INDIA!!!!

I can hardly believe it. I will only tell you bits now because we need to be careful with how we talk about the event I am at, just for safety reasons. Christians in India have been experiencing more and more persecution and they are being extra careful at this event.

Crossing cultures always causes me to look at myself critically and revaluate the world view I function from. Our days here are VERY full and I end up being exhausted from the heat, the input and the strain of interacting with people from a very different culture to my own. The humidity is thick and the heat the first few days was overwhelming. The last few days there has been rain and so the temperature has dropped to a much more bearable level.

I have had the chance to have an Indian suit made. The Indians at the conference were delighted when we showed up looking like this.
The food has been amazing! And so far I have not gotten sick.
I will write more when I am back in Australia.

I am on the move again. Tomorrow I leave Canberra and will take a bus to Sydney. After a night there with family friends I fly out on Sunday morning to India. I will spend 2 weeks in India for training and then come back to Australia. I hope to have time to write and post photos there.
So I am packing once again and getting ready for new places and people. Airport lounges, here I come!

places of meaning

Over my weeks here I have found that places are starting to take on meaning for me.

First there is the church property that holds my house, my office and the church building and hall that are the hub for the community. These places sit at the very centre of my life and work here and that is part of why I got very upset earlier this week when I returned home to find the whole property surrounded by blue police tape. It took me a little while and a few frustrating conversations with police to find out what was going on and for them to let me through the blue tape so that I could go home. I found out that a young man, who had been drinking at a local pub, had been stabbed and had gone through our property before dying across the street. So the entire church property was within a crime scene.









Behind this Greek Orthodox Church, which is at the end of our street, is an aged care facility. This facility became a prominent place in my life over the last two weeks. Right now I live with Jim and Jane, and Jane’s Dad Bill. Jim and Jane were gone for two weeks and so Bill went into care for that time. To help Bill adjust, I walked down every day to take him his newspaper. I would sit with him for a while and hear stories of his life and travels. I got to know several of the staff and some of the other residence started to recognize me. One of the staff had never met a female pastor before and she went around enthusiastically telling the other staff what I did for work.

This is a picture of one of the gardens at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture (ACCC). Behind it is St. Marks, the local Anglican theological school. I have walked over to St. Marks multiple times to use their library and to meet people. The grounds of the ACCC has a labyrinth and overlooks the lake, so I feel it calling me back again and again.









St. Johns Church is the site of a young adults intentional community that prays together every morning. I have joined them for prayer a couple of times and have gone to them also to find likeminded young adults to be my friends.





There is a walking trail that winds its way through the park and along the shore of the lake. I walk some part of this path almost every day. Walking gives me some fresh air and perspective, as well as clearing my head from meetings and hours in front of a computer screen.












I have found that some days I get much more work done if I leave the office and walk to a local coffee shop. This shop is my current favourite, but I am willing to change my opinion as I explore further.

two weeks in

So much has been happening over the last few weeks since I have arrived here and I have not been keeping up with writing. I just got my computer so I am hoping that I will be able to write a bit more now.
I wanted to at least put up a few photos from the highlights of the last two weeks since I arrived in Canberra.

This Sunday was my induction at the church. It went well and I feel very welcomed here.

I spent my day off this week wandering around Canberra and was delighted to come upon the first kangaroos I have seen since I came back to Australia.

It was good to get out and see Canberra again, but I did feel like a bit of a tourist.

We are still working on getting my office together and both the administrator and one of my fellow ministers helped with moving a lot of things in and out.

We still have to do some painting and I will try to put up photos when it is finished.

Youth group had their own Olympics on Friday night with one of my highlights being the swimming races without water or a pool.

We also met and have given the Peace House a name.

From here on out it is called “Irene’s Place: a house of discipleship and peace”.

“I will sing, I will sing…”

Rarely do I not have a song in my head. Regular church and chapel services over the last few years have helped cement hymns, spirituals and songs of praise in my brain. Events cause songs to spring to mind and my prayer life is rich with texts and music. The theme song at the Missions Seminar this year was “Lord Jesus you shall be my song as I journey,” which is fitting for me, especially in these last few months.

“God is so good, God is so good”
This song came to me again and again as I got on and off public transport over this summer. On almost every trip I found a friend. Sometimes it was an old friend from College. A few time it was a friend of a friend who was going my way. Once or twice it was a stranger who I smiled at and started conversation with. But on almost every leg of my journey these past two months, I was not alone. I had someone to help pull my many bags on and off trains, friends to sit and chat with, or just someone to empathise with when there were delays or strange occurrences. I would find myself humming “God is so good” as I showed up yet again at a station or terminal and found that out of the crowd walked a friend.

“We will take what you offer, we will live by your word. We will love one another and be led by you Lord.”
The passage in my devotional book this week has been Matthew 14:22-33, Jesus walking on water. This is a fitting text in several ways. This was the first passage I ever preached on. My first sermon was 7 years ago at a church in Melbourne where I was working as a pastoral intern. My supervising pastor from that church has been asked to come and preach at my induction service here in Canberra. My main point in my first sermon was that Jesus is already standing in the middle of the impossible, inviting us on. Before we are asked to swing our leg over the edge of our comfort zone, Jesus is already there in the midst of what we are called to. We are followers, invited beyond our fears.

“Don’t be afraid, my love is stronger. My love is stronger than your fear. Don’t be afraid, my love is stronger. And I have promised, promised to be always near.”
My journey has ended and has just begun. After 2 months of travel following graduation, I am in Canberra. A week ago my parents drove me and my stuff to my new home. I’m coming back to a place I’ve lived but I’ve changed and so has this place. Walking around this week I’ve been struck by how familiar things seem, yet I still get confused and miss what I have known for the last three years. I have points of joy and bewilderment at my own emotions and reactions to my new life.

