hello there! how is everyone?? hope well.
okay, so thought it was about time to make a little entry. am sitting in a bit of a dodgy internet cafe in sunshine (the also dodgy suburb im living in) with an abundance of computer game addicted chinese people shouting obscenities in frustration of just being shot by the dude three computers down. nice.
Well i cannot believe we've been here for over a month now. the time is just flying past so fast. but we all kind of expected that.
We certainly have got really stuck in. i am loving the work so so much. and have also fallen in love with melbourne. its great. its winter now, and ruddy freezing. but thats pretty refreshing after 8 months of scorching heat. quite enjoying it actually.
so yeh, we live in a suburb called Sunshine. nothing like its name suggests. nah its fine really. its about 20 mins outside the city. we catch the train into the city everyday to get to work. conveniently our place is right next to the station, so you can run out with a cheese sandwhich 1 minute before your train leaves.
so, im in the life centre every morning (explained in the previous entry). i have totally fallen in love with this, just love it. we get loads of homeless people coming through, as well as the rest, drug addicts, prostitutes etc. it all goes hand in hand im sad to say. but yeh ive really got to know the regulars now, and have built up great realtionships. i love them. such cool guys, who have been shunned all their life but now have a little bit of hope and happiness out of the salvos. oh by the way the salvos are so well respected over here, not like back home. no brass band jokes this end!! hahhahahaa. ooo that makes me think of harold from, neighbours, which leads me nicely on to my little expedition last week to ramsey street. yes, thats right, i was prancing around nicely outside lous place and harolds house. it was great. actually pretty sureal. its a lot smaller than it looks. were going again with a mate from work here who knowsd the film crew really well, so we'll go when theyre filming and hopefully get to hang out with the extremely talented actors and actressess. no sarcasm there.
erm so what was i talking about. yeh work, so after the life centre theres something different going on every afternoon. we have loads of community groups - basically if anyone who comes along to the life centre has an interest in something, we set up a club for them. so theres anything from fishing and chess club to the almightily inspiring book club. we also have a community lunch every tuesday where we get stacks of people coming for a free 3 course meal, really gives a sense of cimmunity for them all. we give out food parcels everyday. and also offer a service called ER which is run every morning too. here we interview people who may have a bit of a desperate immediate need, and provide the approriate stuff for that - being a food voucher or referral to a particular service (housing trust, rehab etc). erm loads of the clients come to church on sunday as well. which is just awesome. its so relaxed, just because of the people youve got coming. have been really involved in worship since the start, and its been really great. last week, we had a handful of our regulars just rocking out all over the joint, dancing around, being totally undignified - not initiated by us as well. admittedly most were wasted from alcohol and heroin, but at least for a couple of minutes they had soemthing to be happy about.
i aboslutely love being with these guys, just yeh theyre a whole bunch of decnet people who have a lot to offer when you give them a bit of time.

okay am absolutely desperate to go to the loo so will end here before i have an accident.

hope everyones well, miss you all hugely. please keep praying. any questions please feel free to post a message on here or email me personally. i promise ill get back to you as soon as i can.
take care

x