Sweet Home Alabama

Just yesterday, myself, along with Dan & Jim rented a large "people mover" (aka passenger van) and trekked it over to Sydney International Airport to welcome 13 young Christians coming to us all the way from good old Birmingham, Alabama. The arriving short-term mission team, sent by Campus Outreach based in Montevallo, Alabama was sent to help Jim with the two ministries he founded here in Sydney, Harbour City Church (HCC) and Student Outreach to the World (SOW).

So, aside from the final steps of settling into our apartment, prepping for this team's 6-week stay has taken up almost all of our time lately. As you can imagine, planning a six-week itinerary for 13 people we've never met, in a city that we're new to, for two ministries that we just joined has been a pretty difficult task. What's especially difficult is the fact that this trip is the first of its kind. Campus Outreach has been sending college missions teams to Brisbane (Queensland) for years now, but never to Sydney. So while all of this is new and exciting, it's been pretty daunting to say the least.

In fact, to be perfectly honest, planning & figuring out how to host and effectively utilize this team in our ongoing ministries has been a challenge on so many levels. But more than just the logistical nightmare this kind of venture presents, I've found that ministry and my service to God can very easily became a spiritual obstacle. Funny that huh?

So here we are, Dan & I living all the way out here in this little corner of the world, trying to live for God's kingdom and see Australians come to know Christ. We've come to support two missionaries (Jim & Claudia) and two ministries we love (HCC & SOW). And, we've come to experience full-time ministry work ourselves to judge whether it's a career path we want to pursue. But with all our good intentions, ministry itself has somehow become a stumbling block to God's blessings. My mind wasn't filled with thoughts of how God can powerfully use this team to do His work in Sydney. My heart wasn't overjoyed at the prospect of meeting a group of excited young students who're all eager to get involved in campus ministry. Instead, their arrival date loomed like a dreaded deadline and I was frustrated because so many circumstances weren't ideal for hosting this team. I questioned their motives. I questioned our motives. I fought with Dan several times because we had differing opinions on nearly everything (this is pretty typical though). And above all, I was anxious that our planning would be poor and that the team would leave Australia rather unfulfilled and disappointed.

So you see, I made an idol of ministry. I put my work for God before God. And I couldn't appreciate my labor as the blessing it truly is.

Yesterday, meeting the students and spending a brief afternoon giving a quick city tour was a tremendous blessing. I haven't been able to sit down and get to know them yet. I don't even know all their names or faces. But I know that we share the same heart for God's kingdom. And I know that all my worries and frustrations amounted to nothing. If their schedule isn't completely figured out yet, if we still don't know what they'll be doing the last two weeks, if their budget won't cover their transportation costs, if it rains half the time....no matter! We've dedicated these next six weeks to God as an offering. And He gladly takes our weaknesses with our strengths; it's the offering, the heart of the worship, that He desires after all.

So now I present to you the Sydney CCP Team 2010!



In the meantime, please pray that Dan and I would keep reminding ourselves to serve God with joy and thanksgiving, striving towards faithfulness rather than success.

Finally settled...

It is incredible to us that this Saturday will mark the first month since landing in Sydney. It feels like we only landed a few days ago, but we've been moving non-stop and it seems that time just passed by with us hardly noticing. We couldn't even stop to update this blog (well, that and we didn't have internet access for the last couple weeks). If I were to update you on all we've done--our settling in process, ministry work, life here, church, old and new friends... this entry would be pages long. So for now, I'll just update you on how we've settled in and where we are now.

The Sydney housing market can be pretty ruthless, but Dan and I fortunately didn't struggle too much with finding a place. Since I haven't started substitute teaching, we both were free during the week to view and apply for apartments. Most other applicants had to wait til Saturday for Open Inspections because of work. This gave us a huge advantage and we were able to see a good number of places before settling on our current home.

