If you've never flown international, then maybe you
haven't seen it most of the time, you know, you have three
and three a lot of your international flights, some some
of the real book big ones have 3-6 and three.
This one had 3-4 and three. And actually here's I think of
yeah, there's another there's a double Decker.
So there was like the your your not first class was in the front
of the airplane on the SEC on the lower level.
But the what do you call it? Not private, but business class.
But there's another name. Starts with AP.
No, I don't know. Whatever.
It doesn't really matter. But what is it?
Priority. That's what I was trying to
think of yeah. You know what?
Johnny flies all the time now. But yeah, it's called priority.
It's called priority. And they were all kind of up on
that second level. But the very nice thing is, you
know, we sit down, a lady was sitting next to the, the window,
my wife was sitting in the middle, I was sitting on the
inside seat. And we, they, you know, they,
they do all the thing. All right, cross check, all the
doors are closed, you know, you know, flight attendants prepare
the, the cabin for take off. And I was like, Oh yeah, the
whole row right there was empty. So we, you know, we told the
lady, I was like, you can have this one.
We're moving over, you know, so we kind of had a little bit of
room to spread out and everything else was pretty nice.
So this is the actual church building.
This is Pastor Simeon Western and his wife Kate.
They have 8 kids and just had another one.
I'll show you a picture of it, of it, of the baby in a little
bit. But they had, they had, they
had, they have 8 kids. And then this is his brother
Dan. He's the one that was there in
Israel with us. This is all of us.
That's his wife. Her, her name was Rebecca as
well, which is pretty interesting.
They have 5 kids. A lot of families in that church
have a lot of kids. I think, I think pastor, well,
both of them, the Westerns have 9 in their family that they come
from their number 5 and #6 then they've got a couple underneath
them, but a lot of, lot of families.
And there was one family in the church that has 11 kids and, and
basically all of them are there serving the Lord.
In fact, she, Dan's wife, is the oldest of those 11 kids and
they're all very, very active in the church there, which is
really an encouragement. But to answer your question,
Charlie, I think there was probably around 200 people in
the service. So I preached on Sunday morning
and Sunday night in the church and then we there's the church
building there. I would say that their church is
probably the double the size of ours when it comes to the
building size. This is this is a picture of the
whole thing. It does go back a little bit
deeper than than what it looks like.
It doesn't look huge and it's not a huge, huge church.
But I would say that they have enough room in the auditorium
for probably, probably 175 people.
And then they have a pretty good size fellowship hall and then
nurseries and all of that kind of stuff back there as well.
So these are a bunch of their kids.
We went to, we went out for lunch on Sunday afternoon and
the kids there in the back outside were all their kids too.
But, you know, honestly, it's, it's you really can't tell the
difference between being in the US and being in Australia other
than the accent, which The funny thing was you go and order
something and say one thing and they're like, you're from
America, aren't, you know, like, yeah, how can you tell, You
know? But it was, you know, some of
the stores are a little bit different, like the names of the
stores and everything else. But honestly, everything looks
very, very first world, very US. There's the rest of the kids
there. This is something that's very
Australian. Anybody ever tried this
Vegemite? Josh, you have, They were like,
oh, you got to try this stuff. It's really good.
You put it on toast. They were like, just don't put a
lot. And I'm like, OK, if it's really
good, you would put a lot on there, you know, So we, we put
it on actually, I think we put on a cracker first just to try
it. Very, very, very salty.
And I don't even really know what to compare it to, but I
almost, I was, I was so close. And I wish I would have, I
almost brought a thing back for everybody to try.
But I was like, you're probably not going to like it, but one of
their kids love to put it on everything.
He's like, once you get used to the taste, it's really good.
I'm like, OK, yeah, that's, that's one of those things, you
know, got to get used to the taste.
So, but you know, one of the other things that they have a
ton of, there's like these bakeries, they're everywhere.
Coffee shops. I mean, you see them all over
the place. I love this.
Look at that, that top, look at that donut there in the middle.
I mean that is these, these Donuts on the left side were
actually a little bit bigger than ours are.
But then this one there in the middle, we didn't get one, but I
was like, man, look at that thing.
It's just massive. So all right, let me show you
some pictures of some of this wildlife.
I, I think I had 600 pictures or something like that.
So I can only put about 100 in here.
So I can't show you everything. But if, if there's something
that's missing and you would like to see a picture of it, ask
and I'll show it to you if I have it.
But it's called the Gorge Wildlife Park.
And like I said, we just had a couple days, you know, before we
went to the camp. And I'll tell you a little bit
more about that. But anybody know what that is?
That's a wombat, right? They were, they're more active
at night. So they didn't that, you know, I
woke him up, knocked on the door, and he looked up and got a
picture of him. But they're, they're they look
like hamsters, but they're probably 10 times the size of a
hamster. I mean, they're big, you know.
So anybody know what that is? It's not West Virginia.
Those are dingoes. Yeah, I don't know what they
were going for there, but there was actually one sleeping in
that car, too. There you go.
