“Because of the high unemployment rate [in Kenya], wages are quite low, and we were able to afford a maid. Our kids were able to be looked after easier than [in Australia]. In Africa, as it is in Asia and South America, life is alot more family oriented – our children were involved in so many more activities.”

He says the benefits far outweigh the challenges.

“I had people come to me and suggest it was irresponsible to take a four and two year old to Africa. It was our pastor then who came to our defense and said that he would argue Australia was a more dangerous place than Kenya spiritually, because of the self-absorption and secularism in Australia.”

His youngest son Stephen realises that he misses out on a backyard swimming pool and a PS3, because his dad was called out of a potentially lucrative career as a GP and instead into the overseas mission field. But Dr Djoeandy says his kids are richer because of the multicultural experiences.

“It’s a privilege for me to serve in this role. Sure, I’m earning a lot less money, but money is not everything. A good friend of mine says happiness is not what you have, it’s what you appreciate.”

Dr Omar Djoeandy is speaking in Canberra this Saturday night on “living courageously”, as part of the Canberra Mission Marketplace. He will cover: fulfilling Christ’s mission to be involved in local, cross cultural and global mission; overcoming our fears; building relationships; serving within community; and more.

One of Dr Djoeandy’s core messages is the need to get over what he calls “analysis paralysis”: “We keep saying ‘I need to pray about it’ or ‘I need to get more training’ – well that’s all true, but at the same time we need to be careful that that doesn’t become our comfort zone. I’ve made lots of mistakes, but I’ve learnt from that, and I’m taking one step at a time – and just doing it.”

For more from Dr Omar Djoeandy on cross cultural mission, local mission, business as mission, hearing God’s call, as well as Omar’s personal story, you can listen to an interview conducted this week on Canberra’s 1WAY FM – download MP3 here (31:25).

• For more information about SIM Australia, see their website.
• For more information about the Canberra Mission Marketplace, see the Mission ACTion Network website.

Other interviews conducted recently by Tim:

• Alistair Coe MLA on his involvement with Operation Christmas Child (download MP3 – 3:01)
• Gordon Ramsey on Anti-Poverty Week in the ACT (download MP3 – 3:28)

I’m still finishing off final planning arrangements (and making sure I haven’t forgotten anything…) for the main meeting venue. Then I’ll be out there from Sunday afternoon till…probably the next Sunday afternoon. After two and half years of thinking, praying and planning it’s finally here!

I’ve got a lot to do this weekend so the point of this post is short and simple. It’s to remind you that if you’re not taking part in Soul in the City as a full time participant in projects and the like, you can still attend the evening meetings, which are free, from 7pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday next week, out at EPIC in North Canberra. They’ll be a night of worship, teaching and ministry, with Matt Gelding speaking on one night, Mike Pilavachi on three, and Tim Costello on the final night.

For more details see www.soulinthecity.org.au.

I’m sure I’ll have a bit to write here after the event too.

Hope to see you there!

I haven’t written much yet on my reflections of almost three weeks in my new job, and it’s 11 o’clock at night now so this certainly won’t be a long post. But I have a lot to write, and that will all be coming before too long. It might happen this weekend. But this weekend, the first thing I really should focus on is getting my tax done which, incidentally, was due last night. Oops.

Being appointed as a director of CCRL means that I can bring youth representation to the board. With the current General Manager, Bill Kitto, resigning as of the end of the year, this could be important as we don’t yet know who the incoming General Manager will be, and whether they will be as open to youth involvement as Bill is.

That’s not the only reason I nominated for the board though. For any organisation that I work for, volunteer for, or am involved with in some capacity I try to learn as much as I can in order to do the best I can in my job. As I see it, knowledge is power. The more you know – the more fingers you have in the pie – the better job you can do. I intend to be involved with 1WAY FM for some time, and if I can’t see things from the board’s perspective when planning and implementing new ideas in my position as Project Manager, then I’m not making the most of my capacity. Also, if I have ideas that need to go to the board first, then of course by being on the board I’d be able to present them myself and aim for a faster turnaround time.

And I thoroughly enjoy learning. I try to learn whatever I can out of everything I do because I know that anything could be helpful to me later down the track. This is the learning phase of my life, after all. And I’m sure that I will gain alot of valuable insight and experience at the board level through this appointment.

1WAY FM’s purpose is to present the reality of Jesus Christ through radio and other media, and as the world moves forward, I think it’s important for 1WAY FM to move forward with it – and further establish itself as Canberra’s alternative music radio choice. Through this, it can bring more people to Christ and challenge those who are already saved to continue stepping forward.

