Let me tell you about Peter Wilson. Peter is a participant in our Wednesday night bible studies at Jamie and Kellee Ware's house. He's in his early thirties but he has more work experience than most people twice his age. Peter loves people. He love to talk to them and engage them and learn about their lives. He can meet just about anyone and strike up a friendship quickly. Pete is a man of many talents who has his hands in many things. Peter went to school to become an architect but after realizing it wasn't for him he moved on to various other business pursuits. Before he had even gone to college he's started a business selling his own line of fishing lures but got out before Chinese mass produced lures flooded the market killing small business. After working for a while Pete went back to school to become an ecologist. Some years after that he began working as a salesman of business efficiency training. He's currently doing quite well for a self-taught sales man or any salesman for that matter. All these things tell a little bit about the kind of person that Peter is but what I like most about Pete is his desire to make all he does glorify God. He hasn't been a Christian as long as many of us be he lives the life of one ready to lay down all things for the kingdom. He's generous and knows that he's been blessed with many seeds to sew. A scripture I've been dwelling on a lot in the past week has been 2 Corinthians 9:6-15. In it Paul tells the Corinthian church that if we as, God will give us the resources we need to show the world the glory of God till we're over flowing. I've tried to be a seed planter while I've been here and I've had lots of good examples to follow.

I wanted to tell a little bit about the story of someone who's had a great impact on me here. I've met so many others that have blown me a way in their faith and actions. They all have beautiful stories and I'm grateful to them for sharing them with me and to those who helped me get here. This place will not be easy to say goodbye to.

It's been pretty quiet around here since the team left. Rachel and I have run a few errands since but mostly we've just been enjoying the time left we have with the wonderful people we've met. I think the last time the church building was painted was 30 years ago. The interns have done some of that but we wanted to get the teens involved to so I'm excited to paint with them on Saturday. Tonight we say goodbye to Greg the ACU intern. It's strange to think that he's really leaving after spending three months with them. That means we don't have much time left either. Rachel and I had dinner at Paul La Spina's house last night. We such a good time with him and the family that lives there. The little boy named Bradly was so excited to show me his ring tones on his Mobile and the tricks he could do on his trampoline. We had a good time jumping on it in the dark and playing crack the egg. Paul and I had some good talks about the church and where it's going and where it's not. He has such a heart for people deepening their relationship with God. We are too often easily contented with that relationship but we can never be close enough to the Father. My own walk has been a bit of a roller coaster this summer. With so little consistency in my schedule it's been hard to keep disciplines regular. But God has been faithful any way and this trip has been incredible so far. I'm looking forward to the rest of the time I have spend with the people I have come to love so much.

-Robert

What a great day. It started off at Cavendish Road. We got to meet once again with the encouraging group of students who want to make a difference in their school. We get to talk to them about their dreams for the school and pray together. Today there was a youth worker there from another church named Ben who gave a testimony about his experience doing mission work in the Philippines. Afterwards we talked to Gary the chaplain about hooking him up with Holland Park church so he'd have another place to pool volunteers from when he needed them. We want to make more opportunities for the church to get involved in the community, especially after Rachel and I leave. It's a shame so few people live within a half hour of the church building, that always makes things trickier.
After Cav Road I got the opportunity to get a quote for the slight damage I did to the front of my car when I didn't stop fast enough in traffic. Let's just say the damage is worth more than the car. Oh well, it's only stuff, God is taking care of all things. Another blessing God has given me lately is an extra portion of joy. I've been really excited about life and the work God's given me here. I really want to make the most of these last couple weeks and I have no doubt that's what God has in store.
Meghan has her knee surgery in a few hours. It's a repeated injury and there's a 50/50 chance they'll either remove the torn meniscus or repair it. We're hoping for repair because it means she'll be able to keep more function in the knee and not have such a high risk of arthritis. But God knows what he's doing so his will be done. Prayers always help. I am so grateful for the constant encouragement and support she showers on me. Her faith never ceases to inspire me. Even through chronic pain assorted ailments she raises her head and praises God. I am blessed.
I'm not sure what the rest of the week has in store but I'm ready for it. What good things our God does. How faithful is He always! I pray God opens our eyes to see all he's doing around us. I don't want to miss a thing.

Peace, love

-Robert

Hello again. I'm sorry it's been so long. The team set sail for home yesterday so I've had time to breath and now to blog some. There is much to go over so I'll get right into it.