Those are Wallabies. Those are the Wallabies are a
little bit smaller than Kangaroos, and they had a bunch
of albino Wallabies too, but they had oh, you can you can get
in there and oh, man, Josh. Oh, here we go.
Here we go. All right, so bunch of these
albino Wallabies and stuff really, really interesting.
They let you just walk through and pet them and they have this
it's pretty funny because they have kind of this do not touch
area, not even really much of A fence, but they know that it's
there. So they hop over there and get
inside that if they don't want anybody to touch them.
I mean, you could walk right into it if you wanted to, but
there's signs that say don't. And a bunch of them were hanging
out in there, which I thought was pretty funny.
But it camels. Oh, you know what?
Here I got a video of feeding them, I think.
Let's see if it works. Here we go.
Look at that slobber. Yeah, it is nasty.
They had they give you this a bag of, you know, feed it had
like corn and little. I don't even know exactly what
it was like a little mixture of stuff, but I'm going to play
some of these videos out loud because like we were on the
phone and the and, and I think Jackson was talking to my wife
and I was talking to Pastor Simeon and Jackson said, get a
little bit closer. I want to hear his accent, you
know, So some of these videos they are talking in the
background is very Aussie. So anyway, they had they had
these Peacocks running around all over the place.
Here you go. There's some koalas.
They were there in the trees sleeping.
Yeah, doing their thing here. This is, it was like a little
enclosure that they had. This is about the only tree they
have. Anybody know what they have?
Eucalyptus. Yeah.
They call it a gum tree. Everywhere.
Eucalyptus.
And really, they don't hardly know what oak and all that kind
of stuff is because it's it's almost exclusively eucalyptus.
But that's what the that's what these koalas eat.
They sit there and eat those shoots.
Anybody know what that is? You can't really see it.
It's ah, come on. Here we go.
Is this a video? Yeah, this is a video.
Here we go. I like roasted.
Cassowary. Oh yeah, they're not very common
here, no. Well, we only have them in a
little part of Australia, right? But they're quite rare.
I know by hey how come that one has red foodies on it and that
one doesn't? He does.
It's a little bit. He's he's just big, I think.
You might find, yeah. Well, I wanted to fuck I.
Don't know if you can hear their accent or not.
Quite rare. Quite rare.
What He said a few times. Yeah.
Anyway, there you go. Look at that.
It's a little monkey. He's like this.
This big, it was not very big at all.
It was. Look at this one.
Think somebody ought to do that? Yeah.
Yeah, it might look good. I'm Frank.
You should try that, see what happens.
Yeah, Yeah. There you go.
We got a hold of koala. And so they, they sit there and.
And they just. They hold on to these eucalyptus
and they're just chewing and they're looking at you, you
know, And in fact, no, that was that was not a picture of him
staring at me, but there was, I have one picture where he's
looking literally looking at me right in the face.
You know, it's pretty neat, pretty neat.
There we go. These are the younger ones that
were with us there that day. There you go.
There's some more Kangaroos. Oh, here.
So we had this little, they have it.
They give you a little map to, to walk around and kind of see
where everything is at there. And next thing you know,
Mathias, he's one of the younger ones.
He said, he said the goats eating the map.
And I said, you know, I think his dad said, why did you let
him eat it? He said, I thought somebody
grabbed it out of my hand. You know, he said, I thought it
was one of you guys just wanted to see the map.
So he didn't even look back. And there the goat was sitting
there eating his map and he's got the rest of it in his mouth.
They see how how much he tore off of the map.
You know, it's pretty funny, but you go bunch of different birds
that they have and they have what are those?
What are those parrots? They're they're white with a big
yellow. Yes, yes, they were everywhere.
Big flocks of them, You know, which is really funny because if
somebody in the US has one, it's really rare to see that there
were flocks of them all over the world all over the now, I don't
think they talk necessarily, but flocks of them all over the
roads and everything else. Here you go.
Here's a video for. Anybody else?
Can't even hardly tell what they're saying if you know.
Unless you no. But here we go if.
You hold something else from there.
You right back. You ready?
There you go. Yep.
Some more pictures of them. There you go.
Who is asking about the emu? Yeah.
There you go. The emu's all right.
This is this is a video here. Yeah, yeah.
This. This one's pretty good.
This is this. This is actually one.
See if he'll run. He's trying to get a video of
one of these things happened. But they're all so lazy because
they're so used to people. They just don't move.
I said, surely if the kids go over there, they'll get him to
move. There he goes.
I mean, they kept chasing him. Nope.
He's just cruising along if you. There you go.
This is they had some of these monkeys there too.
Here we go. If you can see them in the top
right there. Really funny to watch them.
They actually use their their tails as like a fifth arm.
There was one that was literally just hanging from his tail.
There you go. I hit him right now.
I hit him right now, hit him right in the head, the back of
his head. He didn't really care.
He ate it. Some ostriches.
There you go. This is the what is that?
That's the quacko. Yep, Yep.
They were sleeping. So I did the same thing.
That little, that little piece of a carrot, I threw it in there
and it hit him and he woke up. He looked over and he saw it.
He gravity started eating it. So I got a picture of him, but
there you go. Yeah.
He was smiling. Definitely, definitely.
