The first e-mail is about the first place we went on Outreach. Ayr, Queensland. It is about an hour south of here. It has about 8000 people and is a farming community. Picture Nebraska but with sugar cane about 8 ft tall rather than corn. People in Ayr were super friendly. In fact, so friendly, we were severely over-fed. Everyone wanted to get us dinner or bring us snacks. I think I gained about 10 lbs in Ayr.
Our first night we were taken up a huge hill to have a BBQ. Our van (which we named Bruce) stalled out and started to roll backward on the last push of the hill; it was so steep it was almost straight up. Maddie (one of my leaders) was driving and after throwing on the E-Brake we all jumped out. Sam (one of the guys on my team) turns out is an incredible driver and hopped in, got the van up the hill.... we finished by walking. We have christened this hill "Mozzie Hill" because the mosquitoes were beyond horrible, we were covered from head to toe. (They call mosquitoes "mozzies" out here.)
We mostly did school programs and went to churches/youth groups. Our second night our team was split between two churches. We prayed about where we should go and who should speak. We ended up at this tiny church with pretty much everyone over 60 (that's being generous with age).... it looked like a retirement home from the early 90's.... pastels everywhere! Our 3 quietest people felt called to speak, so they gave their testimonies. They did great! The church was really encouraged to have young people there and really had a heart for enlarging their church and bringing younger people in but weren't sure how to do it.
We did a lot of school programs. In Australia the schools have chaplains and religious educations classes. Unfortunately the need for teachers greatly out-weighs the amount of students enrolled, so a lot of schools are lacking the chaplains and teachers. We also ate lunch with kids at the schools, played with them at recess, and did yard work. We had a blast and the kiddos really loved having us around. We also did after school programs that were specifically Christian. It was really cool to openly talk about God in the public schools.
My favorite kiddo was Sharnie. She was about 7 or 8.... slightly chubby island girl with short curly black hair. She had the biggest smile and was precious. She was eating alone at lunch and when asked said that no one ever wanted to sit with her. She followed Maddie and I around everywhere and always wanted to hold our hands. She was glowing every time we came to the school and saw her.
Youth group was really cool too. I felt called to speak on the closeness and intimacy of God and what He has done in my life. One of the girls started crying part way through my talk. I got to talk to her later and found out her parents were separated and hated each other. Her dad has had cancer for a year and her mom didn't seem to care and her brother was too little to understand. She felt like no one cared and she had to carry it all on her own. We prayed for her, encouraged her to continue to seek God through this, and challenged the other girls in the youth group to walk with her through this. The other girls were really awesome and stepped up.
Otherwise, there is way too much detail to go into. I appreciate all of my work at the Pursuit serving with kids because it has come in really handy for Outreach. I have taught hundreds of kids now songs and dances that we did in Xtreme Life... and they loved it!
To wrap up, just wanted to tell about one of my Outreach leaders. She was my absolute joy on Outreach! Her name is Maddie (Madeline), she is 20 and from England. She has such a gift for uniting people and bringing out the humor in everything. We pretty much experienced 2 of the 10 plagues of Egypt in Ayr.... flies and frogs/toads. We were infested with bugs of all shapes and sizes for half the time.... not exaggerating, they were falling from the ceilings and crawling all over us. The frogs showed up shortly after.... king toads and tropical frogs of every color and size.... oh, and we had a mouse run out of one of the girls bags one night. It was really frustrating and every time someone screamed or got angry about it, Maddie would just laugh. She just has joy bubbling up in her... and when she prays, things happen. I've rarely seen anyone so in-tune with hearing God's voice.
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