Underground Reality: Columbia

This documentary is the sequel to the Underground Reality: Vietnam documentary, and follows the same premise. Seven young adults go to Columbia to deepen their understanding of the difficulties that Christians in Columbia face.

There are a few major differences between the situation in Vietnam and the situation in Columbia – basically expressed in that Vietnam is a restricted nation (i.e. the government restricts the activities of Christians, and so most of the persecution comes from the government) and that Columbia is a hostile area (so the government doesn’t persecute the Christians, and even tries to provide some protection, but many of the people do). Columbia is one of the major producers of drugs, and there is a lot of violence and accompanying crime in Columbia. Christians, especially pastors and evangelists, are targeted due to their involvement (both real and perceived) in getting people out of the drug situation and turning their lives around. Those who were previously involved in the drug scene are frequent victims.

This is a great accompaniment to the Vietnam documentary, though I didn’t find it as engaging. It really deepens your understanding of what it means to live a life consecrated to God.

You can buy this documentary from the Voice of the Martyrs website.

Sam is planning to have a parachute making night at her house to make parachutes to help distribute Christian literature and Bibles to areas where people cannot go. Please either comment if you would like to be involved, or email her at samismad [at] hotmail [dot] com

Hobart Mission Trip (Hope Frankston) Part 2

We arrived in Hobart on a Wednesday night and the boys were there to pick us up. The first order of business was to meet our host church and acquaint ourselves with the people we would be serving. We had supper with the Hobart CCM Leaders who are ministering at the University of Tasmania (UTAS) sharing our struggles and successes.

When Thursday came along, Hannah and I were pumped up and ready to do some evangelism. That is exactly what we did. The team met up and had breakfast together as we planned our strategy for the day. As we shared a meal, we prayed, read Scripture and even prophesied over each other.

Our target area: Salamanca market and Elizabeth Street Mall (Equivalent to Bourke Street Mall (MEL), Pitt Street Mall (SYD), Queen Street Mall (BNE)).

Our tools: Tracts, Survey Form designed by Cornerstone Gospel Church in Frankston and prayer.

We started our evangelistic endeavours without much success around the Salamanca market area. Refusing to be disheartened, we pressed on in search of people who would be open to listen to the gospel. Eventually we met up with some CCMers at Elizabeth Street Mall and it was there that we began to see some fruit. We met several people who were open to the gospel and interested to come along for a service or a CCM event. A majority of those who were open were from mainland China. There was also a Japanese exchange student and a handful of Aussies.

After that, we followed David Mounster (Evangelism Leader in Hope Hobart) as he went from street to street with a unique but amazing method of evangelism called “toasting”. David would talk to many young people (primarily rebellious teenagers) and asked if they would like to be ‘toasted’. He describes it as a spiritual experience that is better than the highs of drugs, cigarettes or alcohol. If they agreed, David would lay hands on the youth and ask God to reveal himself. Many youth experienced the touch of God in different ways, such as peace, exhilaration or a current running through their bodies. If anyone was injured, David would pray for healing and there have been many testimonies of youth with injuries (arm in a cast for example) receiving miraculous healing.


To Be Continued...

Review: Invisible Children

This DVD is now pretty famous, after the get rid of Kony twitter/facebook campaign and one of the maker’s going off the rails and running through the streets naked, or something like that. Anyway, this documentary is the start of the Invisible Children organisation.

It’s a very moving piece, and some of the scales of things are immense – seeing the literally hundreds upon hundreds of night commuters in one building is incredible. It seems hard to believe that that many children are all in one place, all without many basic safeguards and amenities.

The extras are interesting (especially the music video that they make – it’s hilarious!).

Things to be aware of with this doco are that most of the information is out of date. Kony is predominately no longer in Uganda (mostly in the DRC), and so night commuting is much less of an issue than it used to be. It’s also a lot more political than other documentaries or books – it really wants the US to get involved an eliminate Kony, which isn’t really a practical solution or what I believe we should be working for as Christians.

