As Aislinn has mentioned we finally have our tickets. She has her visa and I am currently working on getting my paperwork through,.
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It's official! We are leaving on July 5th, 2010 at 11:10 pm from Los Angeles and getting to Brisbane early on July 7th. From there we will get our bags, go through customs, re-check our bags, and grab our flight to Sydney, but we only have an hour and a half to do it! Here's to hoping lines aren't long. The tickets were unbelievably cheap- $646 one way- so that was a major deal. The strange thing is that we only bought one way tickets. Yes, we can't purchase our return ticket until 300 days before the flight leaves, at the earliest. So we can't get those until later in the year 2010. Our concern is that the airline requires proof of "continued travel" from each passenger before they can board the plane. We are hoping that our certificates of enrollment from Hillsong and our student visas count, as they do technically represent where we are traveling after we get off the plane...and they document that we will be in the country for an entire 12-14 months.
I've been reading a psalm a day for the past week because I've noticed that my quiet time with God has gone completely out the window. So, I simply take 10 minutes each night before I go to bed and read a psalm, meditate on it, and have some prayer. I'm trying different things out because I want to get myself on a schedule now, so that by the time I'm at HILC it's second nature to me. The problem is that I am not really that into the psalms for some reason. Usually they are really enjoyable for me because they are so worshipful and I find myself repeating them over and over like a breath prayer. But I find my mind wandering and wanting to read other things, so I end up skimming them and then I get frustrated with myself for not taking enough time. It's annoying. Honestly. Over the summer, I read the whole book of Acts in a week. I was so engrossed in it, talking about it to whoever walked into the office, writing about it, eating up the zeal and the enthusiasm in it's pages. But it's so hard for me to focus while I'm back here in the "real world"- this has always been hard for me. So if anyone has any suggestions or materials I could use to get back in the Word, I would appreciate it!
Anyway, that was a random rant- sorry about that. I mainly wanted to share the excitement over the tickets! We thought we'd have to wait another month, but the people in my life really blessed me with graduation donations. I am so grateful to God that he placed people around me who care about this journey and are supporting it as a call and not just a whim. Each day that I feel worried about this process, he gives me another gift to calm me down. Here's an example: I am doing an epiphany concert this weekend for a church in Llano that Dad used to pastor. I am singing five songs from my rep, and they are paying me- I have a paying concert gig! Although I don't feel very enthusiastic about it right now because of the time of year and the amount of time since I've given a classical concert (uh...7 months) I have to thank him for an opportunity to earn some money doing something fun.
Ok..I'm done now. Thanks for sticking with me and reading this!
With love,
Aislinn
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Ok, originally this was only going on Facebook, but I figured out how to post it on the blog so here you go!
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Welcome to our blog! Here you will find us on our journey to Australia. If you are a future Hillsong student, we hope that we can help you along the way and answer questions as we go.
http://www.immi.gov.au/e_visa/
Now we are in the process of procuring plane tickets. I graduated from Oklahoma City University today with a degree in music education, so now I get to move back home with my parents, which is sort of a buzzkill until I remember that no bills= good. And we will both be working our little butts off this semester saving up for our year in Oz. So the question has become, what do we do next? Well, here's what we're doing at the moment.
Robin got a very wonderful present at her office's Christmas party. It's a Guide to Australia. She came up today for my graduation and brought it with her, so we've just been pouring over it. It has maps of every city, and ideas on where to go and what to see, and this will be over an hour that we've been looking at it. There are some really cool pictures- like the one she's looking at now of a huge fish almost eating a man ( "Whoa, look at that grouper! Wait, it's a Giant Potato Cod- and it says it expects to be fed and stroked...I don't think that sounds very entertaining"). We've also looked over the map of Sydney to figure out where we will be living and studying.
The problem with this guide is that EVERYTHING looks cool, and we've decided we have to see EVERYTHING, when in reality, we're going to have basically no money and will not be seeing ANYTHING. So the Australian Open, the Opera House, wind surfing, tours of the outback, sailing, hot air ballooning- all expensive and therefore all erased from our to-do list. But, I guess it's fun to dream. And there are plenty of things in Sydney, according to the book, to keep us occupied. Coffee houses, beaches, arts festivals, parks, outdoor markets, a very cheap light-rail system and according to the book, free roaming lemurs. I'm all for the lemurs!
A few quotes from the book:
"The weather can be very changeable. Desert influences may be felt one moment with searing dry wind and high temperatures giving away suddenly to cold and wet air from the ocean to the South. If you don't like our weather, say, just wait a minute. It's bound to change." This kind of sounds like Texas.
"There is no shortage of places to drink in Sydney. The basic hotel or pub is still much in evidence, while others have been renovated and offer a more varied experience, which might well extend to food and entertainment." I'm glad the pub MIGHT extend to food- I assume a customer may want something in their stomach before going on an alcohol binge.
Here's a bird I hope not to meet, ever:
" Cassowary ( a bird): A flightless bird related to the emu who's thuggish habits include a grunting cry, kicking to kill with it's sharp toe and an ability to head-butt it's way through the densest undergrowth."
"Black is beautiful: the lightning ridge black opals are not unique, but this is the only place they are produced in this quantity. It has been described as combining the iridescence of a dew drop and the colour of a rainbow. Set in the blackness of night, the biggest stone every found was named Queen of the Earth." Sounds like some Earth Queens I know. :)
It all seems very interesting, especially the section on Aborigines people. They believe in something called "Dreamtime," a time before time where the sacred ancestral beings created the land they live on. The land is part of the spiritual realm of all creation, in which all creations, living and dead, have their being. The land is populated by large family clans with certain places having a particularly intense meaning. Their spiritual ceremonies have been lost over time, but some of their visual art has been retained. There were over 200 different Aboriginal languages at one time, and some people could speak 5 or 6. I can barely speak English sometimes. Having just lived in Oklahoma for four and a half years, I have been exposed to a lot of Native American culture. It's sad how the same Europeans who pushed native people out of the way over here pushed native people out of the way over there, too. I don't know much about this part of Aussie history or culture, but I'd like to learn more once I'm over there.
In other news, we have found a website that offers extremely cheap tickets to Oz from the US:
http://www.vaustralia.com
Our goal is to purchase tickets by January 31st. I've been really worried about the financial aspect of all of this, so I've been praying that God helps me to rely on his blessings and to trust more in him. After a particularly discouraging week in which no principals called me back and no one seemed interested in hiring me, I got down on my knees two nights ago and asked God to help me lean on Him and to show me His plan. The next day, my roommate's mom gave me $200 in cash to help with the plane ticket. He is so good, and I need to remember that from here on out. My first goal is that ticket- after that is purchased, I can work on raising/ earning the rest of the money needed. We're also working on setting up a link on this blog where you can click to donate to our training for ministry, if you feel so led. But right now, directly after graduation, I can just rest and be thankful that He blessed me with that $200- and more to come, so my parents tell me (apparently there are envelopes on the counter at home). And, I can rejoice in my favorite season of Christmastime, and wait for Him to be born once again.
Today my verse for meditation is Psalm 37:4- "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."
O Lord, help me to delight myself in you. Help me to know that you have great plans for me; that you have set this desire in me to travel to Sydney and meet you there, and to learn how to lead your people in worshipping you. Thank you for the gifts you've given me and the people who are blessing me and loving me. I love you, love you, love you. Yours, Aislinn
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