There you go. Can anybody see the chameleon
snakes? Yeah, thankfully, almost almost
every snake in Australia is poisonous.
There's very few that are not. And.
And what they say is that in the US, all the snakes that are
poisonous are trying to hurt you.
In Australia, all the snakes that are poisonous are trying to
kill you. They have the most poisonous
snake in the world in Australia. And we didn't, thankfully, we
didn't see any of them in the wild.
All of these are in a enclosure. But yeah.
There you go. What is that?
That's a kookaburra. Who was asking about that?
Was that Charlie? Yeah.
There you go. Yeah.
They're the ones that sound like they're laughing when they, you
know, they're they're they're chirp.
This was a weird one too. That's I think it's like a
mating ritual. You they're going into spring,
you know. And so this is, I don't know
exactly what that bird was, but he filled his whole throat up
and his whole chest up. And I think he was trying to
impress me, but I was impressed. I took a bunch of pictures.
So I guess it worked. But look at this.
This little monkey. I mean, that's, that's a regular
sized bowl. I mean, it's a bowl about like
this that the thing was so tiny. Yeah, that's another hairdo
somebody could try right there. I think that'd be good.
Here we go. This is a this is a video
Penguin. Yeah, I thought it was here.
Let me go back. It was loud.
And so I kind of tracked them down and found out it was coming
from the Penguins. I was really shocked.
This one's actually really neat. These are called flying foxes.
I mean they're bats, but these things were like this tall, huge
things and I only I got AI did get a good number of pictures of
them. I just tried to give you one
that was a close up of it. But anyway, a few more pictures
there from the the wildlife park, but they have ALDI.
That's what they call it. It's ALDI exact same everything,
but they call it ALDI. I guess probably just because of
the way they do their pronunciation, but this was
this. This is what it looks like
inside there. I thought that was different.
So, you know, there was like their freezer section.
But a few other things here before I get into some of the
stuff about the actual camp and everything else, there was a
little Germantown called Hondorf and everything there, Everybody
there German and which is really weird right in the middle of
Australia. They have a lot of these things
too. These are, I didn't, I didn't
get a picture of it, but Oh, yeah, no, that's not it either.
But they have. Anybody ever had a meat pie?
You know what a meat pie is? Yeah, meat pies are really good.
And, and they're in most of the other parts of the world,
Europe, and they have them in Belize.
They have them everywhere. But it's, it's almost like a pot
pie, but a lot smaller. And they've got a lot of
different flavors of them that you can buy, you know, but they
had some of those in there. But I thought I had a picture of
it, but I guess not. So anyway, there's some seals.
Look at this. I thought this is pretty, pretty
funny. They did this for 20 minutes.
I think it was juveniles not think, I know it was.
He is, man. He's just falling asleep.
He's just falling in. Yeah.
His head keeps nodding. You get the commentary in there.
Anyway. So then that's the Pacific Ocean
behind us. Actually, we went down to the
coast. It's called Victor Harbor and
really beautiful place. You know, how many of you have
been to the Atlantic? Probably most of you, right?
It's very dirty compared to the Pacific.
I, I feel like, you know, of course the Pacific is, is
freshwater. Atlantic is salt.
And I think that's probably part of the difference too.
But you know, the, the, and maybe it's just Virginia Beach,
I don't know, but it always looks really dirty, especially
compared to this. I mean, it's just, you know,
really beautiful Clearwater, it feels like, and, and the breaks
start way farther out, but red sand.
I thought that was pretty interesting too.
It's just called Granite Island. We went out there.
Beautiful there. There you go.
That's just the Pacific. It's not, you know, not a lake
or anything. It's just the Pacific.
But you see how clear it looks compared to the and beautiful.
I mean, just look, look at the coastline, you know, just a
beautiful, beautiful place. And we got this picture in this
rock. Of course, guys, we had to go to
the top of it, so we did. They have a lot of this kind of
stuff too. What does that?
What does that remind you of? Yeah, it's Burger King.
It's just called Hungry Jack's. They have a Whopper and
everything. And I think it's just kind of
the difference between, you know, company trademarks and
stuff like that. So they, I, I got a Whopper meal
on purpose to try it, to see how different it was.
And I'm telling the Whopper tastes exactly the same as it
does in the US. Their fries have, they call it
chicken salt, chicken salt and we don't have that here.
I don't know exactly what it is, but it was actually really good
on the fries. One of the guys had been to the
US and he said he went to Burger King and ordered the fries and
he said can can you put some chicken salt on there?
And they said, what in the world are you talking about?
You know, but you know, they they have theirs good.
This is that's the van. Just to kind of give you an
idea. They literally have every car
you can think of in Australia. They have all the cars that we
have plus all of the imports from everywhere else it seems
like. And that's that's past your
westerns. That's their van.
But we were eating at a, at a little, at a little breakfast
place across the road from that. Here you go.
What do you notice about that? Yeah, It's the exact same store,
same thing. I mean, they said look inside at
least the exact same everything, but some kind of, you know, what
do you call it? Trademark thing or something
like that? TK Maxx, you know, it's not a
knock off, it's actually TJ Maxx.
