An Australian Trip

One of the reasons I haven't written much recently is that I have been traveling. At the beginning of May I flew just 3 hours to Sydney, Australia for a personnel consultation for SIM. What a great time I had! I arrived a couple of days early so that i could hang out with my Aunt who I hadn't seen for several years.
On our first day together she must have driven me all round Sydney to see the sights. I had never been there before even though it is so close to home. We drove over the Harbour birdge and round the Opera House. It's architecture really is quite something to see. Then we drove round several beaches including Bondi Beach which is well known for it's surfing. It was a beautiful day to do all this as well and was quite spectacular. I managed to get a little shopping in for the lads back at home in NZ which I always enjoy doing. I had been sent on a mission to find a kangaroo exactly like the one Isaac had lost the year before. What a job that turned out to be!!!! It was so important to him that everytime he talked to me on the phone he cried because I hadn't found "Jack" yet. God knew how big a thing it was for him and thankfully i found one in a shop at the airport as I was a bout to leave the country. He was thrilled and it hasn't been out of his sight since!

The next day all the SIM sending office Personnel people from around the world (South Africa, USA, UK, NZ, Australia, Canada, Singapore and Korea) met up and we travelled 2 hours south of Sydney, into the bush, where we stayed at this campsite for the rest of the week. It was a gorgeous setting with thousands of gum trees and a beautiful river just down the path from our cabins. What a peaceful place to be. The only bummer was that I didn't have cell phone coverage but when we went for walks I managed to pick up the odd signal so was able to stay in touch with home.

We worked hard everyday from early in the morning until mid evening. It was tiring but was also an excellent way for me to get my head around issues in the SIM world and network with others from different offices. It gave me space to think about how we do things here in the NZ office and ways in which we could improve oursleves. I learnt how thankful I am to work in the NZ office as we have a lot of freedom to develop great relationships with our missios and encourage/mentor them. What a privilege. All in all it was a great week away. I missed the lads terribly but we all survived our time apart. They had a nice party for me when I got home and the next day was Mothers Day so it was extra special.

PS....On one of our walks we saw a real, live wombat! He was so cute (this is him here....thanks Laura for the pici) He was just sitting in the long grass as we walked by and didn't seem bothered by our presence at all. At the time I was talking to Isaac on the phone and he thought it was a pretty cool thing to see. No koalas or kangaroos though. Maybe next time.