St Peter's Anglican Church East Lindfield

Mail from Steve

1 comment | Posted by St Peters on 02 Aug 2009 in From Steve's Study ::

Steve has been away on a missionary support overseas since end of July. Today, we heard this from him:

Hi all,

Just thought I’d send you all a quick note to let you know how things have been going here.

We just got back from the Summer Camp yesterday, so it’s been a pretty full week. The camp itself was just like an extended houseparty really with about 60 people attending all up. The place we were staying at was on the shore of a lake (about 8 hours travel by train and cramped minibus) and was a bit remniscent of some of the beachside holiday villages in Australia (though I don’t think I’ll ever complain about sleeping and sanitary conditions in Australian campsites again, having been here). The camp was organised by two churches (…). It was the first time these two churches have worked together, which has laid a great platform for future support and encouragement between them.

My role at the camp was to run three seminars on marriage. I did one on a “Biblical Understanding of Marriage”, one on “Communication” and one on “Conflict Resolution”. I was not the only one running seminars, but by all accounts they fit in well with the other talks people were doing. Much of the time on the camp was spent developing relationships between the two churches, so we spent a lot of time doing “Get to know you” and team building activities, as well as swimming in the Lake (the same one that was frozen over last time I went!). On the last night we had a concert, which was quite an occassion. It had everything from two old Babooshkas singing an old folk song, to another lady reciting poetry she’d written to describe all she’d learnt in all the seminars, another lady giving someone a haircut, a young boy playing guitar, two teenage girls demonstrating strange things you can do with your tongue and much more. The undoubted highlight of the night (in my humble opinion) was the first act which saw the whole room belting out the chorus of “Waltzing Matilda” while a small group acted out the verses.

Today (Saturday) is a bit quieter as we all try to recover. The last “official” thing I’ll be doing is preaching at church again on Sunday. Last week I spoke on the idea of mission in the early church (from the book of Acts… all 28 chapters!), & this week I’ll be focussing on the place of Christian Community (also in Acts).

I had a really good conversation with the two couples who are most responsible for leadership in the church last night which you might like to pray about. They are very keen to continue and even develop our relationships with them. They are very keen for me (& Lorna) to come back to a similar camp next year, but they are also excited about the prospect of doing something more “city-wide”. In particular, they are thinking about arranging some kind of ministry training week to which they could invite all the leaders of the various churches in the city to attend – think Katoomba Convention. There are no such opportunities in the area and from their understanding of the various churches, most are led by people with very little gospel training at all. This would open the door to people from our Diocese being of great assistance in the spread of the gospel in this place.

Anyway, I’d better not use up all of my host’s internet time, so I’d better finish there. I’m very much missing family and friends, so I’ll be very glad to see you all when I get back.

Lots of love,

Steve.

Steve will be back to Sydney on next Thursday. Plese keep on praying for his safety and well being of his family.

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