Seeing friends in Oz

In addition to some great church and small group connections where we were able to share what God is doing in Vanuatu, we had a lot of excellent opportunities to hang out with some good friends as well.

 Houghton with Mike, Aaron, and Lee.

 With our friends the Bells, who minister to Turkish people in Australia.

 With Kristen

 Mmmm, our friends Lorette and Allan invited us over and treated us to Lebanese food.  We used to get it a lot at our church when we were living in Melbourne and going to Bible translation school but we'd missed it these last few years!

 Jesiah and Jacob.

 Gretchen, Stephanie, Lorette, me and Lorette's mom, who cooked all the great food for us!

 Houghton and Allan.

 Alana, Gweny, Stephanie, and Addy.

 Houghton preaching at Grace Baptist in their new building! 

Grace hosted a potluck after the service we presented in so we got to catch up with a lot of old friends.

We also got to spend some good time with many other good friends but unfortunately don't have great pictures from those times.  I praise God for these brothers and sisters in Christ in Australia and for their friendship and fellowship.

Our hosts in Australia

We were so privileged during our time in Australia to stay with our friends Phil and Lenna and their daughter Kristen.  They are fabulous hosts and we enjoyed being able to see them on the weekends and evenings.  Our friends Emmanuel and Marie Claire and their new baby Ezekiel came over several afternoons and evenings as well so we got to see a lot of them too.  They've been serving in Thailand and are now praying about whether to return or to head to another field so please pray for wisdom for them.

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I thank God for the time we had with these great friends in Australia before returning to Vanuatu!

Heading overseas

February 5 we flew from LA overseas and arrived in Melbourne, Australia around midnight on the 7th.  Other than being required to pay huge unexpected baggage fees on our layover in Fiji, our flights were uneventful and we were given pretty decent seats.  The kids did great and we arrived to see our friends Phil, Lenna, Kristen and  Emmanuel and Marie Claire.

After arriving we had a few days of down time to adjust to the time and temperature and to get over jetlag, which was such a blessing!  Our first Sunday here we were asked to share at a new church plant called Arkhouse in St Kilda, Australia.  They were a very friendly and energetic crew and we enjoyed getting to know them!

 

At Arkhouse church

 The pastor on the right.

Last few Aussie pics

Here's some last pictures I hadn't posted yet from Australia.  In the few months between school and coming back to Vanuatu, I helped Lenna with getting a church library up and running.  And her daughter, Kristen, and I hung out a bit too, which was fun.  Miss you guys heaps!

Our last Sunday at church in Australia was a good but emotional one.  We hope to stay in touch with friends from there for many years to come but it is always hard to say goodbye to the physical part of fellowship.  We were prayed for before the church and sent off with love.

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Hanging with the Richards

I had some really nice times with the Richards in the months between school and coming back to Vanuatu.  The kids and I had some quality time when Houghton & Gretchen spent a weekend in Sydney.  I've been trying to practice my Bible story-telling skills at random times.  So, we practiced one of the stories I knew from a workshop about Philip and the Ethiopian from Acts 8.  Jesiah loves hearing stories and is pretty good at remembering them and then asking lots of really hard questions about them.  :)  He's a good kid and really interested in God. 

So to go along with our storying, we also made sock puppets and acted out the story.  The goal was to practice the story and be able to share it with Hought and Gretch when they returned.  The kids did great.  Addy held the chariot's horse for us, Jesiah was Philip, Gweny was the angel and held the water for us, and I was the Ethiopian.  They remembered quite a bit to be able to tell the story to their parents.

Several days after H & G returned, we packed up a bunch of camping gear we'd borrowed from friends, and went camping at a place that had come highly recommended to us.  It was at the southern-most tip of Australia way out on a peninsula - a beautiful place called Wilson's Promontory.  Here are some pictures from our 2 days spent there.

