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April 24, 2010

Pray for Mirrabooka

First this link:  http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/7093845/one-dead-in-mirrabooka-street-brawl/  For more infomation on the Mirrabooka stabbing  recently.

As I was sharing in the last post we have been going into the suburb of Mirrabooka for the month of April.  Please pray that the walls would come down. There is still unrest and violence there. (Dont worry mom we've been safe.)

When we went to walk through the community we heard many times about the stabbing. Up until that point most of us hadn't been much on the news.. and we are like 60hrs a wk on the base -blog updates included.
Anyway,.... a couple people that returned from a full afternoon there saying that they met the family who were now dealing with the death of their loved one. They were encouraged that we would want to pray, but were at that moment working out the funeral details and the family was in a bit of mess. So we prayed later. My thought after the fact was; in that community, Im not sure that anyone as reached out to them yet.

Although it is extreamely diverse, containing a Mosque, a couple churches, many parks and plazas there is this very strong sence I get there of "walls".  There is an amazing amount of cultures there, and with those cultures comes prejudice out of nationalism or ties to each of the home countries represented there. 

Our bus full of YWAMers representing people from all over Europe, Australia, America/Canada, and some from Korea. About 20.

We split off into teams and went to prayer walk. (By the way-while we were walking if we met anyone who was a non-english speaking person we invited them to weekly classes we held at the base and in Mirrabooka.) I was paired with a good friend of mine Sidra who was just a little timid. This was her first time really stepping out and the neighborhood didnt look far from one in the States (where she is from). Its sometimes hard to remember not to treat a country, culture, or people group like your own especially when from the outside it looks soo similar.
"I dont want to come across like Im pushing a religion ya-know." She said.
I agreed.
The first lady we spoke with was really busy, so she wasnt interested in us praying for her. "I am a christian, Im just really busy right now, and Ive had a long day."
I was very interested in her story though. She looked a bit Nigerian or something close, with beautiful thin eyes, a round-pleasent face and dark-dark skin.
All and all we got to speak with a couple Australians who shared with us that there had been alot of violence in the community lately, and asked us to pray for a spouse who was transitioning in their job.

There were quite a few people we got to talk to after that,.. a few Asians that seemed VERY happy to meet us, but couldnt speak an ounce of english -we were able to communicate that there were english classes available. A couple of South Africans. (which excited me a whole lot for obvious reasons.) We actually talked to them for a long time. After praying for them they thanked us for what we were doing and thanked us that we were in their community and agreed that our work was needed.

So I thought "Hey thats cool."

Latest Facebook quote:
"... The week started off with doing interviews in the city for the Media department-Got hit on by a drunk guy, interesting. Working on sorting and designing some things.... Yesterday many of us met people... immigrants, refugees from all around the world in Mirrabooka. -Somalia, Sudan, South Africa, Bosnia, Burma, India, Sri Lanka, . . . wow and its just a suburb of the city!!!"

April 19, 2010

Mirrabooka


We gathered together to hear about a new suburb we concentrating our efforts on in the month of April. The entire base, currently here in Perth of about 100 .

Mirrabooka is a suburb of Perth. There are about 7,000 people residing there; bout the size of my home town. I guess there are many refugees there from war-striken African countries like Sudan and many from Middle Eastern countries  like Afganistan, Iran, and Iraq, and many other nations.  Because Australia is not 'known' as country that has joined or started many wars, and has a culturally known layed-back attitude about religon, I have been informed that it is considered a 'neutral zone' for many refugees and thus Mirrabooka is a large region of people from all over the world and a vast amount of them have 'been though a lot.' Another people group residing there that have 'been through alot' culturally and historically- Australian Aboriginals. Many of which call the streets their homes and parks their beds. I would be very very happy to formally meet an Aboriginal that has not had to break away from drug abuse, alcoholism, or a broken home.

 Quite a few individuals from the base have done ministry there, and shared those stories with us on the bus showed on the way to the suburb center. Whoa!- the stories ranged from playing ball in the street with kids to being caught in the middle of gang-like violence.
For the first few weeks we will be gathering there (from afternoon till evening) to pray and worship to get Gods heart for the area. We don’t want to just read the facts and assume we have all the answers obviously, and if God is telling us all to go there.. We need to seek him out to understand ‘why’ in detail, on top of the fact that worship claims the ground in the spiritual realm also.


Reflections of our worship and prayer time in the park/ Square:

* Aboriginal kids chasing and tackling each other, in and out of the crowd, and around our legs as we worship in a group. It comforted me to know that they felt so at ease around us, as strangers, that we were safe enough to play around.

*Behind me about 20 aboriginals carried on yelling slurred words of English and gibberish because they all were in a drunken haze or something related. It looked as if they lived in that corner of the park. The men shirtless with distinctive aboriginal accents, and the few women beside them… empty beer bottles clustered about them as they were standing and sitting beside a herd of empty abandoned shopping carts.

