PRAC WEEK HERE WE COME!

The Prac Week season has begun! This is when we head out in small teams to serve the community through the church and para-church organisations. This semester one team left just yesterday for Cooma, to serve the church and our team leaves tomorrow to serve with the Salvation Army in Sydney. Just to give us a heads up for working with the disadvantaged our team began the week spending two days working alongside the clients at Mission Australia's Triple Care Farm. This is a drug rehab for 16-24 year olds and it's situated about half an hour from us on 100 acres of beautiful farm land. We made some really good friendships there and on Wednesday we invited them back to work with us on our property. Six came and we had a great morning of work followed by a delicious lunch and then a trip into Bowral to enjoy a GREAT coffee. This is real ministry. A lot of the clients find it hard to talk about everyday stuff, instead they talk about their 'party' lifestyle so we encouraged them as we spoke of things like food, cars, movies and music and even computers! It was great and we look forward to returning before the end of term to build up these friendships.

A lot of the work we do is all about building relationships. This is what Jesus did - all ministry should be through relationship - that's the difference Jesus makes! We go to give and there's a lot of love that we can share from Jesus. We always top ourselves up by having a Quiet Time at the start of everyday so that all that we do is the outflow of our own relationship with Jesus. Our aim is to be led by the Spirit in all that we do and simply join in with what God is already doing. Sounds easy but often we can get in the way!!

At TCF it was interesting that as we helped them to paint their chicken pens it was very easy to strike up conversations. Our guys were able to share lots of what we do and what we believe in a very easy going environment. We were also able to learn lots about the backgrounds of the clients. Somehow it seems unfair that they have had to face so much heartache and hurt in their lives, but we believe whatever their experiences, there's nothing that Jesus cannot redeem them from or forgive. God loves to use all our experiences for his glory and maybe help us to relate to others who have experienced the same as us.

In a little over a week I'll be able to share a lot of the stories of our team experiences and encourage you how Jesus is using us to make a difference in this world. I already know that even though we go to give we will also receive so much more - just wait and see...

HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND AND A TERRIFIC WEEK!

STEVE aka WOODSEY