It's just that's what they call it there.
This is pretty interesting because this is they have a
bunch of these. This is probably the biggest,
biggest one that they have. It's a chemist warehouse is
their pharmacy and and so that's where they go for their medicine
and things like that. You know, we go to CVS and
Walgreens, they go to Chemist Warehouse and you know, pretty
interesting. Here you go.
This was actually in the wild. We were just walking to we were
going to go hike a trail for like a short trail.
It came up on this evening, walking down the road.
They're ugly birds, I'll tell you that much.
It's like a walking Bush. I was trying to, I, I got very
close to him. I was trying to get him to run
and he finally did. But see, I was I was outside of
the vehicle walking behind him at that point.
So he was trying to stay far enough away from me, but I think
he was, like, curious At the same time.
It's a kind of an area where people are a lot.
So I think they're used to him and they probably get fed.
So he was like, does he have food or is he trying to kill me?
You know, there he goes. There he goes.
He's like, yeah, it's a little too close.
All right, you can stop. So anyway, there's I didn't get
a great picture of his family, but that's most of them, that
fact, I think that's all of them except for the baby, right?
So here in the middle is is Isaac.
He's the oldest. He's 16.
And then Nathaniel on the far right over there, Pearl, she's
the one with the red dress. Ruby is the one with the purple
dress. Mathias is the one in the center
there with the black shirt on. And then sitting down there,
Stephen. And then he's holding Asher.
So that's that's seven of their kids.
And then the baby is the last one.
So and the one on the far left is my wife.
But anyway, this was also in the wild.
It was really neat. It was, it's an actual, it's a
kangaroo, not a wallaby that's carrying a Joey.
And let's see, I got a video of that too.
Yeah, pretty neat. You know, beautiful, beautiful
scenery out there too. A lot of these, I don't know if
you can see the little dots there and maybe you can't see,
but so close. But those are Kangaroos.
Those were all in the wild. And as we're driving, the kids
especially, they were just saying this is crazy.
We don't ever get to see this. And I think I think there was
probably 10 or 12 Kangaroos that actually had a Joey with them
and a couple of them that were outside of the pouch.
And as we got a little bit closer, they jumped in and they
turn around and their head pops back out.
And it was really neat to see that.
But here you go. I got a little video.
You know, there is that one actually had a Joey with it too.
I was hoping to get a little bit closer.
But in this field here, I mean, there's just they're wild.
They're herds of kangaroo the same way that we would see deer.
And I think I zoomed in a little bit.
Let me see. Yeah.
Something scared them and they all took off.
There you go. But you know, the same way that
we see deer on the side of the road and stuff, Kangaroos all
over the side of the road. Yeah, they can be.
They're really scared of people, though.
The only only way that they would actually box you would be
if you cornered them. Yeah.
They, they, they don't like to, they don't like to stay around.
Everyone that we got anywhere close to took off.
Yeah, none of them faced us. Like they were going to do
something, you know. But anyway, a bunch of them up
there. I just, I just got a few
pictures here because I thought like, you know, that's, that's a
gas station and that's what almost all of them look like,
you know, it's very modern. There's another one, that Shell,
that's a Shell station right there.
They're gas. So that's $1.61 Australian.
Australian is like $0.66 to the dollar, so it's pretty easy to
do because everything was 2/3, but it's $1.61 per liter and
there's 3.7 liters per gallon. So that's their gas is close to
like 4 1/2 dollars right now per gallon.
So, oh, this is pretty interesting that I had never
seen this before. But the same way that we do tea,
they have a thing that they can do coffee with.
So this was the room that we that we had there at their
house. They had a little heater.
You just heat the water up and then you, and then it's a, a
coffee bag. You drop it in your coffee and
then it, it, it works the same way.
But there you go. There's the baby.
Yeah, she was what, a month, a month old.
It was really, really, really good that they had a baby there
because my wife got all of that out of her system and she got
the hold of baby as much as she wanted to.
And I did too. It's pretty neat.
Here's one thing that they have. What do you notice in there?
Yeah, Kmart. They had Kmarts all over the
place in there. Interesting that they, that
they, you know, went out here. Yeah, we, we used to call it
came apart because, as you know, that's what it was.
But they still have them there. Pretty neat little place.
There's a coffee shop, a lot of those.
David Jones. What does that look like?
Yeah, It's like their version of Macy's.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You would not know that you were
not in the US except for the different names.
And that's. That's really it.
So proof again, Kentucky Fried Chicken, They had McDonald's all
over the place, everywhere. Target across the street there.
Yep. This is one other way that you
know that it's different, too. I got to drive their car and it
was on the opposite side of the road.
It was a little bit different, but you know, you, you pick it
up pretty quick, but you know, you're so used like when you're
getting ready to pull out, you look to the right to see if
anything's coming right. Or actually you would look to
the left to see if anything's coming and you're going to cross
traffic, but it's, you have to look the opposite way.
