BELINDA - SOUTH EAST ASIA
Praise for the recent Aussie visitors who were able to encourage her in their limited time together.
Continue to pray for energy in all the many things she is involved in – particularly as she continues to adapt to a new way of life and new language. Her language lessons are going well – pray especially as she works on pronunciation of words / phrases.
Pray for the relationships which are continuing to be fostered amongst the people she is living and working with. Pray for wisdom as she seeks to communicate her faith in her still developing language – praise that many people want to talk about spiritual things.
Pray for her safety and protection – she has had her place broken into and would like prayer regarding a night watchman.
Praise that she is having a great time and for the ways in which the local people look after and encourage her
Pray for more workers to work alongside her in the area that she is living.

KALUMBURU  & THE KIMBERLEY REGION OF WA

Much has happened with our involvement in the Kimberleys over the last three months.  A girls 13 year Futsal team again visited Dural over two weeks of January.  The nine girls and two leaders were hosted with us in the Sports Centre for the day either side of the week long Nationals held in Canberra.  As well as playing Futsal, the girls enjoyed the sights of Sydney and Canberra and loved hanging out with our Dural team and our visitors from the Soloman Islands.  Special thanks to Sarah, Myles, Allister, Ed, Daniel and Joshua for their special care of our Kalumburu (and Soloman Islands) friends during their visit.

Mid January also saw the Shields family from Dural make the bold move to live in Kalumburu.  Tim has taken the position of Deputy CEO and Belinda women’s project co-ordinator.  They have settled in very well with kids Jacob adn Riley and we are confident they will do an excellent job fulfilling these strategic roles in the community.  Continue to pray for Rim, Belinda, Jake and Riley.

We are presently arranging for two girls from Kalumburu to come down to Dural to take up and educational scholarship. This eill be an excellent opportunity for the girls to pursue their education at William Clarke College as well as further strengthening our ties with the Kalumburu mob.

Other opportunities keep opening in the Kimberleys for further indigenous mission.  One avenue we have been asked to investigate is in the town of Kununurra.  We have been asked to provide some overall strategy for linking all the towns sport and recreation activities.  A move like this will again stretch resources so we need a lot of prayer before embarking on this one!  Pray that God will close the door if this is not something for us to pursue.

There is the opportunity to visit Kalumburu again this year.  Several people have expressed an interest in either returning to Kalumburu or venturing there for the first time.  Some will be flying in, others driving.  Again sport for the kids will provide a focus, although there will be the opportunity to undertake other types of ministry in the community as well. Interested?  Contact Brian Codrington.

SOLOMON ISLANDS

A 16 years girls team, 15 years boys team and All Age Men’s team along with seven leaders visited Dural during January.  Of the 37 Solomon Islanders half had previously been to Dural.  We experienced some turmoil in travel arrangements, but eventually all arrived and joined our Kimberley visitors for a great two weeks.  These visits do so much to build the strength of our relationships and to make our visitors aware of our church and community support for them and their nation. 

All teams acquitted themselves very well.  The girls just missed the semi’s, the  15 boys and the Men were knocked out in the semi finals.  All three teams were “great crowd pleasers” with their flamboyant style of play.

In Canberra the teams had great support by the resident Solomon community and again were privileged to be hosted by the Solomon High Commissioner for a BBQ at his house.

The Men’s team has returned to the Solomons and straight away commenced training for the Oceania Futsal World Cup qualifiers.  This tournament to be held in Fiji in June will see the winner not only proclaimed Oceania champions, but also advancing to the World Cup to be held in Brazil in October.  We obviously believe the team has a great chance of winning!  If successful this would be a wonderful testimony to the work of our Solomon leadership team who have build the sport since Dural Sport & Leisure Centre introduced Futsal to the Solomon Islands in 2001. 

The world is full of good sportsman who make a mess of life.  Playing sport well does not guarantee success in other aspects of life!  That’s why our ministry of sport is called SALT (Sport and Leadership Training).  Over the next six months we are increasing the priority of Leadership Training in our sports curriculum.  Pray for the impact of that in players lives.

