Outreach Week #6
For our last/final week of outreach we made our way up to Airlie Beach. We arrived there on July 8th and unpacked all of our stuff at the YWAM house in Airlie (the same house we stayed at while doing the Chai Tent). That night we had dinner and got settled in and met our new team member Melanie. Melanie is from Germany and was in Brisbane to start the School of Biblical World View for our base. They had just finished running the school and she was backpacking around and liked what our outreach was about and asked if she could join. So we all had seen her around the base so it wasn't awkward having her come to spend the rest of outreach with us so we invited her to stay. Wednesday was our day off so we went to go check out the town and look for different outreach opportunities to set up for the next week and hung out there for the whole day. On Thursday we started our actual outreach part. We headed down to the beach after intercession and worship to go set up the volleyball net. A lot of backpackers travel alone so we had a pretty good number of them show up to play. It was fun, however a lot of the backpackers interested in volleyball were guys. But it was a good time, a lot of them agreed to come for the next week and most of them did. A lot of the backpackers however were coming and going ut three of the guys were actually living there which was cool. Once it got dark we set down everything and went back to the house for dinner. On Friday we did the same thing with the volleyball net except later in the afternoon we did a sausage sizzle for the backpackers who were playing. It was a great opportunity to tell them about why we were in Australia (Bible School) and just get the word out that we were Christians. We prayed for the food and everything and had a good time talking to the backpackers. We then went back to playing volleyball and Maegan our leader got into a really good conversation with one of the girls and was able to witness to her while they watched us play. A lot of people just came to watch us play volleyball because there's not much to do in Airlie Beach except go on the sailing trips to the Whitsunday's and the Great Barrier Reef which is why it's a popular place to start with. In the evening we had dinner and one of the guys who played volleyball came over for a movie night at the house which was cool. Our guys really got to connect with him. He was from the States and was travelling with 5 other friends from the States as well so it was good to create that friendship because for the rest of the week his friends came to play volleyball. On Saturday we went into town and invited some of the people to come to the waterfalls just outside of Airlie Beach. No one was able to come but we walked around town for awhile incase we saw anyone who we had met before who would want to come. While walking around Luke Fritzke saw 2 girls from Swift Current! One of them was Alley a girl who I had met when I was in quizzing. I was good friends with some of her friends and for a few of the quiz meets we hung out a lot. So it was awesome to see her and her friend Justine. They had just finished doing Capenwray in Perth and were travelling for a couple of weeks before going back. So they came to the waterhole along with Jeremy, the guy who was renting the YWAM house. After going to the waterfalls we went back to the house to make some food. Once we got there Melanie was back from her day snorkelling trip to the Whitsunday's with another girl that she had met from France. So we got to all hang out and have another movie night. On Sunday July 13th our whole outreach team went to one of the local churches and got the YWAM name out among them. After church we went to the house and had lunch then took the volleyball net down to the main beach again with some sausages. A lot of people showed up to the volleyball game so we had a mini tour which was good. Alley, Justine, Jeremy, and Melanie's french friend came and played so it was really good to have so many people involved especially because a lot of backpackers came to hang out. The American who we had the movie night with brought all of his friends and we played until a hour or so after the sun went down. It was so much fun. Then afterwards we all were sitting around and one of the girl backpackers from Germany started talking about religion with COrina. So we all were sitting and casually talking about Christianity. She was absolutely brilliant. She was a philosophy person who loved reading up on different philosophers and beliefs. She came up with different complaints that many have against Christianity and we were able to tell her different truths. One of the topics was on a absolute truth or one reality. She said that some people believe that we are all living in a dream that seems like reality but in fact we are just sleeping and dreaming. We talked about the book that our focus group was reading at home called Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis which talked about absolute truth. It was so interesting to talk to her about it, it was good. We invited her back to our place so she came over and Corina was able to talk to her more and more about God. By the end of the night Corina gave her a Bible and she told us that she was going to read it. The next morning was Monday July 14th which was our last morning in Airlie so we packed everything up and headed to 1770 where we were going to spend a couple of days. Our experience in Airlie Beach was different than any of our other weeks we had. The volleyball net was a very good tool for ministry and it was very effective. We were able to just chill with the backpackers and have a great time. Everyone seemed to love it. We were able to reach people from very different places in the world like France, Germany, U.S.A, Ireland, Israel, etc through playing volleyball. It was so good to see all these people from everywhere able to have fun and talk about anything.
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