We are back in Sydney, Australia after having visited family and friends in SoCal. It was a brief and yet a jam-packed two weeks. As we had mentioned in our last Junglenews, we weren't able to meet with all of our friends and supporters as this visit was not necessarily our Home Ministry Assignment (usually referred to as furlough) time. We were thankful for and cherish the meetings we've had, but look forward to meeting everyone else during our next visit (HMA or vacation).
This visit back home has been invaluable for both of us. For starters it helped me regain perspective on a lot of things. I think living in a new place where everyone is a stranger and everything is different caused me to subconsciously lose a sense of perspective on who I was. Being in the presence of friends and family during the two weeks we were back in the U.S. has lifted away this unnecessary "weight" that was somewhat affecting my emotional well being. I feel refreshed and confident to get back to being used by the Lord here.
This break has also helped me resolve to better chronicle our work and our lives here in Sydney. I realized that as much as we tried to inform everyone of our work through our newsletters, people are somewhat curious of the mundane and unassuming part of our lives. People have even asked me "What do you do when Jim is busy with ministry?" The answer is simple: "I'm busy doing ministry with Jim." However, my ministry work may be slightly different than Jim's. Most of the time I have been right there alongside Jim in a lot of what he has been doing, which has been the plan all along in order for me to be aware of and learn with him all the aspects of church planting so that I can better help him. The other side of the "work" that I do here has to do with taking care of the personal aspect of life of ministry overseas (like housework, finance, health, MTW, and logistics to name a few). I will try to write more about different aspects of our lives here as much as possible. So stayed tuned!!!
Here's some info about what's been happening since we returned to Sydney.
For the first few days since we were back I've been picking up on things that needed to be done to re-settle ourselves back to life in Oz - you know the boring stuff, laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning... In the meantime, Jim's been active in ministry from day one. In fact, two Sundays ago (Aug 19), we had a rally for the new campus ministry Jim started with two other guys. We had a good turn out of 2nd generation Korean-Aussie university students from a number of different local churches. The students seemed excited about the prospect of not only being discipled and trained, but also of reaching the people on their campuses with the gospel. This coming week they are starting their first meeting at two campuses. We are so thankful that this part of ministry has had a good start. Praise the Lord! This past week we've been ministering to a friend. Time and time again, we fell the Lord using us in the area of peacemaking and reconciliation of relationships. Please pray for us to be used as pure vessels of God's love.