But it is a great doco to watch to learn about some of the issues that Uganda and the surrounding countries has faced in the recent past.

Local Mission Trip Opportunity

If you have a passion for young people, and want to go on a mission trip, but have concerns about going overseas or can't make that kind of commitment at present, then you may want to look into being a Red Frog volunteer.

Red Frogs is a chaplaincy group that goes to Schoolies events and acts as a sober person at Schoolies parties. They are extremely vital, as this week (17th to 24th of November) sees a LOT of very hard partying, and the problems that go with such partying. And most of the people involved are teenagers, who aren't known for making the best decisions.

Visit the Red Frog website for more information, or speak to Sam and she'll put put you in touch with people who have done Red Frogs before.

John Stott

"We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God."

Day Three - Extra Photos

I thought you might like to see some of my extra photos from this day! I hope you enjoy them!

Review: Missionaries in Action

This is a series of short auto-biographies from the perspective of different Australians who have been or are involved in missions, either within Australia or overseas.

To be honest, I usually find short pieces more difficult to read than longer pieces, especially after the first piece. I need time to digest what I’ve read, and with short pieces, I need to think it over more frequently, which makes things difficult at times. This really wasn’t helped by the fact that the first essay is by far the weakest in the book.

But once I got past the terrible first piece, I found the rest of the stories very engaging. The wide focus is useful for those who feel called to missions but who don’t know where to start, or even what is happening world-wide.

One of the stories that most excited me was that of the Kirschs – the couple who started Celebrate Messiah, which actually operates near where I live. Their testimony and ministry is especially interesting to me, because I have a lot of school friends who are Jewish, and my grandfather was ethnically Jewish (he and his mother converted to Christianity). But most of the stories (indeed, all but the first) were interesting and engaging, and inspired me to realise that just like these people, I can participate in missions within Australia, and worldwide.

Day Three: Friday 15.06.2012 – Part 2

Then we moved on to the Joshua Primary School, the school Bushikori runs. Most of the children in the school are sponsored. There are some students from the general community, as the school is very good, with dedicated teachers and ‘small’ class sizes of 30-50 children in each class. This is less than a quarter of the size of many government funded schools, which have over 200 children in each class.

We greeted each of the classes, and I got to meet my sponsor daughter Shamimu. She looked very surprised and shy. I hugged her, I was so excited. She is in P2. Esther has a sponsor son in the same class, Wycliffe (after the reformer) which was an added blessing.


Next we saw the new staff room and viewed the land where they are planning to build a dining hall for the children.

Our next stop was the recently built library, which is open to the entire community. I was able to talk a lot with Linus about a shared love for reading, about getting a catalogue system that works, and finding a way of supplying them with more books.

We had some morning tea at the library, then continued with the tour. Next stop was the medical clinic, where they provide a lot of care for the people of Mbale. Aside from general medical needs, they have a lab to test samples (especially for malaria), a pharmacy, three wards and a maternity wing. They do a lot of immunisations at the clinic. While there, we saw a family Esther has especially been praying for, who lost the father, one child, and their house in a fire. She has 3 children, 2 who escaped the fire and the other who was in utereo at the time. The oldest child was being treated at the hospital (not for burns, the fire was over 2 years ago). I’m not sure what for. Esther prayed with the child.

The next stop was to see the tree-project. Bushikori is working to provide stability for its people in terms of income, fire-wood, and off-setting global warming. They are growing seeds of fast-growing firewood trees and of fruit trees, which they then distribute as seedlings to people in the community. Last month they distributed over 20,000 seedlings!


The tour was over, so we headed back to the library for lunch and then to plan the rest of our stay. Aside from planning that we would be resting tomorrow and working out the time that I need to go back, we didn’t actually fill in much. Sunday is church, and next Saturday is the commissioning day.

