Day 4 on Mission in Port Hedland

Day 4 is Tuesday and we are in for a very busy day! The day started at 8am again at a different local primary school where we did the our puppet show twice. These went really well again, and the kids seemed to be very engaged. Following these two performances, we had to head straight over to another school to give the performance again. Another 2 shows! These were also really good. Also probably our biggest crowd! We finished the performances (which go for about 40-45mins each) by about midday and then headed over to the Port Hedland Anglican Church for another great lunch and team meeting.

Following these meetings I hung out with Ellisa at her billet's house for a bit. She has a cold and so has been pretty tired and sick so I looked after her as she rested. At about 4:30pm Wayne came and picked me up and we drove over to South Hedland to do some door knocking in the rough area of town. I was pretty nervous about this, but the local Christian guys assured me it would be fine, and after praying I felt pretty confident. Wayne and I were partnered up and we didn't have much luck at first. However we ended up meeting and blind Indigenous man, who was wandering down the street, named Moses. He said he was a Christian and was in Port Hedland for a funeral and we had a good chat about who Jesus was and what that meant for him. This was encouraging as despite his disabilities, he had a real faith. We prayed for him and then continued on our way.

We made our way into this block of semi-detached units that looked more like a rubbish tip than a place where people should live. One of the unit had burnt down about a while back and it seemed like all bar one of them were abandoned. We met a couple of Indigenous guys in this house (they were living with their family and as far as we could tell there were at least 8 people living in this 2 or 3 bedroom unit!). There had just recently been a death in their family so they were pretty upset. We talked with them for a while and prayed for them. Soon after this we ran into some boys who recognised us from our school performances earlier that day. What a great testimony that we were serious that we were here to tell people about Jesus, they see us in school and then on their streets! Funnily enough, they were adopting a pet joey (baby kangaroo) because their neighbour had shot the mum... only in Port Augusta I guess!

The day did not end with the door knocking (which we finished at around 6pm). From that It was back to my billet's house (my billet is Phillip who is the Senior Minister of the church) for what is called a 'dialogue dinner'. Before we arrived Phillip had invited a couple of non-Christian people who had some sort of connection with the church to his place for dinner to meet and talk with me and one of the other guys on the team (Matt). We had some great conversations with these guys about why even if our lives seem good we still need to put our faith in Jesus, and why we trust in Him.

Finally we went to bed! A busy but amazing day!

Things to pray for:

• Pray for all the people who heard the gospel proclaimed today, through the schools performances, the door knocking and conversations over dinner.
• Pray that many of these people would put their trust in Jesus
• Pray that Christians would be able to figure out ways to help people stuck in serious poverty and cycles of poverty and unemployment
• Give thanks for a great bunch of Christian people who care for the people of this community and are actively taking the Gospel out to the people who need it most.
• Pray for Ellisa, that she would get better soon
• Pray for me that I would lose my cough soon
• Pray that all the team would have lots of energy!

Day 4 will be a 'day off'...