Unashamedly Christian

I’ve arrived in San Francisco and while I’m waiting for my connecting flight to Sacramento I thought I’d post an update!

The flight over from Sydney was long – 14 hours. After the first hour it was uninteresting – and the joys of flying United economy (it was ok, but the seats are a bit cramped). Needless to say, I didn’t get all that much sleep and am fairly tired…really looking forward to bed tonight!

Well I’ve got to race as my flight is about to board!

As most of you know, I’m a graphic designer – I’ve been working in design for the last three years and really enjoy it. And also as some of you would know I’m a Christian, Jesus has changed my life and the joy that I’ve found in my life I want to communicate to others. I’ve done a lot of media work to help contribute to the sharing of the gospel, but feel that God is calling me to do more. I’ve been praying and thinking about going to college and studying religion – with looking at either pastoral or evangelism, or both!

To make a long story shorter, I’m going to Weimar College in California, USA – and I’m going tomorrow! Ok, the cat’s out of the bag now! It?s going to be great – except for being away from family and friends for four years. This last week has been hard saying goodbye to the people that are dear to me – but it’s not permanent, I’m coming back to Australia whenever I can!

I’ll be posting things to let everyone know how things are going…

I’ve finally got them off. After 14 months of having braces on they’re off – man it feels good not having them on! For those of you who don’t know, I had a bad accident when I was about 10 that damaged my teeth and that combined with five wisdom teeth (yes I’m really smart – just kidding) meant that my mouth was a bit of a mess. But one operation and 14 months of wearing braces have done wonders – I’m really happy with how everything has turned out.

I’ve just come back from Australian Youth Conference 2007, and it was such a blessing! It was exciting to see over 340 young people excited about the gospel and sharing it with others – I feel that this is the beginning of something big in Australia.

Joshua, Tony and I went down for it and had a great time, not only were we blessed by the messages, but we had some really good fellowship too! The three of us and also Lyle Southwell and two others from Sydney stayed at Duane and Aloisia’s place in Warragul – which is about 1+ hours drive from Melbourne CBD. It was good fun traveling in every day with all of us plied into the one car.

Here’s a few photos from the weekend:

This is the main area with around 400 people!

Peter Gregory taking a class on how to give Bible studies – was very good!

Pr Mark Finley talking on Sunday – his message was wonderful!

Me giving a testimony. I wasn’t going to, but God impressed me that I needed to share how God’s opened the door for me with something (which I’ll be revealing soon!).

I know, it’s the 14th of January already and a bit late for a “Happy New Year” post. But I’ve been busy the last two weeks and haven’t made the time to post…anyway, here goes:

Where did 2006 go? It almost seems like 2006 only just got started and it was over! Looking back over the past year I can’t help but rejoice in God’s goodness, His mercy and steadfast love – from the happy times (of which there was many) to the I’m-feeling-like-my-heart’s-going-to-break-from-pain times (of which unfortunately there was a few), He has gotten me through! Looking forward into 2007 (hey, I can only see the outline!) it’s going to be a big year for me, with lots of changes, lots of challenges and I hope lots of happy memories. But one thing I know, that with Jesus whatever comes I’ll be able to face!

I hope that all of you (that’s whoever’s reading this) have a great year, and if you know Jesus that you’ll come closer to Him – and if you don’t that you’ll give Him the chance to change your life, for after you’ve experienced His love in your life it’s never the same!

And if you happen to be on my short list of lucky people (better know as family and friends of both myself and my parents) you’ll be getting the above limited edition Samuel Clarke designed card soon (if you haven’t already got it). And if you don’t, then feel free to drop me a line and tell me why I should have sent you one!!

My mother and I went for a hike to Genoa River today, it was good to be out in the bush and I really enjoyed the peace – especially as I’m going through some storms at the moment. Here’s some photos:

Genoa River – this part of the river goes into a smallish gorge

My mother and Charm on the rocks – Found out later that it was national park
not state forest and we shouldn’t have had her with us (so don’t tell )

Me sticking my head up

Looking down on the river from half way up the gorge walls

It’s been raining the last few days, and quite cold (around 9?-15?C – and this is supposed to be the last month of spring?!). And today I was working on a design job, when I decided that I just had to go for a run as I was sick of being inside, and nothing was going to stop me – rain, hail or more sleet! I put my full-body wetsuit on and went for a jog down to the Cann River – a 9km return trip. Even though it was cold (10?C) by the time I got down to the river I was steaming, so I jumped in the river and had a swim! Boy that was cool (as in cold)! Then I jogged home in the poring rain – it was great fun, if you haven’t run in the rain before, give it a go! I haven’t done any serious jogging in the last few months, and about 3km from home my legs were starting to kill me – but I made myself keep going and run the rest of the way home! It’s good to push the limits (with somethings) every now and again.

