Two Yanks In Oz

We've been living in our house in Sydney for a week and a half, and sometimes I feel like I'm only visiting. Other times I feel like I actually live here. Sometimes I forget that I'm not in America and sometimes it's very much in the foreground of my thoughts. It's not hard to get used to the culture here; the similarities are very numerous. The things that are different are small and fun to joke about. I've been pretty content, but then I'm reminded that I haven't had to deal with very many stressful things yet. Things like keeping up with course work.. or paying the massive bills at the end of each month...which I don't really have the money to do. Those are the times when I remember that I'm on the complete other side of the world from my family and if something happened, they really couldn't help me. And although I do know in my head that since God told me to come here He isn't going to abandon me, my stomach doesn't seem to get the message.

We've been into the city of Sydney down by the harbor and saw the opera house and drove over the bridge. We've had all sorts of local food and been walking around the shops. I've been to an art gallery (free admission of course!) and learned a little bit more about Australian history. But the thing that really struck me happened when we were at Bondi beach yesterday afternoon. When a person stands on their own coast line, they feel small and they can look into what seems like a distance forever long, but it is a familiar distance. The sky looks one way and the horizon line looks one way and even though that person is literally on the edge of their continent, they know where they are. When I was standing on the coastline yesterday, I saw a horizon whose shape and distance was so much longer and farther reaching than what I see in the gulf of Mexico at home. I saw water a completely different color and the sky looked like it had expanded. It may seem like two beaches would look the same, but the view is completely different. This coast is completely unfamiliar to me. It's so much wilder and more vast than our gulf. And when I remembered that standing on the beach meant that I was standing on the edge of Australia, I felt like I was just standing on the end of the world or something. I mean my feet aren't safely planted on the sand of my home anymore. I feel so far away and looking out over the water, the distance between myself and my home seems unbearably far. Australia is pretty much the farthest I can physically get from America without coming around the other side of the planet. It's sort of paradoxical because this country is like ours in many ways and like I said, sometimes it's easy to forget how far away we are.

That is why I am glad I live in the house that I do. There are seven people that will live here, and 4 of us are American. It was five Americans, but one of our roommates who just arrived last week has decided this isn't the right place for her and she is going back to America on Friday. It's a complicated situation and I won't explain it on this blog, but she feels like God is calling her back immediately. So now we have an empty room, but I know God will fill it with someone who will bless us.

The people that are here for sure will certainly be a blessing to us...it's already been amazing to hear about some of their life stories and the similarities to us they have. We have two roommates like I said, from America- Michele from Oklahoma and Julie from South Carolina. Both of them lost their fathers at age 11, and when they found out Robin had just lost her own father, they all formed an immediate bond I think. Both of them are our age and got their bachelor degrees at home before coming here. Michele is very calm and seems so steadfast in her faith. She has been the one to talk to me about God's plan and faithfulness to us and has been very reassuring when I allow the nerves to creep in. Julie kind of takes care of people physically..she feeds the boys in our brother house a lot it seems...or maybe I'm just seeing a lot of it because we are on break from school right now. :) She's very laid back and laughs a lot. She also has never ending patience when I ask questions about school life, since the school always waits until the last minute to tell us anything.

The other roommate I've gotten to know is Silje from Norway. She's 19 but she's really mature ( everyone here tells me Europeans gro up faster than Americans...actually, pretty much everyone grows up faster than Americans apparently) and she has a beautiful singing voice. She's been hanging out with Robin and I a lot because we're the newbies. I think she and I are similar in a lot of ways. Neither of us is incredibly social, but we've been making our best effort. :)

We have another roommate, Ilona, who is from The Netherlands. She's on holiday in Melbourne though so we haven't had the chance to get to know her.

We do have a "brother house" and those guys have either been over here or we've been over there what seems like almost every night since I've been here. I don't know how the tradition got started, but when we got here they told us they were adopting us since we now lived in the Kiss of Heaven house (yes...our house is named Kiss of Heaven. The house next door is also college housing and it's callled "Blessed") and that if we needed anything they would help out. They seem like good guys, even if the Aussies do make fun of Americans...it's all in good fun though.

