Impact Winter

I can only imagine that the weather back home is now warming up, the snow is melted, its cozy in the day, and evenings are turning to a mellow warmth that only requires shorts. But here in Brisbane the seasons are gearing down for winter. Its getting brisk in the evenings and I feel the need on the especially cool nights to wear long sleeves and pants. This also means its time for Impact winter. Every year, our base does a series of impact tours. In the summer (as one would imagine) its impact summer, winter is impact winter, impact Airlie, impact Gold Coast, impact Byron, etc... These are focus evangelism tours withing Australia.
So early last week I found myself crammed into a 26 seater bus with 20 people, luggage, a circus size tent, a trailer full of cooking supplies and sports equipment and part of an entourage of 3 vehicles which looked similar. We left at 4:00 am about 10 days ago May 17 and travelled approximately 17 hours north, up the coast to beautiful Airlie beach. This town's purpose and livlihood is built around tourism. It has the Whitsundays, and Whitehaven beach, the Great Barrier Reef, etc.. And is a peaceful down time stop for most backpackers. Generally the entertainment aside from the beautiful creation is the strip of shops and pubs along the beach, that is laced with Backpaker hostels. This entertainment includes wet t-shirt competitions, strip clubs, foam parties, and any other lustful indulgence you can think of really. Its a place where there is not much to do but sleep with the back packer next door and get really drunk or drugged.
So the YWAMers rock up a couple times a year freaking everyone out with our gigantic circus tent that takes us a day to put up. After attracting attention via 40 young internationals who have never put up at tent before, following the instructions of a rugged Aussie (from Darwin) with one finger slurring orders in a confused muddle of directions that even after putting up the tent 7 times confuses me, haha. Not to mention the other Aussies from the Brisbane area trying to decipher and translate this Northerner for all of the Europeans and Asian. Anyway, once that scene is out of the way, we generally have already advertised what we are doing. We set up camp and bring a mellow alternative to the lust riddled drunkeness of Airlie Beach. We serve Chai tea (indian spiced tea) for free, have live music in a cozy, mellow, backpaker atmosphere. As the backpackers come and step from their turf of the world, experience and searching for meaning, bringing them into our world and onto our turf of truth, reality of God, and answers. They come in and we sit with them, build relationship throughout the week and lead conversations into deep questions about the meaning of life, purpose, design, creation, good and evil, redemptions, etc... Showing them that all the questions they have can be answered in one night. We also frequently see people healed or emotionally delivered of hurts and pains this week.
I have two stories to tell, I'll tell the shortest first and update later with the second. I talked to a guy the first night who was saying how he had been to the Chai tent last time we were there. He was a local, now this town for locals has one of the highest broken family rates in Australia. Families generally after divorce with move to Airlie either broken or remarried to settle. And we were also asked to speak in school on how marriage should look from Gods perspective and how to cope as a child with broken families. Anyway, this man, Peter, remembered us. He gave us a comment that I will never forget, many backpakers say it, but he said it best. He said that we bring something that helps people escape from escapism. That people are drawn to this tent, because of the "spiritual vibe", Gods presence. He said the tent allowed him to have something else to do other than get drunk in the pub. He thanked us deeply for our presence and what we do for the town and the people and came every night that week and even helped us take down the tent and wants to come to visit us in Brisbane.
In this conversation he seemed like a great guy, but he turned sour when we talked to his family. He started cursing and seemed disgusted at the thought of his sisters. I let him talk for some time, and the God brought an eastern proverb to my mind that one of our teachers on base had used one time. I said to him, "you know, bitterness is like pouring two cups of tea... poisoning one. Then YOU drink the poisoned tea and wait for the other person to die. Because bitterness doesn't hurt anyone but yourself, and yet it gives you hope that someone will understand you through it. In talking about your family you changed into a completely different person, it wasn't you, it was the bitterness you are harbouring." He came close to tears and said I was right, that he needed to forgive his family and repair some relationships. Me and my friend Tim then talked to him about what the bible says about forgiveness and what Jesus did for us. He received this and was attending our worship times before we opened the tent for the rest of the week.

Praise God. He is good, He is a real God with real answers to real problems in real peoples lives. We have to cut down the mystical look at God that says that He is disconnected and super spiritual, as well as the rational view that says that he has no spiritual power and realize He just IS. Completely spiritual and completely real and in touch with our lives. Jesus came through a birth canal to be in the flesh and he walked on water. Thats God.

Much Peace, Love and Prayers