So it's really like it throws you off because you're like, why
is nothing coming? Oh, wait, there is a bunch of
stuff coming, you know, and one of the things like if you're on
A2 lane, which a lot of the roads that we were driving on
were were like 4 lane roads. So we had two lanes and I found
myself, I kept drifting all the way over to the other side lane
because I felt like it was really weird being right on that
dotted line, you know? But other than that, it wasn't
too bad. This is really interesting.
OK, so we ended up in this little, it was a place called
Semaphore. It's it's a little beach area,
long dock that you can walk out on and see the ocean and
everything else. But they were doing some kind of
music festival or something like that.
And they had this indigenous woman there that was doing some
kind of like, ceremony where they're, you know, blessing
everybody and doing all this stuff.
And there was a guy there that was playing a didgeridoo.
So I figured it would be a pretty neat little video show
you. That's the didgeridoo.
He's blowing it right there in the background.
I think I zoomed in on it. There you go.
She was all painted up. I mean, it was weird.
It was really weird. This smoke was supposed to be
cleansing everybody that was there.
That's what this whole thing was very, very, very demonic.
But you know, I mean, they don't look at it that way.
It's just like a ritual. They're performing this stuff.
But I got video of it because I thought, you know what, this is
really interesting to see how they do these things.
They had this thing. I got a video of this too.
I'm going to show it to you in a second, but I'm going to give
you like a context, All right? They called them the monsters
and they had all these people dressed up in the weirdest
costumes you could think of and including one of them that was
dressed up like the devil. But they were going to they
were, they were doing this. They were, they started playing
this music and everything and they marched all the way down.
We left, you know, before we saw them go very far, but they
marched all the way down, all the way down the, the, the
boardwalk, you know, or it's not a boardwalk.
It's a pier that went way out into the Pacific Ocean and they
were going to bless the animals that lived in the ocean, you
know, But this woman and this guy, they they sprinkled them
with all this water and all this kind of stuff.
It's it's, it's obviously it's, it's their religion, but it's,
it just goes to show you how lost they are, how dark
everything is. But anyway, I'll give you a
little. That's the same one.
Here we go. Yeah.
It's like, it's almost like voodoo.
It's not voodoo, but it's it's similar.
Yeah. There you go.
There's the devil. Just weird, weird stuff.
But take the water around to the monsters.
Yeah. And then dolphin randomly.
I don't know how long the video goes.
This poor dog was like, what in the world are you doing?
It's like he kept trying to get away and they kept pulling him
back in. Yeah, yeah.
He was the only one with any sense out there.
Exactly right. So she's tapping 2 sticks
together. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly right. You can see her standing there
at the microphone tapping. It was like tap, tap, tap, tap,
tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. I don't know what significance
that had, but he's playing the didgeridoo right in the
microphone. It's it's a ceremonial
cleansing. That's what this whole thing
was. It was really weird.
But I thought, you know what, pretty neat to actually catch
them doing it, you know, and, and have it on video.
Oh, way better. No, actually the smoke.
I mean they so this lady was like take it throughout the
crowd, take it to the crowd they wanted and they brought it and
it was like all blowing in our face and it was I mean, I don't
know what they were burning in there, but it was I was like,
get that away, man, stunk, you know, whatever it was.
But anyway, I was just we were just staying around because we
wanted to see what in the world this was all about, you know,
and anyway, thought it was pretty neat to actually have a
video of what all that what that kind of stuff is that they do.
But anyway, this is their house. They have these little things,
you see the garage doors and all that kind of stuff.
Those are actually, they use that to, to block the windows
and kind of an extra added insulation and then like an
added layer of protection and stuff too.
Crime is not real bad there. But so then, so I mentioned that
we, I preached on Sunday morning and Sunday night and then
Tuesday we went to this camp and I guess it was a couple hours
away from their house, but probably 100 and 25 of the
people in the church went there. And it's kind of a highlight for
them. You know, it's going into the
summer and everything else. Everybody takes off work.
The whole families go there. So their, their school years are
a little bit different too. So they don't take the summer
off. They have 4 periods.
They have two weeks off 3 * a year.
And then they have like 6 weeks off in the middle of their
summer, which is Christmas basically.
That's the other thing that's weird for them.
They celebrate Christmas, but it's like 95100° on Christmas
Day. You know, they said there's no
chance in the world that they're ever going to have snow on
Christmas because it's, it's the opposite.
You know, it's the middle of their summer in in on December
25th basically. So, but this is what the camp
looked like. It was just a bunch of these,
you know, all these buildings and, and different rooms.
This is the room that we had there.
This is the auditorium where we had the services.
I thought this was pretty neat. This is like their little
version of the Keurig. Tiny, tiny little cups, though,
like real small. This was that.
This was actually the the backside.
We stayed in one of those rooms there and that was our view.
It was really nice. This is the service.
The guy that's up there leading the songs there.
I think he's got five kids too, but I'd called him into the
ministry and so he's actually studying for the ministry, which
is really exciting. This is where the cafeteria and
the the auditorium was. That's what I'm saying, doesn't
really look that big, but all of these things were in there.
There's a big eucalyptus tree right there in the middle.
That's what a gum tree looks like to them.
