Outreach Update 1

Welcome to the first update from outreach! We are now halfway through our second week and as ever time is going so fast! I'll try and give a quick overview of the stuff we've done so far...

Cairns
We left the base in Townsville on Saturday 5th April and drove up to Cairns. Most of us had had very little sleep as we'd been up at 5.30am to wave off the Vanuatu team as they left for the airport. After a long drive (it should only have been 4 hours but was more like 6 or 7) we arrived in Cairns and set up our camping mats in a church there (girls on one side of the room, guys on the other). On the Sunday evening we gave a couple of testimonies in the church service (their pastor preached) and were blessed to see 2 people give their lives to Christ! On the Monday and Tuesday evenings we went down to the beachfront and did a free BBQ and played sports with the people that we met down there. This was great fun and we had some good conversations about God with the people we met and blessed many others with fun & free sausages!!! The days were mainly spent planning for...

Pentland
Wednesday was spent travelling to Pentland. Here we ran a 2 day kids camp in a (very) small town of about 400 people. We had 9 children one day and 13 the next, played various games and shared with them about God. On Friday evening we showed The Bee Movie (strange film, by the way) and a bunch of kids came along to that.

Yeppoon
We had a very long day of travelling down the coast to Yeppoon on Saturday, made longer by locking the keys in the kitchen before we left (2 of the guys finally managed to fish them out through a hole in the wall using the magnet from a speaker) and a blown tyre.

On Sunday morning we took the majority of the church service, and I was one of the people speaking. I shared briefly on how communion reminds us of how we are dependent on God like we are dependent on food. I was nervous to speak, but I know that with practice this will get better.

Monday was a day off, which we just spent hanging out as a team. However, we weren't getting picked up until 10am. This suited Karly and I very well...we are staying in people's homes here in Yeppoon and we have been placed together a half hour out of town on a ranch! And our hosts (knowing how much Karly loves horses) took us for a trail ride before we got picked up. It was incredible! We spent about 2 hours on horseback in the Australian bush, going up and then back down a hill. From the top of the hill you could even see the ocean.

Yesterday (Tuesday) was spent mainly in planning for the school lunchtime programme that we ran today and in running a programme at a retirement village. I felt that the programme went very well indeed, with various people sharing different testimonies and Brandon and I played some songs and hymns. We also had about a half hour to chat with the residents.

I don't really have time to write any more just now, so I appologise for my breivity!

Thank you to everyone who has supported us financially and in prayer. Please continue to pray for us! Prayer for this week's school work is appreciated as rules have literally just changed and now prevent us from sharing our faith. Also, prayer for relationships within the team and that we won't be missing anything that God has for us.

God bless you all! xx