement slab with
cinderblock walls, sectioned off into 10 smaller rooms (kitchen &
bedroom) with a large room in the center. It’s a bit of an adjustment
but we have cleaned it up quite a bit and it is beginning to feel like
home.
Many people in the community live off of welfare and have a sense of
aimlessness. And yet, when you look deep into their eyes you see a
longing for something more than what they have experienced. Tonight we
will have our first worship service with our new church family and we
can hardly wait to join in worship to our King! We will be doing a lot
of “lifestyle” evangelism, just living life alongside the people we meet
and sharing the love of Christ as we play sports or have a simple chat
under the shade of a tree. Pray for the people of Australia, that they
would find a sense of purpose and destiny in a world that seems
hopeless. Pray that the Joy of the Lord would cause an uprising of
praise that would spread to the other communities and even deeper into
the outback. Remember our team as we are in more severe conditions than
we’ve ever experienced before and a different spiritual climate as well.
Pray that we can bring a little more of God’s kingdom to this small
community and a joy that overflows from the heart of a King rejoicing
over His people.
As always we need your financial support to keep going on this
journey. We have so many more stories to tell and people to meet. Help
us give our lives away for this one year and thank you for pouring into
our lives and the kingdom of Christ. You can donate by clicking here.