So that was the, that was the service one of the nights or the
morning. So then I preached Tuesday
night, Wednesday morning, Wednesday night, Thursday
morning, Thursday night, Friday morning, Friday night and
Saturday morning at camp. And I said, man, I told my wife,
I said, you know, I'm going to get up and preach on Sunday
morning. And they better hope they like
it 'cause they got to hear it 11 more times, you know.
And anyway, it was a blessing to be with them.
And they said it was a blessing that we were with them too.
But I can't, I don't know. But there's, there was, that was
most of the people that were there at the camp.
And what do you think? The first question Brother Niton
asked me was any Indian people there as the other was, he was a
guy right here. I don't know if you can see him
right there, like kind of right in the middle right now.
He and his wife, real nice guy, but he was he's actually from
southern India, but they really have a lot of people from a lot
of places. They had they had some refugees
from Yugoslavia and Romania that lived there in Australia.
They had we had people from all over the place, you know,
actually even a couple from the US.
But bonfire one night after the service, this was there you go
tgi Friday's. I mean, that's what I'm saying.
It really is just very, very similar to the US.
We went to this was this, this was the area where we went to
lunch. This is big open area and then
it goes into the mall type area. Then we came back to the church
and you know, I preached on Sunday morning and Sunday night
again, but this was all the kids they had, they had their own
little program during the during the services and they learned a
bunch of songs and things. So they were singing the songs
and quoting the Bible verses that they had memorized on that
Sunday morning. But that was the only spider
that I saw. Do you know what that blue thing
is? That's my shirt.
I pulled it off and there was a spider on it.
And I was like, oh, man, I wonder how many more things are
in there. But I I took a picture of it and
I sent it to him and I said, what is this and is it
poisonous? And he said, I don't think so.
Yeah, I think you're good, but just kill it.
Anyway. I was like, oh, I already did.
But anyway, so Brother Al and Miss Esther, we were supposed to
get back at 11:00 to Richmond and a flight from Dallas got
delayed, as is usual. The usually the case when you
get to the US, it seems like. But so we end up not getting
into a 130 and or something somewhere along the lines.
And they showed up and he said, all right, you know, something,
something. And I was like, who's he talking
to? And then, and then if my kids
came out, I was like, Oh yeah, they were supposed to be at
home. He surprised us and, and showed
up at 1:30 in the morning at the airport and brought the kids
with him too. So here you go.
I'm going to give you a couple things here as we close, but I
thought this would be pretty interesting while I was there.
I, I took, I, I a lot of the words that stuck out to me that
were different, right. So a tradie, they, they call it
a tradesman. So anybody like a Carpenter or
anything, you know, somebody that goes to Lowe's, what is the
name of their Benson's I think is the name of theirs or
something like that. But he said, I said, oh, is that
like, you know, a home store, whatever he said, yeah, that's
where the tradies go, you know. So a sparky is an electrician
breakfast. They call it brekkie.
They do so a lot of what they do with everything, they shorten
all their words and they either put an O on it or an IE.
That's what they do with a lot of it.
So like the Salvation Army salvos, you know, a Carpenter is
a chippy. They, they always say this, how
are you going when they, when what they're asking is how you
doing? You know, how are you going?
He said, because Pastor Lewis was there with his daughter and,
and, and, and one of them asked her that this, you know, how are
you going? And she was like the car.
He was like, what? They finally figured out what
they were talking about. But a diaper, that's a nappy.
Yeah. A Ute they call the pickup truck
is a Ute. And if it's a big pickup truck,
they call it a yank tank. They call us Yanks.
We're Yanks. And so if it's a, if it's like a
big souped up F-150 or something, they call it a yank
tank. A dummy is a pacifier.
Figured that out because he said something he used some phrase
and he said something about if you don't, you know, if you
don't like it, don't spit the dummy and not cum or something
like that. Spit the dummy.
And it was like, you know, don't spit the pacifier out of your
mouth and just, you know, say forget about it.
You know, it's this phrase that they used a lot.
Macas. That's what they call
McDonald's. Like we would call it Mickey DS
or something like that. They call it macas.
They don't even say McDonald's, they call it macas.
A car is a trolley, a boot is a trunk.
Relo's relatives. A jumper is a sweatshirt.
You know, we, we consider a jumper is like a lady's dress
type thing, you know, and one of them said something to my wife
about taking her jumper off and she was like, what?
He's like, what? She was like a jumper.
He was like, oh, I think you call it a sweatshirt.
I was like, yeah, good thing. All right.
Yeah. Sweatshirt.
Flying Fox is a zip line. Pram is a stroller.
A fizzy is what they call a soft drink.
Sonny's sunglasses, they call the nursery the creche book bag.
So I left my, I left my book bag in at somebody's house.
And we had, we had been over there and we, and then we went
out and did something and, and we didn't come back to the
house. And I said, hey, I left my book
bag over there. You think somebody can pick it
up for me? And he was like, book bag.
What's a book bag? I said, we're like a backpack.
Oh, oh, yeah, we don't call it a book bag.