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More December-y things

The Richards hosted our church's New Year's party at the house they were house-sitting at.  It was really nice fellowship, although everyone did poop out pretty early! I was invited to a nightclub party by some guy at the post office but did decide to turn that invite down....  :)





Because of being done with school, we had a lot more time the last few months in Australia to connect with friends from church too, which was really nice.  It did make it that much harder to leave at the end, but such is the beauty and pain of relationships, isn't it!  Here are our friends John and Joanna on the right here and Emmanuel and Marie Claire, who are just gearing up to be missionaries as well.  We talked them into going to Summer School at Equip to get the basic language and cultural acquisition skills we learned there.  And they hope to head out to Thailand to work with abandoned and orphaned kids next month, Lord-willing!  They have a nice website if you want to check it out at www.ricefields.com.au 

Housing

I was so fortunate in my months following school to have housing provided by friends from church.  I house-sat for my Lebanese friend, Amira for about a month while she and her daughter family in Lebanon.  She has 3 cats I fed while I was there, 2 of which were around a lot and very friendly.  It was fun to have cats around again.  They were very sweet.  Once she returned, I stayed with a Filipino friend, Joy (also from church).  Houghton & Gretchen were staying there as well and the last few weeks another family of Joy's stayed with us too.  Praise God for His provision of housing for the full time we were in Australia.  I thank God also for the opportunity to learn about several different cultures as a result of the multicultural mix of our church in Melbourne!  What an opportunity to have fellowship with Christians of all different backgrounds.  And they were so generous to us in opening their homes and hearts to us.  Thanks, friends! 

Dandenong walk with friends

Back in Australia, some of our friends, Lee, Janet, and Aurore took us out to Dandenong National Park in Australia several weeks before we came to Vanuatu.  It is a beautiful park so enjoy the pictures!

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See below for new posts from Vanuatu.  I'm just catching up on Australia ones now that I have regular internet.  :)

Jan/Feb '10 Newsletter

Please click on the newsletter for it to expand to full size.

The importance of being a team

I definitely miss having my entire team around to serve and fellowship together since the Kenners headed over to Vanuatu in December. Gretchen and I were recently asked to assist some fellow missionaries who minister to Turkish Muslims here in Melbourne. They are an older couple retiring later this year and have always served just as a couple. They mentioned the value of working as a team, seeing that as a team they could have done so much more, especially to reach out more to children when they have family outreaches. Gretchen and I were enlisted to share the Christmas story with the children and we did other activities while their parents heard a message. I am thankful for you, my team of givers, pray-ers, and encouragers and I am thankful for the Richards and Kenners and the opportunity to glorify God together as a team, sharing His message and hope.

Here is a Turkish single woman I've been able to get to know a bit through the ministry of our missionary friends here.

Team Shots

Just before the Kenners ditched us for Vanuatu :) (don't worry, Lord-willing, we'll be joining them soon) we got some fun new team shots.  Here's Bush Team Vanuatu!

Christmas program

Prior to Christmas, we celebrated Christ's birth so many years ago, with a progam at our church.  I was able to be in a chimes group, playing hand chimes I'd never before seen or heard.  Gretchen and I had quite a learning curve on these instruments so we took them back to Kangaroo Ground to practice a few times.  I was also in the choir and helped with one of the presentations of the toddler-age kids.  Anytime you have kids in a program, there are chances for laughs so it was fun to see them share what they'd practiced and memorized and to have multiple reminders of why and how Jesus came to earth.

Graduation

Wahoo, we graduated!  I now have a year of linguistics skills under my belt for ministry in Vanuatu.  I pray it is to the Lord's glory and the good of a people group in Vanuatu!  Please pray for the students from this year that God would enable us to use what we have learned to honor Him and that people would come to know Him as a result.

Newsletter Dec. 09 side b

New Address and newsletter side A

Please note to the right my new address for the remainder of the time I'll be in Australia.  Here's side 1 of my last newsletter.

Last class of the year

Thank you to all of you who prayed for stamina for us to finish out the year well.  We finished all of our Semester 2 classes up the 2nd week of November and then had just one class for the last week of school before graduation.  It was a great change of pace in that we were in a different area than the regular classroom, were able to spend most of our class time working on the assignment, and we had group presentations outside at a beautiful venue a bit of a drive away from the school.  The class was program planning/program design management so it was useful for our team to work together to plan out how we see things fitting into where we see God leading us in the next few years.

Great Ocean Road

The "Dodgy D Dorm" dames (single girls at the school) had a last hang-out, going for a drive to see the "12 Apostles" on the Great Ocean Road south-west of here.  It is a gorgeous drive and we had good quality time together.  Had it been warmer I would have jumped in the ocean but it was just a bit too nippy for me.  I'll get my fill of bathwater temperature ocean water in Vanuatu so I'm happy to save myself for that.  :)  Here are some pics from the trip.

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