Trip to the Gold Coast

This is sudden notice, but it was decided by GRN that Glenys would join Alex Shaw (another GRN worker) to meet with some Indigenous People.
Alex has been traveling do different parts of the country sharing about the work of GRN. He met Major Ben Johnson from the Salvation Army who has been seeking to work with the Yeripo tribe in that area.

He is meeting with the elders on the 23rd June where the elders will officially approve or welcome the Salvos to minister with their people.

Attending the ceremony will be elders from different clans, and elders from neighboring tribes.

After talking with the elders, it has been agreed that we will  meet with the people too. This will be a significant time to meet with people and talk about the needs in their particular communities.

More details will be shared when Glenys comes back.
Please pray for this time, for the elders in these communities, the Salvos, and GRN.

Tranting Tales

Our trip around parts of Victoria went well.
We took 3 kids with us. Nelita and her brother Trevon and our grandson, Xander.

For those interested, this link will show you where we went. Just copy the link and put in a new tab.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=15-6b4GetXRVrrtRMw1AhdrpRlg8

Trevon had not seen much of the country, so we felt this would be a good time to show him how diverse this great country is.

They sailed on a paddle steamer, went to a gold mine, camped in an extinct volcano, stayed on a farm with alpacas, played in sea water in various freezing beaches, went to museums, and walked many bush walks and reserves.

Apart from seeing and panning for real gold, Trevon said the best thing was the numerous morning/afternoon teas and suppers he had around Victoria. This was his highlight!

Xander fell into a patch of 3 cornered jacks.

 One sad puppy

Goulburn  Giant merino

Junee Chocolate factory

First Victorian cold morning

Mt Franklin- camped inside in the reserve

Can't they feel cold?

Gum nut playground - Canberra Arboretum

feeding alpacas

Paddle steamers- Echuca

Our first port of call was to stop into a sticker factory in Sydney and get a sticker put on the back of the caravan. Now when people are stuck behind us for hours, they do not need to get mad, they can read the sticker, download the 5fish and be blessed!!!!

Sticker ready for its new home

Never too old to play hide n seek!

nearly there

Our sticker for all to see.

We visited a number of churches in Western Victoria and Gippsland. It was such a blessing.
We met with people we first met before we on to the mission field along with old friends and made many new friends and acquaintances along the way.

As we mentioned, our kids did love the food at the churches. They still talk about it.

Since coming back, people have contacted us and shared how they have used the 5fish app to reach others with the gospel.

Many others were excited that they had a tool they could use as the need may arise.

We need to conduct another trip to Victoria. We were hoping for September/October, but we are not sure about dates and fitting it in with what we have already committed to.  Schooling for Nelita is a problem as she is getting special education for learning difficulties, so are reluctant to take her out of school while we travel around different churches. Please pray we find a solution for this as we strongly feel the need to do another trip.

We were asked to visit an Indigenous Bible College at Cootamundra, Bimbadeen. It was great to finally go there and see a place we heard about over the years.

While we were at GRN, we were approached to help with the curriculum development of the Bible College. It was running as a college a number of years ago, but stopped running. The Indigenous Christians are looking at getting it running again.

It is exciting working with those who are so keen to help others grown in the Lord and be equipped to help others to grow in the Lord as well.
 

Bimbadeen, Cootamundra

Plague remembering the girls at the home

Bimbadeen was originally a hospital, then the government turned it into a girls home for indigenous girls.  Now it is a place to teach and encourage Indigenous Christians in the Lord

3 score & 10

As many of you know, we feel that God would have us travel to different communities sharing God's Word, recording and distributing recorded Bible stories.

We have not been able to travel yet as we do not have the prayer and financial support we need to go.

After talking to several people, we have come up with a campaign. We are looking for 3 score & 10 (70) people to commit to support us.

There are a couple of ways this could be done. We are looking for 3 score & 10 (70) people who are willing to pray for us on a regular, if not daily basis. If 70 people commit to praying just 2 minutes a day for the work of GRN, our role in that, and the people we will be working with, then 140 minutes of prayer daily would be offered up.

The other area of the 3 score & 10 campaign if for 70 people commit $70 per month. This would cover our travel and living costs with the existing support we have already.

We will have icons on the blog and in our newsletters showing where the prayer and financial support is up to.  Each time we get and additional 20%, we will colour in another icon.

coloured finance icon representing goal reached

finance icon representing goal not accomplished

prayer icon representing goal not accomplished

coloured prayer icon representing goal reached

Family

Not really GRN news, but still very exciting to those involved in our family.
We welcomed 2 grandchildren into the world in Feb.

One on the 18th and the other on Glenys' birthday, the 22nd

Our second son Daniel and his wife, Shayna had a little girl on the 18th.

Shayna-pregnancy photo

Daniel and Xander

Xander and Tuiela

Tuiela

Our youngest son, Benjamin and his wife Jessica had a little boy on the 22 feb
Maximus Herbert.

Benjamin and Maximus

Benjamin, Maximus, Jess

Maximus Herbert

Deputation

April and May will see us TRANTING to churches in NSW and VIC.