After some adjusting the team started mixing with the locals quite well. After week one we headed off to Camp Orion for some wonderful encouraging times. While run by Christians Camp Orion is not set up like a Christian camp. It is set up as an out reach camp to unchurched kids. Therefore there isn't singing, or devos but everything is designed to develop relationships between the Aussie teens and the Lipscomb team members. It's a high ropes camp so there's lots of fun activities that challenge the kids to get out of their comfort zone and do things they didn't believe they were capable of. Each team member has one camper that's their buddy for the week. After dinner there is built in one on one time for us to spend with that person to grow friendships. My buddy was a lot of fun and we had a good bit in common but it was had to spend time with him one on one because he was invited by his best friend and they spend all their time together. But over all the camp was a great success. At night we had speakers come and talk about their life stories and how they were shaped and formed. God wasn't explicitly mentioned but implied and I think they really spoke to the kids. Nothing speaks to this generation like a good story. The relationships we build there spilled into spending time together outside of camp.

After Orion we spend a day sight seeing at the beautiful Stradborough island. A few of the kids from camp came along which was a huge encouragement. Its amazing to watch how quickly friendships were formed between the Lipscombers and the Aussie kids. I'm excited to be the one staying behind to keep those connections going. The kids have such amazing hearts and a few are really searching. The real point was to form friendships so that we can show people love and that would allow people to see the way we live and ask questions. The Lipscomb team did and excellent job at that. Now that their gone Rachel and I have lots of shoes to fill.

Camp Connect came next. The director of the camp Brad Johnson said it was maybe the best year they've had. Connect is more of a disciple ship

Good times

What a wonderful time we've enjoyed the past few days. The team arrived without a hitch. Well, almost. One of the kids did get pulled over for not declaring food in their bag because they were taking it through for someone else and didn't know there was food in the bag. So they got to be humiliated by the smart-alec quarantine officers getting asked questions like "can you eat this?". But everyone made it through alright and we got everyone back to their host homes fairly quickly. It was a really long day for the poor jet lagged team. We took them to a beautiful ocean-side park called Wellington point for lunch and went for a long walk along a sand bar to an island that can only be reached at low tide. After wearing out the already tired group we took them back to their host homes to spend some time before the BBQ at night. I felt really bad for them because they were already tired and disoriented and now we were at a party with new faces I hadn't even seen. And the only light was that of the camp fire so they couldn't make out well the faces they were meeting. So we didn't end up staying long because we had done the job of keeping them up long enough.

Sunday morning went extremely well. I always love to worship with Holland Park but it was especially nice to hear Dr. Lavender speak and I was particularly glad he had come on that day because my host mom had decided to come to church that morning. She's one of the most kind hearted people I know and embodies so many of the traits of Christ I just can't wait till she makes the decision to pursue a relationship with the Jesus I think she believes in. To what degree I don't know.

Monday morning, after much delay, we took off for the Lipscomb retreat. We reserved the perfect quaint little cabin in the outback three hours from Brisbane. It could not have been a more perfect place. It had gorgeous rolling hills and some rock-faced mountains off in the distance. The team is melding so well as only a group could after being prayed over so much. I'm so grateful to Mark and Beth for the hours I know they spend praying over the trip, for fruits they don't get to witness immediately like I do. In the short time we've been here we've heard nothing but good things from the host families and congregation members. I pray we are just as effective with those who don't know Christ. We have the opportunity Friday morning to witness to the kids of Redlands college. The interns have been there before but we haven't been able to talk in the more intimate class room setting that we'll be in on Friday. We need prayers that the spirit would speak through us to say what these kids need to here. That there is more to living than living for themselves and that there is a God who genuinely cares about them. Exciting stuff. Also on a side note, God is teaching me this week to act on my compulsions to serve. There is more good I can be doing and I want to act on it when it comes to my head. That's all for now. Love you all!