We call it a backpack, you know, And so the guy that I, that I
showed you in the picture that's actually training for the
ministry, he said, yeah, I'll pick it up and I'll bring it by
the house. I'll make sure I pick up your
book bag. It's like they're making fun of
me the way that I say words, you know, which I thought was pretty
funny. Footpath is a sidewalk.
They call a trail a track. Trash can is a bin.
Go throw it in the bin. And then the trash can on wheels
like you would take out to the curb.
They call it a wheelie bin spitting.
It's when it's just sprinkling a little bit, you know, they I
said, yeah, man, it feels like it's about to start raining.
And somebody said, yeah, it was spitting a few minutes ago.
Like spitting parking lot is a car park.
That's how they say that, a Brawley umbrella.
There was a few other things that that I thought were
interesting too, but that's that was a good handful of those that
I wrote down. Let's turn over and we'll be
done. Turn over to Proverbs chapter
27. Couple takeaways from this trip.
And really it was, it was not a missions trip per SE.
You know, obviously I preached a lot of times when I was there,
but it was it was the people who were saved, you know, and it was
it was there more for encouragement and just trying
to, you know, be an encouragement to them.
And of course, usually what happens when you go to these
places, they end up being an encouragement to you as well.
But, you know, sometimes I think what happens is we feel like
we're the only ones left that are still trying to serve the
Lord, you know, and really trying to do the best that we
can to be everything that we can be for the Lord.
And this church is, I mean, they are, I don't know if we can find
somebody that's more on the same page with us.
Everything we talked about they, I mean, I feel like they have a
really good balance on, on all of these things.
You know, there's a ditch on both sides of the road, right?
And you know, especially like when it comes to the gospel,
obviously most people are, are just, you know, pray this prayer
and you can be saved, right? That's a ditch on the on one
side of the road. But then sometimes it you, like
we talked about on Wednesday night, you can have a ditch on
the other side of the road, right, where it's, it's
impossible for you to get saved unless you jump through this
hoop and that hoop and go through this ten week series and
all these other things, right. And there's a balance.
The balance is, is kind of in the middle there.
And, and you know, the more we talk, the more I was like, man,
we're we're, you know, they're right on the same page with us.
And you know Elijah? And this is not this, this here
in Proverbs is not about Elijah. But, you know, Elijah got to the
point where he was, you know, I'm the only one left.
You know, it's poor me and everything else.
And God said, get up and stop whining.
There's 700 of you, you know, And sometimes just because you
can't see him doesn't mean they're not there.
But when you come across somebody like that, it's very,
very encouraging. And I think, I think it's going
to work out for him to come be with us in April.
We'll see, but he's going to go to Pastor Lewis's for a week and
then come down here and be with us for a week.
And, and, and we're going to have a, we're going to, we're
going to have some preaching and things.
And the way that it's working out this coming year, we're
probably not going to be able to have or not be able.
We could, but we're not going to do a missions conference
specifically like we normally do, But he will be our speaker
for our missions emphasis. And I know you'll enjoy him.
He's, he's a really, really enjoyable to be around, but also
just really wants to do what's right, really wants to live for
the Lord really has a church that's very, very strong.
And you know, there's a lot of good men.
There's a lot of good churches that are still out there.
And I know sometimes it feels like so many churches around us
especially are just dropping all their standards and, and they're
not even, you know, they're not preaching the gospel anymore and
they're nothing like they either, just the shell of what
they used to be. And you think, is there anybody
that's still willing to take a stand?
You know, there is, there's, there's people out there and
there's men out there. There's churches out there.
They're still living for the Lord.
And that's, it's an exciting thing.
And that reminded me of this verse here in Proverbs chapter
27 and verse #17 iron sharpeneth iron.
So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.
And you know, it's there, there was a lot of things that I
picked up there and, and we talked about a lot of different
things about the way we do things.
We talked a lot of things about the way they do things.
And I picked up some good things.
And I think things that we're going to actually try to
implement in our church and a couple things.
And I'll tell you, it's not even worth telling you about them now
because it would, it would, it would just be more questions
about it then, then it would help.
But just just the way that they really, they put a strong
emphasis on prayer and the, the importance of it and, and some
of the things that they do around their prayer meetings, I
think was just excellent. It's great.
Something I never really even thought about doing before.
You know, some of the things that they're doing as far as
their outreach type stuff, I mean, it may work here, it may
not work here. And some of those things I would
say, and you know, that would, that wouldn't work for us just
because of the way that that it would have to be done.
But you know, same thing for us. He was like, man, we, we've been
wanting to get a ministry started on the campus here at
our university. What are you guys doing?
I said, well, we're just at the very beginning, but I'll give
you everything we have, you know, and those kind of things.
It's just really nice to know that there's other people out
there. And, and, and here's the other
thing that that I kind of took away from it.
It is more important now than it ever has been to make sure that
we're doing everything we can to get the gospel out.
You know, they're desperate. They're desperate for people in
Australia and, and they have less than we do when it comes
to, you know, the churches that are out there.