This isn't to say that things didn't go wrong. MANY things went wrong. Here's just a small list of things off the top of my head

-wire transfer failures (4 times); we were broke
-forgot to hand off fundraising checks in US before our flight so we had to mail; empty bank accounts
-didn't have my bank card because it was at my friend's address but she was in Korea for the last two weeks; we were broke
-didn't have a car for the first two weeks because we had no money to buy one and Jim and Claudia were still house hunting as well
-my laptop AC adaptor broke which severely impaired our house and car hunting endeavors(ordered a replacement from Hong Kong and it's arrived)
-frustrated and angry at one another constantly
-New South Wales Teaching Office kept telling me I was missing documents I needed to process my application to teach
-went WAY over our first cell phone bill because the Aussie cell phone plans are WEIRD
-Dan's Blackberry we unlocked wasn't working
and lastly...
-ALLERGIES ATTACKED US FULL FORCE!!!!

Yup. I may have blocked out more things during the coping process, but we felt like we were being tested. Haha. Looking back though, it wasn't so bad. It was more that Dan and I felt so rushed to be comfortable/settled, harassed in a new country, and powerless/out of control of the situation. When I consider now that there was a good place to sleep every night, that we ate great meals, that we were able to fully participate in ministry in spite of our situation...I can say that God was providing. Maybe he wanted to break us in to the Australian mission field and say, "It may not be third world, but it's not home!" =)

So where are we now?

We now live in a two-bedroom apartment in the suburb of Rhodes which is approximately 15 km from Sydney's CBD (Central Business District). Rhodes is a recent real estate development. It was formerly a land fill, but in the past few years there's been a huge push to build apartment buildings everywhere. And with the erection of a new shopping centre (with an IKEA) and the convenience of a train station, it's become a pretty popular housing district for apartment dwellers like Dan and me. I GoogleMapped our current address and came up with this...


Yup, it's that new. Those four little pool looking things are the foundations of the four towers that make up our apartment complex. We live right over the train station so it gets PRETTY loud at times, and we certainly don't have a view of the water, but it's home. And every night we thank God that we have a clean, safe place to rest our heads and call our own.

I also want to say:
I, Theresa Choi, vow to update this blog more frequently.


Thanks, guys!

Off and Running

Day 6 in Australia

We’re just rounding out our first week here in Australia and we’ve already been blessed by some amazing encounters on campus. The other night, Theresa and I both led small discussion groups on the campus of the University of Sydney. This was the first time we were meeting most of these students, so we started with a few ice-breaker type introductions to get the discussion rolling. To Theresa’s surprise, she had two newcomers in her group who were raised in a mormon family. They were here for the first time because they had recently begun to question their faith and were seeking some more answers about God.

So, we talked about the contrast between religions that seek to “reach God” by way of a demanding “to-do” type lifestyle (works based salvation) versus a genuine christian faith that seeks God by simply humbling ourselves to accept that Christ lived and died to accomplish all the work for us (grace based salvation). They said this made some sense because they've been feeling the burden of living a works based life. Needless to say, this is just part of a working conversation that's just starting out so we’re hoping to follow up much more throughout the year.

Anyways, it’s just exciting that we’re not even one week into our stay here in Australia and God has already led us to some awesome encounters with young people who are hungry for the truth! Praise God for exceeding our expectations and for the work that He’s doing here in Oz!

Now, we just need to find an apartment and a used car somewhere so ya'll can visit!

And here's a homemade video of the SOW camp

Thanks MC for the footage!

Update and Preparations

It's been a little less than one month since our last post, but so much has changed in regards to Australia. In the 2-week time period that we spent in Sydney for the 6-day campus ministry leadership training camp and for setting up our living arrangements, God has really moved our hearts in wonderful ways.

1. Dan and I feel 100 times more confident about and comfortable with our future mission work in Australia. Being in Sydney this time around, with the mindset that it will be our new home for at least one year, was entirely different from our initial vision trip. We looked at each street, house, building, person with a new lens. And it was great! It only got us more excited to get started!

