After praying for rain in the church services yesterday, God answered so loudly that I was woken in the early hours of the morning with rain bucketing down on the tin roof outside of my room. I lay there with a great big grin on my face, thanking God. People had been praying for rain for months and today was the first time that our billet told us she had seen her driveway flooded.
Monday was a planning day for the Gunnedah missions team, which was great as I kind of think I know what’s going on now. Today was also Michelle’s birthday, so I got to sing her ‘Happy Birthday’ a lot, which I enjoyed and she endured with grace.
We met in the church hall where Colin led us in a bible reading and the ministers, Scott and Ben told us a bit about themselves and the ministries that were underway in the church that we would be serving in this week.
The ladies of the church put on a great spread for both morning tea and an extravagant lunch. They are so kind!
In-between feedings, our caffeine addicts felt the need to check out the local coffee. So Gladwin proudly set off down the street with Paul and I squished into the cab of the ute that his billet had kindly lent him for the week. It lasted until Gladwin tried to reverse park and stalked it. Then the ute wouldn’t start again so Paul ended up pushing it into the spot. Gladwin popped the hood and started tinkering while Paul and I went to order the coffee. We came back to find some locals had spilled out of the pub to help Gladwin. An Aboriginal guy came up and called Gladwin his brother, which was a bit lovely. But Paul and I wanted to keep the coffee hot so we walked to the church, leaving Gladwin in the capable hands of the locals. He turned up to church on foot shortly afterwards, having called his billet after being defeated in his attempt to re-start the ute.
We did do some work in-between all this good eating. Our youth team sorted out a lot of the talks and things that we were planning to do this week and I assume that was what the children’s team were doing on the other side of the room .
Then the girls decided it was necessary to take Michelle out for her birthday. So we ended up back at the same café, drinking, eating cake, talking and introducing Ros to the art of taking ‘selfies’.
After checking out the local Christian book store, we ended up back at the church hall where we found Dan had arrived! He flew in from Hong Kong on Sunday and spent the day driving up today. So our team is complete.
Rachelle and James were going out this evening to talk to a married couple. I’m not really sure what others were doing. But Michelle and I were able to spend some quality time with our billet, talking about God’s grace and viewing pictures from her time in Africa over cheese, grapes and a glass of white.
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