After spending nearly 60 hours in a car over 11 days I don't think I'll ever complain about being on a long car journey again! Amy, one of our team has calculated we drove almost 7000 km, which equates to around 4350 miles. Having just written that I must have been mad to sign up for it...
I flew from Melbourne to Perth and was able to spen a few days there before our mammoth road trip.I loved Perth, some amazing views from Kings Park, beautiful flowers and some nutty tourists...must have been British!
I was working with the Western Australia Branch of YFC, yes Western Australia!So they cover a massive region!For the trip I was in a team with 2 staff from WA Mike and Alyssa, and Amy a staff member from the Hunter Region in NSW. Together with our car and tralier we set off for a very long drive! Our first stop was Newman. Unfortunately we took a slight detour and did some off road driving! The day should have involved about 10 hours of driving but actually ended up being nearly 15 hours. When we arrived at Newman for about 20 minutes I still felt like we were moving, very bizarre!
The second day we set off fairly early to drive up to Broome. At home we often say that it's humid and we need a good thunder storm to clear the air. The humidity in Broome was so high that rain was not helpful, it just increased the humidity! We spent the night, which was Saturday, in the manse for the Uniting Church in the 2 rooms with air con! The minister Darren was a wonderful man who was faithfully serving in a tough situation. In the remote communities people often spend a couple of years working in the mines and then move away having made a decent amount of money. I had no idea about the high turnover of people in these remote communities. Darren explained that many ministers often burned out after a short time. We helped to run the Sunday morning service and met a wonderful group of young people. I left praying that God would give strength and wisdom to the Christians we met.We did have some time to enjoy the beauty of Cable Beech...sometimes it really is a tough life!
Our next stop was Kununarra, I was driving at this point and had to slow down to take in the amazing views around me. It was a real highlight to see the things I did. Then having arrived in Kununarra we split up and spent time with different hosts. Together with Alyssa I stayed with a couple called Tony and Diane for 2 nights. Both nights we were in bed at 9pm as our time travelling was taking its toll. During the day we were in the District High School having been invited in by the Chaplain Kim...no it's a guy! We ran something called Motivational Media. For more information check out there website: http://motivationalmedia.org.au
It's a good way to develop contact with new schools. We used the 2010 presentation True North. The following day we ran 3 short sessions on the subject of values. I know it was a blessing for Kim as Chaplain and it was a privilege to work in a small remote community with a mixture of students.
From there we travelled to Hall's Creek. It was another small community where we ran Motivational Media together with a small seminar. The highlight for us was meetin one of the Christian teachers, Casey. An amzing young lady who followed God's leading as a new teacher and chose to work in Hall's Creek. She has an amzing heart and passion for God to work in her community and it was a delight to spend time with her. We all left with our hearts full. What a privilege to meet those whom God places in tough situations who have a deep sense of God's call and to see their joy in follow Him! A different highlight was to spend a couple of hours relaxing watching The I.T. Crowd! I can't believe I'd only seen bits...must watch it when I get home! Sorry Al, you've been talking about it for ages, should have listened a bit more!
We then began our way back, via Broome, staying with Mike's sister, it was a great place to rest before heading off to connect with a Chaplain at Meekatharra. The WA Branch have run seminars in the past and I sense they hope to do so again. After a night relaxing we headed down to Mount Magnet to run our last Motivational Media Session
You will see the 2 flags outside the school, the Australian Flag and the Aboriginal Flag. The school were contacted and informed that we would be passing their way and accepted the opportunity for us to come and run the program. At the last minute we had a change of venue. The staff said that they would quickly go and ask all the parents for permission to take their childern off site! Whether this happened...?!During our trip all the technology worked perfectly, until Mt Magnet, we think we overloaded a cicuit. It wasn't a difficult problem to solve but we were so thankful for no technical issues in general.
Lasting memories from the trip:
Going to the toilet, flushing it and screaming loudly as 2 frogs appeared in the bowl...
Meeting some amazing Christians working in remote communities, being able to bless and encourage them
Seeing scenery and visiting places lots of Australians haven't seen
Drinking lots of Iced Coffee
Watching the I.T. Crowd
Making some new friends in Mike, Alyssa and Amy
Lastly, here's our car and tralier:
And because it was funny:
No comments:
Post a Comment