Australia

P3391 Personal testimony.

/ DVH

Hubby and I have made bible delivery trips all around Australia from top to bottom and side to side, for the past 21 years, approximately 280,000 kms. We lost count! God called us, when we were in the middle of Australia, staying at Uluru. My dear hubby was in terrible pain at the time. The L4/5 discs in his back were disintegrating, plus he couldn’t sit for long periods of time, and he couldn’t work anymore.

The bank wanted to repossess our house at that time. Undaunted, hubby had faithfully finished a 3 year bible college course lying flat on his back, most of the time on the floor! He had bone crunching against bone so it was not nice. A dear friend paid for us to fly to Uluru, and he shared his accommodation with us.

I like to tell people that my husband walked all the way from Brisbane to Uluru, because he literally did. Apart from going up and coming down again, he walked the aisles of that plane, both ways, in terrible pain. They had to put him in a wheelchair to get him on and off, because he could not manage the stairs. A bit later he had an operation for those discs and praise God, the pain left. But at that time we were both praying and waiting on the Lord to find out if there was anything He wanted us to do for His kingdom. 

On the very last day before we flew back home again, we decided to scrape up our pennies and invest in a hire car from Uluru, and go out to Mt Conner, which was about 147 kms away. The picture above shows you the area. We climbed out of the car to look at this interesting formation of rock, and hubby very carefully warned me to lock all the doors, because the car was not ours. So I did. 

The scene wasn’t all that riveting, just a huge lump of mesa rock far far away. Plus, by this stage we had taken some truly great pictures of Uluru. Now that is some rock!  But we took pictures anyway, then we went to leave. Poor hubby was taking pain killers for his back so he could manage the never-ending pain, so he was a bit vague. That’s when the unthinkable happened. In all his concern to keep someone else’s car safe, my dear husband had locked the keys to the car — IN the car. And it was very HOT in the sun. There were the keys, together with some  water, a very necessary item – plus sunscreen and food etc. All of it was locked away, tighter than a drum. This is not good when you are out in the middle of the outback, in the middle of nowhere! We were stranded. Yay!

We prayed for help, because neither of us had the ability or energy to walk to the nearest cattle station, which was, at the time, 65kms away. Then a Dutch couple turned up in a Combi van, and tried to help us with a tiny little screwdriver so we could get the window open. No chance there! Then along came a busload of Japanese tourists. They found what was happening to us, much more interesting than the view of Mt Conner! Bless them. Fortunately someone had a great big screwdriver, thank the Lord, so while this was going on, all the passengers were busy filming our dilemma. 

Finally a Ford Falcon drove into the viewing pull off – there wasn’t even a toilet! And out climbed these four guys who could have played international Rugby! Boy were they big guys!! One of the biggest ones had his wife with them. When they found out our predicament … which wasn’t hard to miss with a crowd of Japanese tourists jostling round the car filming away…the wife whispered to my hubby: “It’s OK, they can fix this for you. My husband just got out of jail for breaking and entering!!” We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

But sure enough the four of them started tackling the problem of how to get into our little rental car. Meanwhile, they were all so big they could have picked up the car and shook the keys out!  A-n-y-wa-y … I shan’t tell you what they did, because I’m pretty sure it was illegal, but in the process someone came up with a coat hanger and they used the BIG screwdriver to open a window a bit, and then the coat hanger trick to pull the keys out of the ignition. 

Slowly the big guy balanced the keys toward the slightly opened window, and then … the keys fell off! A collective groan went up from all the Japanese tourists who were still  watching on! The keys slipped off the coat hanger hook onto the driver’s seat. Another big groan from the audience. Finally the guy managed to thread the keys back onto the coat hanger and carefully pull them out of the window. And he noticed a tiny scratch on the driver’s door and licked his finger and wiped it. “That’s OK,” he said. “That’ll buff right out.” Problem solved! 

