Away from the Land Down Under
Outreach
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| The beautiful Timor-Leste |
Outreach was a ride. I have only been on one missions trip before this and it completely wrecked me, so the fact that this one was three times as long should give you a hint of how this update is going to go. As you may know, my team of five guys, four girls went to East Timor for a month and then went to serve in the outback of Australia in Darwin for 10 days. Basically all of my expectations were not even close to the reality, which is per usual. I don't even know why we make expectations anymore when they don't really benefit you either way most of the time. But, I of course expected to be going to a desert island covered by a dramatic fog with monkeys coming from every direction, then for Darwin to be rolling plains with as many crocs as there were people. Now that I process those ideas I'm really unsure why I even thought... yeah I don't know. Anyways. I'll start with East Timor. We started our time off there by spending a night in the capital, then driving for four hours to a middle-of-nowhere, can't-find-on-a-map, tiny village. These first two weeks confirmed in my mind that I had never been in a more stunning environment. Who would have guessed that this country I've never heard of would have incredible jungles, rolling mountains, and beaches with the clearest blue-green water and whitest sand?? And good God the people were SO beautiful!! It just goes to show how incredible this earth is and God's creation is and we don't have any idea of the extent of it.
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| A waterfall we hiked to in Bahareduk |
Bahareduk
The village we were in was called Bahareduk, and we all literally don't know how to spell it so it's pronounced Buh-harr-ih-dook. Ha. Our team stayed in a YWAM built structure that had a kitchen/dining room and then a boys room and a girls room, each with a small bathroom. We were smack dab in the middle of their village on basically their only road. Other than the many rats stealing and tearing through our stuff, the place was really great. During the two weeks there, we got to "unplug" and really get to know our team dynamic while doing our ministries. Every morning, we would split up and half of us would plow and sort dirt and make garden beds, and the other half would make cement and create bricks for building houses. Lots of hard work, and we all loved it. Then every afternoon, we would walk around the village and do house visits or do a church service for the village. We made a lot of little friends and also got to spread the gospel to many families! There were nine people that wanted a relationship with Jesus and we saw over ten babies healed from fevers and worms!! It was truly incredible. One of the craziest moments was when some of our team and I went down to the outdoor meeting hall to see the cultural dances that they were doing, and we accidentally got pulled into a huge ceremony of inducting the new chief of their village. We felt a little underdressed, very unprepared and became extremely aware of how important translators are. But, because we were white, the chief sat us at his table at the front and shook our hands and had us treated like royalty as well. It ended up being really important, though. The chief is a huge deal in villages and he had the power to kick YWAM out of the village due to the fact that we are a Christian missionary organization in a very Catholic/animism/witchcraft-based area. (Catholicism is not the same there as it is in the States. Very idol-based, worshipping of many gods and inanimate objects, no Bible-base, etc.) He ended up liking us a lot though, so praise the Lord! I also now have baby fever to say the least.
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| Lil Amisa |
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| Baby Abice! |
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| Two beautiful girls from the family that lived on base! |
Then we spent two weeks in Dili, which was definitely a new experience. We got to work with two different groups of kids every other day. One was a kindergarten/preschool and the other was like an after school boys and girls club. It was sometimes really hard to communicate with them and keep them entertained with not a lot of knowledge of the language, but we figured it out and ended up having a lot of fun. The base that we stayed at was a YWAM base with a few amazing families and staff that I already really miss. We also got to do some street evangelism using music and our drama and we saw three people give their lives to the Lord! It was incredible seeing how little things that we would try God was able to use in such big ways. We all got to share our testimonies and preach at churches as well! A few of us got hit with a little bit of a bug there, but not bad enough to knock any of us out for more than two days. And something to top all of this off, we actually amazing food the entire time we were in East Timor. Our hosts were some amazing and hospitable Timorese and Brazilian women that really knew how to cook. There was garlic in absolutely everything. Amen amen.
Darwin
To finish off our six weeks, we spent some time in the outback of Australia. We were able to talk to many aboriginals there and really spend some time helping in their community. We took the time we had there to just serve all that we could, whether it be yard work or cooking, praying and worshipping, evangelizing, or leading services in the aboriginal community of Bagot. It was great to speak English after a long time of being a little bit confused and trying to hurriedly learn a language. There were quite a few crocodiles, but the whole area was gorgeous and very exciting. We didn't get to spend much time there, but I really enjoyed being able to drink water straight out of the faucet and a hot shower... I know I know, pathetic.
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