When I got home I was steaming – I felt alive!

We’ve been back for almost six weeks now, but I’ve been too busy to get around to a blog post on our time in Vanuatu – It was only three weeks, but so much happened in that time it felt like we’d been there for months. I’ll probably not be able to cover everything we did over there – my diary entries each day were pushing 1000 words – just the things that really stood out for me and made the trip one that I’ll remember for a long time. So here’s a brief account of the three weeks – going week by week and based on my diary/journal entries (but with some things left out!) each day:

The first week

Monday the 28th of August (my birthday) we flew out of Brisbane to Port Vila – it was fun to be flying after 6 years, especially when for about 7 years we were flying every two months or so! Arriving in Vanuatu was different, though it was great to be back in the islands! We arrived Monday afternoon, so didn’t do a whole lot that day apart from drop our gear off at the mission compound, talk to some of the people we were going to be working with and have a walk into town. Tuesday was a full day, here’s my diary entry from that day: “Woke up at 5:30 after a hot and humid night. We had pawpaw, coconut, bananas, toast and baked beans – it was nice to have fresh pawpaw and coconut! After breakfast we went for worship at the mission office and dad told a little about who we were. It’s amazing how many people who are working in the church now are old friends from PAU! We’ve caught up with a lot of them today – though I was only 3 to 6 years old when I knew them, so I don’t remember a lot!

After staff worship we went out to Freshwind – a church about 15 minutes drive from the mission. Dad and I were in the back of the 4WD ute – which was great fun – and it started to rain. We had to go through these muddy tracks to get to this church that was holding a VBS (Vacation Bible School) for about 200 kids. We did a few songs for them and then caught a bus back to the mission as Douw had dropped us off and taken someone who was running programs on abuse prevention to where he was going. We had to walk for about 1km through this muddy road – it was really a mess!

When we got back we went down to town to get some money changed and to see another of my dad’s students from PAU who works at the bank. Afterwards we went to the markets – as well as fresh food, which there’s a lot of – there’s also a large area of tables with people who make food and sell it. We had a large lunch for 250 vatu each (about $3), it was an experience! Lunch was a green coconut drink, fish (which we don’t normally have!), rice, veggies and a bit of salad. All up it cost us about 850 vatu for the three of us for lunch – $10 Australian dollars, which is really cheap!

The next few days where really busy. We did a lot of singing and went out to this program that was being run right out in the bush. Wednesday we helped move around 2 tons of books from under a house to a storage shed – a good workout! On Sabbath we ran a 3.5 hour program for the main church – singing and talking – God blessed and we had a good time. During the week they’d found out that I was a designer and asked me if I’d help them get a newsletter going, and also work on ID cards for the staff and pastors (which including taking photos). So I’d started working on a design for a newsletter.

Week two (in some ways the best week)

This week there was ministers training with all the pastors from the 83 islands of Vanuatu. They only have this every three years, so it was a big thing for them! We where asked to sing to them at the main meeting in the evening – it was good for my dad to give them a vision how his music can be used in worship. I also took photos of all the pastors and staff for the ID cards – I was glad that I’d put my tripod in!

Our friends the Rykers and Kleinke’s arrived on Monday and we went out to the airport to meet them. They’d come to run a 15 night Bible outreach in Port Vila – the main city. We took them to where they were staying – a guest house in a village, it was a bit of a shock to some of them I think! Not your typical place to stay, but it certainly was an experience that I think they’ll remember for a while!

