Hello from Byron Bay, Australia! This place is so different than any place I’ve ever seen. For those of you Iowans, it kind of reminds me of the Okoboji area around the 4th of July except on a much larger and more elaborate scale. The community is only 8,000, but they have 2 million visitors per year. Most are here on a backpacking trip, to surf the famous beaches, or to party. The best way to describe it is as a hippie town. 
It was put on the map in the 70’s because the Aquarius Festival (similar to Woodstock), and they’ve been having a similar festival every year since Aquarius. As one of the YWAM leaders said about Byron Bay, “you can reach the nations for Christ all from one location”. It’s so true! I have heard so many different languages and have seen so many different cultures represented here. There are a few Americans and even a few Australians sprinkled in. Seriously though, there aren’t that many Australians here! There are many Europeans, Canadians, and Asians. I even had a conversation about faith and World War I with a 78 year old Tasmanian man named Geoff the other day. It’s an incredible place to share the love of Christ.
We teamed up with YWAM last night to serve a free BBQ at a city park and share Christ’s love with the people that came. Shortly after we were offered marijuana (not the only time that has happened here) by a 15 year old, the BBQ got started. I ended up talking to Itay for two hours. He is from Tel Aviv, Israel and is Jewish by culture but not by faith. 
He is 23 and just left the military after a couple years (requirement in Israel) and is spending the year traveling the world before returning home to be an engineering student. He was thumbing through a New Testament, and it was a great opportunity to talk to him about who Christ was and still is. It was so interesting to talk to him about Christ being fully God and fully human and being the Messiah that Jewish people are still waiting for. He then invited me to go surfing with him today! Surfing!! I wouldn’t have the slightest clue what to do. However, I said “yes” so that I could have an opportunity to go deeper with him. Thankfully the weather was terrible, and the waves were small! So instead we decided to take a 6ish mile hike to a lighthouse. It gave us a lot of time to talk, watch a pod of 15-20 dolphins swimming and jumping in the bay, and get caught in a crazy thunderstorm (I met another girl from Iowa while scrambling to find shelter…small world). I was able to share more with Itay about the hope and freedom that comes from a relationship with Christ and that now, through the Holy Spirit, I can live in that freedom as I pursue being more like Christ every day and moving further along into the man that he created me to be. He was interested and asked a lot of questions, but that’s where we left it. It was so great! God is doing work in each and every person on this earth, and I trust that the conversation I had with Itay was the exact message for where he is at in his life. God will bring someone else into his life for the next step along the way. So that’s it from Australia for now. I’ll update you again soon!!