*A couple of police, that just happened to be there, on horses appeared to have just broken up a fight among them. They later on thanked us for helping us train their horses to work with crowds because we had brought soo many people with us. Weird huh?

*Looming around us were some Africans with turbans, watching from a distance along a walk way, stone-faced and cross-armed. I don’t want to assume that they are Muslim. If they were Nigerian refugees and they were Muslim. . .There are many people being killed in a long-standing war with Christians and Muslims. (Ask me about this If you need more info to pray its not what you may assume.) I don’t think it was a coincidence that the police were there when we rocked up. It made me feel more assured that God was protecting us tangibly.

*And then as we were led to pray over specific issues. Each of us were to ask God for forgiveness on behalf of our (home) nations wrongs represented or other things that we may represent. As couple of us drew together in a group of 3 we could hear people crying out all over… Americans asking for forgiveness on behalf of the intentional and unintentional injustices and pains from the wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan. Europeans for sending missionaries to countries to promote religiousness and cultural judgment rather than God and unity.  I over heard people asking for forgiveness for the ways that Christians  have miss-represented Gods character, and specifically because of the religious wars in Africa.

*I glanced over and saw a guy from our team (not sure where from originally). Spinning a little aboriginal boy behind our crowd. Both were giggling and laughing. I have never seen joy like that between two strangers before in my life. How quickly that man represented a father to me that took joy in his adopted child.





The cut out area is PERTH and all the suburbs


Some of the Statistics referenced in this post are from 2006 Census Mirrabooka



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Featured Christian Artist: Arien Van Stralen. This grown boy likes to climb random objects and generally sticks out in a crowd because he is just so unique. After getting past the outward uniqueness, there is a artist just waiting for an oppertunity to illustrate, sketch, and spew out obnoctous amounts of creativity spanning from the serious to hilarious! (wow that rhymed)

April 5, 2010

Photos: Week 2


 
The TREES of Australia. Beautiful and HUGE!!



  
Matt being the cute guy that he is... #1 is in one of the Airports on the way over, #2 is in the bus riding to our first Thursday night gathering.









 As a base we get to do breakfast all together for holidays, or at least together formally. The only time we get pancakes and napkins... If you've heard us joke before... we see napkins and say "Who's birthday is it?" Only because here at this base one only gets napkins on their birtday.
All and all we had a very good Easter holiday though.. had communion as a base... and I have to say, I am still blown away at the amount that I dont see or really understand the sacrifice that was given on the cross.. Amazing. Worthy of way more than napkins. For some reason I keep on getting U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" stuck in my head... because its the closest song that actually makes me think of how much we take Christs sacrifice for granted... Forget what I have left to do on this planet today before the sun goes down, or who I have left to please (a stumbling block for me by the way.) Or how often I am quick to point out the rise and fall of others without a breath... but Jesus - Jesus man... its like the electric chair in todays cultures.. not pretty. Not pretty at all.
Im not looking to forget the resurrection... but this year I just cant get past the brutal pain, prolonged torcher, and self-less sacrifice.
  

 




























Riding in the base bus's to Thursday night Evangelism.


Every Thursday we go into the city as a whole base and do 'outreach'. Outreach is a time where we as YWAM Perth ask God corperately how he wants us to serve the city. More often than not we share Christ with people with people that we have built relationships with over time.

This week we had a huge gathering. The team called "Island Breeze" danced and shared stories from their life experiences through redeemed Island dancing. Very cool, talented and Spirit led team.




Out of all the 'interesting people" I got to meet  that night - I had the privilege of praying for a man in his early 40's hanging out with his 2 boys one age 7 and one about age 5. Their family is really struggling with some stuff (Im dont feel right sharing on here without his permission)... but please pray for them.



OH! and I almost forgot I updated our pages (above) on this site... please feel free to look around at each of the pages. If you have any thoughts about how we could communicate better please lemme-know.


And AGAIN THANK YOU for your love and encouragment... some days it like our hearts are like sponges..ready to soak up the condemnation or doubt just when its needed in an email, facebook,... whatever.




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Featured Christian Artist: Chuck Anderson.
 Inspiring media oriented art. (and yep the guy that designed the look and feel of Window's 7!!)





For more check out his website: www.nopattern.com


Skype: We have it now.


We have Skype!

OUR NAME: Bellskys

"Bell", "Bells", "Steph and Matt"- easy to remember names were all taken.
Bellskys was a lovely nickname we were given last year on outreach. 
Please-please-please add us.

We are desperate to stay in touch with friends and family back home, and everyone else too. You can use it to intant message -type back and forth, or talk from computer to computer -almost like a phone conversation, and even have video to video conversations. (We are getting the video/webcam part hooked up later today, pretty cheap at walmart.)


Skype is an internet communication program that is a breeze to download and is free to use to communicate home. If you dont have Skype you can get it here: http://www.skype.com/


This is what it looks like on your computer..

Mom that means you - the website practically walks ya through it. Please mommy, please please,... (if you have a better internet connection by now)