Elliot Ragomo came to Australia with Jack Wetney in August 2005 as part of the first Solomon Futsal Educational Scholarship.  Elliot has attended William Clarke college and has now finished his School Certificate.  A great achievement!  For five months of his time with us, Elliot ventured to Spain for training with the elite First Division club, Playas de Castellion.  While the club has asked Elliot to return, he has opted to return to the Solomon Islands to be part of the World Cup campaign.  Elliot will return home to the Solomon Islands at the end of February.  Please pray for him!

Pastor Nathan Kuku and his family have arrived back in January from their trip to Sudan where they ran the first conference for Christian leaders. His intention now in line with his ARISE SUDAN vision is to return to Sudan in August and live there for 2 years as he trains and disciples leaders throughout the country. We now have 5 months to help him prepare for this huge transition for him and his family and get all the resources he will need for the leadership and discipleship training.

Reuben Singleton from the Sydney Refugee Team (International Teams) went with Nathan and was able to see first- hand the great spirit of unity and the hunger for teaching amongst the Christian leaders. There was a very moving part of the trip when one of the leaders said to Nathan how much they needed teaching on “forgiveness” and they wanted him to come back and to disciple them.

Many contacts continue to be made in Blacktown and other suburbs,  the mentoring of some families is continuing as is the English teaching. We are seeing many more men and women seeking us out for help in finding employment and currently we have about 80 people we are helping in this way. This means a lot of follow up as you can imagine that even once employed it is not “plain sailing” and  a good deal of continuous support is required. This is being done in partnership with other service partners such as Migrant Resource Centre, Centrelink, TAFE, Hillsong Citycare, and Sydney Refugee Team.

In working with, and attending forums with other community and government agencies it is quite interesting as we all introduce where we are from and the questions that inevitably come as to who we are and why we are involved. 

Opportunities this year include partnering with the Bible Society in preparing some Christian material for refugees, also helping to get published a secular children’s book for refugees. A further opportunity exists to work with some agencies in helping African people achieve their driving licences.

We expect that in 2008 Kidsgames and other activities in Blacktown will be led by some Blacktown churches, however we have committed to help to get started a playgroup at Nathan’s church to help educate and offer friendship to mothers with young children.

The aim we have too is to cover more families of the spiritual leaders with mentoring so as to strengthen their leadership within the community.

 In 2008 we expect there will be less of a requirement for “goods” and more of a requirement for help that is relational.

If you have a mind to offer your services in any area then please contact Chris and Noelene Thomas.

Rachel and Kate return to PNG… 

We headed back to PNG on the 30^th December 2007 headed for a village called Kompiam in the Enga province,

located in the high lands of PNG. The purpose of our trip was to help out at the Baptist union hospital and to see how God could combine our love and desire to serve Him with our occupation nursing.  

We were working with an Australian family the Mills who are serving in PNG and have been for 8 years, running the hospital. We also worked with another Dr Jackie who has spent the past year in Kompian hospital. Our role was to help out and lend a hand where needed. We assisted the nurses on the ward with wound dressings, medications, observations and spent time trying to learn pigeon from them. We also had the opportunity to spend time in the operating theatre where we both got to be baby catchers in c- sections and Kate got to be the assistant surgeon on a c – section and toe amputation. 

We went on an 8-hour hike to another village Murump where we spent a few nights. There we assisted Jackie with her medical research into malaria and TB and assessed patients as they have no doctor out in Murump. The hospital there was a small hut with 4 beds and a fire in the middle, very different from our multi million dollar hospitals back home! Assist  

One thing we learnt was how powerful the power of prayer can be in a medical situation. One great example of this was a man on the ward with a tumour on his left leg that weighted 7kg. To remove the tumour he required a full leg amputation below the hip joint, in order to try and save his life or at least provide quality of life. Before the surgery we were told that this man would most probably bleed out and die and to be prepared. The Sunday before the operation Dr Mills told the church and asked them to pray for this operation and to ask people to donate blood. On the day of the operation the pastor of the hospital was present in the OR his sole job to pray. We prayed together with the patient before the operation like we always did and we all continued too during. The man survived! The next day he was asking for crutches so he could walk, something he hadn’t been able to do in months. We were all convinced the only reason that this man survived was because God showed up.  

God was faithful to us during our entire trip giving us both good health and amazing people to work with and share our lives with. We would like to thank all those people who were praying for us while we were away your prayers were greatly appreciated and made a difference.  