“Lead me, guide me, along the way. For if you lead me I can not stray. Lord, let me walk, each day with thee. Lead me Oh Lord, lead me.”
In that first sermon I preached, I noted Jesus’ need for prayer even though he was part of God. I have been reminded of my need for prayer and a grounding in something beyond myself as I started my first week of work here. Things feel so right and so overwhelming. I have had moments of pleasure realizing that I will be able to stay here for a few years and at the same time terror thinking “oh no, what have I done!” Yesterday afternoon I walked over to the Labyrinth at the local Christian Center. As I walked the circles in and out crying to God, I asked for guidance and found comfort in the fact that I am not alone. I don’t need to have things all figured out as I commit myself to this place and people, but I do need to remain strongly committed to a mysterious and creative God. This is a big task I am walking into but even though many of my friends are far away God is close.

“I bind my soul this day to the neighbor far away, and the stranger near at hand, in this town and in this land.
I bind myself to peace, to make strife and envy cease. God, knit thou sure the cord of my thralldom to my Lord.”
Sing with me God, in this new day.

Coming Home

Home has been a loaded word for me through our many moves. I have come to terms with calling many places home instead of home meaning one location. Yet, as my plane circled the city of Sydney preparing to land three days ago, I found myself crying with the relief of coming home. Even though my parents have spent twice as many years in Australia as I have, they still joke that I am probably the most Aussie member of our family. I grew up here. So while many of my Mennonite Mission Network colleagues prepare to enter new cultures and understand themselves in new languages, I have come home to forms of speaking and culture that are instinctive to me. I have been gone for three years, which is the longest time I have spent away from Australia since I was nine years old.

On the drive home from the airport and on our numerous walks over the last three days I have been stuck by the slight yet significant differences I see and feel from the USA. The first two weeks in a new place always help me to see the place I left and the place I am coming to with a strange kind of clarity. The smells, sounds, sights and tastes of Australia are welcome to my homesick and longing senses. The sizes, shapes and colors of the cars and houses have differences that are hard for me to verbalize and yet they comfort me. I have to stop every once in a while and breathe deeply; flowers, gum trees, the ocean: the smells of home. I find myself giggling or calling out in joy every so often. The dusty grey-green of plants and trees along with the Aussie brands and labels in the cupboard, fill me with a girlish glee and whisper “home”. My eyes are filled with the sights of familiar little shops: bread, fish and chips, flowers, and surf boards. The ocean, so close to my parents’ house that I can feel the pounding of the waves as I lay in bed at night, stretches out with crystal blue vastness. The accents and languages I hear along side the tastes of kebabs, Jatz Biscuits for morning tea, Cadbury’s drinking chocolate, and leatherwood honey; I’m slightly overwhelmed with home.

What will this life hold for me? I am so full of hope and expectation. I am a young woman coming back as an adult to the culture of my childhood. Rooms of my heart that are normally closed to each other are open as I bridge these two cultures I hold so dear. I am at a crossing point, a portal, between my two worlds and cultures. Between being a child and an adult; between being at home and a foreigner in the same place.

Transitions, trusting and goodbyes

I woke this morning to the sound of little feet running on the floor above me. As I rolled over rubbing my eyes and trying to decipher what time it was from the amount of light coming in my basement window, I heard little voices above me “Auntie Riah”. Slowly, I stumbled up the stairs to be greeted by the smiling faces of my nephew and niece.

The two months between finishing school and leaving for Australia have given me a chance to spend a little time with my family here in the USA. Because I am continuing to raise support for my fast approaching assignment in Australia and not working, I need to lean on the support of family and friends. I have slept in 15 different beds since I moved out of my house at the end of May. Friends and family alike have opened their doors and homes to me and have been patient with me as I bumble through this time of transition.

I’m not used to asking for help. My Mennonite upbringing taught me to use little and to be generous, but in these last months I have had to rely on others generosity and to ask for money for now and for the 3 years to come. This is hard. I like to be independent and I have learned to associate wise judgment with financial stability. Yet I find myself in a place of following where I feel God calling me and this means financial instability. Is following God wise? Will I be cared for? I am asking hard questions of myself and other and having to trust in new ways while making myself vulnerable.

I am into the last leg on my journey this summer. I have a week and a half with family and a week of orientation and training before I fly away to Australia. Transitions and moving have been one of the most reliable things in my life over the years and so I keep thinking I will get better at them. But even when I know some of what I should expect from transitions and what I need to do to make them easier, they are still draining and emotionally charged.

In this time of instability I have the chance to spend a few days and hours with my family. Wanting to know my extended family better and to understand my roots was a major factor in my decision to come back to the USA to study. Most of the time I have had off over the last three years has seen me tucked in a car making the nine hour trip from Indiana to Pennsylvania to be with family. We all have gotten used to seeing each other on a semi-regular basis as I pop in and out. So, even though I have been telling my family about my assignment in Australia for months, many of them were shocked as I hugged them goodbye saying that I would be back in 3 years.

As I look at my aging Grandparents and my young nieces and nephew, I wonder what 3 years will look like in their lives. Here are young and old people that I love and who will be on the other side of the world from me. Three years in my life seems like a good commitment and not that long, but for grandparents and growing children, 3 years can make a world of difference.

So as I enjoy my time of lounging around and reading novels, I am also reflecting on where I am going and why. I have felt and continue to feel a strong call from God to go back to Australia. I wonder why God is calling me away from family and into times that feel uncertain. Yet as I look to the Bible I see others who were called to leave family and stability, to uproot and follow God’s call. Maybe I am in good company. I am not sure what the next months and days hold but I am trying to trust in the one who knows all and who is guiding my steps.