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!