Walkabout

Student Life Ministry in Brisbane, Australia with Amanda DeCesaro

This week English help made me very very excited!!! We had a few new people come, Johnson and Cecilia, who Vincy invited. Yuki, Yuen, Serena, Cathy and Jean also joined Vincy, Mary, Dani, Nate and I. Then Yuki, Serena, Jean, and Yuen went through the first lesson of Christianity Explained (CE) with me. That was the largest CE I've ever had, it is usually one-on-one. What made me even more excited was to see their enthusiasm to learn. Yuki who is from Japan was especially eager to not only learn but to read from the Bible. Its times like that when I am so glad God has called me to Australia. Pray that they continue to come to CE and bring friends and that they will understand who Jesus is and what He has done.

Serena, Vincy, and Jean playing hangman

Wednesday was MinJun's birthday, so we went to a Korean BBQ for dinner. It was great to see Emma, a girl I did a CE with last year. She introduced me to her new boyfriend, Harry. She is so sweet, please pray for her, she still doesn't have any room for God or Jesus in her life.

Emma and I at a Korean BBQ

Every day we have evangelism times from 1-3. I am responsible for being there every Thursday and Friday. This Thursday for the first hour I partnered up with Alex. We went to the Common and I spotted a girl reading Harry Potter and suggested we talk to her. Much to my surprise this girl was one of three girls Emily and I talked to just last week. Her name was Tegan and when she told me that I apologized for not recognizing her (she was wearing huge sunglasses). We stayed and talked to her for about 40 minutes. She told us about her beliefs in God but that she didn't grow up with Jesus and hasn't really experienced Him, so she doesn't have a relationship with Him (her words). I remembered her telling Em and I about a co-worker friend who recently "found Jesus" so I asked her more about that. She told us that this friend was having a great influence on her group of friends and that she has completely turned her life around and that she was amazed by the change she has seen in her friend. She also told us that she has learned more in the last month about Christ from her friend than in her entire life. [I was so proud of my new little sister, even though I don't know her, it was so exciting to hear how she has been taking steps of faith to share the gospel with her friends]. Tegan told us about how she just wants to live a good life with morals and being kind. I asked her what she thought the end result of that kind of life is, what's the point? She then revealed that she does believe in a Heaven and Hell and hopes to get into Heaven. I then got to share the gospel with her and explained that the God of the Bible is 100% perfect and that His Heaven requires 100% perfection. I went on to explain that all world religions are about one's own works while Jesus offers grace. She had told us that she prays sometimes so I encouraged and suggested that she prays to ask for Jesus to reveal Himself to her, if He is truth and if she should follow Him. Please pray that God opens her eyes to see Him and that she understands grace and true salvation. It was no accident that I didn't recognize her (for I may not have talked to her again) and it is no coincidence that there are all of a sudden many Christians entering her life: her co-worker, me, and Megan. Yup, she knows one of our students, Megan (they both study Japanese) and last week after Em and I talked with the three friends they told Megan about it in class. They didn't know Megan knew us, but they told her about talking to these two Christian girls. Tegan said, "it was weird, they were so happy." haha, I love it! I asked Tegan if she would like to hang out with Megan and I sometime and she quickly agreed. She then asked us if we got our strength from our belief in Jesus. We agreed with that, to which she told us that many people she knows that have a great faith have a great personal strength.

The second hour I met up with Joanna, who has recently joined Student Life. I don't know much about her or her faith, but was glad to take her sharing. We ended up talking to a Chinese girl, Ivy, who has impeccable English for the entire hour. Joanna asked some great questions and felt very comfortable chatting with Ivy. I ended up getting her number and inviting her to ISM Tuesdays. Pray that she will come along and bring her boyfriend. Also pray for Joanna as she grows in her faith and gets more involved in Student Life.

Ivy and Joanna

Thursday night, one of our students came over to make us a wonderful German dinner. It was so good and it was fun to hang out. After dinner, Wolfe took Dani and I to a Chinese movie called Aftershock. It was the first foreign film I've seen in a theatre. It was about the earthquake that hit China in the 70's where 240,000 people died, it was really sad.

Alycia, the master chef

I made the gravy, haha

Friday morning I was woken up to our doorbell and knocking at 6:30. I thought one of my roomies must have locked themselves out, but to my surprise it was a nice couple hand delivering a postcard to Emily from the Galapagos Islands. A continued tradition is that mail can be dropped off and picked up from the island without postage, anyone who stops by the post office will thumb through the mail and see if there is any close to their destination. That was the first time I've heard about it. They apologized for waking me up, but that wasn't what I was sorry about: a few minutes later I felt very nauseous. The rest of the day I spent in bed, getting up made me extremely dizzy. Lynn, Jeanie, and Dani took good care of me. It was a painful day and Saturday I woke up with a bit of a headache (probably dehydration) and a sore back, but I felt so much better. Then after drinking a lot of water and moving around I felt almost 100% except I still did not feel like eating anything, oh well, haha. This was the first Saturday that I didn't have any plans and it felt good. The only plan I had was to Skype with my teammate from last year, Susanna. It was great to see her again and hear her voice. We talked about life and things God is teaching us. Even with what seemed like a wasted day, this week turned out to be a very eventful and amazing week! Thanks God!