We have been keeping busy over here, moving in and Skyping with people back home and seeing the sights. We've been at church twice and let me tell you...it's HUGE. Just last Sunday, we saw 29 people get baptized. It was amazing. Tomorrow we have orientation and our auditions for the worship stream. Yes that's right...I have to sing a Hillsong song in front of Hillsong worship trainers....it does make me a little nervous, but it's just to place us in the correct tutorial with other people who are at the same skill level. They keep emphasizing that it's very low pressure. However, I still want to give them all I've got! And we are also taking a music theory test, but I'm not worried about that. I'll put that OCU music education degree to use. :)

Even though I do sometimes feel keenly how far I am from home and I do miss it, I know that the Lord is with me. I feel a swell of peace wash over me to combat my nervous moments and I know that my family is alive and well somewhere on this earth 10,000 miles away and that I can contact them if I really need them. But still, it's hard to be 10,000 miles away..hopefully I will eventually get used to it here and feel that this place is my home for a while.

Please continue to pray for me as this journey of growth and change continues. Pray that the means to be able to live here will present themselves and that I will become equipped for whatever service the Lord is calling me into.

Blessings,
Aislinn

Yes! We made it! 4 flights, 2 train rides, 1 car ride and 30 hours later, we are here. We arrived last Wednesday (the 7th) and after an hour and a half trying to find the right train, we finally got onto platform 13 and headed out to the blue mountains.

We stayed with some lovely people for the last five days, and today we are at Hillsong waiting to sign our rent contracts and be shuttled to our house. We are living in the same house in a neighborhood called Glenwood, which they say is a 30 minute walk from the church. So we're going to be getting our exercise. The big blessing about this house is that it is fully furnished! I will feel so much more at home in this house because of that. Also, I'm glad we don't have to worry about buying furniture and renting appliances. Whew.

So far everyone in this country has been very nice. We were shocked that no customs employees raised their voices or commanded us to go anywhere- they very gently asked us to move left or right with a smile on their face, and the lady that searched my bags joked with me the whole time. The only gripe I have is that sometimes you have to ask for help instead of an employee offering. For example, in the train station, Robin and I lugged our 8 bags and my guitar all around, with train employees watching us the whole time, and none offered to help. We were clearly exasperated, tired and seriously confused- and they just sat and watched us struggle. However, when I asked people to direct us, they were more than willing to help. Interesting.

So far the food is similar in many ways. Not as much ethnic variety and it is expensive (McDonalds will cost around $8.50 a meal! And the fries and drink are Happy Meal sized), but not incredibly strange. The TV is mostly from the UK or the US, so nothing unfamiliar there. And it is beautiful here. Cold, but beautiful. Pictures and video should be posted to facebook soon.

Your prayers for safe travel were appreciated. Now we just have to go get our papers signed and move into our house! :)

Blessings!

Dear God,

I delight in you. I find new things hidden in each passing moment that romance me; I hear words from every mouth around me that draw me into you. The gifts you give me surpass my expectations and are far too good for me. The people who love me deserve better from me, and still you bless me with their friendship.

You know that I love your sky so you paint it twice each day with my favorite colors. And at night you send me small visions of your glory, scattered throughout the expanse of the heavens. You know that I find joy in blooming things so you place them along my path. Even in the poorest and roughest of neighborhoods you plant gardens; they are behind trailers and under barred windows. You know that I love children so you send these precious ones to worship in front of me, and I watch them clap and take it all in. And you know that I love to sing, so you gave me a voice. And when I sing to much and listen too little, you take my voice away so I can hear others.

When I am sad, you wrap yourself around me like the quilt that I loved as a child. You listen to me cry and when I pray for peace or sleep, you answer me.

When I am uncertain, you speak words into my thoughts throughout the day and sometimes your voice comes from the mouths of the people behind me in the grocery store. You tell me that you will always take care of me because you love me and want me to live, really live.

When I am happy I will praise you for letting me feel that way.

Lord, I am deeply in love with you. Thank you for showing me what that means. Thank you for teaching me what love is and that it is what I deserve. Thank you for teaching me how to love someone else.

I promise you, my God, that to the best of my humble abilities, I will lift up the people that come across my path. I will speak of You more often and I will talk with you even more often than that. I will tell you I love you with words and with actions.

