Back in Australia :)

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Hey guys!

Sorry about the gap between the last blog and this one! It's been a while!

I'm back in Australia now doing the final part of my outreach stage in a small town in Western Australia called Port Hedland. It's about 2 days drive north from Perth and is a mining town so those who do manual labour here are loaded...seriously loaded. I think they could earn in a month what some people earn in a year! If you ever want to earn money quickly getting a manual labour job in Port Hedland is the way to go!

Quite a bit of travelling has been done since I last wrote a blog! After Flores we travelled to Lombok which is another Indonesian island. The way which we got to Lombok was pretty epic...2 days of travelling via car, ferry, weird pimped out taxi thing, bus, ferry and another weird taxi. It was a pretty random trip and is definitely not a trip i would do by myself. We met this lady who was travelling by herself and she was always getting ripped off by people because she was white and female. I'm suprised she felt safe enough travelling by herself...she seemed pretty sassy and she was mid 30s and some of the stories she had to tell were absolutely hilarious and sooooo random. After the trip we officially were done with eating bananas. Even typing the word banana makes me want to vomit. People can be very generous in Indonesia and one of the things they have are bananas and boy did we eat a lot. I ate 4 in one day...not fun. As much as we appreciate their generousity, having the same thing offered to you over and over again is not fun!

So we finally got to Lombok after a pretty epic journey. Lombok is a muslim island so we had the mosques going off every other hour with the prayer calls which was an interesting experience. Some of the calls sounded earily beautiful but others...well they were very different from what I'm used to and so very loud! The place we were staying in Lombok wasn't actually that different from Bali. It definitely did not match up to the expectations I had of it, although we didn't go to the place we originally planned to go (a village in the mountains which is more obviously muslim and a lot less urbanised). Our ministry in Lombok pretty much consisted of prayer walking (without saying christian words like 'God', 'Jesus', 'Lord' etc outloud since it's a muslim island and a whole lot of persecution happens there) and winding down after a very hectic time in Flores.

After a few days in Lombok we took a ferry to Bali and spent a day and a half in Bali before flying back to Australia. We got to see the people at the Bali YWAM base again which was really nice and it was so good to spend some more time with them. There was no room on the base because of the schools they had running so we stayed in a 'hotel' in Kuta which is a more touristy part of Bali. We paid before looking in the rooms and I can safely say it was the worst accomodation we had throughout out whole stay in Indonesia and probably the most expensive. For all those planning to travel to Bali...check the room before you pay.
Anyhoo i don't have much time so onto the next part!

So we flew back to Perth and were reunited with the other outreach teams. It was sooooooo nice to see everyone again. We only had a day and 2 nights before we were on the road again and teams were arriving during that time so the time we got to spend with people wasn't nearly as much as we would have liked but it was just nice to see their faces again. Me, Tanner and Christian have been united with our original team which is sooooo nice. It's much bigger and consists of people who i grew to love over the period of the 3 month lecture phase and even though they had had 2 months together it was really easy to slot in and they were very happy to have some fresh new faces in their group.