The day after, I felt so much better and Skyping with Susanna made my day

This week finally felt like we were in the swing of things. We got a classroom for our 4 hour block of international student ministry (ism). God has really blessed this step of faith, offering English help and Christianity Explained Courses (CEs) to international students. The first and the third hour we have English class where students can come learn some idioms and play games like pictionary in order to improve their speaking. We met a few new students all from China and they were excited to come back next week.

Kai and Serena learning some American Idioms



Vincy learning how to teach a Christianity Explained Course


This Saturday we had an ISM social in the city. It was a long day of fun, we first split into two teams for a photo scavenger hunt. They were given a list of captions and had to creatively take a picture that represented that caption, some of the pictures were hilarious. After the game we went to print the pictures and just hang out in the city, then we met up with some more people for dinner at a Korean restaurant. One unexpected surprise was to get a call from a Chinese guy named Dean. He joined us for dinner and then later Vincy was talking with him about Christianity. I had only met him once at the end of last semester when Wolfe (Chinese guy who came to Christ while I was on summer project here in 2008) brought him to our international dinner party. Wolfe told me that he was interested in Christianity and had been going to church. When Vincy talked with him, she discovered that he put his faith in Christ just weeks after he was at my house for the party! God is so good!



Jean and Wil with their list of captions

My team: Dasha (Russia), Grace (Kenya), Jean (China), Wil (Australian born Vietnamese)

Me, Budd (Fiji, who replaced Dasha halfway through the game), Grace, Jean
Holding Twilight DVDs for the caption "Dime a Dozen"


Caption: "This is my Pet"

The other team: Nate (on my STINT team), Bob (Korea), Dani (my sis), and Chars standing (Korea)
taking the photos was Mary (China)




Me and Teresa (Vincy's friend, China)

The Dinner group: Teresa, Mary, Lynn, Wil, Dani, Budd, Jean, Jeanie, me,
and Dean (Vincy taking the picture, making us laugh and MinJun left early)


Then on Sunday we went to Mt. Gravatt for a day of tennis. It was put on by Campus Life for all uni clubs. Student Life brought the most members which was great to see. Our relationship with the uni is great and they appreciate our involvement on campus and our desire to be active with outreaches and socials. This is one of many ways God has blessed Student Life at Griffith Uni. I personally love tennis and it was a long time since I've played but I had heaps of fun that day.


Me and MinJun goofing around with tennis rackets


My beautiful housemate Jeanie (Ji Eun) Bae on her birthday

We tried to treat my housemate, Jeanie like a Queen on her birthday. It was on Wednesday which happened to be a public holiday, so no school, and we joked that the whole state was celebrating her. My other Korean housemate, Lynn and I spent most the day making her ravioli and a gigantic chocolate caramel cake covered in marshmallow. We also had some Korean food and of course the Korean tradition of seaweed soup for the birthday girl. It was a fun night of celebrating someone I love very much.

Friday and Saturday was our 24 hour retreat called Momentum. We drove about an hour south to the Gold Coast where we stayed overnight in a church. We had worship, evangelism training, and vision casting. We also took some time to plan some upcoming events and of course to eat together, haha. One of our beloved students, Wil, put together an awesome lunch of Vietnamese wraps (it has a Viet name but I can't remember what its called). It was fun to make lunch together and enjoy another culture.


Kelly shows Josh the results of a telephone-pictionary game


The amazing lunch we shared together, we had to cook the beef and create our own wraps

Jeremy, Emily, Gemma, Tim, and Orrie after worship and dinner at Hungry Jacks (Burger King)


Tim and Tam sharing some TimTams.... such a hilarious photo, I just had to share it
(thanks for taking this super awesome photo Em!)

Nate, me, and Kris doing surveys at South Bank campus

The second week of the second semester was just as busy as the first and we were meeting many new students. On Tuesday we finally made it over to South Bank campus, which has all the art, film, design, and music students. It is a very small campus with just one area that students hang out, in the courtyard, outside the food place. The campus is spread out along South Bank which has many shops, restaurants, the river, parks and is a short walk to down town Brisbane. So, naturally, its hard to meet students there. We would stand around what seemed like a ghost town until a class would let out, then we would get a huge crowd. We got a few contacts that day, but one guy was really interested. His name is Raymond and he is friends with one of our students. Kris took him along to meet some students who wanted to hear more about Student Life and Christianity; he also came to our Fusion weekly meeting and plans on coming to Momentum (you'll hear about that soon). Keep praying for South Bank, it is small, yet there are heaps of students who need to hear the gospel.

On Friday our students organized an outreach at Nathan campus. they set up two a-frames with questions on them: What happens after death? What is the meaning of life? How do you define good and evil? What is satisfaction? Some good conversations came out of that, along with some interesting insight. Pray for Ben as he meets up with a Sri Lankan guy he talked to for a couple hours at the outreach. Also pray for Peter and Ben as they meet up with a guy who sat right next to our Student Life: Evangelical Christian Students banner reading a Richard Dawkins book; gotta love God's sense of irony, haha.


Bec, me, Raejene, and Megan at Women's Retreat

The weekend was amazing! We had our Women's Retreat right next to the ocean. It was a cramped two nights in a two bedroom unit with 20 girls. One girl that came just met us randomly, a friend of a friend, a couple weeks ago. She was brave and made some new good friends out of it. I saw some of the ladies become very vulnerable with each other, it was great to see the kind of trust that was growing and the community that we envisioned. And of course the men were jealous so had a guy's night out (I heard they watched chick flicks, but its just a rumor).

Contact Me

amanda.decesaro@gmail.com

About Me

Followers

Subscribe to Feed