Australia (part 2): Let the Singing Begin

Yesterday (Sunday) marked our first full day of concerts. The church we sang at in the morning took us over an hour to drive to, but you won't hear any complaints from us. Riding in Danny's bus is fun, and gives us time to talk, laugh, and sleep. We sang and led worship for about fifty minutes and preceded the pastor's message. He spoke from Matthew 6, where Jesus instructs his followers to do good deeds in secret in order to avoid approval from men. I think that was a good message for us to hear on the day of our first concert, because sometimes it is hard to remember that we sing for the Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that the glory we receive belongs to God and not to us. Praise Him!

After the service, we spent a long time drinking tea and coffee and chatting with the church members. One interesting aspect of the culture in Australia is that they eat - a lot. Sometimes they have breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, tea, and supper. We have been offered tea and coffee with treats alongside everywhere we have gone. But since their portions are smaller than ours, and their food is generally healthy, you won't find a huge number of overweight Australians. At the church yesterday afternoon, they served us Australian pizza - the pizzas are smaller, but they pile on the toppings. SO delicious.

To fill the hour and a half in between our concerts, we went to Chadstone Mall. It was by far the hugest mall I have ever been to; to get an idea, realize that Chadstone has multiple food courts. Hope, Taylor, Wayne, Aaron and I walked around together for a while, and found an Indonesian store that sold authentic clothes, jewelry, scarves, trinkets, and hand-carved furniture. While Hope and I were looking at jewelry, though, the boys wandered away - which would have been fine, except that neither Hope or I knew when and where we were supposed to meet to leave. Thankfully, we found a couple of our group members after wandering the mall for twenty minutes or so, and all was well. 

Our "back of the bus" group.. also mall buddies :)

Our last concert last night pushed our limits a little bit. The sanctuary was so small that we didn't use microphones, and our voices and bodies were already tired from the long day. Brandon had to dig up a 9V battery to power one of the few direct boxes we needed, and Aaron's keyboard stand arrived at the last possible moment. Nevertheless, God gave us the energy we needed to sing well. Despite a few notes that probably should have been much louder and chords that died away much before they were supposed to, we had a good time. Should I mention that the church was primarily an Indian church and served us the best Indian food we had ever had? Or that we met a two-year-old named Thomas who had been clapping along during the entire concert and wanted to show us his happy face, sad face, surprised face, thinking face, and cross face? Yes. It was a good time.