what's happenin??!

What's the latest peoples? Everyone a weee bit busy to blog - surely someone has some news?

How was your party Claire? Have you got any photos we can download on to our blog :)
Now don't be shy I'm sure you looked FABBO in your 80s clothes! Or was it 70s?

Since my other two escapees have not done an update on our trip to Griffith looks like the person with too much time on her hands, (as my Pastor's wife would say), will have to fill in the gaps.

Zee, Myles and I went away for the weekend to visit our cousin in Griffith. We kept telling her for the last few months that we were coming, but there was always a clash with our busy lives. So finally we decided to go before she returns to NZ.

So we had a marathon trip to Griffith - 8 hrs out of Sydney. We left late Frid 25th just for a quick weekend away. Most of the trip there we had a storm following us. It was always just in front or on our right side or just behind. It was AWESOME. You could see the dark clouds spreading like it was following us and trying to catch us but it never did.

I love storms - the lightning was amazing. Zella's 10 yr old sister said the most imaginative thing about lightning - it's God taking pictures of us! How cool is that! No wonder I get such a buzz out of it.

Anyways we were seriously speeding - doing over 120k...we wanted to get to Griffith before midnight. We were almost there when out from the side ran a rabbit. I screamed, the rabbit made two very loud thuds underneath the car.

I felt so sorry for it but there was no point stopping. It was mince meat at the speed we were travelling. Then about 20 mins later just as we hit the small town just before Griffith our car just died.

We were all very thankful that the car died in a very well-lit street with town and street signs so we could give the NRMA guy directions. God and his great rescue plans. 10 mins before and we would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere with no lights and no way of knowing where we were.

After seeing Wolf Creek our imaginations would have worked over time!

So we got to Ems, our cousin, finally at about 2am. Car was towed to a garage. Next day we found out it had a hole in the radiator - no longer felt sorry for that rabbit....instead it was 'stupid rabbit, was it blind, couldn't it see the lights' :) We had a good laugh over that one. Plus the rabbit was growing in size - it became the size of a wombat, even joked it was a kangaroo. But unfortunately I have an instant replay in my head of it - it was a large grey rabbit - or hare...do they have these in Australia?

Griffith is such a small town that even the Holden garage/dealer didn't have a radiator. So we had to order it in - but it would take a couple of days. So instead of returning Sunday nite, we returned Tues, yesterday.

It was great we all caught up on our sleep, reading, watching dvds and relaxing. Zee was saying it was like the LORD knew she needed to rest and made her take time off work. Myles found a new best friend - this huge comfy cosy lazyboy chair which was big enough to accommodate all 6 ft 1 of him!

Sunday morning, Myles woke me up for church - I had gone to bed at about 5amish, so I wasn't feeling like going. But Myles said to me we have to go to support Emma. He was right so I got up and woke up Zee. We all hopped in the car we hired and drove around the corner to church (yip, Griffith is small).

It was an awesome service...from the moment we walked in to very loud music with only 7 or so people in the crowd but a full on band. There was a young woman with an awesome voice singing and I recognised the old songs of my baptist days - it was great. Just a small group of christians raising the roof with heartfelt worship.

They had a guest preacher - a Pacific Island man who goes around all the small towns to encourage them to keep up the good fight. He was incredible. There was nothing spectacular about him, I mean he looked just like us - just his awesome faith and heart for the LORD's people. An ordinary christian doing EXTRA ordinary work in God's body. It was incredibly encouraging to see even in small towns the LORD is moving and the message was awesome.

It reaffirmed messages from the LORD. I found myself writing so many things for our church and for our 40 days group.

The LORD is calling us to a greater level of obedience and commitment. For me it means an increase in my prayer life. I have already had this message from the LORD for me personally and for our church. He expects even more from those who already have.

What we say or do will have no major effect if we don't draw near to the LORD. The awesome thing is that we don't have to be at the same level to increase our commitment.

He talked of sowing seeds to reap a harvest. Whatever seeds we sow we will reap. It made me wonder what will we reap with the seeds we are sowing now? If we want to save lives, to make a difference, to love God more and love others more - then are we sowing these seeds to reap a great harvest for our LORD?

We believe the LORD allowed this accident of ours to keep us in Griffith so we could hear this man speak. So we could rest and realise that we are not indispensible - work will always be there, commitment and responsibilities will always be there BUT without a one on one active and vibrant relationship with the LORD it all means nothing.

Good thing I am working - this lesson cost us $700 and it was worth every cent!

My heart was moved by George, this small town preacher, doing his part in the body of Christ. If each of us did as much as he did, unsung and unnoticed by the rest of the body, then the LORD would have an unstoppable church. It filled me with hope for the LORD's body.

I am going to tell our pastor about George. He's visiting Sydney and i have his email address. How cool would it be to connect us to his work, to support small communities, a lot of them aboriginal. It's definitely something we could include on our short term missions projects for our 40days group. He's from Bourke, NSW....I am imagining a trip to bless him in his community work!

This church only had about 8 people but they worshipped as if there 50 people there. It was very inspiring. They were like our church...people kept arriving late. Nobody really knows what the LORD is doing in all his churches and his communities. But it seems he is even busier than us!