Blessings

On Wednesday we're traveling to Asia for MTW's Asia-Pacific Area Retreat. This is a retreat that happens every four years for each region in the world, and Asia-Pacific's is this year. Everyone serving in this area with MTW will be attending. Although we are sort of "traveled-out", we're pretty excited to be attending a retreat where we'll be spiritually nurtured and where we'll be able to fellowship with so many other co-laborers. We plan on taking our church-plant project to a new level, so we hope that being among so many experienced folks will cause us to come back inspired and re-energized. Please pray for us: a) travel mercies, b) sensitive to the leading and teaching of the Holy Spirit. I'll leave you with what I had promised to some of you. We have added a new member to our family. I guess he's not so new to us, but new to you since this is his debut.

• Given name: Noble Mate Shalom
• Nickname: Buddy
• Birthday: April 15, 2004
• Adopted: February 5, 2007
• Gender: Male
• Height: 2ft.
• Weight: 70 lbs.
• Hair Color: chestnut-blonde
• Eye Color: hazel
• Occupations: Volunteer Therapy Assistant, Social Ice-Breaker, Cheerful Greeter, and Loyal Companion.
• Interests: Swimming, running, hiking, eating, sleeping, going for a car ride, playing catch, chase, and hide-and-go-seek.
• Expertise: Chasing cats, hunting and digging for lizards in the backyard, getting in people’s way, tearing teddy-bears apart, fetching balls or sticks, chewing on plastic toys.
• Dislikes: Vacuum cleaner, taking a bath, staying home alone, staying out of the loop, barking small dogs.
• Favorite foods: Meat, bones, stinky foods like dried anchovies & squid.
• Species: Dog
• Breed: Labrador Retriever

"I'm having a good day! How 'bout you?"

So handsome!

Strike a pose!

True Aussie

Man's Best Friend

Bush is in town!

Tonight President Bush came to Sydney for the APEC summit. What is APEC? APEC stands for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and it is an economic forum for a group of Pacific Rim countries to discuss matters on regional economy, cooperation, trade and investment. Together, these countries represent about 60% of the world economy (World Bank). The organization conducts the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting, an annual summit attended by the heads of government of all APEC members. The location of the summit rotates annually among the member economies.

Since this year's meeting is being held in Sydney (from Sep. 3rd through Sep. 9th), Bush, along with 600 people in his entourage, flew into Sydney on this rainy and cold night. The entire Central Business District has been under lock-down. The police have built tall iron gates around the city center to prevent people from getting too close to the places where these world leaders will be meeting. No one is allowed in he city whether on foot, by car, or by public transportation. No one is being allowed to take photos, not even the media. Many Sydneysiders are worried about possible violence from protesters, however, most importantly they are dreading the chaos in traffic. Residents are encouraged to go away for the weekend. The city was given an additional public holiday on Friday, Sep 7, by the New South Wales state government to ease disruption caused by the world leaders' arrival in the city. What a great compromise for what some people have to endure!

The point is: If you were thinking about surprising us with a visit, this is not a good week. We won't be able to take you to the city, nor show you some of the most beautiful sites which include the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge to name a few.

Just for fun: A famous tradition during this summit involves the attending leaders dressing in a national costume of the host member. As I was reading the local newspaper today, I found this funny interactive cartoon. I love how the Aussies find humor in any and every situation. Click here to see what it is: http://www.smh.com.au/multimedia/bush_dressup/index.html

Home-Sweet-Home

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.

P.S.: My other resolution is to take more pictures. Can you believe that we haven't taken a single picture with family while in the U.S.! I'll post some pictures next time. Gotta take some to be able to post, right?

Breathtaking Views

It has been raining non stop for almost the entire month of June. So when the weather cleared up a bit this month, we took advantage of a beautiful sunny day to go for a walk along the beautiful cliffs in Watsons Bay overlooking the Pacific Ocean. On the other side, we had a great view of Sydney’s CBD and the Harbour Bridge.

There are many beaches and coves along Sydney’s waterways where you can hike and soak in amazing views. The following pictures were taken back in May along the trail of one of the many coves in Sydney. I think my pictures don’t do justice to the beauty of the actual place. If you visit us we’ll take you to these places and you can see for yourselves. Any takers?

Happy Anniversary to Us! We celebrated 9 years on June 13th.

So what do you think, cheesy or romantic?

"Let the cold wind blow and the hard times roll..." (*)

Winter is just around the corner in Australia, and we're finally experiencing cold weather in over a year! We arrived here in October, during Spring in Oz which coincides with the Fall in the U.S. So the last time we were in cold weather was back in the beginning of 2006! Wow!

Although the Winters here are very much like the ones in So Cal, we have been freezing! The problem isn’t when we’re outside as one might assume; we're actually freezing inside the house, day or night! You see, most houses here are made of bricks, and insulation and central air are not so common in most homes, except in some of the new ones. Some houses have fireplaces, but not ours! It gets bone-chilling cold! We literally walk around the house during the day wearing our down jackets. At night we've been sleeping in our flannel PJs, on flannel sheets, covered up with three layers of blankets -and one of them happens to be a Korean mink blanket! We tried to tough it out, but even Jim can't stand the cold. So, we went and got ourselves a portable heater -pretty common here.

The thought of having a portable heater was hilarious for me! I feel like we've gone back in time. I was thinking about how I hadn’t seen one in nearly thirty years, and couldn’t help but think back about my childhood days back in Brazil when our family used to sit around a heater, much similar to the one we just bought, and cook hot dogs over it. Oh, the good ol' days. Thinking about my childhood has brought some warmth to my heart. I just hope this heater does too.

P.S: Thank you to all those who've prayed for us and sent us words of encouragement regarding my last entry. Regardless of the circumstances we’ve begun our weekly fellowship meeting and we’re very excited about our ministry.

(*) lyrics from a Bluegrass song

Looking at the bright side of things

Have you ever lost something (a material possession) that was so valuable to you that you actually grieved over it? Well, the past week while in Perth, Western Australia visiting a couple of churches and fellow MTW missionaries, Jim's laptop was stolen along with his pda, his cell phone, our car and house keys, our passports, and his favorite Bible (they were all in one bag). We were devastated to say the least!

I don't know about the other items that were lost, but Jim went through the five different stages of grief within 24 hours from the incident over the loss of his laptop:
1) Shock and denial – someone broke the driver’s side window of our parked car (borrowed from a church member), popped open the trunk and took the laptop bag! He couldn’t believe it!
2) Anger – Need I explain.
3) Bargaining – Jim was thinking “If only the thief could return at least my laptop…”
4) Depression – He was not himself. He never gets depressed!
5) Acceptance – The next morning he was better. He’s the type of person that does not dwell in the past but moves forward. Actually, the minute he saw that the bag was gone, he was already thinking and planning on what to do next.

It’s not much the loss of the laptop itself that made him upset, but the contents in it. He used it to work on a lot of stuff for many years. I think he had most of its content saved on hard drive, but still… there was a lot of personal stuff, ministry work, etc in it. So, we spent the next few days changing passwords on all our personal info that was managed online. We went to the U.S. consulate to renew our passports. Now we’ve got to get our visas re-issued. It is a bit scary to think that all our personal information is in the hands of a stranger who resorted to crime to satisfy some kind of need s/he had. This was certainly a wake up call to us that we need to be more vigilant and careful at all times no matter where we are.

On the bright side, we were sharing this with the host couple the night of the incident and the guy said “Maybe the person who took your bag will use Jim’s Bible to read God’s Word and come to know Christ.” We agreed and prayed for him/her.