-Robert

Soon and very soon

Hello friends,

I've started and walked away from this thing a dozen times in the past week. A lot as been going on over here. Work with the schools has gone well. Our normal Tuesday meeting at Cavendish Road school wasn't as big as it normally is. The majority of the kids that show up are year 11's who are in the middle of exams. But a youth worker from the area named Ben showed up and grabbed some kids out of the play ground to have a meeting with. We went around telling our stories and giving testimonies of sorts so it ended up being a great meeting.
Wednesday night we had a bible study over at the Ware's. Normally we watch Rob Bell videos and they'd be finishing up the series with the last one except there was a problem locating the DVD. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I'm glad we didn't find it. Jamie lead a brilliant discussion on the Forms and Functions of the church. He started by asking us what we thought the function of the church was. We said to Love, to Worship, to create Community, Heal Brokenness, Forgive, Invite. We noted that these are all Functions we know the church is supposed to preform. These are the results we want. The Forms being the rituals and acts we do to try and achieve these Functions. We discussed how the church has become a sanctuary for Forms and lost it's purpose, it's Functions. We are more concerned with How we do things than Why. But Jesus came to get rid of this mentality. He came to free us from this form thinking and tells us to stop worrying about the letter of the law and strive for the spirit. The Pharisees we in love with Forms, carrying out the letter of the law and then some. But these laws were created to carry out Functions, they exist for the sake of their purpose. The minute they stop preforming their Function they are useless. Yet the church would rather hold on to a Form they're comfortable with that is no longer relevant to the context of their world, than try something new that carries out the Function of the original law. We talked about how under this new freedom. We are allowed, invited even, to be creative with the way we preform the Functions we are asked to participate in. Living under this revelation is living under a knowledge that what is in the heart truly is God's biggest concern. If we seek Him first He will be faithful and lead us in the right path. There's no need to cling to tradition because it's comfortable and safe. We make the bible and especially Acts and the Epistles into a book of forms to follow. But Acts is a recording of what happend, not nessesarily what should happen. And the Epistles were written to a specific people at a specific time to achieve a specific end. When we look at the advice in these letters we have to look behind the command to see the Function they are trying to achieve, not the Form prescribed for the particular situation. There is much we can learn from them but it's not a manual by any means. Unfortunately, the most important Function of our church today seems to be carrying out a Sunday service. This is an important and good thing but it's just a small part of a larger live of service to God. It is also unfortunate that we pick and choose the parts of the bible we like to follow and call the things we don't like "cultural" and the things we like "essential". We went a bit deeper than this and covered a lot of ground like, what about believers who are more concerned with Forms than the Functions they were created to preform- when it's time to wait for them and when it's time to cut loose and move on. It's very encouraging to see so many people seeking the true heart of God. The people here are so wonderful and full of earnest seeking.
The Lipscomb team gets here in less than 42 hours!! I'm really excited for them to fall in love with all the people and things here that I have. We certainly have enough planned to keep them up so that they can get to bed at an hour conducive to offsetting Jetlag. They'll be arriving at 6am after 30 some odd hours of travel and we'll be keeping them up till 8 or 9 that night. I know I didn't make it that far the first day I was here. I fell asleep on the front row at a worship workshop. Hope everyone's summers are going well. Prayers always help. Love you all.

Robert

Brisvegas

What an amazing week I've had. The ball has started rolling at one of the schools we're at. There's an R.E. class tomorrow we'll get to volunteer at. As in the U.K. in Australia you can teach religion in classes as long as there's fair representation of all religions. Some schools have religion classes every week but most get to experience other religious practices through assemblies. Tomorrow morning the 8th Graders of Cavendish Road High school will be piling into a lecture hall to hear about Jesus. I'm so excited for what God is going to do there. At our meeting on Tuesday we went into the room and prayed over Thursday's R.E. that hearts would be exposed and kids would have their eyes opened to see what's missing in their lives. Every prayer helps. We'll have a chance to share some of our testimonies and lead small groups after the lecture part is over. This will also give us a chance to promote the camps we're holding in a couple weeks. I can't believe the team will be here a week from Saturday. Time flies.

I can't wait to have more American's around. It will be funny to watch all of their reactions to the culture shift after having been here for a month. God is blessing my relationships with growth as time goes on. I really want to be able to surrender and let him move in them more. Help me love deeper and more genuinely. I often force things because I don't think I'm friendly enough but that never works. We just need to be transparent and loving and be able to laugh together. I just got back from a camping trip that helped me do all those things. We were able to experience some authentic Australian bush. I had forgotten how much I love to go camping. We had such good times just sitting around a fire talking. I think humans need to do that more often. It's so much better than sitting in front of a television.

Yesterday after visiting the schools we were able to go rock climbing. I really need to take pictures and I'll have some up later but it was dark last night. It is such a perfect area to do it. It's a natural rock face that runs along the river that cuts through downtown so right on the other side of the water is a beautiful view of the city. I went abseiling for the first time. I was expecting a new way to repel down gracfully back words but no. We got to the cliff's edge over 100ft to the ground and Josh, the ACU intern we're working with over here jumps down face first. I was not mentally prepared for that. The first time I was too timid and didn't let the rope out fast enough so I fumbled my way down the rocks and whacked them pretty hard once. But once I got the hang of it I went down much faster. The harness has less time to dig into you if you go fast. If you ever get the chance go faster than slower. Ok, that's all for now. Thank you agian to everyone that made it possible for me to be here. God is doing such wonderful things here and I'm privileged to witness and participate in it.

Shalom,
Robert