We start in Hamilton Vic then off to Gippsland.  As this will mainly be during the school holiday break, we will be bringing Nelita, her brother Trevon and our grandson Xander. Talk about madness!.

Our daughter-in-law is struggling with her new baby after having a c-section and some complications. We are taking the grandson so she can rest, and the grandson, Xander feel like he is a big person going on a big trip.

Trevon is 12, Nelita is 11 and Xander is 4.

Xander (Panda) and Tuiela(tutu)

Trevon and Nelita

Their faces show how happy they were in getting their photo done for this blog. They were not really mad, but not overly excited!

GRN Camp

The weekend of the 11,12,13 March saw us attending our first annual GRN camp at the Winmalee Christian Conference Centre.
http://www.winmaleeccc.com.au/default.htm 

The talks were based on prayer. We read, talked and did prayer for the week end. It was a good time to discuss and meditate on different aspects of prayer.

It was interesting that while a lot of answered prayer was discussed, it was also brought up about how to deal with prayer that does not go according to our preconceived ideas of what God is doing or about to do in our lives.

The pictures are here are from the WCCC web page, as I did not think to take some to put on the blog. Sorry!

Trip to Borroloola

As many of you may have known, Nelita's father passed away just before Christmas. We took Nelita to be with her family at this time. She stayed there for Christmas and the New Year. We left home to pick her up on the 8th January.

We stayed in Borroloola until the 18th. This was a time to renew relationships with the people there, and enjoy their friendship and company.

While we were there, we shared about our new work. We showed many people the 5fish app and helped many download the app. We were even fortunate enough to test Dennis' recording skills, and tested some of the scripts Glenys had written.

The language groups there are Garrawa, Yanyuwa, Mara and Gudunji. There is a fair amount of material recorded in Yanyuwa, but the recorded material in Garrawa has been lost over the years. This is a language we would like to start with. Along with Garrawa, we would like to do a lot of work in what is called Aboriginal English.

This is not Kriol, which is a language spoken in many places in the Territory and Western Australia. Aboriginal English is a bit like pidgin. It contains many English words, but sentence structure and the way it is spoken is different to main stream Australia.

Many younger people would speak Aboriginal English. As GRN seeks to have recorded material in the heart language of the people, we would like to start here.

A lot of the teenagers are ashamed to speak to Christians, so having the gospel on the phone means they can listen without embarrassment.

Dennis was able to spend some time recording some of the scripts we prepared. It was a great chance to put the training to the test. As most of the training was studio, it was good to see what we needed to do on field. Naturally, we are going back to the office with lots of questions.

 This is Vincent Charlie. He is the church leader at the AIM church in Borroloola. Vincent has a lot of respect in the town as a very strong Christian.

Vincent has a great reading voice, so we would like to use him for the scripture reading recordings.

Other people we will use to help with writing, translating and checking.

When a person cannot read well, we say the words out loud and they repeat the words. Our voices are then cut out of the recording. This is a lengthy process, but it works!

While we were recording, we had cicadas in the
trees, cockies squawking and kids yelling in the background.

This was a useful test, as we now can go back to the studio and work out how to either remove the noises or ideas on how to record reducing the noise in the recordings.

This may sound a bit slow, but we were recording as a trial for ourselves, and for the people, so they could experiment and see if they wanted to help in this area.

When we were recording in a community called Wandangula, we encountered other problems. Have you noticed that when you are doing something, kids come from everywhere, and are underfoot. They were having a lot of fun running through the shed we were using, then the dogs followed the kids.

It was all good, as we were just experimenting. Notice Dennis is sitting on the chair. There are not many in the communities, but because Dennis is an old man, he is given the chair!
The lady sitting in front of the recorder is Nelita's mother, Fiona. The other person is Nelita's sister, Lowana

Some of the fun things we did, was take the kids swimming. This is a great way to spend the day. The weather is hot, and sitting in the water with people is a great way to talk and share about different things.

This young girl is Lashara Rory. She is a cousin of Nelita's. They were almost inseparable while Nelita was there.

On this day, we took about 5 kids swimming. While we were there, Dennis went into town.  While he was there, it started to rain.

We all ran for the Mc Arthur bridge. It was very interesting sitting on a great pile of rocks, trying to shelter from rain and lightning. This did seem a bit futile as the water was blown under the bridge with every gust of wind.

One thing about wet season rain storms, it is not that cold, and while wet we were quite comfortable.

While we were at Borroloola, we stayed at an outstation called Sandridge. The traditional owners of this outstation are Nelita's grandparents - Stewart and Nancy.








Cooking was done on a wood fire. One thing you learn quickly when living out bush, is to use a small amount of wood to cook. Our food was well cooked, the billy can provided a great cuppa, and the grill did our toast beautifully!













 As we flew to Darwin, we needed a car. Our youngest son, Benjamin lives in Darwin, so he lent us his car.

We were very grateful for this. While it was a 4WD, it did not like a lot of the roads we had to travel, especially after a big rain.

Dennis had to spend a lot of time at the car wash in Darwin to restore it to its pre-Borroloola condition