Rachel and Kate

FROM KALUMBURU

Dear Family and Friends,

Hello from Kalumburu! Thanks to everyone who has sent emails, letters, packages and phoned us. We have felt very loved and cared for across the miles!! We have now been in Kalumburu for a month and thought it was time to answer questions about our life here and fill you in on what we do…

We arrived in Kalumburu on 17th January after a week holidaying on the Sunshine Coast. We moved into a three bedroom house on the edge of town, overlooking the airstrip and hills. After a few days of unpacking, cleaning and exploring our surrounds, we started work at the Kalumburu Aboriginal Corporation.

Tim’s role in the Kalumburu Aboriginal Corporation is as the Deputy CEO. This role assumes responsibility for the management of the corporation office, which has 6 full time salaried staff and 3 staff who are employed on the Community Development Employment Program  (CDEP). I am really enjoying getting to know each staff member and consider it a privileged to encourage and support them in what can be tough working conditions. I am also the community’s CDEP Manager. The aim of CDEP is that it acts as a pathway from passive welfare to work and training. As you can imagine, the decades of disempowering policies coupled with welfare makes this

challenging. It is certainly not a perfect program. However, we have about 55 people in the community regularly working on CDEP. Three years ago, there were only 3. They work in areas such as the playgroup, school, community maintenance, operation of machinery and wardens working with the police. This means I liaise with various other organizations in the community, which I enjoy.

One of the other things that I have been working on is working with the CEO to try and get children of about 12 – 15 years of age away from Kalumburu and into schools around the country. Socially and academically it is the best thing for many of them. We have over a dozen out this year, which is great. For those who are a bit older we seek employment opportunities down south. As time goes on I am eager to work with the CEO at a

government level to access funding for community development programs. The role will evolve as I become more familiar with the community and its organization. I have also started a Grad. Dip of Human Resource Management via distance education. It is a bit weird to be studying again, but look forward to implementing my learning into this workplace.

Belinda’s role is to run a play group for 0-4 year olds five mornings a week. I have four women who work under me on CDEP and it has been great building relationships with them and their kids. It works well with our family,

as I take Jacob and Riley along and they play with the kids and join in the activities. Having never run a play group before, let alone 5 days a week, I am thankful for the experience as a Kindy teacher and also all that I learnt last year through the Dural playgroup. The aim of

the playgroup is to encourage young mums in their parenting and to have a safe place for them to come and spend time with other mums and play with their kids. My biggest challenge is to get the mums to stay, as they

like to drop their kids off and have a few hours to themselves. (I am sure all parents can appreciate that!) It’s slowly getting there and the mums and kids that come regularly seem to enjoy our little program.  Part of my role is to work with the Child Protection Officer in setting up programs to encourage positive parenting and build self worth and confidence amongst the women.

I am also hoping to start a young

girl’s mentoring group to encourage

friendships and to spend time doing girly things while chatting about some of the issues that affect young women in Kalumburu

WATOTO COFFEE & DESSERT FUNDRAISER

Out of the 2007 Colour Women’s Conference came a prompting to raise funds to help rehabilitate “the invisible children” of northern Uganda through the ministry of Watoto which has already established three villages around Kampala.  In August 2007 Watoto saw this dream becoming a reality with the opening of their new Church plant in Gulu, northern Uganda.  Simultaneously, they are working on acquiring land for the new Watoto Gulu Children’s Village (consisting of homes, schools and a clinic) and a ‘Reception/Rehabilitation Centre’.  (see www.watoto.com)

So the women from Dural pooled their resources, talents and giftedness and released it all into God’s hands to do whatever He had planned. Wow!  What a ride!  It started in April and the team of helpers grew from about 23 to over 50 very enthusiastic women on a mission.

On Saturday night, July 21st, the Watoto Coffee & Dessert Fundraiser saw a crowd of around 140 people gather for an enjoyable God-blessed evening. The men and women who attended dug deep to raise the much-needed funds to give the “Invisible Children of Northern Uganda” hope and a future.

The team dreamed of building a house for the children.  Some had already raised $9,400 earlier towards building a house. They happily added this resource to whatever was raised on the night. We thought we needed $19,000 to build a house but later we discovered that a house in this new project would cost $38,000 as there was infrastructure to be included in the costs.

