Bible Study

Bible Study started back up again on Wednesday! Our youth attend 2 different schools, one in Yeppoon (just down the street) and the other in Rockhampton which is about a 30 minute drive. When we first started the Bible study we asked the students when the best time was in order to make it available to as many students as possible. Unfortunately, we realized that the time that worked best for the most number of students, made it unavailable to others! Last term we have Bible study at 3:30, which was right after school got out. The Yeppoon kids walked down the street, had an after school snack then we jumped into Bible study. The Rockhampton kids were unable to attend because they didn't get back from school in time.

Well, we came up with a brilliant plan! Why not move Bible study back 30 minutes! Why we never thought of this before, we have no idea! So, this Wednesday we moved the time back and had more kids than we've ever had! We are really looking forward to this term, with our new theme "Refocus." We are looking at why we believe what we believe. Please pray with us as we continue to plan this term. Pray that God would give us guidance in what we teach and that it would be His words the youth would hear and not ours!

District Conference

This past week we had the opportunity to go up to Townsville for the annual District Conference. We had a great time getting to know the other churches in our district as well as spend more time with the people from our church. During the conference meetings, Sean and I had the privilege of running the children's program.

On the first day, we took the kids to the beach. There is a free little water park there as well as an open area where the boys played rugby.

On the second day, we started off with devotions and read the book There is a Yeti in My Shed and talked about the importance of obeying our parents! Then, we introduced the kids to puppy chow (muddy buddies) and they loved it! They ran around camp sharing the puppy chow with everyone. We then played some group games outside for a bit followed by Uno. We were amazed at how much they enjoyed playing Uno. We ended off the day by making Gak which was a big hit!! Here are a few pictures :)

We had 2 travel buddies on our 9 hour drive to Townsville. Darryl and Myrtle are both members of our church and we really enjoyed getting to know them better! During our free time we enjoyed driving around town and getting ice cream with Myrtle. We also visited Castle Hill that had a beautiful view of the town! Below is a picture on top of the hill.
Although Sean and I were not able to attend the Conference meetings, it was neat to hear about the business side of how the church works and how each church in the district is represented at Conference. The new district board was elected as well as a new District Superintendent. We would like to ask for your prayer for these individuals as they step up to take these positions of leadership. Pray that God would fill them with his wisdom as they go about their jobs and that the decisions they make will glorify him. Also, pray for balance in their lives as they take on their new responsibilities.

The Little Things

There are 2 things I look forward to every day. The first is getting up early with my cup of coffee, bowl of cereal and doing my Bible study. The second is being able to cuddle with my husband every night :) This morning as I curled up in my chair with my delicious coffee and started reading my Bible, I was touched at how much God loves us and how much he cares about the little things that matter to us. In John 15 verse 9 it says,

As the Father has loved me,

so have I loved you.

Now remain in my love.

I have read this verse so many times, but today it really touched me. Do you understand how loved you are by our Savior? Here Jesus is saying, "as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you." As I thought about it for a while this morning, I was completely blown away by how loved we are!!

Sean and I love riding bikes, and obviously we were not able to bring our bikes with us to Australia. We have been looking into buying bikes here, but we've found that bikes cost more than we are willing to spend at this point in time. As we were sitting in church 2 weeks ago, I looked outside and noticed what a beautiful day it was. I thought to myself, "man, what a beautiful day! If only we had bikes!!" After church, Sean and I were talking to some people and this man came up to us (who we hardly know!) and asked if we would want to borrow their bikes while they are out of town for the next 3 months! I was completely shocked because I had just been thinking about how much I would love a bike. And to add to that, he also offered for us to borrow their car while they are out of town!!!! What?! I love that God not only meets our every need, but he also brings about little blessings like these to remind us how much we are loved by him.

XLR8

I realized the other day that we haven't told you too much about the children's program that we have at the church! It is called XLR8 and it is every Friday afternoon from 3:30-5:00. The children range anywhere from preschool to 6th grade. It is run by a lady in the church and I help her out. XLR8 averages about 20-30 kids. Quite a few of the kids do not go to our church, so it's a really neat opportunity to get kids into the church and learn about the Lord!

This term the students learned the books of the Bible, the 12 disciples, the Beatitudes and 5 Bible verses! All term they work really hard to learn their information, because at the end of the term they are quizzed in order to earn badges. Last Sunday we had an XLR8 awards ceremony where the students were presented with the badges that they had learned from the term. Here are a few pictures from the event!