There was alot of discussion tonight about the appointment of the new directors – including the fact that it could be a conflict of interest having a salaried staff member on the board. That was largely put aside with the suggestion that I could be asked to temporarily stand down for any decisions where that conflict of interest would come into play.

I guess I saw my appointment tonight as an endorsement, and as encouragement, to continue pursuing further involvement in this new phase of my life. The vast majority of my time will now be spent on 1WAY FM – using my skills and ideas to make changes, in order to take 1WAY FM into the future and help it effectively accomplish its mission.

That’s what I think – based on what God has revealed to me so far – that my life’s purpose is. To use my unique skills to help missions accomplish their God given mission. Once I have done my season at one mission, another one will be awaiting me. This is what I’m pretty sure I’m heading towards. But you know, this could only be part of it. God could have anything in mind for me!

We’ve been here in Thailand now for over a week, and it’s just under three weeks until I go back home to Canberra. People ask me how it’s going, and how I’m feeling, and really, at the moment everything just feels normal. I’ve been to Thailand twice before – spent a total of 9 weeks here before this trip – so I know the culture, I know how to get around, and I know a bit of the language. We’re living in an apartment that could easily be an apartment back home (as far as living conditions go, apart from the filtered water), and I’ve joined the sports club in the complex so I’m swimming and going to the gym often. We have broadband Internet access, and I’m using my laptop, and we’re eating food that I’m quite happy with. I’ve been off work since the end mid June so it doesn’t even feel like a holiday as such.

It feels normal, almost as if I’m back in Canberra.

So for me, this doesn’t feel any different yet. In two weeks, when it gets close to the time when I’m preparing to leave, and preparing to say goodbye to my family, I will perhaps start feeling a bit different.

It’s great to be overseas again. Being brought up having a major family holiday each year, and with a dad who loves travelling, I’ve always had my own itchy feet for travel. This is my first overseas trip in two years, and my first one since turning 18. That means I’ve got new travelling things to think about, such as making sure my bills are paid, and that my bank knows I might be using my credit card over here. And being out of Australia again I’m returning to those thoughts of where I might end up when I’ve finished this “phase” of my life – may I come back to Thailand to live, or perhaps Germany (I’ve always loved Germany since learning the language in high school). I’m thinking it very possible that I might go and grab an around the world ticket after another year or so of work to see what’s out there before making a decision on where to go…

One of my tasks here in the past week has been to set up my family’s tech gear. If you asked me what the biggest challenge was, then I’d say – and it still is a challenge – reassuring dad that the phone calls we’re making to Australia really are costing only 10c, and are not being timed. The second biggest challenge would have been finding the little peice of technology that allows us to do this. It’s called an Analog Telephony Adapter (or VoIP adapter), and essentially it lets us plug a standard telephone into the Internet to make cheap calls over it. Being a fairly new and unknown technology even in the Western world, it wasn’t easy to locate over here. We ended up looking through probably about 30 IT stores over two IT centered shopping plazas before we found one store that sold them.

The end result – we have a Canberra based phone number here that works just like a Canberra based phone number. People from Canberra can call us for the cost of a local call, and we can call anywhere in Canberra (or in fact, in Australia) for just 10c untimed. The only downside is that because we don’t have a super fast Internet connection, we need to limit our Internet usage whilst someone is on the phone – as long as we do that, the quality of the call is no different to normal.

In other news, I ate my first real spicy thai dish today. It was hot. I can’t remember what it was, but I saw it sitting there at the food court in the shopping mall near our place, and I thought I’d just go and give it a try. I do remember it had some sort of meat in it, as well as some greens, rice, and of course chilli. I ate it in rounds, and had plain white rice in between each round in an attempt to nullify the spicy aftertaste. Three rounds took me to the end of the plate. In between each round, I would wait for perhaps 3 or 4 seconds before it started. My tounge burned, my throat burned, and my nose ran, but I managed to tell my family that I would never do this if I was going out to lunch with someone for the purposes of conversation.

Turns out that I did make it through the ordeal, and it wasn’t all that bad. It was probably very mild compared to what Thai people sometimes eat, but I’m really not used to it. I’ll wait till tomorrow to see what the pain is like at the other end before I decide whether I’ll do it again.

Anyway, I’m off, we’re going over to Matt’s new school this afternoon – apparently on Sundays they have a get together with a soccer game and a swim, or something along those lines. It is incredibly hot today, compared to what it has been like during the last week, so I’m thinking a swim will be excellent.

