Hello wonderful people! We are hoping and praying that all of you are doing well these days! We are so thankful—maybe more than ever—knowing we have such incredible people all over the world who back us up and support us. So, the first shout out is to each of you whose prayer, financial support, love, and encouragement are huge vehicles for God’s grace in our lives. We are doing well, and want to give you an update (even if a little tardy) that will hopefully encourage you and let you in on what’s been going on for us on the Sunshine Coast. We would love to write an entire update without a single mention of corona virus, but, alas, it is a huge consideration in our daily life. We can both say that it has been a pleasure to lead alongside and under some amazing leaders in this time. We have seen the very best come out of our base leadership, who have supported the base so well through the constantly changing conditions. We have also been grieved, as many people we care about have left the Sunshine Coast to go home. As time has progressed, twenty-six of our fifty-two students decided to go home, each being led by God and wisdom from parents. Our outreach team retained eight out of the original eleven students, however! We also decided that our outreach would continue, but in the Sunshine Coast instead of Uganda. We have been fortunate to be able to stay open and functioning in limited capacities because of our status as a registered training organization in Australia. We were able to finish lecture phase, putting into place different protocol to keep our neighbourhood and us safe. Our numbers dwindled over the last weeks of lecture phase, but a building anticipation for a local outreach here, on the Sunshine Coast was also at work! Now that we are on outreach, the school is broken up into four teams, which are spread around our neighbourhood. Each team is engaging different organizations and communities! Our team has become involved with an organization called Integrated Family and Youth Services (IFYS). This is a fairly large organization in Australia that does things ranging from meal programs to running homes for youth and adults with cognitive and physical disabilities. IFYS has a broad range of services, and asked us to take part in their meal programs as well as in accommodations for some homeless. Of course, because of covid, jobs are more difficult to come by and many cannot work or leave their homes because of health reasons—this has increased the load that IFYS is dealing with many times over. We have been overjoyed to help in many different ways: cooking, delivering meals, labelling meals, working in the intake area for the accommodations, and other things. We have noticed that while it doesn’t always feel like we are doing much, people are incredibly grateful for any time and effort we offer. What seems normal to us—a joyful demeanour and a good work ethic--has actually made an impact of IFYS workers and those that they serve. We are realizing that simply looking to benefit others in this time elicits a really positive reaction in people. These reactions have led us into some good conversations about faith and hope! One testimony that has come out of our work with IFYS is a man named Mark’s story. Mark, just days before our team met him, was on the verge of ending his life. He is 37 and has walked through incredible hardship and loss. Recently, he was given a book about who Jesus really was by a Hillsong pastor. He began to read the book, and only the day after he finished it, he was checking into the homeless accommodation with one of our students. As Mark was answering the intake questions, our student was able to share about his faith and the Gospel with Mark who was more than interested given the circumstances he had been experiencing. Mark has shared his belief in God and his desire to grow in his relationship with God as well! God has certainly been after Mark, and is so faithful to him! We will continue to see Mark at the Hub where the accommodations are and be able to pour the love and life of Jesus into him! Over the last two weeks of outreach, we have found a really good speed for our weeks. We work with IFYS three days a week and for two days a week, we have various ministries that we initiate. Some of the things we do are street evangelism (from a safe distance!), social media engagement, neighbourhood projects, Waves House projects (where we live), support YWAM ministries, and volunteer at a horse farm! As the weeks go on, we want to tell you about each one of these and share stories from them. For now, we will tell you about the community projects and the horse farm! After putting up fliers and posting on social media offering to help families for free, we have received many calls and messages from people who, though shyly, have asked for help with various tasks such as trash removal, painting, gardening, and other things. In general, the people calling are not able to afford to have someone professionally come. People who are dealing with loneliness, depression, anxiety, or trauma are also messaging us asking for someone to talk to. We are getting more and more opportunities to serve people and explain our motivation behind doing it! Please be praying with us that more people would be answering when Jesus is knocking. We are asking God to help soften people’s hearts to the good news we’re bringing! At the horse farm, the team has been helping a lady that we have gotten to know from the couple times that Sam has taken Karis horseback riding for her birthday. When we asked if there was anything we could do for her, she admitted that times were not easy for her. We have been able to not only help out at her farm, but also create relationship with her and the people that work on the farm with her, sharing faith whenever the opportunity is there. The owner of the horse farm, Atalanta, is open and soft hearted. We are praying that through our time with her, she’ll see the power of the Gospel along with the people that she employs. It has been a pleasure putting our faith into action here as the farm is beautiful and the horses are so much fun! Outreach has been amazing so far. Our team is so diverse in their passions and skills and yet we are very unified in purpose and in our pursuit of God! As the team leaders, we often feel at ease knowing our team has the initiative and drive to do things that we wouldn’t think of. This makes leading them such a pleasure! We have been learning so much about leading through this season as well as about each other and ourselves. Walking with students through the uncertainty of these times has proven to be a refining process. As we said earlier, we are thankful for those who have led us and led with us through this. We finally feel like we are peaking out of a time when we were in “survival mode” and back into a more intentional and mindful season where we can take stock of what God has accomplished in and through us. We are sorry to be general, but we are still in the process of understanding everything that has happened and the effect it has had. We still have about six weeks left with them and are praying for big fruit in our ministry locations, believing that even the Western world can experience God’s miraculous power!
We are personally loving having more time here on the coast to invest in our neighbors and community. While a DTS is going on we feel we barely have any time to do more in the community so its an awesome blessing to have this outreach dedicated to the space where we live and call home.
A fun perk about having our outreach in Australia has been extended time in the beauty here and a bit more freedom, we know our team loving that! Almost all of us wake up at 5:00am every morning to head to the beach for prayer walks or worship or surf ect. then come back together at 8:00am for fellowship together before heading off to our ministries for the day! We are also trying to keep Saturday's light, fun, creative, and restful which has been a blessing and isn't obtained easily on your average 2 month outreach overseas. We all love being busy all week in all the areas we are volunteering, but want to continue to be intentional with each other and with our individual growth with God as well.
Also to clarify potential questions, we are following all the governments rules, regulations and encouragements. We are working WITH our local government with these volunteer services and take all the safety precautions. All 10 of us living together has given us more flexibility as well. Queensland is slowly lifting some regulations as well, numbers of new cases have gone down significantly.
Love and miss you all! As always feel free to message us!
Samuel and Karis
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1. Karis dancing in the sunset!
2. The girls on our team - (from left to right) Kara 20 Canada, Luca 19 Germany, Marie 19 Sweden, Jillian 18 America, Heidi 18 America.
3. Our whole outreach team (from left to right of the guys) obviously sam, Benji (blue shirt) 21 Switzerland, Jye 19 Australia, Jordan 28 Australia
4. Celebrating our last dinner on lecture phase
5. We all separated into our separate houses for outreach on Easter, so this was our first day just as our team, we made an Easter brunch!
6. The sign we made (the flyers look the same)
7. Karis, Kara, and Luca at the horse farm in the trailer going to feed the horses!
8. Karis leading one of the horse farm workers daughter on a little pony ride.
9. A python we saw on the way back from our date night last week, this was on our street, beautiful snake!
10. We took the horses up the mountain to graze to cut back on the feed bill for Atalanta, we had a pack lunch with one of the workers and her daughter!
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