Wednesday I had an interesting experience – one I could’ve done without! We lived in PNG for a while in the 90’s – my parents were missionaries – and security was always an issue. I’ve had a knife to my throat and spear to my chest in a hold-up when my mother and I were coming out of a supermarket – God protected me and I wasn’t hurt, but they took my mothers purse – anyway that’s another story! That’s just background on PNG, which is a dangerous place now. Vanuatu is a whole different country, everyone is friendly, well almost everyone. Here’s what happened as I wrote it in my diary, “I finished working on the newsletter and realised (as I had all afternoon) that I hadn’t had anything to eat! My parents were out, so I went down to the markets to get something to eat and also to go and change some $AUD into Vatu. I got a coconut and some laplap to eat and thought I’d go and eat by the water – it looked nice and it was out in the open. So I went and stepped over the chain that’s on the edge of the water, and sat on the edge of the sea wall. It was nice and peaceful with the sun shining and the water lapping on the wall. I’d only started to eat when I felt someone close by me and out of the corner of my eye I saw two men coming close to me. One came over to my right and stepped over the chain and starter talking to me – straight away I was thinking something was going on – the other man went to my left and was about to step over the chain. The guy on my right was trying to talk to me, but my interest was with the man on my left who had a bag in his hand. I turned to him and said halo, which caught him off guard. I then started to wrap up my food and get up, they realised that I knew what they were up to and stated to say it’s alright friend, but I told them to go. I then walked away as quickly as possible without running! I was praying the whole time and asking for God to protect me, but when I got away from them I my heart started pounding and I was feeling faint. It gave me a flash-back to when I was held up at knife and spear point in PNG – not an experience I ever want to repeat! Thank you Lord for protecting me!”

Thursday was the highlight of the week for me (and maybe the highlight of the trip!). We (my parents and myself) along with Rykers and Kleinke’s hired a bus to take us around the island of Efate (the main island) – 140km of really rough roads but it was so much fun! It was great spending time with everyone as they’re all kinda like family! Here’s a quote from my diary, “There were so many experiences today; stopping at the church, all the beaches, meeting village people, lunch and snorkelling with all the fish, riding on the roof with Joshua, siting with Joshua, Mikhaela, Riva and Sarah at the back of the bus, playing the game of soccer at one of the villages, the singing in the bus, at the markets, plus lots more. One of the villages we stopped at the people had just lost a family member, and we were able to talk to them about the hope of the Christian and I prayed for them – it was good being able to bless others. And at another village some young guys were about to start a game of soccer (which seems to be the national game), so we stopped and plied out of the bus and joined in! It was quite an experience! For the last hour in the bus we sang songs – choruses, hymns and Bible verses, it was great fun! And isn’t praising God fun? I reckon it is!

Friday lunchtime we ran a program singing and preaching in the markets for an hour and a half – the markets are the centre of Port Vila, with hundreds of people there selling their produce, and lunchtime is the busiest time of day. It was my first time preaching in a market, but I really enjoyed it! Most of the people in Vanuatu are Christians, and it’s great not feeling any pressure when you talk about God! We were also promoting the Final Events of Bible Prophecy program that was starting that night. After the program we had people who were selling produce at the markets give us food – pawpaws, tomatoes, bananas, peanuts, coconuts – saying how much they’d been blessed by what we’d done – it was moving to see how much they love Jesus and also their kindness to us. We might have run the program, but I came away blessed!

The meetings started that evening with over 300 people. We – my dad, mother, Riva, Sarah, Mikhaela, Joshua and I – sang before the meeting, teaching the people some new songs. There was also a few singing groups that sang items. Tony spoke on how the Bible is still trustworthy and it has accurately predicted the future. These program ran from tonight for 15 nights straight.

Sabbath we worshipped at the main church in Vila, had a bung lunch with the pastors and in the afternoon we sang our last song for them – it’d been great working with them during the week! Seeing people so dedicated to sharing Jesus love with people, and doing it on very low wage was inspiring – they’re a very dedicated group of men (oh there was one woman Bible worker there too)!

The last week

Sunday we went out to Mele Island with Rykers and Kleinke’s and had a snorkel – the fish were everywhere and so many colours! Mele Island (also called Hideaway Island) has the worlds only underwater post office – you can get special waterproof postcards and give them to a diver who’s in the post office – kinda crazy, but cool at the same time!

My dad flew out on Monday back to Australia for a few days then up to PNG for a few weeks with his ministry work. My mother and I were staying for another week.

For the first part of the week it was raining most of the time – and the meetings were being run on a stage in a sports field. Despite the rain we still had over 200 people coming – Satan wasn’t happy, but God is stronger!

Wednesday I managed to get really sick, still not sure what is was, but it came on fast. Started with a pain in my stomach then I got a really high temperature with shivering and started to talk gibberish. My mother was so good in her care for me, using natural treatments and a days rest I was feeling almost better! Praise God!

