Walkabout

This week was great! We had many great conversations and encouraging moments through out the week. But, like always there were some hard things to sort out. This week God decided to impress on me my already breaking heart for the lost. This is a common recurrence in my life, I have days where I will be so burdened for the lost that it becomes severely emotional. This week it lasted from Wed until Fri. It started with my weekly brekky with Lauren Wednesday morning. She shared with me a conversation she had with her unbelieving dad. I started tearing up, which confused her a bit, but I just told her that it was really sad. On one hand, I don't really know Lauren's dad, yet I know and love Lauren and she loves her dad. Then I went to Mt. Gravatt for evangelism time. We had an odd number so I sat and prayed for a bit, where again I began to tear up over people who don't know Jesus and what's more, don't even care! Then I traded with Emily and took one of our newer involved students, Jeremy sharing. We walked up to a blonde hair, blue eye guy expecting him to be Aussie. He greeted us with a Scandinavian accent and I asked him where he was from. To my delight he said he was from Norway (I'm part Norwegian) just visiting some friends who were studying abroad at Griffith. Jeremy and I ended up sharing the gospel with him and I persistently encouraged him not to give up trying to find truth. Being born in a very postmodern nominally protestant nation, Even admitted that he once believed in God but due to a friend's younger brother's fatal disease, felt that he'd rather believe no god existed than be angry with him. After sharing the gospel I looked Even in the eye and with full conviction told him that God has a great desire for Even to know Him. After seeing some wheels turning in his mind, a few lip quivers and wondering eyes, I knew God was working on Even. Please pray for him as he is only in Australia for a month, may he run into other Christians who can answer any new questions he may have.

Sunday afternoon Dani and I met up with her students Yarn and Roland in the city. Yarn brought his Japanese friend named Sho. All three of these guys are so easy to talk to and Christianity came up many times throughout our time. While we were waiting for Roland we hung out at Starbucks and Yarn asked me if I went to church that morning and what I did there. It was fun explaining why we sing to God and what our Pastor talked about. Gateway is doing a series about the questions our non Christian friends are asking. This week was talking about the common belief that "there can't be just one true religion." Later when Roland came he asked me what I learned at church. Gotta love how easy God makes it sometimes. We also found out that Sho has many Christian friends and that he met Yarn at an English help class held by a church. It was fun to spend some time with them, a change from just the people I know from uni.

This week was amazing! As are so many of my days spent here in Australia, God just has to show up and bless us. This week at English help Emily and Elaine came (they are the two Chinese girls that Scott met last week). Lan, one of the Chinese girls who usually only comes for the first hour (the English hour) decided to skip her class and stay for the Christianity Explained (CE) hour, I was surprised. I let Nate and Liz take those three girls to start the CE while I took Yuan (another Chinese girl) through the second lesson.

The second lesson is all about Jesus' death on the cross and what that means for us. Yuan had some great questions and I know that she has learned a lot about the Bible in the past. A couple weeks ago I had gone through the Campus Crusade tract called Knowing God Personally with her and some other girls. She brought it out after we finished the lessons content. She asked me how to accept Jesus. I was so excited as we went through the gospel again. I knew God was working in her heart when she asked, "this is so good, why doesn't everyone want this?" I told her that that was a great question and I often wonder the same thing. I told her that in order to accept Jesus all she needed to do was repent and believe and that through faith she would have salvation. She read through a suggested prayer and said she agreed with it. I was so happy but then she threw me for a loop when just as she was getting up to leave said she wanted to learn more because she felt she was still in the middle. I am unsure of the decision she made but I hope it will be made clear this week as I follow her up with Vincy. This is one of the hurdles with international ministry, but I trust Christ to continue to work in each one of their hearts.

After everyone left I asked Nate how his CE went. Emily is a Christian and it seemed she was a bit argumentative with her Buddhist friend Elaine. Please pray for the friends, that Emily will change her attitude of "no matter what, she won't believe" and be a good witness to Elaine. Please also pray for Lan, who was a bit shy to voice her opinion but seemed interested to learn.

Have I told you how much I love my housemates? One morning we walked to campus together and on the way stopped to pose for these photos. It was so funny!

This week was exciting and routine at the same time. Sunday was Thanksgiving at our Church, not the turkey kind but a celebration that Gateway has every year to thank God for what He has done throughout the year. After the service we were all encouraged to share in some fun and have lunch with our church family. Dani and I ran straight for the petting zoo, haha.

Tuesday was another English Help and CE filled day. This week a friend of Ben and Nate joined us. His name is Scott and he came for a visit and to check out the ministry at Griffith. Because of Mid-terms we didn't have very many people come this week, but it was good to give Scott a taste of international ministry. Later in the week he met two Chinese girls and gave me their contact information. They plan to come next week.



Later in the week another visitor arrived, Liz, Nate's girlfriend. It was fun to have her stay at our house. On Saturday we all went to Lauren's 21st birthday party, which is a big deal in Australia. It's usually a themed party and Lauren invited us to all dress up as something that started with any of her initials: L, C, or H. So I went as Cleopatra (my last minute costume). It was a fun night and many of our students were there to celebrate Lauren. Traditionally there are embarrassing speeches made by the parents and friends. Lauren's party had three speeches: her dad and two high school friends. It was interesting to hear her before Jesus life stories and to see how much God has grown her over these past three years of knowing Him. Please pray for Lauren's family who do not believe.

August Newsletter

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.

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.


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.



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!

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.

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!











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.