Those burly men drove off almost immediately, but before they left the wife said to hubby, “They would never have left you alone here to manage this situation. They would have stayed with you, until you were safe.” They told us they were all from Newcastle. We gleefully jumped back in our now wide open car, drank a whole bottle of water, waved at the Japanese tourists boarding their bus, and then headed back toward the Uluru complex. As we were driving away praising God loudly for His provision, and kind hearted people, the Lord spoke into hubby’s heart. “These are your people, the people I have sent you to – ordinary working class Aussies”

Sometimes we get our assignments from the Lord, in unusual ways. We’ve been doing what He told us to do in that little white car on the road back to Uluru, ever since. I don’t usually share our personal life here, but maybe somebody out reading the blog today, needed to hear that a ministry can be born from strange and difficult circumstances. Bye. 👋.  Isaiah 40:3-8. Isaiah 55:10,11.

P 3076 Road building.

/ DVH

“And how blessed all those in whom You live, whose lives become roads You travel; They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks, discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain! God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and at the last turn—Zion! God in full view!” Psalms 84:5-7 MSG. 

“One day spent in Your house, this beautiful place of worship, beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches. I’d rather scrub floors in the house of my God than be honoured as a guest in the palace of sin. All sunshine and sovereign is God, generous in gifts and glory. He doesn’t scrimp with His traveling companions. It’s smooth sailing all the way with God-of-the-Angel-Armies.” Psalms 84:10-12 MSG.

I’m a word person. I love the Word of God, but today I’m also talking about the way words are put together. For me, words paint pictures in my mind. They take ordinary things and endow them with the Holy Spirit’s thoughts and beauty. We’ve travelled along a lot of roads – bumpy ones, dusty ones, gliding highways and roads with beautiful scenery, as we take bibles all over Australia. So I feel like a little bit of an expert on roads.

In the first part of Psalm 84:5-7, the words take me into our car,  winding our way through beautiful scenery, watching for what will appear when we get around the next bend. I dearly love to go on roads I’ve never been on before. Occasionally as we’ve travelled along, we’ve taken a side road – just to see what was at the other end! The picture at the bottom of this blog show you what we found at the end of quite an ordinary road. It was surrounded by cane fields. (Lucinda,Qld.) 

However, the bit in this Psalm that captured my heart is the very first verse. “And how blessed all those in whom You live, whose lives become roads You travel.”I would love to be a road the Lord travels upon to reach out to others. The kind of road that takes people from living in the same old same old, into the bright fresh land of daily discovering Jesus. I pray that other people can see Him in me, and enjoy the view, and maybe they will want to know Him for themselves. We can often think about witnessing as speaking etc. but enjoying Who God is, in the middle of this crazy upside-down, often scary life, can be the greatest witness and worship of all!

This Psalmist values God’s Presence more than the supposedly fine things this world can offer us. I’ve sat on a Greek Island, and their beaches are very pretty.  The sea around those islands, is the most beautiful colour. But the writer tells us that they would rather be scrubbing God’s floor, than be in any place of this world’s natural beauty. Anywhere our God IS, is a far more beautiful place than this world can offer.

I love to sing and worship, but I also love to sit and listen to worship as well. Listening to worship lifts my heart and thoughts above this often cranky old world. We all need that refreshing, so we can keep God’s highway in our heart OPEN. Worship makes us bigger inside, and more open to whatever He wants to do next, and it also positions our hearts to hear Him. The thing is, I don’t just think of worship as singing, or playing an instrument. I see it as a life-laid down, together with the way we love others. Surrender, is worship to me. 

Jesus travelled along a lot of dusty roads as He ministered, and distances never seemed to matter to Him. He sometimes went off the beaten track for just one person. He saw broken roads all around Him. His whole life was a highway into the Father’s heart, for mankind to travel on. Now that’s worth pausing and thinking about! 

In another version it says the first verse like this:“Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.”It is our strength and belief in God’s goodness, when we are under the pressure of highway creation, that makes our road solid and straight. This highway is not just a theory, it can make our lives with Christ accessible – but like any highway, the road to Zion comes at a cost. This cost exists, because quite beautiful, even seemingly useful things – that do not seem to be harmful – have to be removed from our lives if we are to become His highway.

There are times that I can see the precious Holy Spirit with His front-end loader, bulldozers, excavators, and graders, asphalt makers and road rollers continually rumbling along through my life, under the Lord’s watchful eye! All that equipment working on us is represented in our lives as situations, or other people. We all have difficult people who become implements in His hands —they are used by Him to make our road straight and strong and available to God and others. Road making is intense! It requires co-operation with the Lord, and a vision for a better, more available, ME.

