Dear Christian Friends, 2 Aug 07
 
  Greeting to you from our home in Sydney.  July was a very busy month for
us.  If you recall I was on the road to Adelaide with the whole family when
I wrote my last mission letter.  The kids had three weeks off school and I
thought it would be a good time to hold a special meeting in Adelaide to be
an encouragement to the folks there.  We arrived in Adelaide after a two day
trip and we got there just before a wild storm hit the shore.  The wind was
blowing very hard and it rained and rained as well as being cold.  We didn’t
complain though, rain and stormy weather have been a rare thing since we
have been in Australia and we are just starting to get out of a seven year
drought.  We began the meeting on a Friday night and went through Sunday
afternoon.  It was a blessing to the folks there to have my whole family in
attendance and we even had the extra blessing of seeing two of our church
members from Cobbitty come to Adelaide for the special meeting.  Neville and
Sandra Moffitt have relatives living in Adelaide so they decided to pay them
a visit and come to the services as an encouragement to the people there.
All told we had 15 in attendance with two new visitors from the area.  To
add to this blessing the visitors returned on the fourth Sunday of the month
when I flew down for our regular services.  So we are very grateful to the
Lord for the good services and the safe travel back home.  The total
distance traveled for the trip was 1860 kilometers, that is about 1150
miles.  It was a long way but the kids loved it and we got to see allot of
things and places that we have never seen before.  The church in Cobbitty
agreed to pay for our accommodation while in Adelaide, which was quite
expensive, and the trip there and back was paid for out of our mission
account, so you will see a rise in travel expenses for this month.  Even
though the distance was long and the trip hard, I was once again reminded
what a need we have here of true churches.  There are some many small to
medium size towns we went through that have only an Anglican church or no
church at all.
 
  After getting back here to Sydney I was looking forward to the services in
my own church.  When Sunday came around we all got over to the school hall
and began the set up process so we can have services.  Just about the time I
finished setting up the sound system, I turned around and saw a young couple
that had just came in.  I immediately went down and shook their hand and as
the husband of the two talked I notice quickly I was hearing an American
accent.  Come to find out the young couple was from the Friendship
Missionary Baptist Church in Sacramento, California whose pastor is Bro.
Chris Silvey.  It was both a surprise and  a blessing to have Bro. and Sis.
Joey Jaco in our services.  It wasn’t until after I had finished all the
services for the day that I learned Bro. Jaco was a preacher who had just
been ordained by his church and that was a double blessing because the next
Sunday was my Sunday to be in Adelaide and Bro. Jaco graciously agreed to
fill in for me while I was away.  Bro. Jaco and I had several hours of
fellowship through the week before he left and I was so impressed with this
young man and hated to see him go back to California.  We so need good
sound, God called men in this country.
 
  Over the last couple weeks we have been fighting the flu bug.  Patti and I
both were sick last week with fevers and aches and pains and now this week
it is the kids turn.  As of right now we have five out of six kids sick with
fevers and upset stomachs.  I had three of them at the doctors yesterday and
he said this is just something that is going around.  It is always a very
trying time when you have so many sick at once.  We are up several times a
night checking temperatures and giving medicine.  But we are thankful we
live in a modern country with all the modern medicines to help alleviate the
symptoms.
 
  Before I close I want to mention that some of you might have noticed that
our website has been down for some time.  We lost our web space when I
changed Internet providers.  So what we have decided to do is purchase our
own domain name and web space through the church and have a permanent web
site which should be up shortly.  The new web site address is:
 
  We thank you all for your prayers and letters of support and encouragement
and of course we thank you for the financial help that you provide for us
here.
 
 
  By Grace,
 
  Bro. Jeff, Patti, Savannah, Sydney, Garrett, Ethan, Connor, and Chloe
 

 

 Dear Christian Friends                                         2 April 2008

 

Greetings from Mount Hunter, New South Wales.  We have finally finished our move and I don’t know if we are just accumulating more stuff or if I am getting older, but every time we have to move it hurts me more.   Moving is never a fun or  an exciting task, but this time it was a bit more bearable with the help of my two older girls.  Savannah and Sydney have really grown in the last couple years, both of which are as big as me and Patti.  Now that they are bigger they are allot of help moving boxes, furniture and all the other items that must be moved from one house to the other.   They were also a big help in putting things away, because as you know, moving is just one part of a big job, the other half is putting everything where it goes in the new place.  Although this move was hard, I do want to thank those churches who sent special offerings to help with some of the moving expenses, because of your generosity I was able to hire a moving truck for a couple days, which allowed us to carry more of our stuff in a single trip and thus not have to make so many trips back and forth, and I was able to hire a couple guys from a moving company to come in and move the big stuff that neither I or Patti could move, like the fridge and dressers and things like that.  

            Just for a little background on where we are now, Mount Hunter is a rural area just outside of where we were living.  We are about 20 minutes away from where we were living in the suburbs.  The house is setting on 5 acres and has about 2 acres in woods.  Just the other day while in those woods I saw two of Australia’s most poisonous snakes, an Eastern Brown snake, which kills more people each year than any other kind of snake, and a red bellied black snake which is venomous, but had rather run than bite and that is what he did when he saw us coming through the woods.  To add to this bit of flare in country living we have thus far caught six mice in the house, one bat, one lizard and one frog.  It has been quite an interesting first three weeks.  But I think everyone is settling in and kids are taking to country living very quickly.

            In other news, I had my monthly trip to Adelaide this past Sunday and I’m glad to report we had one new visitor there.  Harold and Terri Stewart who are the main two in attendance now brought there 22 year old daughter Tadem.  I was very encouraged by this new visitor and the fact that they all were very eager to learn more about the Sovereignty of God.  What a blessing to see people who are hungry for the truth.  Please pray for this family that the Lord might ground them in the truth.  To add to this good news, we have also been having a new visitor in our services at Cobbitty.  John has been attending now for three weeks.  He professes to be a Christian, but has been away from the Lord.  He said that there were some circumstances in his life that the Lord had used to cause him to see the need to be in church.  He commented that he had been looking around for several months for a good church to attend and every where he visited all they wanted to do was play games and sing the praises of liberal and modernistic preachers.  He seems to thoroughly enjoy the services and has asked me to pray for him.  So I ask that you join with me in praying for John that the Lord would cause him to grow and that John might get back in fellowship with the Lord.  He has taken a right step in coming to church and we pray that soon John might experience the joy of the Lord’s salvation once again.   

            Before I close for this month there is one more thing I would like you to pray with me about.  When we moved here to Mount Hunter we noticed a church building just off the main road.  It is a brick building, small, but in other wise good shape.  I noticed that the grass was very high, but at the road was an almost new sign.  I decided to call the number on the sign and ask about the church.  Come to find out the church is no longer in use and is owned by the Uniting church of Australia, (this is some Church of Christ, Methodist and few others that joined together into one church many years ago under the name Uniting church).  The man I spoke with told me that they would be interested in selling the church to us.  I am currently in negotiations with them about this, however it is slow going dealing with the hierarchy of this group.   They are supposed to be getting me a price and I’m hoping they will keep it low seeing we are a small church.  I would ask that you pray with us that if it is the Lord’s will for us to have this church building, then the sellers will keep the price low enough for us to be able to buy it.  If this works out, this church will be only about 3 minutes from our house.  Until next time.

 

 

            By Grace Alone,

 

            Bro. Jeff, Patti, Savannah, Sydney, Garrett, Ethan, Connor, and Chloe