Hello folks!!!! I hope all is well at home with everyone. I have been praying for you! So, we were in Australia
this month. It has been a fun, adventurous, dangerous, and just plain
strange month! I don’t know how else to describe it! Hahaha. It was a
really incredible month though. We started out doing ministry in
Katherine, which I captured a little bit of in the first blog about
Australia. We then moved on to Beswick,
which is an Aboriginal village about an hour and a half from Katherine.
The people here just love to worship! It’s really incredible to be
around! The Holy Spirit definitely shows his presence during the worship.
The fellowship is very small and for some reason men usually don’t
attend, which is a super bummer. Please do pray the men in the
communities to attend fellowship. That would just strengthen the
communities so much.
After spending a few days in Beswick, we rolled on out in our sick off road Toyota Land Cruiser,
from like the eighties, to Bulman. Bulman is another Aboriginal
village, which is a couple hundred kilometers from Beswick and it is all
dirt road!! And yea you guessed it! I drove on It while it was muddy
and pouring rain!!!!!!! It was the most fun I have ever had driving in
my life!!! Wooooooooo!!! So that was a blast driving on the crazy
outback roads. We did get stuck at the Mainoru River for three days
though before getting to Bulman. It was also exhilirating driving
through rivers! Oh yea don’t see that at home! Luckily there was a
station at the river and the store owner was just so incredibly nice and
hospitable to us. She is an awesome woman who we owe alot to.
We got to Bulman and had incredible services there, too. Also in Wemol,
which was a neighboring community to Bulman. We had a street service
ther under the street lights. It was most excellent. I ended up sharing
my testimony alot this month which was awesome because most of the men
and even alot of women struggle with the same addictions I had. One
night at a service in Bulman, I brought in a word to my testimony!
Whaaaaat!? Now were getting crazy. Jesus’ teaching of the Lost Son in
Luke 15:11-31
because that sums my life up in about twenty verses. The Holy Spirit
spoke through me I believe and I also believed it impacted people. One
young man came up to us and said that he wanted to stop using and if we
could pray for him! Stokeworthy!!!!! It was the first time I had ever
“preached” a word from the Gospel. Also at the beginning of the month
was the first time I had ever shared my testimony with a congregation!
It was a big month of growth for me in that area of speaking in front of
people and having faith that the Lord would and will speak through me.
In Wemol, we were apart of two baptisms! It was so cool. My brother in Christ,
Teammate, and friend baptized them in a beautiful spring in the
Australian outback. It was crystal clear and about waist deep. It was a
perfect venue for the Lord to wash away our sins. While it was Ben’s
first time Baptizing, he still taught the people there that anyone of
them could baptize the people that wanted to get baptized. It was really
cool! So considering I had never officially rededicated my life to
Christ publicly, I was also baptized in the beautiful spring in Wemol in
the Outback of Australia! It was really awesome! I have now publicly
professed my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ!!! Exciting!!!
We still did some ministry in Bulman and even an awesome family that
lived in Bulman, Lazarus and Lisa, took us out fishing with their family
and cooked water buffalo over the fire, and we swam with the kids in
the river. It was an absolute blast!!! Lisa also made these incredible
bread things just made of flour and water (called Damper) cooked over
the fire. They were like a really large and thick English muffin but
still doughy! So tastyyyyy! Lazarus and Lisa were a blessing to us for
sure and so was the food. God provided meals like that for us because we
are on a very tight budget this month and I have realized that
Australia is the most expensive place on the planet! A can of coke is
like 3.25! It’s nuts!! We sacrificed lunch for almost all of the days
this month, which for sure opened my eyes to the world. At least we
still had dinner and breakfast and most people in the world don’t even
have that! I was hungry and upset about it for a while until I did come
to the realization that I was still getting more than a lot of people in
our world.
Anyway, we had a lot of down time as well this month
because our main ministry wasn’t until the evening and we had a lot of
time to wait for rivers to go down. We did end up leaving Bulman two
days ago and are now back in Beswick getting ready to roll back to
Katherine. But check this out haha: we got to the Mainoru River to cross
back over to get back. Well, the river was extremely high and we don’t
have a snorkel on our Cruiser. So what do we do? We do it World Race
style, that’s what we do! We fashioned a snorkel out of a plastic
bottle, duct and athletic tape, rope, and an old muffler off an
overturned truck in the river that’s probably been sitting there for
twenty years or so. Can you believe it!! I have pics that I can
hopefully post. The ingenuity was incredible and the team effort was
incredible! It sure enough worked! I drove it across and it made it!!!!
God totally came down and push us across it was so exhilarating!!!!!! I
couldn’t believe it!!! We were hootin and hollarin! It was awesome!
As we head back to our origin in Australia, I reflect on the month. It
was just an odd month with strange yet beautiful things. We slept where
we could, ate what we could, and even got chased by animals on a few
occasions. I had heard that it was spiritually dark working with the
Aboriginal tribes, and I now have experienced it and believe it’s true. I
felt attacked almost the entire month and it was tough. At one point I
got extremely homesick which I never thought was possible for me. It was
a month of growth for me especially. I was more into the word than I
have ever been in my life which was definitely a highlight and I was
bolder than I have ever been before. I overcame a lot of personal things
holding me back from fully surrendering to Christ and I still have a
long way to go, but I also need to celebrate what was accomplished in me
through Christ. Honestly, Australia is incredibly gorgeous no doubt and
I would probably love to be here on a surfing safari one day catching
some tasty Pacific waves, but I do not feel that I have been called here
to do ministry. God had totally broken me in South East Asia and that is where he spoke to me the most so I am extremely excited to go back to Southeast Asia. Malaysia, get ready because warriors of God are coming to rock you!!!!!
Thank y’all so much for your support and prayer. We didn’t have much
internet this month (prob a good thing), but I have now checked my
support account and Y’all have set me over the 10,000 mark!!!!! So I am
here to stay!! I thank all of you for that (especially Mom and Circle K
Furniture 🙂 and I thank the Lord for his faithfulness and providing
just as he always does. Thank you everyone I love you I miss you and God
bless you!
