ENCOUNTERFEST 2006: 2500 youth, three days, encountering Christ!
We had the privelege to attend Encounterfest,Hillsong's youth conference last week. There were about 2500 middle school through college age youth there. It was pretty amazing to see the leaders of the next generation abandoning themselves to God. There were two guest speakers. Nate and I learned a lot, but also enjoyed comimg together and full on worshipping Christ. My favorite aspect of the conference was on the last day, we all loaded on buses and made our way to Plumpton High School.


That entire Saturday was dedicated to renovating the school, putting on a festival for the community, and cleaning up the suburb. It was like "Extreme Makeover: Highschool Edition." All of it was done simply to say "Hey, we love Christ and we love our neighbors so here's a free gift for you". The temperature reach above 100 degrees and of course, keeping with the Aussie norm, there was no air conditioning. By the end of the day we were hot, sweaty, covered in paint, and a little loopy from all the fumes, but it was such a great time!The next day we had a big barbeque for our house, and Chef Nate grilled up some mean KANGAROO! Yes, you heard me correct...surprisingly it was so good even our vegetarian ate 4 steaks. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers, we miss you like crazy! (Christmas decor is up in the stores and I'm having a bit of a hard time!) We love all of you so much!

Lindsey

Crikey... Maybe the dingo ate your baby! While in Australia we have had the chance to look at an interesting culture from the inside. Here is a slide show of a few of the things which we thought to be quite comical from our "American" frame of mind. Hope that you enjoy it...

nate

We have had
the opportunity to get involved with some of the different ministries of the church. This past Wednesday we spent the day with over 3,000 children ages 4-12 at an event put on by Hillsong called "Kids Fest". This event had games, rides, an activities for the kids to do. The highlight of the day was the DVD recording of the 3rd Hillsong kids worship DVD. It was so awesome to see the innocence of children during worship and the joy and excitement many of them had. The ultimate purpose of this event was to see children come to Christ. Lindsey and I were with a group of 50 children who we work with who are from the inner city. We believe that there were many seeds planted and that children's lives were changed. The other picture was taken at Hillsong weekly Women's morning Lindsey attended with a student from the house. In one week we will be attending Encounterfest which is the youth conference for youth ages 12-25. We are really excited about this and are believing that lives will be changed. Even though the pace of life is busy and we are involved in many great things we miss our families and all of our friends. We appreciate all the prayers and support.

nate