We all want the King of Kings to travel down our highways so that other people can come out of the roadblocks and broken highways they are living in. Road building is a worthy calling. Bye. 👋

P 2570 Easter down-under. ⛺️

/ DVH

In our part of the world Easter heralds the end of summer time. Enjoying the Easter holidays in this country rivals our enjoyment and obsession with eating Easter Eggs! It is a last flash of summer brightness to be savoured at all cost. In days gone by, Aussies used to try to do an obligatory drop-in to say “Hi” to God. Today, most don’t go to church anymore … because they are just plain too busy, and probably gave up church-going for Lent.

Let’s peek into one family home cos they are about to leave soon for the beach. Everybody helps to pack the car – some less willingly than others – and then we join in the rush …  … So we can go sit in a traffic jam – which happens in both directions – coming and going! At the same time, we indulge in our fav pastime – complaining about the Main Roads department and their distinct lack of competence regarding our road system. 

The people in the back seat also like to complain, loudly, about the people in the front seat’s choice of music, and a good time is not had by all. Fights can eventually break out in the back seat, because it’s hot in the car sitting in the sun, not actually going anywhere. Some people anticipate this angst and have a few cold ones while they are waiting for the traffic to move. One guy this Easter fished out his electric guitar and cheered up the cars at a stand still. Dunno how he plugged that in!

Eventually, tired and weary, this family arrive at their chosen destination and put up the tent — which is no mean feat. Tent construction is advertised as great fun by Dad – possibly because he isn’t keen to do all the work alone! The kids meanwhile, are hopping from one foot to another longing to be told they can go and stick their toes in the ocean. Our ocean is still warm at this time of the year … 

… That’s when their holiday really starts. It’s sun, sea, salt, surf and sand … Sand in your togs, sand on your towel, sand in your eyes, sand on the tent floor, sand in your sleeping bag, and in your sandwich. Who cares? This is our last chance to enjoy summer for four days, and we are going to do it!! If it kills us.

Meanwhile mum works hard to make sure everybody is fed. As well trying to keep the mayonnaise for the prawns COLD so that nobody ends up with a case of salmonella … and that’s not easy with no fridge! Most of the time her job is to sit on a towel on the sand, watching the kids, and counting their heads bobbing about in the ocean. At the same time she is expected to stay there on duty in the sun, while her spouse enjoys chucking back a cold one with the other liberated spouses in the camping ground. It is always time for a beer in Australia!

It was not ever meant to be so at our house – light years ago. My mum used to say: “If I can’t plug in my electric frypan then I’m not going.” Later on she married a truckie, an ex-soldier, whose idea of camping comfort was a tarpaulin over some trees and a ground sheet for sleeping … Like …on the ground! Grass was a bonus that was not even remotely equal to today’s memory foam mattresses. But you were allowed to have a hip hole dug in the ground for your hip, and supposed comfort. True story.

My step-father’s idea of a toilet was another tarpaulin wound around some gum trees and hole called the long drop! If you weren’t careful, or you went to the loo in the dark, that’s exactly what could happen to you!! He loved camping in the bush. I still shudder when sand gets in my shoes. But I’ve had prayer for healing lots of times!! OK I’m joking – again. Traumatised … there’s a word!! The idea of intentionally sitting by the ocean and getting sandy and salty and calling that fun …Nah! Not happening Jan.

Easter in Oz is not thought of as a Holy time. Or even a time for reflection. The smells and bells have faded into the background, replaced by the smell of the ocean, fresh fish, and boozy, sweaty bods. And yet everybody who is in that camp ground will probably turn up again when the sun begins to get warm. Why? There is a great camaraderie that all us Aussies really enjoy when we get together. They want to go back to that place and see those people they have come to know over the years. 

The need for fellowship is deeply engrained in the heart of mankind. It’s the ‘where it happens’ that is killing us, in the church.  Many people honestly think that Jesus is great but they don’t want to sit in a church staring at stained glass windows, wondering when the service will be over! THEY DON’T KNOW HIM – WHY WOULD THEY COME? Church is monumentally boring in their eyes. So Australians are now officially, His lost sheep. Here’s a news flash, Jesus wants those precious lost sheep back – what are you going to do about it? 👋