The Coast and the City

With this post, I want to promise you that I am still on a mission trip! Mandy has been telling us to take it easy and get over our jet lag, so we've just been tagging along with people from the church as they do different things.

First I'll give you a picture of Polly and I so you have an idea of who she is.

We are complete opposites. She is outgoing and energetic, a night-owl, a procrastinator and slow to get around. She is super-sweet and we've been getting along great. She is always on skype talking to someone, so she's much better at keeping in touch with everyone back home compared to me, but oh well. I'm used to being away for extended periods while she is not.

This next picture is a collage from Gold Coast. This is the main tourist attraction in Brisbane (except the Great Barrier Reef). Emily took Polly and I here on Friday, and we just walked around for three hours along the beach and the shops at Surfer's Point. Apparently, this area has some good surfing. We saw a few guys surfing even though the waves weren't great and our first topless sunbathers - oh the joy of an Australian beach. The day was gorgeous, and we had a lot of fun just getting to know Emily and each other. And by the way, their KFC here is way better than the KFC at home; however, everything is way more expensive here because of their labor costs and food standards.

Saturday, we went with Mandy and Mikaela Heinrich, along with some other girls to Brisbane to formal dress shop for Mikaela. The other girls that tagged along got bored, so they took Polly and I to the river to see where the flooding occurred, the art galleries, and the South Bank market. There were so many people! You could see where stuff still needed to be repaired since the floods in January, and Mandy has mentioned that we might go up in a couple weeks to another area that suffered from flooding to help out because they're in desperate need of volunteers. Below are some pictures from South Bank!

That brings us to Sunday (today)! Church this morning was really great. A missionary from Portugal spoke from Psalm 73 and the importance of having God's perspective instead of man's. He used it in relation to not getting discouraged when the wicked prosper and the followers of God do not, but God spoke to me through the text about how I don't need to look down on the social events that have been happening. It has been somewhat discouraging because I came here to do missions, not relax and enjoy myself, but I realized that is my perspective on these past couple of days. God may see them differently. I'm starting to build relationships with the Aussies, and they are starting to become mates with me. This is important in any ministry. I know once tomorrow starts, I'll be busy, so I should be cherishing this time to relax and just focus on the people around me instead of tasks (even if I am a task-driven person).

After church, a group of the young adults went to get coffee before returning to the Heinrich's for lunch. I truly was able to enjoy chatting with a different group of people and getting to know them instead of feeling guilty about just hanging out. Polly and I were giving the guys a hard time about not being gentlemen (they just aren't here, they aren't raised to be) and respectful towards women. But after that, two of the guys went and bought Polly and I a burn phone so we could stay in touch with people. I didn't want to hurt their feelings and tell them I never pay attention to my phone!

Wow, this is a long post...the rest of the day contains church and then a welcome social afterwards for Polly and I. Tomorrow we're meeting with the church staff to get our assignments for the summer! I'm excited and just itching to get to work and see what God is going to do this summer!

Wollongong Beach

A faint, but pretty rainbow

Pictures from Orientation!

LAX - travelling to Sydney!

The group chilling out and getting to know one another...

Finally - we made it through customs and are officially in Australia!

Driving to Kiah Ridge - on the left side of the road!

First stamp on my passport, hopefully many more to come!

Kangaroos!

State of Origin - Go Maroons!

I am officially in Cleveland!

Rugby is huge in Queensland! Last night was the first game of the State of Origin, which is a huge rivalry between the Queensland Maroons and the New South Wales Blues! Basically this is America's Super Bowl spread out over three different games, and it is always Queensland vs. New South Wales. The rest of the country doesn't pay much attention to rugby, instead they focus on Australian rules football. Anyway, last night, a huge group of people from the church came over to watch the game and eat a lot of food. I think I kind of catched on to what was happening, but I was so jet-lagged and overwhelmed by so many people being loud and talking at once, that I excused myself at half-time and went to bed. The Maroons won, so that means that Queensland will be happy until the next game at least!

Before the game, Polly and I went to the church to meet the pastor. He is also jet-lagged because he just got back from Israel, so we're going to all take it easy until Sunday, but I think I'm going to head up to the church today and see if there is anything I can do; I just hate sitting around! It makes me miss home. This weekend we're going to head back to the city to shop and the Aussies want to show Polly and I Brisbane. The girls that we hung out with yesterday seem to already have our social calendar planned out for the whole summer, so if the church doesn't keep us busy, they will!