Cheers

Tim

Every single Soul conference that I’ve been to so far has been different from the last, and this one was no exception. Rather than being primarily a participant, I was this time primarily an organiser. I was on the site operations team, and my job was to manage the main tent – basically the tent/pavillion/marquee/whatever you want to call it where the two main meetings each day (morning and evening) were held.

Although it took up most of my time at the conference, it was still great fun. I usually only enjoy things if I’m learning something from it, and this certainly fit the bill – I learnt alot practically about venue & event management: everything from managing volunteers to the different types of pro audio cable ends. The volunteers on my team were fantastic – including one person who donated the use of his cameras and video switching equipment (probably worth a combined total of at least $15,000) and another who just knows exactly how to work the visual side of things (eg. lyrics, cameras, lighting) to ensure the best appropriate worship setting for those attending the meeting.

The main meetings consisted of announcements, worship through song, a talk from a different speaker each time (with names such as Jim Yost – an American missionary in Papua, Mike Pilavachi – director of Soul Survivor Global, Hugh Evans – humanitarian and previous Young Australian of the Year, and Matt Gelding – director of Soul Survivor NSW), more worship through song, and an invitation to the Holy Spirit to join the meeting. Many things happened – including people being healed, people coming to the Lord, and people making big decisions – something which I identify with well because it’s exactly what I was going through two years ago when I decided to sell my business.

The conference of course didn’t just consist of the main meetings – there were also three seminar sessions a day, where three to four seminars were available at once, presented by a number of different speakers on issues such as speaking prophecy, caring for the environment, creativity in worship, world and local missions, reading the Bible, spiritual warfare, serving, praying, leadership, youth work, intimacy with God…. and more. I only really got to one seminar (but have ordered a bunch of others on CD) which was with Maaike Starreveld from Soul Survivor Holland. She spoke honestly and openly about her experiences and the one main thing I took away from her talk was – “If you get distracted while praying or worshipping, perhaps God is trying to tell you something”. I often get distracted and try to push the distraction away – but Maaike told of times when she has been distracted whilst praying by, for example, objects such as lamps on the other side of the room. In that circumstance, God was trying to talk to her about being a light. It sounds simple – but was an oh so helpful realisation for me.

The other thing I took away from the week was a bunch of new friends and acquaintances. I met alot of people on the Soul team, especially the site operations team, and I’m sure I’ll be seeing alot more of those people in future.

I’ve created a very short video of some of the happenings – all in the main tent because that’s where I was:

At the moment I’m really looking forward to next year. Soul Survivor NSW is moving away from the conference format to mimic what Soul Survivor UK has done – and create ‘Soul in the City’. Rather than a week long conference format focussed on feeding and growing young Christians, Soul in the City (and it’s younger sibling ‘Soul in the Suburbs’) is focussed on young people serving others. Soul in the City 2008, based in Canberra (yay!), will involve five days of meeting together in the same ‘main meeting’ format, but then going out and serving the community through a wide variety of projects. I don’t have any idea yet what these projects are going to be, but they’ll likely range from things like gardening to community sporting events, and from cleaning to IT work.

Here’s a video that shows a bit about Soul in the City in London:

I can’t wait till that comes to Canberra – it’s going to be fun and challenging to help organise it, and it’s going to touch alot of people.

It was Sunday morning when we found out that one of our friends in Thailand died suddenly of a heart attack on Saturday. His name was Al Steiner, and he was someone we knew for only a very short time, yet someone who made a huge impact on us.

Since Mum & Dad decided earlier this year to move back to Thailand as full time missionaries in a few years, I was quite certain that I would be staying here in Australia. However, after meeting Al in October, I started to rethink that. Al floated the idea with me of him and I going into a partnership teaching English and computing basics to Thai businessmen, and it was something that I instantly begun thinking about. After we’d left Thailand, he told me in an e-mail “you would be the person I would chose to work with. That tells me God’s in it.”

Even though we only spent such a short time with him, we felt like we’d known him for ages. We all shared so much together, and we heard the intriguing story of how he and his family came to be in Thailand eleven years ago (from the United States). Mum & Dad were looking forward to working with him alot when they returned to Thailand, and I too was mulling over the vision he presented to me.

But all that can change so quickly, and it did. After undergoing a routine stress test at the hospital on Saturday morning, his heart gave up and he was called home. Although he was the second death of a friend that I’ve experienced, he was the first Christian one – and just to think that right now he is up there with God is… something that’s very hard to explain.

We’ll always remember Al: his humour, his loud voice, the way he took up two places in the lunch line, the things we taught him, and the things he taught us. And we’ll see him again, one day.

Three pictures of Al Steiner, just over six weeks before his death on 26/11/2005