In terms of what we've been up to during our time in Port Hedland, we've been doing a little bit of work in the high schools where we go into classes and talk on identity/self worth, relationships (including broken family relationships and problems with peers) and substance abuse. The school we've been going to isn't a christian school so we are not allowed to talk about God or mention anything to do with christianity...i'm not entirely sure but i think it is illegal to do so and relationships with the schools have been broken before due to slip-ups. We're lucky that we can even go in in the first place as it is usually only possible through the school chaplain and the school which we've been going in to has recently had their chaplain leave so God has already been providing for us through making it possible, even if at times we get frustrated by it only being 4 hours a week that we're able to speak to the kids.
It often feels like we are spending a lot of time chilling at the church we're staying at because the time we have been given in schools is pretty small so frustration seems to be a common feeling at the moment. Although it can get frustrating that we're not 'doing' things here I personally am enjoying spending time with the full team and winding down from the ministries we did in Indonesia. A common thing which i'm finding when talking to people is that our time with God has reduced dramatically and in some cases disappeared during our time on outreach for a number of reasons.
I know that my quiet time with God has pretty much disappeared and you can really feel the effects of it, especially when you are constantly asked to serve people or reach out to people. I have felt pretty drained for quite a while and instead of doing anything about it I just carried on trying to do everything in my own strength which is soooooo draining; by the end of indonesia i was pretty much spent in every way possible and my attitude towards ministry just got worse and worse. Towards the end i physically went into ministries but would refuse to do things or only put half my heart into it and my attitude towards the people that i was serving was not one which was loving or willing. My thoughts usually were ones of wanting to be served instead of serving and feeling really frustrated that I had to even serve people in the first place. I felt bad for feeling this way but didn't go to God with anything, instead just beating myself up for being such a poor representation of Jesus and just generally feeling sorry for myself.
God was so faithful despite all of this and despite my poor attitude and unwillingness to do anything but sleep and complain (or at least thats how i felt like i was being most of the time), God really moved. We saw both healing and people becoming christians and God really spoke to the christians around us, encouraging them with our presence and the testimonies we had from our lives and lecture phase. God is good even when we're not!!

Wow this blog is turning out to be another long one! I hope it makes sense, i didn't manage to finish it when i wanted to because the library we went to only lets you use a computer for 30minutes a day unless it is an emergency...one of the weirdest systems i've encountered but hey ho!

I'm reading a book here when we have all this spare time called 'A love worth giving' by a guy called Max Lucado. I picked it up because at the time i felt so far from being a love giver and felt so bad for feeling this way that even though i had no real desire to read it i knew it was probably good to at least give it a go. God has really met me while I've read it and I feel a whole lot closer to God now. It's not that He pulled Himself away from me but I let my tiredness, emotions and busy schedule get in the way of spending time with Him so even though He was there all the time I couldn't feel Him or hear Him and I found it difficult to see what He was doing in and around me. Putting God first is definitely something I am going to have to work on but He is sooooo incredibly faithful and sooooo patient.
Lately I've been concerned about how critical I come across due to my high expectations and the difficulty I feel in trying to communicate things and impacted the way I felt God saw me. I was worried that God was disappointed with me everytime i had a critical thought about someone else or everytime i felt angry or confused or anything which is often conveyed as being negative which added onto the worry I felt about being critical as I became even more critical or everything I did as i constantly felt like I was failing...vicious cycle right?! Well this morning I read about how when God sees me, He sees Jesus, His son and He smiles. All the 'bad' things i feel and think are completely covered by Jesus and God does not look upon me with a look of disappointment...He looks upon me and smiles. Pretty sweet.
The other day I read about how we are not overwhelmed or overburdened (even though sometimes it can sometimes feel like it) because Jesus carries it all. It's something I've heard a lot and read a lot but it just made more sense this time. Ok so this is turning more into a sermon like blog right now but bear with me! The book talked about Matthew 11:28-30 where Jesus asks those who feel burden and overwhelmed to come to Him and He will give them rest. He then talks about a yoke when is easy and light. In ancient Israel farmers used to train and inexperienced ox by yoking it to an experienced one. The experienced one carries the load and the younger animal follows beside with a light burden so basically Jesus is saying He is carrying it all for us and helping us through it. He is there beside us, He is baring the brunt of it all. Awesome right!

Ok so yer this is a really long blog so I'm going to sign off now so you guys can rest and recover after that! Apologies to all those who tuned in for a 'what has Rachel been doing' as it was more about 'What has Rachel been feeling/learning' and sorry to all those who feel way to 'christian-ed' out....hope I didn't overload with too much info! Feel free to ask questions/give comments!

Love to everyone! Miss you all!
Hope you've had a great week and are enjoying/have enjoyed your weekend!

Much love and blessings to you!
Rachel

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