MY MINISTRY
I'll go ahead and enlighten ya'll on what I know so far. From orientation they told us that our mission is three-fold:

1. Evangelism - this is the main goal - while this used to be a Christian society, many people today have no concept of God. Also, Aussies are stand-offish, so the main way to be able to reach them is to listen and express an interest in them. Please pray that I will have opportunities and that I will be prepared for them.
2. Equip - discipleship - During my two months here, I'll be working with the youth group and young adults. Thus, it is so important that I develop relationships with them and help them grow in their relationship with Christ. I know this is going to be a bit harder for me because Polly instantly connected with the girls yesterday while I seemed to fade a bit in the background. I definitely need prayers for boldness to put myself out there! Additionally, the relationships need to be focused on Jesus!
3. Establish - don't limit God to what He can do! This is more of a small group thing while discipleship is individually. However, the same stuff goes for here as discipleship.

The specifics so far are

• Working in lunch-time groups at the school - in Australia there is much more freedom to talk about Jesus in the schools, so we'll be going with some of the teachers from the church to help them out in their programs
• Youth group - the church has a fairly large youth group, so we'll be involved in that in some way - I haven't gotten much information on that yet
• Young adults - also, there is a good sized group of young adults, so Polly and I will be involved in that ministry in some way - again specifics have not been received.

I should get all pertinent information next Monday when Polly and I meet with our supervisor, Mandy, and the rest of the church pastoral staff.

As promised, pictures will be coming in the next post!

Flying out to Brisbane

This morning is the last time we'll be together as a full team until August 1. We are all heading out to our respective locations, with Polly and I flying to Brisbane where we will meet our supervisor and then head to Cleveland. It has been a blast getting to know everyone and experiencing a little bit of Australia.

The first day I was able to see some kangaroos, though that's fairly common in Australia. The next morning at breakfast I tried a distinctly Australian dish of VegeMite on toast with butter. It tasted like soy sauce, which is definitely something I don't want on my toast. Yesterday morning consisted of learning about the Aussie culture and our basic assignments (I'll write a post about that later when I hear what Mandy says about our responsibilities). One of the most interesting things from our sessions yesterday was learning that Australia is a post-Christian society. While most of the older generations would call themselves Christians, the younger does not identify themselves as that. Most of the churches only have 25-30 people and much of the congregation is over 60. Now I know that all of our assignments involve children and young people, so I think this is the main struggle for the Australian church. The parents don't care about church and God, so therefore, their children do not either. I think this is where America will end up in just a few years, which means that we need to get our butts in gear to learn how to make sure that the communities see Jesus as relevant.

After the morning sessions, we headed to Wollongong beach. It was chilly and rainy, but it was still great to walk down the beach climb on some rocks and walk around the city. Pictures will be posted when I get to Cleveland. I think that's all for now, it's time for brekky (breakfast).

Arrival in Sydney

So, I've decided to do a blog instead of writing weekly email updates. I should be better at updating this instead of composing lengthy emails periodically.

After 3 flights, I finally made it to Sydney. None of the flights were horrible; I did read Radical by David Platt in its entirety on the flight from DFW to LAX. It is such a challenging book, and I recommend it to every Christian, though be prepared to have your world turned upside down if you truly think about the truth of what Dr. Platt says. On the flight from LAX to Sydney, it was completely dark and there wasn't much to see, so I just slept and watched a couple movies. It wasn't terrible though I don't think I'd want to have flights that long very often.

Arrival in Sydney was frustrating, it definitely made me realize that I need to learn to be patient and not to quickly lay blame on others even if it is technically their fault. We had trouble with our visas because the travel agent forgot to put our middle names on them, and then the rental car didn't have the car ready, so we got to spend an extra three hours sitting around the international terminal at Sydney. Eventually we made it to Kiah Ridge, which is where we are having orientation. We didn't get to see any of Sydney, but during debriefing we are going to have an opportunity. I'll elaborate more in my next post because now we are heading back to some more orienting and then a trip to the beach!