We went home and rested, and then had dinner with Anne. We talked about some of the challenged that Bushikori faces, including students dropping out (sometimes having children) and living lives that and not materially much better off than their parents did. It is very challenging for everyone involved, especially the staff who have put so much effort into mentoring these children.

Aside from that, we had our first power outage this trip! It didn’t last long as there is the President staying in the area. We saw his entourage coming home, but we didn’t see him. There were armed police everywhere. There were a few political protests, but not much, and there didn’t appear to be any fear associated with them.

Review: Underground Reality: Vietnam

This is a documentary aimed at youth produced by Voice of the Martyrs. It documents eight teenagers (from America and Australia, including the guy who went on to become Australia’s VOM youth director) who travel to Vietnam and interact with members of the underground church, recording some of their stories, whilst smuggling Bibles into the country.

I really recommend this documentary! It’s a wonderful resource to expand your knowledge of life for believers in Vietnam, under a communist government. It also gives insight into how difficult life can be for believers elsewhere in the world (even outside Vietnam) – something that many Christians in the West do not know or understand. It will also help you pray for the persecuted church around the world and for the lost in these and other countries.

You can buy this DVD from the Voice of the Martyrs website, and you can also sign up for regular updates via email and newsletter of those who need prayer and what you can do to help Christians around the world.

Day Three: Friday 15.06.2012 – Part 1

Today was a massive day! When we had gotten up we waited for John to take us to Bushikori. We drove through Mbale, then to the road that goes to BCC. The road is quite bad, with lots of potholes and dust.

Once we got there, there was a massive greeting, with the children singing a song. There was a sign up welcoming us (I was sister Elizabeth! I was asked what my second name was, so I said Elizabeth instead of my surname. Because they switch the order of names to have the surname first, and Elizabeth is a common name here, they thought that was my name.) Esther was given a bunch of flowers and there were many people waiting to take photos. One of the staff, Ignatius, took Esther’s camera to get lots of photos of us.

Then the tour started. Esther hasn’t been since 2003, and Bushikori has grown a lot since then!



The first stop was Anne’s office, where we met Michael. (Michael has visited Esther in Australia, and was here in 2003, so it was a re-meeting for them.) He was one of the 13 original sponson children, orphaned by HIV. Now he is the headmaster of a very large primary school (which takes some Bushikori children) and is making a difference in the lives of children like him.



We talked a bit about the growing needs of Africa, and how in a lot of areas international support is drying up as not enough of a difference is being made for the donors. I know from speaking to a few people at Bushikori that it worries them – firstly if they are doing enough and secondly if the support will continue even with the difficulties and failures. I pointed out that Australia has a lot of generational problems – of generation after generation being involved with drugs and alcohol or just never getting jobs, and how we spend lots of time and effort on trying to reach these children – and sometimes we’re successful and sometimes we aren’t. But we need to try, because some DO make it out, and sometimes it surprises you which ones it is.

The next stop was to visit Linus. He’s a head of a department, but I’m not sure which one. He had recently been severely burnt all across his face, neck and shoulders (November 2011). Esther, who had seen the photos, was surprised that he was the same person! There was initially concerns that he would lose sight and that his mouth would be damaged, and that he would be scarred for life. But with much prayer he is now almost completely healed! Praise God! It truly is a miracle in his life. The only place with any scarring left is his chest, and that is where they were not expecting much scarring, as his chest was covered with clothes at the time of the burn, which would have provided some protection.

We met the other heads, and learnt about the childcare department especially. Here it involves a lot of things – from making sure that all the children have mosquito nets and bedding to providing food at school to checking that things are okay at home. There are over 400 children currently being sponsored (most from Australia) so this is a lot of work.

To sponsor a child, please go to the Bushikori website, or see Sam and she’ll put you in touch with those in charge of child sponsorship. Fees are $320 a year for children in primary school, $320+ hostel fees for secondary school children. There are also scholarship funds for those who are at university.