After the Coffee and Dessert evening it appeared that an amazing total of $33,594.14 had been reached.  We were overwhelmed and praised the Lord for His abundant blessing. This was far beyond anything we could have imagined. Little did we know that He had not finished the project yet!  A few weeks later another donation came in for $5000 making the total 38,594.14!!!  We could fund a house!

What an amazing God we serve and we give Him all the glory. He blessed Watoto and the Children of Uganda with the funds for a house and in His amazing way of doing things, He blessed us all along the way.

Marvellous Happenings: “I am beside you. Follow in all things My guiding.  Marvels beyond all your imaginings are unfolding.  I am your Guide.  Joy in that thought.  Your Guide and Your Friend. Remember that to Me a miracle is a natural happening.”  (God Calling)

With God’s help….TOGETHER we CAN make a difference

Elaine Abraham

OPERATION MOBILISATION (OM) INDIA

Marie Louise Fitzgerald has recently led a team of eight, including  students and ex students from Pacific Hills High School  to  the OPERATION MOBILISATION (OM) INDIA centre at Hyderabad. OM is an inter-denominational Christian movement committed to partnership with Indian churches in sharing God’s love with the nation of India. OM India seeks to be culturally sensitive using innovative methods and programs that meet local needs.

The team was involved in various activities at two OM India Good Shepherd Schools for Dalit Children.  The word Dalit means crushed or broken and refers to the large section of Indian society, some 250-300 million people who were once known as untouchables, who live extremely marginalized lives throughout India.  OM’s work in Hyderabad thru’ the Good Shepherd Schools is very, very impressive.  Their vision is very radical.  OM India, under national leadership, aims to alter the social order of Indian Society, including the Church, through the transformation of Dalit peoples by the means of providing Christian Education, and thus the gospel, to Dalit children.  There are currently 67 Good Shepherd English Medium Schools offering access to Christian education to hundreds of children from the most oppressed section of Indian Society – the Dalit Community.  This is provided without cost to these children who come from humble circumstances and would not normally have access to schooling, let alone an English medium school.

PACIFIC HILLS INDIA TEAM Members were involved in a wide range of activities in two Good Shepherd Schools, 2 churches (one Telegu the other English), two villages and a house church.  All team members taught various classes, made resources for local teachers following their directions, requests and instructions, put on skits, ran an assembly, sang, taught dances, played many game and spoke with and listened to many, many children and adults.  Much of this activity was impromptu or done with only a brief preparation – we did not very often know what would be required of us until it happened.  The Team Members quickly learnt to work together, to support each other & to give it their very best shot.  We prayed together daily and for each other and the people that we met throughout the day.  We also had a team meeting each night.  Different team members lead the meeting.  We read scripture together, reflected on the day and prayed.

All team members involved themselves in the local culture as much as they were able.  Every team member purchased and wore salwar kameez suits, ate Indian food, observed and fitted in with local customs as far as possible and generally experienced a very different style of living from that to which they were accustomed.  Some team members were keen to learn & use Hindi and many Indian people enjoyed these exchanges.  The team returned from India with a deeper understanding of the power of the gospel to transform, of the commitment of Indian Christians to see that transforming work continue and their desire to reap a harvest among the Dalit children.  Similarly, the team members have a first hand understanding of the purpose of Mission and its place in God’s plans for His Creation.

 Marie Louise Fitzgerald

BANGLADESH

Late in January my daughter Eliza and I joined a team from Carlingford Baptist Church on a short-term mission trip to visit the HELP Children’s Home in Bangladesh.  The Home was started by David and Namita Halder, members of Carlingford Baptist Church, when they returned to their homeland and saw the plight of many street children.  They started to take in children and rapidly their number grew to 129.  Clearly unable to house so many children in their home in Dhaka, and with the help of many people in Australia, America and England, they purchased the 5 acres of land 26km north of Dhaka where 360 children now live. 

Quite a number of children at the Home are orphans but many come from extremely poor one-parent families.  Life in the home is one where the children are given three meals a day, plus morning and afternoon tea or tiffin as they call it.  They go to school within the grounds and attend chapel at 7.30am and again at 5.30pm.  There is over 50 staff employed as teachers, administrative staff, cooks and helpers.