2. We were tremendously blessed. This is the main reason Dan and I feel so much more at ease with the decision to jump the pond. Before we could only imagine the extent of our involvement, the people we'd be working with, those we'd be ministering to...basically our spiritual environment. And though we by no means got a full taste, we finally got our feet wet! (And that sentence had too many metaphors.) Both the SOW (Student Outreach to the World) training camp and the two Sunday worships that we had with HCC (Harbour City Church) were . I can't really find the right words to describe. At the SOW camp, Dan and I connected with so many of the university students and it only made us more eager to go back to Sydney and connect more! And at Harbour City, though the intimacy of a home church can be awkward and uncomfortably confronting, in some ways it is sweeter and purer. Worshipping with a handful of brothers and sisters who are committed to the same goal and share in the same ambitious vision with you is so spiritually....warming?? (Why does English feel like a foreign language right now. I can't find the right adjectives. Everything's a metaphor.) In any case, Dan and I can't wait to get to Sydney and start our work there!

And an update on where we are now, what we're doing:
We have officially started the preparations to make the big move. We've sent out support letters, made our health check up rounds, bought a full year's worth of our meds, paid our last month's rent, started moving boxes from our little studio into our parent's homes aka storage... and we've got our visas! That may sound like we've done quite a bit, but there's SOOOO much more! We have yet to sell our cars, cancel our insurance/phone plan/cable, transfer money to our Aussie bank, meet up with all of our friends at least one last time, do a missions presentation at our church, pack and so on! Plus we have about 30 birthdays this month including Dan's niece's dol.

So please do pray for us this month. Pray that we would get all these things taken care of soon, but pray also that in the midst of the chaotic hustle and bustle we wouldn't neglect the WHO in all of this. We need to daily spend time in God's word and in prayer because the last thing we want is to leave the States physically exhausted, mentally unprepared, and spiritually dry.

Oh! And please stay tuned for updates!

What! Why Oz?

Naturally and quite expectedly, we've been struggling with people's perception of australia as a valid mission field. For the most part, when people hear us talk about how we feel compelled to offer up our marriage/life to God, they get excited and support the idea of serving together. But then, just when the support is building up, we drop the bomb on how we've been called to Australia and everything changes. All of a sudden, I can see it in their eyes... "australia, are you kidding me?" "You're not going on missions, you're going on a vacation!"

Then of course, I can't help but sigh, gather myself, and try to re-explain what this is all about. You see, when I tell someone "we're going on missions to australia" maybe it just sounds weak or unconvincing, like it is a vacation. But, if I change the words a bit and say something like "you know what, the people of Australia really need to know Christ", then all of a sudden people seem to agree and see some need for missions there.

Well, whatever the case is, I don't blame people for bringing their preconceived notions of Australia as some dream vacation filled with darling harbors, cute, cuddly kangaroos and opera houses. It is a beautiful place afterall!

But, after all the struggles we've had in trying to share our vision for God's work in Australia, we received an unexpected encouragement from one of theresa's old friends from berkeley. It goes like this:

"theresa! it's been a long time! do you still remember me? hehe :)

i'm so excited to hear that you and dan will be going to australia for missions! this might sound crazy, but we actually prayed for missionaries to go to australia in one of my classes! i'm in the biblical counseling program at the master's college and we have a sister program out in australia (i don't know exactly where). you should do the program! :) anyway, my professor was saying that the people out there are hungry for the Word and there's a great need for missionaries! what an answer to prayer! i praise God for you both and am excited to hear more about how you decided to go, what you'll be doing, etc. etc. :)"

Anyways, thanks to you all for trying to see beyond the "glitz" of this "trip" and see that Australia, as much as any country in the world, is truly in need of Christ's saving grace!

the start of something beautiful

Hey everyone!
Thanks for visiting our little australia missions blog. If you'd like to find out more and help support the growing mission field in australia, please email us at danandtheresa@gmail.com with your mailing address/current info. Or, just leave your info in the comments section below. Either way, we'd love to send your our support letter and update you throughout this journey.
Thanks so much and God bless!
Soli Deo Gloria,
Dan & Theresa