Sunday with an “AIM”

Sunday with an “AIM”

Today, we went to the Australian Indigenous Ministry Church in Tennant Creek.  I can only speak for myself  - I hope to have the boys up and blogging soon so that they can share their experiences and point of view. I felt like an outsider looking in as children sat patiently with their mums and the men talked and stood around before the service began.  As soon as the Aboriginal leader started the service, we all became one in Christ; singing and sharing in the time together. Being a part of God’s people has that unity no matter whether we are of the same background, tribe or nation. 

The Sunday School children got up at one point to share some songs with us and a couple of the kids from our group got up and joined in.  We sang “Happy Birthday” to a couple of people celebrating in the coming week and then settled down for the message. One of our number was the guest speaker this week and sharing his personal testimony. He has Aboriginal heritage and spoke honestly about some of the struggles he’s had in the past and where Christ has brought him to today.

We spoke with a number of people from the congregation after the service and then came back to the campsite for lunch.  A couple of missionary families with AIM came and had the meal with us and spoke of their work in this area and among indigenous people with other remote communities.

It's been great to join in with the other families on this Mission Awareness Tour.  The kids are all off playing together and we are enjoying getting to know each family and learning more about them.  Tomorrow morning, we are heading off to the mission community at Canteen Creek - some 180kms from here.  It's mostly on dirt track so the caravan stays here and we'll tent it with everyone else. Not sure if I will be able to write much from there.  We'll see...

Tete a tete in Tennant

We are finally here in Tennant Creek and have now meet the other people on the Mission Awareness Tour.  How wonderful it was to finally get here! We casually chatted over dinner and then had some missionaries who work for AIM talk with us about their work out here. We get to rest and enjoy just "being" tomorrow :)

Long lay over in Longreach

We decided to have a shorter driving day on Thursday to give ourselves a break from the full-on driving we'd been doing.  We also wanted to do some sight-seeing - Qantas Museum, Stockman's Hall of Fame...  After we set up camp, Andrew checked our vitals and realised that our suspension was gone. We couldn't do anything then, so there were anxious thoughts and many prayers that night. Thankfully, the one place that could actually deal with this problem, managed to squeeze us in on Friday.  So, we had extra time in Longreach... to catch up on washing, get in more supplies and go back to the Qantas Museum and look at more things that we hadn't had time for the day before.  Though it has meant we had more miles to cover with less time, it was a welcome break.  We were thankful that we didn't break down in the middle of nowhere!

As I type this, I'm sitting at McDonald's in Mt. Isa, having my morning coffee.  Gotta love free Wifi on the road...even if it is slow!  We hope to get to Tennant Creek tonight and catch up with AIM Mission team.

Day 2 - Eagles, hawks, little lambs, sheep, cows, emus, and plenty of roadkill

Sorry - slow internet tonight so photos will have to wait for another time...

We are at a caravan camping ground in Augathella, Queensland (just north of Charleville) after another day of driving as quickly as we could through outback NSW and Qld.

The roads may have changed, in direction and width, but were the same in one respect - looking like the remains of a battlefield. The amount of animals (mainly kangaroos) that had been killed in the night and just lying there was phenomenal! We gave up trying to count them all.  This brought out some eagles and hawks, oh and crows.  The baby lambs we saw were alive, thankfully, and just eating by the side of the road. The sheep did make one crossing in front of us but mostly they kept out of the way.

The carnage was a blight on what was otherwise, an interesting day on the road.  The skies are vast out here, the sunlight so bright and the dirt is getting redder and redder as we go.  It is quintessential outback now and it is beautiful to behold.

Took the older two boys down to the local pub here in this small Qld town to watch the State of Origin match tonight.  Most of the crowd was pretty quiet but one guy walked in and started barracking in a Darryn Lockyer style of husky voice. It was great to be with locals enjoying the game :)

Will sign off for now.

Almost there...

It has finally stopped raining for a little bit and so I have been madly transferring things over to the caravan.  The tyre has been fixed on the caravan, the "spring cleaning" of the house is almost done and so are Stephen's exams.  We have a long drive ahead of us - we are trying to get to Tennant Creek in four days to join up with others on a mission awareness tour.  We'll be going to some remote Aboriginal communities in that first week of July.  I'll write about that as we go, not wanting to project my own ideas onto that week.

First though, we'll be taking off sometime tomorrow (when we finally are all ready to go) and be heading through outback NSW and Queensland.  We'll actually go "back of Bourke" and maybe beyond on the first day.

Starting to pack...

We are getting ready to go on a big caravanning trip up to the Top End of Australia.  This week, we've been slowly thinking about what to take, sorting, cleaning, washing and now, starting to pack.  We are no where near ready and I will probably rue the fact that I didn't get my act into gear sooner...  In these quieter moments, I've been thinking about the "stuff" that defines us.  Paring back our belongings and deciding what is essential and what we can leave behind is a process in itself. Perhaps I am being too philosophical and I just need to get going and pack!