And he said, if you know of anybody that wants to come to
Australia and start a church, we'll do everything we can to
help them. And I said, if you know anybody
that wants to come to Virginia and start a church, we'll do
everything we can to help them. You know, it's they got the same
burden there as we have here. But it's just, it's so
important. And that's why the Bible says
the harvest is white and laborers are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest to send forth
laborers into his harvest. It's so important that we do
that, you know, and I think it's, I think it's a command we
don't take really all that seriously.
I think, I think we are doing what we can as I think as much
as possible to get the gospel out in our area.
But are we praying that God would send more laborers into
his harvest? You know, I came away from that
same man. I, I need to pray more for
Australia. You know, I mean, they have way
less people, but there's a, there's a lot of people in the
area where they're at. He, he, his dad actually started
that church 25 years ago and they were there for probably 10
years. So, so Simeon was young, he was
only 5 or 6, I think, when they left that church.
And his dad went and started another church and they were
there for about 10 years. And then his dad went and, and
took another church that was dying.
And that's where he was at when he passed away last year.
But Pastor Simeon 10 years ago got called to go back to that
church and they asked him to, they asked him to come be the
pastor and how neat that is that he was able to.
He didn't really know the people.
There was not really anybody left that he remembered.
And most of them didn't remember him.
But he ended up going back to that church and it was
struggling. It was a church that had started
to get away from what it, you know, what they knew they or, or
the way that they had started, you know, But there was still
some of those original people in the church that were there when
his dad were there. And a lot of them got behind him
and, you know, they're following him and, and the church is going
in a great direction. It's amazing to see what God can
do. And then and they've got a lot
of young people there, which is really exciting.
A couple of the messages that I preached, I preached
specifically to, you know, teenagers in college.
I mean, they have a lot of them that are in that, in that age
group. And they're trying to do what
they can to do exactly what we're doing here to raise their
young people to be the ones that reach their country, right?
It's, it's just, it's exciting to see that even on the complete
opposite side of the world, there's other people that are
doing the same thing. And it's not because we ended up
at the same college. It's not because we sat in the
same preaching. It's not because we grew up
together. It's not because of any of those
things. It's because it's in the Bible,
right? And they can figure it out in
God's Word. On the opposite side of the
world, we can do the same thing, right?
He's never even been to the States before.
It's not like he's been influenced by everything that
we've heard from all these other people, right?
I mean, obviously you can listen on the Internet and those kind
of things, but it's because it's biblical and they're following
God's Word and we're doing our best to follow God's Word.
And what do you know? We're all on the exact same page
because we're following God's Word, not some man, not some
tradition, not anything else. We're trying to follow the
Bible. It's amazing how you find
yourself on the same page with somebody else who's doing the
exact same thing. There's a lot of them out there
that are doing it. And it's exciting to see that.
And I hope he'll be able to come in in April and, and preach for
us a little bit. He said, if I come, I want to
make it worth it. I don't want to just go around
and see everything. I want to preach.
I said, all right, we'll do it. You know, he does want to see
some things, but at the same time, you know, it's, it's, it's
about getting together around God's word.
And, and you know, they said they were encouraged by us being
there. And I know it'll be an
encouragement to us if he can come.
So we're going to try to do that.
But anyway, I know it's not, you know, it's, it's a different
type of service tonight. But a lot of you have asked
about the trip. And I said, you know what,
rather than telling everybody individually, we'll try to do it
all at the same time and just give you some pictures from it
and give you a little taste of what it was like over there.
But anyway, appreciate you appreciate everybody covering
for us when we're gone. I know it's, it's different when
I'm not here. And to me, I don't feel like
it's, you know, I've never, I've never not been here.
I've never been here when I'm not here.
So I don't know what it's like, but I know, I know the feeling
of, you know, things just being a little bit different, a little
bit off. And, you know, so I appreciate
you allowing us to take the time to go over there and try to be a
blessing to to somebody else and for everybody covering for us
while we're gone too. So I know it's, it's, it's a lot
of roles that you're trying to fill that you don't normally
fill and did a good job at it. So I appreciate it.
And we'll just have a word of prayer tonight and I want to do
something a little bit different.
All right, we, we're going to close in our song, but normally
we would sing This could be the day, right?
I want to sing. I'll take the old time way
because we got it. We're going to start a new
tradition. All right, every time Brother
Todd sang that song and those who are sitting behind it would
know this. But he said, I've read the last
chapter and I know who wins. He did it every single time that
we sang that song and he was one of the only ones that did it.
But we need to we're going to start a new tradition and we're
going to do the same thing. All right, So we're going to
sing that song tonight after we pray, let's pray.
Father, again, we thank you so much for your goodness to us.
Thank you so much for the opportunity we have to to see
other churches and and other ministries, even on the other
side of the world that are still living for you.
God, we thank you for their faithfulness.
I pray that you'd help us to be faithful as well.
God, may you use us in this area to reach this area, but then
also to to reach our Jerusalem, our Judea, our Samaria, the
uttermost part of the earth as we have the opportunity to do
that. God, I pray that you would help
us to just be faithful and sharing the gospel, faithful and
standing for what's right, faithful and following your
word. And again, I pray that you would
help us to stay true to the old time way and that we just stick
with with the Bible. Thank you again for all you do
for us in Jesus name, Amen.