Mission to Merrylands

Last week was Mission week for college. The whole student body is divided into mission teams. Each team is headed up by a chaplain (one of the faculty). And each team heads to a different church(es) to work with them for a week (Sunday to Sunday).

We went here, to St Anne's, Merrylands.


We were involved in heaps of stuff: a Men's dinner, a Seniors' Bible study, Scripture Seminars at a local school, preaching on the Sundays, ESL classes, scout groups, train station fliering (the fliers had chocolates attached), door knocking, the list goes on.

Two cool things about the week:

1. A couple from the church took the whole week off work to be embedded with the mission team. Awesome idea. So encouraging. It was so nice to have that kind of connection with actual people from the church.
2. St Anne's runs a Sudanese church service each week, which is almost entirely in Dinka (language). And just like MacDonalds in France, it's the little things that really caught my attention. (a) The service leader (and a deaconess?) sit on the stage in lounge chairs throughout the service. The preacher does the same thing, but on the opposite side of the stage. (b) They had several people talk (for 3-5mins each) about stuff that's going on in their life, rather than the service-leader give announcements about those things. (c) They sing loud, but they hardly move. (d) People were constantly whispering in the service-leader's ear or handing him notes, etc. I think at least some of those were requests for prayer.
   

It was a good week. But it's nice to have finished now, and to have caught my breath again.

Merrylands is pretty culturally and ethnically diverse. I bought some lebanese sweets at this joint... Yummy, but overpriced and not as good as my local. The coffee was undrinkable.