Fundraising and TeamQuest

Last Friday Matt and I held our fundraising dinner. I blogged about it in my last post...remember the breakdown? Well, no extra people came. We ended up having it in one of the smaller rooms of the church building, and it was great! We think that God really wanted the specific attendees together for this specific dinner. We ended up having five families represented and two individuals, totaling about eighteen people. We were really blessed to have Matt's mom help me get the food ready and the room set up. Help me is really an understatement, she's wonderful! The Green's blessed us by serving the dinner. Dwight W. who I've mentioned before came to support us. He and his wife shared the good news of Jesus in Adelaide for many years. Two of our very sweet and supportive female friends came to learn more about what we're doing. They really blew us away with wanting to spend the evening encouraging and praying with us. Perhaps the most surprising couple of the evening though was one that Matt first met when they lived in Searcy, Arkansas. They are family friends, and David works at ACU with Matt's stepdad. Their coming was so refreshing! After everyone ate that night, Matt and I gave our usual presentation. It was pretty apparent that this couple was soaking it up. After the presentation we opened the floor up to questions, and they had many good ones. When it was all said and done they said that they were really encouraged by our excitement in going to Australia. It was pretty amazing, because we encouraged them by showing excitement in being on this journey, and they encouraged us by coming out of the blue to support us and spend the evening hearing what we have to say. What we've found is that people don't even give Australia a chance when they think of countries/continents where not many people know the love of Jesus. However, once they hear more about it they are blown away. We don't ask people to be as excited as us about going...but we can't help but think that if they heard our story they might be!

This past Thursday our team was again part of TeamQuest. TeamQuest is an evening that ACU hosts where students can go and learn about how to be involved in God's mission through doing internships around the world and joining mission teams. Each team that is currently training makes food from their country to serve. We also talk to the students about the different internships we've done, our teams, where we're going, etc. This year I told students about how I did an internship in New Zealand in 2004. I would make the joke as I talked about how many of them were in high school when I did that internship. I had one student say, "I think I was in middle school". Yep, I'm old. Anyway, I love TeamQuest because I love to tell our story. God has done such crazy things in our lives that I can't help tell about them. It's cool to talk to students and see their eyes light up as they're thinking, "Hey, I can do that!" For those of you who just go places for the food, this year we served curried sausages (probably more of an Indian dish,
but still really popular in Australia), ANZAC biscuits, hot tea, and of course the usual Vegemite on crackers. We serve the Vegemite primarily for the shock factor. :) Don't worry, that flag is not touching the ground. I don't know if that's a big deal in Australia, but we try to show respect to the Australian flag just like we do the US flag.

This morning Matt is enjoying a Nascar race with some of the men in his family. It was kind of amusing, his stepdad called during the week and said, "Tish did not want to go right? Because if she did, we did not get her a ticket". I can't think of many more places I'd rather not be, but I really appreciated him thinking of me! I'm getting quite a few team things done; I've updated our "partner tally sheet" as I like to call it. I also sent out an email to those who have given us their email address in the past for updates. I contacted two new possible supporters, or at least people who might know people who might be supporters...you know what I mean. I'm about to send out some thank you cards. Then Bane and I are going to go out and enjoy this amazing day, he deserves to run around outside and sniff some light poles.