Starting the Slow Process of Sorting Out Our Lives

An unavoidable consequence of going overseas as a missionary is that you have to sort through everything in your life into three piles. Store, Sell, Throw away. I (Rich) am going through all the letters which I wrote in my teenage and uni days. I used to be a prolific letter writer the bulk of which seemed to be written to girls (maybe they were better letter writers?). It is a very slow process. I have hundreds of letters. For those who've written to me more than a couple of times, I'm sorting these letters to give back to the persons who wrote them. I'm sure they'd be interested in what things occupied their minds over a decade ago.
These are the letters which haven't made it and are being thrown out. I'm recognising that you can't keep all your memories and you need to make room for the new memories which are being created in the moment.

• Praise God for past friendships. Pray that God will help us to form new ones in Thailand.
• Please pray for the process of sorting out our lives and getting ready to God (Only 3 months now!)
  

Holidays Fun and Surprises

We've just returned from holidays with some good friends who are also heading at the same time as us with OMF. We were having a great holiday when in the middle of the holiday our eldest son started complaining of pain in his mouth at lunch. We examined his mouth and saw a slight rash in the inside of his lips. When we saw a few spots on his wrist and feet we suspected hand, foot and mouth disease which was confirmed by a visit to the G.P. Hand, foot, and mouth disease is quite common and is considered a mild disease and our son is almost over the illness.
This ended the holiday for our friends to reduce the chance of infecting their children. This was a great shame as our son loved playing with our friend's son who was of a similar age.
It seems that we've been besieged with illnesses in our children in the last couple of weeks. Our eldest has glue ear as well as hand, foot and mouth and our youngest had conjunctivitis last week!

• Please pray for our health, especially for our children as we continue our preparations to go to Thailand.
  

Tall Poppies - No Just Seeding!

When I noticed this lettuce growing taller and taller, I thought that it was just a 'tall poppy' - a special lettuce which stood out amongst the average. However, then I noticed a lot of the other lettuces starting to sprout out too. It was not until my mother-in-law told me that they were 'seeding' that I realised what was actually happening. These lettuce were growing taller so that their seed could spread further. I praised God for his wonderful design to enable these lettuce to self-perpetuate.
As you can see my little garden is growing. On the far right is the tomato plant, and next to it is some spinach, both given to me by my neighbour. On the bottom centre I don't know what that is - it just started growing when buried some vegetable and fruit scraps to make compost. I bought strawberry seedings which you can see far left from Flower Power for $2 because our eldest son loves strawberries. In the pots I've planted some watermelon seeds, cherries and mangoes - don't have a clue how they will go. Keep you posted.

Too Valuable to Lose

This book deals with the research into why missionaries quit the mission field. They are especially concerned what they call "preventable" reasons. For example the top preventable reason for missionary attrition is "lack of home support" at 6.2% of all missionary attrition.
Other major preventable reasons include:-

• Problems with peers (i.e. other missionaries)- 5.9%
• Personal concerns - 4.9%
• Disagreement with agency - 4.7%

If you start adding up these "preventable reasons", you get a large proportion of missionaries going home for preventable reasons. It costs churches hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare and send missionaries long term. They are too valuable to lose not just in monetary terms, but more importantly in terms of the work they leave behind.

• Please pray the decrease of preventable reasons for missionary attrition.
• Pray that missionaries receive adequate home support and that they have get along with other missionaries.

"To valuable to lose" is available to download for free.

A real man

I bought this Ozito CDG-200 12V cordless drill from Bunnings for $30 on Sunday. This is the first cordless drill that I have bought and I feel like a REAL man now! I bought it because the fence on one side of the house had half fallen down due to strong winds. I'd badgered the real estate agent for weeks to fix it with no success. So I bought the drill hoping to put the fence back in place with some screws but also to use it for when we need to dismantle the table and other furniture in coming months.
I should have inspected the fence more closely before I told my neighbour that I'd fix the fence. I tried, but failed miserably and the fence isn't any closer to being straight again.
However, our neighbor, an old Italian lady with limited English invited me through to her backyard and offered me a zucchini and tomato plant for my garden (she'd seen my lovely lettuce growing next door no doubt!). Now I have lettuce, tomato and spinach (which the lady gave me also) growing in my garden. I'll take a photo to post on the blog if they survive the next couple of weeks. The lettuce were easy to grow, but I don't know about tomatoes and spinach.

• Please pray for courage to invite our neighbor over for a meal. I have been putting it off and off but want to do so before we leave. I invited her to our son's birthday party in August but she declined saying that her English was not good enough.
  

Worm Farming

I promised people that I'd be posting photos of my worm farm so here they are!

Can-O-Worms - available at K-Mart

(click on the photo to zoom in on the worms and see them better)

The funny thing about worm farming is that when you meet other worm farmers you have an instant bond with them as you share your worm farming stories and tales of woe when the worms perished in heavy rain or were fried in last summer's heat wave. I've converted one couple at church into worm farming.

Why do you need a worm farm? Because it means less rubbish going to landfill; you create free fertiliser and pot mix; and because its FUN! You don't need to have a garden. If you live in an apartment, your balcony will do just fine. If you need some worms send me an email in February 2007 (by then my worms would have multiplied to a good number)

What's our real attitude to prayer?

I was at a missions prayer meeting recently of medium sized church and only about 10 people were there (including the minister and his wife). Does this say anything about our attitude to prayer (or missions)? I think I would be right in saying that if there was church meeting we thought we could miss if time was pressed, it would be a prayer meeting. If this is the case, then we show that we really don't believe in the power and efficacy of prayer. This is a dangerous position for the church. I dream of a day when we have to get to a prayer meeting early so that we don't miss out on a seat ...

• Pray that we won't underestimate the importance of prayer and prayer meetings.

More Christ Church Biblestudies

Tuesday Night: Julia & Luke's Biblestudy (Christ Church, 645 service)

Wednesday night: Cip & Steph's Biblestudy (Christ Church, 645 Service)

Cross Cultural game - what does it feel like being a new cross cultural missionary?

• Praise God for continuing opportunities to share at biblestudies.
• Pray for strength to keep on visiting groups and not losing our enthusiasm.

Ashfield Presbyterian

Last night I shared at a combined meeting of biblestudies at our old church, Ashfield Presbyterian. It was great to catch up with friends I haven't seen for a number of years and hear what they have been up to.

• Praise God for the opportunity to share at Ashfield Presbyterian
• Pray that people last night were encouraged and challenged by what they heard so that they may pray for spread of the gospel in Thailand

Goodbye my brother, Goodbye my friend

Luca's cousin and playmate left yesterday for the middle east where his parents (my wife's brother family) are serving. It will probably be at least 3 years before they see each other again. On the way home he might visit us in Thailand. Although they won't remember the fun times they had, it was still sad for us. Saying goodbye to my wife's brother's family was hard.

• Praise God that my brother-in-law's family are faithfully serving God in a very difficult place.
• Pray for their son that he will be able to find playmates.
• Pray that God will help to continue to dwell on the positives of serving overseas and not the negatives.