Bangladesh is the 10^th poorest third world nation in our world with a population of 144 million people living in cities, towns and small villages.  It is approximately the size of Victoria.  Bangladesh is a 98% Muslim nation.  I have traveled to poor countries such as China and Egypt but I’ve never experienced such in-your-face widespread poverty as I witnessed in Dhaka and in some of the villages we traveled through. In many respects it was like visiting a galaxy ‘far far away’, it is so vastly different to our own reality here in Australia.

We engaged with the children through many activities and at night the team took turns in conducting chapel.  Each morning we would wake to hear the sound of happy children getting about their daily business from the sweeping of paths before breakfast, hanging out their washing, and practicing on their traditional musical instruments such as the pan flute.

Towards 7.30am the children move towards chapel for morning devotions and to pray. Their hand clapping, traditional musical instruments plus keyboard and drums and singing of Bangla praise songs could be heard as we woke.  There was so much joy in what they did that I was quite often overwhelmed.  If I went out on my 6^th floor balcony to watch them the children would see me and wave with a greeting of “good morning auntie!” that was so sincere.  Breakfast and school follow chapel.  School is five and a half days a week, with Friday being the only full day off.  School resumes after lunch on Sundays.

To sum up I am totally in awe of the work of David and Namita Halder, they have truly taken up Christ’s great commission to take care of the widows and the poor with all its challenges and self-sacrifice.  Their goal is to take in 1,000 children.

In the children who’s many lives have been a battle to survive (prior to coming to the Home) in the worst poverty and all that is associated with it, I found beauty, resoluteness, tenacity, resourcefulness and resilience.   In our culture we would deem them poor beyond belief; however the children see it quite differently.

We were sad to leave but Eliza and I knew that it would not be our last trip to Bangladesh and the Home.  We made many friends with the children, heard their stories (as much as they would share).  We know that we are limited in our ability to do huge things for them, but I think Mother Theresa’s quote … “we cannot do great things, but we can do small things with great love”… is appropriate. 

To read a whole lot more of the work of the H.E.L.P (Health, Education, Leadership, Program) Bangladesh go to globalrecordings.net/article/447 Margaret Drummond

PNG

Phillip Kelshaw who is working in conjunction with Global Interaction and Baptist World Aid, co-coordinating work parties to work in Mt Hagen in PNG throughout 2008 -

Please pray that the final preparations for the first work party who leave in three weeks will fall into place.

Pray for Colin Miller and Philip Kelshaw & two other men, as they head up this preliminary work party departing on the 13th June, that the necessary building materials will be available in time so that they can put their time to good use.

 Pray for safety of all workers on the site in unfamiliar circumstances, working in a different country etc.

 Pray for the second work party of 20 people, who arrive on the 5th July,  pray that all their travel arrangements fall into place and that they will be able to settle in well to the building programme.

Pray for every one involved that God may impact their lives as they have made themselves available for furthering His Kingdom in Mt Hagen, PNG.

Pray for the PNG nationals that will be working with us during the building programme that the love of Christ shown by the work party can be impacting to these people.

Pray for the Dural work party preparations, visa applications, passports applications, and the booking of our airfares will all go smoothly over these next few weeks and that there will be no delays.

Pray also for the final preparations of necessary building materials that we will be shipping from here can be finalised and the container packed and shipped in the not too distant future.

TRAINING FOR MISSION

I was lucky enough to participate in ‘Context Training’ course run by Global Interaction (GiA) in February. To do this course I was able to travel to Melbourne and was billeted out to stay with another young guy doing this course as well.

What’s context training?!? Some of you may be wondering.

The Context training course is a course that all GiA cross-cultural workers (missionaries) complete before going out on to the field. It is a course that looks at how we as Australian-white-Baptist missionaries can communicate the gospel to other cultures, as to not try to reshape their beliefs in order to create more Australian-white-Baptist Christians but to enable them to be unique Christians to their own culture.

The course was a week long intensive and looked in depth at indigenous spirituality (Ivan Jordan spoke on this), Buddhism (2 missionaries who were home on deputation ran this) and Islam (Walter White who was in Bangladesh for 20-odd years ran this). The course also looked at theological aspects of contextualisation, which was harder for me to follow having never done any theological training previously. After returning from the course I have been challenged to not only think about what may lie ahead of me in international mission, but to also think about how we as a church and as Christians can be active in local mission opportunities.     

Myles Sutherland