At the start of the awards ceremony, the kids sang and did the motions for their favorite song! Jesus is My Superhero :)

The student's names were called one-by-one and they came up to the front where they were pinned with their badges!

Friday Night!!

Yesterday was so much fun! It is the end of the school term and schools are going on break for the next 2 weeks. The church ministries are in recess for the next 2 weeks because a lot of people go out of town during this time. For the last youth group of the term we decided to go roller skating. It was so much fun! For a lot of the kids, it was the first time they had been. It was so fun to watch them progress throughout the night. At first they were hanging on to the wall, then they gained a little confidence and let go. By the end of the night they were skating like old pros! They were very sad to leave because they were finally starting to get the hang of it. Needless to say, we will be going back again! It was such a great night to celebrate the end of the term and have fellowship together! Below is a pictures of our awesome youth leaders!

I'm (Sam) enjoying getting to know the women in our church. Yesterday, I was blessed to be able to join in the Friday morning women's Bible study. Before we got started, I was so surprised because they presented me with my very own Aussie cookbook!!! I've been asking for some new Aussie recipes and now I have my very own book!! Our Pastor's wife contacted the women in the church and they sent all of their favorite recipes. I'm looking forward to trying them out. I felt so blessed by this!! I loved the note in the beginning because it has a lot of fun Aussie words, so I thought I'd let you read it to :) Below it is a picture of my new cookbook!

This cooking book is from a few of your mates to help you become closer to a true blue Aussie. I am sure you will get heaps more recipes during your stay with us. I am not sure if there is such a thing as dinkum Aussie tucker. Check out how many come from other countries! But them are all YUM AS! Many blessings as you enjoy whipping up a storm in Oz.

Much Love,

Your Friends

Yeppoon Wesleyan Methodist Church.

Finally, this is just a picture of the sunset as we were leaving work the other night. So beautiful!!

Baby Night

This week's theme for youth group was Baby Night. We started off the night with devotions, where we focused on the passage in Hebrews 5 that says, "Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." We challenged the students to look where they are at in their walk with the Lord. Are they in the beginning where they need to be drinking the milk and focusing on the elementary teachings in the Bible? Or have they been a Christian for a while and it's now time for them to move onto more solid food and take the initiative to be in God's word and grow past the elementary teachings. Even in the 2 1/2 short months that we've been here, we've already seen a lot of growth among the youth. They are asking so many good questions and they are hungry to learn more about God's word.

All of the games revolved around things that babies do. We had a great time coming up with all of the games! Here are a few pictures from the night.

For the first game, there was one student who was picked to be the "baby." The baby then had to go to the mums (that's how they say mom here) to get taken care of. One mom had to put on a Nappy (diaper), the next mom had to put the bib on the baby, next the mum had to feed the baby. The bottles each had coke in them. Then the baby had to be burped and finally the bib had to be taken off. Once all of this was complete, the baby had to crawl back to the starting line. The first team to finish won. Unfortunately, there was a lot of rug burn!!

The next game was called Nappy clean up. The students had to eat crunchy peanut butter out of a nappy. Gross....

This game was called Messy Nappy. Earlier in the day, Sean and I melted 4 different kinds of chocolate bars and placed them in the nappies. The students had to guess what chocolate bars they were. Afterwards, some of them wanted to eat the chocolate out of the nappies.

The last game was an obstacle course. At the beginning of the race, the students had to put on a nappy and hop with a potato sack. Some other things they had to do throughout the race were putting on a bib, drinking a bottle, eating baby food and spitting a dummy (pacifier) through a hoop. It was a great night!!

Day Off

Our day off is Tuesday. We do our best to keep Tuesday's very relaxing and carefree. We also try to use this day to do some exploring! This week we decided to have a date day and we went to Rockhampton (a larger town about 30 minutes away) to see a movie. We went and saw the movie The Help which was so good! Probably one of the best movies we've seen in a while. After, we found this beautiful park called Kershaw Gardens and we walked around for a bit. I thought I'd take some pictures for you because we thought it was so pretty.

Yes, Sean is growing a beard!

There were really nice paths all around the park. We wished we had bikes or roller blades!!

Pretty waterfalls!

Just a short post today, but we just wanted to share the beautiful place that we found :) Take care!