The weather cleared up (well, it stopped raining) for the last few days of the week. And I was feeling well enough to go to the programs on Friday night – it was great to be back at them.

Sabbath my mother went to the mission church, and I went with Rykers to Etaow Seventh-day Adventist Church. I had my Bislama skills pushed with trying to interpret the sermon for Joshua and Mikhaela (though I think they were able to understand “small small, em tasol!”). It was a great sermon on trusting God with everything – the amazing thing is that I’d been going through some issues with my trust of God’s leading right before the sermon began, and it was almost as if the message was for me! I’m constantly amazed at God’s sovereignty and at the same time His individual care for me!

The last two days went too fast! On Sunday we spent most of the day with Rykers and Kleinkes. We walked into town and had a look around the town, then went and played a game of soccer in the park by the water – almost as soon as we’d started, some newspaper boys came running up and asked if they could play (and they sure can play soccer!). After the game of soccer we got some kumala (sweet potato) chips and went out to Erikor (sp?) island. After eating we had a look around the island – there’s a resort on the island, but also a open air church and the graves of a missionary wife and children. Looking at the tombstones I couldn’t help thinking of the sacrifice that the early missionaries gave to share the news of salvation through Jesus Christ – and I wondered if I’d be willing to go to the same length and risk to share the knowledge that I so often take for granted.

That evening was the last night we were at the program – it was sad, but at the same time really exciting to see people responding to the truth of God’s word. After this night the campaign had only five more nights – and at the end over 60 people made a decision to be baptised!

Monday the 18th of September, one day I wasn’t looking forward to! We went up for staff worship at the mission and said good-bye to everyone. After getting the bags packed we went down to the markets and caught up with Chris, Joshua, Paula, Maliza, Sarah, Riva and Mikhaela (Tony was getting ready for the meeting that night). We got a green coconut each and had a picnic lunch together. Then it was time to say good-bye and go catch the plane – when we got to the airport there were three of the pastors that we’d gotten close to. It was really touching to have them come and say good-bye, their service and dedication to spreading the gospel was a real inspiration to me!

And then my mother and I caught the plane back to Brisbane, Australia and drove 1700 km’s home! Then after a few days we drove another 1700 km’s back up to Brisbane for the family camp at Numinbah – but that’s another story…

I’m turning 20 and leaving me teens as of tomorrow. It’s not something I’m really looking forward to, not so much because I’ll be old (cause I’m not), but because it’s the start of another season of life. The next few years are going to be ones filled with big decisions. And I want God to guide me in everything – my lifework for Him, the friends I choose, the girl I marry – I want it all to be under His direction! I’m listening to a song now that sums up how I want my life to be:

O Great God

O great God of highest heaven
Occupy my lowly heart
Own it all and reign supreme
Conquer every rebel power
Let no vice or sin remain
That resists Your holy war
You have loved and purchased me
Make me Yours forevermore

I was blinded by my sin
Had no ears to hear Your voice
Did not know Your love within
Had no taste for heaven?s joys
Then Your Spirit gave me life
Opened up Your Word to me
Through the gospel of Your Son
Gave me endless hope and peace

Help me now to live a life
That?s dependent on Your grace
Keep my heart and guard my soul
From the evils that I face
You are worthy to be praised
With my every thought and deed
O great God of highest heaven
Glorify Your name through me

(O Great God is copyright � 2006 Sovereign Grace Praise)

So I’m 20 tomorrow, and I know that I’ve just scratched the surface of God’s plans for my life – I’m looking forward to where He’s going to lead me!

On Sunday we had some friends over for an afternoon/evening of fun! As you may have guessed by the title of this post, I’m turning twenty soon – but I’m not twenty until I have to be, cause I’m not looking forward to leaving my teens – and we’re going to be flying to Vanuatu on the 28th of August (if that’s news to you, check back soon to hear about it) and so we had a get together before we left. About 30 people came over, and I think everyone had a good time.

We had some games out in the paddock – and few old ones like freeze tag, and bull-rush; and a new on called “Great wall of China” which was really fun!

I make up (with my parents helping with chopping up veggies) enough Singapore noodles for half an army (well, it looked like it), and people brought sweets – it was a nice meal. We had a bonfire and sat around it eating and having a chat. Then afterward we sang some songs of praise to God for He is worthy of praise!

Also I took a shot of our church family on Sabbath: