Our Future

As many of you would know, we are no longer with APWM. This is a decision made by the committees looking at how and where we work.

As we are not working with GRN, we need to be under a mission to be under APWM's umbrella.  We did put in a proposal to APWM last year, and we were told early this year that it was not accepted.

We need to be working under an accepted mission organization to continue as missionaries with APWM.

While we understand this is a policy that has been long standing and is necessary to ensure workers are not 'loose cannons' and working to a standard, it has been hard for us to know where to go from here.

As we have a number of children in our care at the moment, we are unable to go on deputation with another mission organization. Dennis' part time work also hinders this.

We have to make some huge decisions for our future. We cannot live on Dennis' wages alone.

Our first thought was for Glenys to give up her work and get a full time job to help supplement the income.

If we did this, then there would be no one to help with the teaching that we do with remote Christians and the work we do with the teaching materials would stop.

Please pray with us and our future. We feel strongly that we need to continue developing bible studies suitable for remote Christians who mainly learn orally, but do not know if we can manage on a part time wage alone.

While the children we have with us make joining another mission hard, we still see them as a mission field and are privileged to see them gaining an understanding of God and their relationship with him.

Updates

Dennis is enjoying his work at Tamworth. It is interesting how God works. At the end of last year, Dennis was really sad at leaving Dungog Clarence Town and did no know where or how he would serve God next.

He has the caravan on some land 5 minutes out of Tamworth. There is no power or water, so he relies on the solar panels and some topping up with a generator.

After working at Tamworth  a few weeks, he has found he really enjoys the job. He works with the inmates and the guards who need some one to talk to.

Please pray for the people Dennis comes in contact with. He meets so many broken people.

Just an update on his hours. Dennis travels to Tamworth Monday evening after cooking the evening meal. He stays there for either 2 or 3 days depending on the week and then returns home.

This job is only part time with a lot of miles traveling each week. The time home is spent working on assignments for his chaplaincy training or helping Glenys with the kids and giving her extra time to work on the teaching materials for Indigenous Christians. 

Dennis at Tamworth

Well, today is the start of the new life.
Dennis has officially left us today to go to Tamworth.
While he  does not start at the jail until Tuesday, he left us with the van in tow this morning.

As you may know, Dennis is no longer preaching at Dungog Clarence Town, but he has been asked to do supply at different churches.

He was asked to preach at Singleton Presbyterian Church today.

As Singleton (Singo) is on the way to Tamworth, he decided to take the van to church and keep traveling on after the service.

Tomorrow he has to be at Glenn Inness by around 8.30, so it made sense for him to go to Tamworth and then on to Glenn Inness in the morning.

Glenn Inness Correctional Centre

Then.. Tuesday start at the prison.

Please pray for him as he learns more about his job.  He has spent the last few weeks commuting to Sydney. This last week he went to Silverwater Jail, had some inductions, met other chaplains, and met with others helping him get ready for this work.

As you may imagine, security is important, so he had to learn the protocol, get the final security tags and other important things.

He also has to go to the Bible College in Sydney once a month for this year to do a chaplaincy course.

Christ College

Dennis hates to be away from home, so it is hard for him and he worries how Glenys will handle everything while he is away.

Dennis will be home Thursday evening after he finishes at the prison. He will leave the van at Tamworth. A Christian  from Tamworth  is letting him leave the van on his property.

Then on Monday evening, he will turn around an commute back to Tamworth to work again.

Please pray for the people he will meet. We are asking God to give Dennis the wisdom to deal with all he meets, and for God to work in the hearts of the inmates and the workers there.

New Work, new posts

As you will see, as you look at the following posts on this site, there are a lot of changes in our lives at the moment.

We are committing ourselves to regularly update these pages.

Please add your email address to the site so you will be notified when there are new updates.

Could those of you in churches that have faithful prayer supporters without computers update them for us.

We are finding that to send out large numbers of newsletters costs us over $100 each time we send them out.

Together we can work to inform the people in our churches about our work.

It takes so much discipline to sit and regularly write when so much is going on. It would be great if the people in your congregation are informed and are actively involved in the work we are seeking to do for God.

Dennis' New Job

For the past few years Dennis has been preaching at Dungog and Clarence Town Presbyterian churches part time.

This has come to an end. He has worked with the congregation and helped them step out in faith. They decided to trust God to fill the position of a full time minister. They built a manse, and now have it filled.

We are so proud of the congregation with how they are willing to step out and trust God to help them grow the church.

While this was great, it meant that Dennis had worked himself out of a job. What to do next. As our support level is no where near enough to live on, we had to look elsewhere for us to be supported.

Long story short, Dennis was approached and asked if he would be prison chaplain. This was what happened, but he is part time chaplain for Tamworth Jail. That is 3 hours drive from our home in Woodberry.

Dennis  will take the van to Tamworth and stay there for 3 days one week and then 2 days the following week.  He will be working with prisoners on remand at this particular jail.

What is sad, is that 80% of the inmates are indigenous. Once again, God is ordering our steps and keeping us working in the area he called us so many years ago.

Dennis is employed by Jericho Road. This work is with the Presbyterian Social services.

                                           https://jerichoroad.org.au/

Another mission that Dennis is involved with is Crossroads Prison Ministry

https://cpm.org.au/

If you are interested, you can look at their web site to gain more info about this important work. This ministry also works wit a correspondence bible study course for prisoners.

Some inmates are already using this Bible Study course, and Dennis will be there to help them with any problems or questions they have on the course.

There have been some small discussions about us helping to develop some Bible Study material for the Indigenous people in jail. We will let you know if that develops further.

Please pray for Dennis as he travels many miles each week.
The people he works with need God's blessing in their lives.
Dennis also works with the staff at the jail when needed.
It is a very mixed and varied ministry.

Glenys will be at home holding the fort. Please pray for her as she looks after 5 kids while doing her own work as well.

Ch ch ch changes

Changes Again!

Do you ever wonder when life will run smoothly and there will be no problems on the horizon? Join the club.

It has always been our desire to be able to provide remote Indigenous Christians with solid biblical teaching.

While we were working with GRN, some issues arose, as we were limited to writing gospel stories. Biblical, chronological teaching is not really their  main thrust.

This led to us being led to go a different track. While we would love to keep working with developing teaching material, we are unable to find a mission that is working in this area. We are looking at using You Tube as the medium to get the stories out.

While we loved the 5fish idea, it was not something we found the people we were dealing with would keep returning it. We did notice that You Tube is always being watched, so felt this is more viable.

We are not working with any mission at the moment. We put a proposal to the APWM, the missions department of the Presbyterian Church. Unfortunately this proposal was not accepted.

The main reason is that we did not fit into the criteria that is required for us to be a missionary with the church. We need to be under a recognized mission to continue what we feel God has called us to do.

This has led to some changes in the way we are looking at doing things. At first we thought that we would just give up and get a secular job to pay the bills. Then we thought that if we do not do this task, who is going to do this.

As we have lived by faith for the last 20 years, we felt we should still trust God to help us as we still feel the calling we have is still important.

As from now, we will still be doing the recording and writing bible stories and putting them on videos to be distributed or shown on You Tube. They can also be sent to people through phones or put onto USB sticks to watch on the TV, to name a couple of ways to share the stories.

To ensure we are not 'lone guns' running amok, we have put in some checks and balances in our work.

We have to have a 'script committee' to look at the stories, and ensure they are biblically correct.
We need to have the prayer support to continue so we will have God's blessing on us and the people we are seeking to minister to.
We will be working under the local presbytery and seeking their pastoral support for our growth and well being as we seek to serve God.

This means we will need to be supported financially through this work.  We will not be able to have our funds sent to the Presbyterian Church any more. They will have to be sent directly to us.

We trust those of you who supported us over the last years will continue to help us with the work we are seeking to do.

It would have been our wish to work with a mission, and we will keep looking at different missions to see if we can find one that is looking to help with the Indigenous Christians in remote parts of Australia.

When we find on, we are certainally will to work with them. While we are out on our own at the moment, it is not something we wish to have as a permanent situation.  Please pray with us that God will keep directing our steps.

If you are wanting to know more about our time with GRN and what we are doing in the future, please feel free to ring us and we will talk with you further.
                 Dennis 0429 168 638    Glenys 0429 462 771

At Last

June 2018

Yes, we are still alive. Working full time, and having so many in the house does not give much time for essentials as blogging to say the least!

We will attempt to give you a summary of what has been going on this busy busy year.

FAMILY
We will just go and re-introduce our family as it has changed since the last time we wrote.

Dennis

Has been preaching part time at Dungog and Clarence town again. This is going well. He now has a young married couple bible study now at Dungog. Clarence town has a number of children, and are looking for someone to help with Sunday School.
He also works part time for GRN doing recording and editing recorded scripts. He is finding this hard as the computer part is hard for him to learn. There is a lot of paper work involved and this needs to be perfect.



Glenys
Is still working with the scripts. She has written a number and is waiting for the GRN script committee to finalize their checking of them. They need to be checked Biblical accuracy and easy readability.

This sort of work does not have a lot of exciting stories about it, as it is sitting in front of a computer, commentaries and bibles for days on end.

Our Gang!

Nickarita, Jai, Trevon, Estella, Nelita, Sylvester

Nickarita (12) is in the red shirt. Jai (17) in white shirt, Trevon (15) black hat
Estella (10) white shirt, Nelita (13) in the back and Sylvester (11) yellow shorts.

We took all the family to the Maitland Steam Fest. This is the first time they had seen steam engines. Most loved it and were fascinated by all the different machines and seeing a real steam train was great. One was not at all interested, and could not get over the smell of the machines!  Well, cant please them all.

Nickarita and Jai are brother and sister. Nelita and Trevon are also brother and sister. Estella is what we would call a cousin to them, but she would call these 'brother and sister'. So in Aboriginal culture, these kids all call each other brother and sister.

Sylvester is related but the other kids call him 'gungu' (grandfather, from the mother's side of the family)

Sylvester is not in our care, he is here with his grandmother. We will explain this when we share about Cheryl and James.

Four of the kids in our care attend St Phillips Christian College in Newcastle. There is a section joined to this school called "DALE". This stands for Dynamic Assisted Learning Environment.

DALE ST Phillips Christian College

This  school caters for students who struggle in mainstream schools. We sent Nelita there 2017 and were so impressed with the way they dealt with both her learning difficulties and anxiety. We felt this type of schooling would help with kids from the Territory. Hence our sudden increase in family.

The four who attend there do struggle with anxiety and are often fearful when exposed to new and strange situations.  We have watched the 3 that came down this year and have watched them blossom

Jai is in year 11. When he arrived, he would not try any thing new in case he could not do it. He was stressing a lot at school, but he has come so far. Last week he did work experience at a coffee shop. He was scared but he faced it and dealt with everything, and maybe, just maybe even enjoyed himself, but not that he would say that! This week he is doing a Christian leadership conference for 2 days through the school. He got up and prepared for it without a problem or voicing any fears.

Jai

Jai is playing AFL and loving it. He plays for Maitland Saints. He has been chosen to play for the regionals.  This is where the kids in his league are chosen to go and represent the league against other areas.

Jai is a gentle boy, and changes when on the footy field. I would not like to be tackled by him...no mercy there!

Trevon

Trevon is in year 8. He did not attend school last year while back in Borroloola. So he is doing year 8, but we cant say he is repeating as it was not done last year.
Trevon came here in the middle of first term. We had a party for all of the kids at the end of 1st term. It was to celebrate them working so hard in a new school, new family, and new culture. But is was also to celebrate the fact that we did not have any phone calls from the Principle wanting to 'have a talk about Trevon' He did not have one suspension from school, not even a warning. This is the kid who previously was suspended about 2-3 times each term.

God is really working in Trevon's heart. Trevon has developed a real hunger for learning about God and what his role is in his life.

Trevon is back playing AFL.He too is in the regionals as well. He is playing in the U17 with Jai. He is such a good player he is better suited to the older age group.

Nelita

Nelita is repeating Year 7. She is really coming out of her shell this year. This year has helped with her learning skills and confidence.

The last 2 years Nelita played soccer as a sport. She enjoyed it but was often too scared to get in and fight for the ball. She was great in training, but too scared during matches with strangers.

One of her teachers at school encouraged her to try out for AFL. We were hesitant as we did not feel she could tackle or handle being tackled.  Any way, with a bit of work, she joined the girls U14 team.  She has never looked back. Her kicking is amazing. If she gets the ball, it usually ends in a goal, or a point. She still struggles to get in to fight for the ball, but her speed and kicking has given her a position in the girls U14 regionals as well.

Nickarita

Nickarita is doing year 7 with Nelita. She struggles to read and write. We found out she needed glasses. It was a surprise to both her and us, how much she could not see. You will not get a photo of her with them on, as she gets shamed. We have her wearing them in class, and sometimes when we go out somewhere. It all takes time.
She excels at woodwork. Her teacher said she is a 'natural' for wood work. He wants her to do this for work experience when it is her time. This teacher was a builder before he started teaching, so I guess he knows what he is saying. At home she is more than comfortable using power tools. We have had her using the jig saw, orbital sander and drop saw.
Unfortunately for Nickarita, she hates AFL. Poor thing, she has to be carted around all day following the others when they play. We have organised some special activities she can do while away, but it is still 'boring' for her. When we are playing on the home field she will often spend the day with our daughter-in-law, Shayna.

Estella with grand daughter, Teulia

Estella is doing year 4. She repeated a year as well when she came last year, as her learning was not up to the required level. She is our 'brainy' one. She loves to learn. She does works hard to achieve. Last year she could hardly put 3 letter words together, this year, she is attacking works and does not give up. She is also our day dreamer. Often she will be standing in the middle of the room thinking about something, and not getting ready for school. It takes her hours to get things done because of her dreaming.
Estella is also playing AFL. At the beginning of the season, she did not want to play. After a while, she showed some interest, so we asked if she could train with Nelita just for something to do. After a couple of weeks, the coach approached us and asked if Estella could play with the girls. As she is 10, she needed special permission. Estella is quite short, but what she lacks in stature, she makes up for in gumption. Nothing stops her. She will tackle, or attempt to, any one. She is not scared of any thing.
This is why Estella does not go to Dale, as she does not have the anxiety issues or learning difficulties the others have. She has been asking to go to a Christian school, so we are looking into seeing if we can get her into a very good local christian school ( finances depending) Maitland Christian School.

Well, that is the kids we have and a short history. I will add more a little later on.