Australia Day 5 (2 to go): Day of outreach

This morning we did our 2nd of 3 breakfasts, and it was a bit hard. We're very tired and it was hard for the ladies to get up early again and set up their tables - and I think the other students are dragging a bit too, because fewer people came over to either of our tables to talk.

Jasmine spoke up front this morning and did very well - I was so proud of her.  She was sharing from her heart and looked out at all the students (& not her notes) for the last minute. God touched my heart as I heard heard her speak to me this morning.  It's so exciting to see God use her in this way. (Here's a photo - it's a bit blurry, but that's as close as I could get without distracting everyone - I'd like to show the video, but it's hard to upload it).

The main speaker this morning was excellent - my 2nd highlight of the conference :-)  He shared from 2 Cor 9 about our freedom to give up our rights to be used by God to everyone I meet every day.

This afternoon we had our outreach adventure - I went with a student named Sarah. She was new at witnessing which actually helped to urge me on to take more initiative at the first!  We all bused (5 busses) to the Gold Coast (1 hour) and went house to house for about 2 1/2 hours with surveys.  They only gave us 2 Knowing God Personally booklets (KGPs) for the 2 of us (in PNG we start with 20 for each person), but we weren't even able to use one today - it was too hard to transition into the Gospel :-( . We went to 27 houses, 10 were not home, 10 people were not willing to answer any questions, and we had good conversations with the other 6 people. We skipped one house because they were backing out of their driveway and smacked their mirror on the garage door frame - as they evaluated their insurance claim, we concluded that it wasn't a good time to talk to them (but as we passed them up to go to the next house, my gaze connected with the lady's gaze and I can't get the image of her face out of my mind - maybe we should have talked to her). We enjoyed our time, but I wish I could have talked to more people.

When Jasmine and Lily returned (we all had gone out with different partners), I asked them how it went: Jasmine said it went okay, but Lily said "it went terrible". Lily knocked on the first (or second) door and as she was introducing themselves, the lady slammed the door on them! Lily said, "I said to myself, 'I want to go back to PNG'" - she wouldn't knock on any more doors :-( .

The final results for all 400 of us were something like about 15 people heard the full Gospel, and 1 prayed and received Christ into her life (a Kiwi lady). This is very different than the 112 who prayed and received Christ in Hisiu on 20 June from 35 of us (in 5 hours)! This helped the girls to see how incredible is their opportunity in PNG!

On the drive back up the mountain, we went through a small town (North Tamborine), and I counted 17 houses & shops with Christmas lights shining & blinking! One shop had a sign that said "Merry Christmas". It was nice to see them in the dark (it's the peak of winter here & it gets dark at 5 pm), instead of normally in the summer daylight at Christmas time.

Sorry, only 1 photo today :-\ Thanks so much for praying!!