#13 Second Trip to Australia

Our American and Australian Sports Club Team!

For any of you who have ever been on a mission trip where you were really able to connect with the people you met, probably found yourself thinking "I wish I could join my mission trip world and my home world.  I would love for all my friends and family to be able to meet each other!"  Unfortunately that usually doesn't happen because often times you don't even get to go back a second time, so you can forget about your family and friends going.    Thankfully I was really blessed that it actually was God's plan not only for me to get to go back to Australia a second time but I got to take some of my family and close friends with me!

During my first summer in Australia the Senior Pastor, Dan, had given me an assignment to create a project using my major (marketing) that would help the church in some way.  (I may not have described that very well, it was 8 years ago so its hard to remember, but that was the basic premise of the project.)  So I put together a proposal where I first used my observations about the community as well the statistics and data I had available to me to analyze the demographics of the community and then came up with some ideas of different ways the church could reach out to their community.  I had noticed that there were a lot of children in the community and that the community was passionate about sports.  As I've mentioned in past posts I had a lot of experience putting together sports camps so I ended up proposing that the church do a sports camp (but they called it a sports club) the following year and I would come back and bring a team to help their church run it.  I don't know that I thought this would really be feasible when I proposed it, but I did honestly want to come back and I loved the idea of bringing some of my family and friends.  To my surprise the senior pastor, Dan and my supervisor (the associate pastor) Andrew loved the idea and were  really excited about me bringing a team to help do a "sports club".  So the wheels were in motion but I was still a little skeptical (although excited) that this would actually happen.  I had Andrew and Dan excited but they still needed to get it approved by the elders at the church and I had to go home and find out if I could put together a decent size team of experienced people who would be willing to raise the money to fly across the world and help us do this sports club.

The American Team!

When I got home I found out it wasn't going to be as challenging as I thought. My friends and family that I invited to come were really excited (I mean who wouldn't be excited about a trip to Australia?)  God worked things out and I was able to get together an awesome team.  My brothers, Rob and Chad and my sister in law Julie agreed to come as well as my best friend Amy and her sister Beth.  Rob got two of his students from his youth group, Chris and Laura, to come. I also had some other friends from my home church sign up, Bridget, Kristina, Megan, Mike, Zach and Stacey.  It was a GREAT team and we got to work with an amazing church.

I went over about a month ahead of the rest of my team so I could help make preparations for the sports club and the mission team's arrival.  The Australian coordinator for the sports club was a wonderful man named David French, and he was such a pleasure to work with on this project.  He had been making many preparations to get people from North Pine Baptist involved before I arrived and he had a great local team in place.  He also had host families arranged and had already started promotions for the club.   It was great to work with David and it was so good to be back with my Australian family. Some things were different of course but for the most part it felt like I was able to pick up right where I left off in my relationships with these dear friends.  I felt so blessed to be back and I was actually going to be able to join these two worlds for a brief time.

The team was there for about 10 days. The first few days were spent sight seeing and making final plans for Sports Club.  We had a fun trip to Brisbane which I remember included a ridiculously funny subway ride home, we were all very tired and Chris had us laughing hysterically pretending to be stuck in between the trains.  Yeah... we were definitely those loud obnoxious Americans during that part of the trip. We also got to spend a day at the beach where I believe they got to try some fish and chips. That's one of the food items I miss the most about Australia, it just isn't the same here! On Sunday the team led the morning and evening worship services and spent all of Sunday afternoon getting the Australian  volunteers and the American team together to work out all details for the sport times, morning celebration and of course the all important run-on skit! It was the super heroes them, which was my personal favorite theme!

It was a great week, we had a lot of kids.  I don't remember the exact number. I want to say close to a 100 maybe???  We had to battle some rain issues.  It had not rained there in a really long time yet that week it rained a lot. Thankfully they have a great space at their church and we were able to do a lot of things inside on the rainy days.  The teams worked beautifully together.  Everyone had a great time and I think some really special friendships were formed between the host families and mission teams as well as the all the sports club workers. I know it was a week the American team will remember for the rest of their lives. It makes me smile whenever I see my American friends and family and Australian friends comment on each others Facebook.  One time recently I found my self thinking, "how do they know each other??" Then I remembered oh yeah... you took them to Australia with you! 

We ended the week with a cook out or barbeque as the Aussies would say and a really fun trip to the Australia Zoo.  (Well there was a bad accident on the way that was not a fun experience but I think most everyone enjoyed themselves the rest of the day.)  However unfortunately we did not get to see Steve Erwin, which was disappointing but they did get to hold a Koala, pet kangaroos and see a crocodile show!

Most of the team went home after our trip to the zoo, but my brother Rob and his two students Chris and Laura stayed and we went up to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef and some other sights. We had a great time even though I picked the wrong part of the reef to go see.  You should go to the Outer Reef I believe for the most spectacular snorkeling or scuba diving.  We went to the inner reef which was okay and we did see a sea turtle and shark (well Chris "supposedly" saw a shark) but I wish I had known better and we had splurged for the outer experience. Sorry Rob, Laura and Chris!  We also got to go up into the rainforest which was pretty cool. 

Little Sally Walker goes to Australia!

After our long weekend Rob, Laura and Chris went home and I stayed another few weeks to wrap up things with the sports club follow up and say goodbye to the wonderful friends I had made in Australia. I even tried briefly to get a job there.  I went as far as going on an interview but I wasn't qualified for the job as I was only a recent college graduate.  I know now it was not in God's plan for me to stay there, although I was very willing at the time.


I treasure my times in Australia and the wonderful friends I was able to make over those two Summers (Winters for them).  As I said in my last post maybe one day God will surprise me and I will get to go back but even if I don't I feel so blessed that not only was I able to go back to this land that I fell in love with during my first trip, but I was also able to take some of my dear friends and family from my side of the world with me so that they could also experience a taste of the wonderful things I was able to experience.  Not very many people get to do that. I am so very blessed!