You have placed a calling into my heart to go somewhere sight unseen in 8 days, and to stay for an unknown amount of time. I have less than half of the money I need, and I am scared of failing you. I am scared that I will miss the reason you have sent me so far because of my own weaknesses. Please, God, sit beside me in class and hold my hand as I walk so that I will always remember to wait on you.

I don't know why I feel that you are sending me so far away just to be closer to you, but I trust you. I will no longer worry or try to control this journey. You are in control, and I know that if I really do love you the way I profess to love you, I will trust you.

Thank you God, for giving me grace. Thank you for allowing me to be so intimately connected with you. You, creator, savior, pasture-maker, shepherd, healer, my redeemer,Lord and King, beginning and the end- I AM-

I humbly praise you and give my life to you again. I surrender. I love you.

Hi Guys! Well I really don't post as much on this blog as I should and to Aislinn's delight, I plan on changing that once we hit the ground in Sydney :). However this blog post is prompted more by recent events in my life then by our impeding trip to OZ.

Is it strange that I am writing my family letters to read if something happens to me after I leave for Sydney? I think my biggest fear would be a plane crash, but hey, I could get cancer or get hit by a car over there, too. So I wrote my parents a "Just in Case" letter with instructions about what to do with my stuff and how to handle a memorial service, etc. It was soooo sooo soo strange to write it, and I felt paranoid the whole time.

Honestly, I know I shouldn't have a real fear of death, but the plane ride is making me nervous. And given my Dad's history of sending Forrest and I "Just in Case" letters every time he and mom get on a plane, I figured I would return the favor. I am also giong to write all three of them individual letters to settle some issues between us, and to let them know what they mean to me, and of course to reassure them that I am in heaven with Jesus, which would be totally awesome (just hopefully not yet please!).

I could just say all this stuff to their face, and I probably will, but I'm hoping that if something were to happen to me on this journey, a letter like that would be a great comfort. What do you all think? Crazy or thoughtful?

19 days until I step onto the first of the 4 planes that's going to get me to Sydney!

~Aislinn

Well. I have had a frustrating past few weeks, to say the least. If there's anyone out there who is unaware of the process in moving internationally, you not only have to have a passport, but a visa. For short term travel that's not always necessary but in my case it is. So, I was told by some people at HILC through facebook (MISTAKE #1, btw- do NOT get your info from people on facebook!) that I needed to go online, print out a paper application and mail it in to the US/ AUS embassy in Washington DC 5-6 months before I was going to leave to give them ample time to process said application. So, way back in October, I mailed in my application (MISTAKE #2- mail it in 4 months before and you'll be fine! MISTAKE #3: do it online, and you'll get approved in 24 hours!). They charged my credit card on October 7th, and then in December I got a call from my case officer stating that the visa couldn't be processed until 90 days from the date my classes started. That meant that they couldn't begin to make a decision until April 19th.

So April 19th came and went, and I got nervous and called the visa services information hotline. I was told that they hadn't opened my visa, but expected to soon, and that when they did open the application for processing, it would take a maximum of 20 days. (MISTAKE #4: I did not ask them to contact me when the visa was opened for processing.) I asked why the processing hadn't been started since I had been given this specific date by my caseworker, and they said "Oh, I can't see anything wrong with the application, so I don't really know..but we'll be in contact." So, I waited 20 business days and heard nothing.

I then called the hotline back and got some person who barely spoke English who said that the application was "still in processing" but that she couldn't tell me how long it had been in processing or when a decision would be made. I asked her to have my case officer call me, because at that point, it was the end of May and I had about 4 weeks until I got on a plane. SCARY! (MISTAKE #5: I didn't ask for my case officer's information to contact him directly...and MISTAKE 6: I lost his name and phone number even though he'd called me in December). I informed the person I was speaking to that I needed to let the case officer know my travel plans, because I am leaving 2 weeks before courses start. They were running on the assumption that they had 6 weeks to approve it, but they really had around 4. (MISTAKE 7: I didn't include travel dates on my application because I filled it out before I bought my airline ticket- it goes along with doing it too early.)

So I got an email on May 28th saying that within 2 business days my case officer would contact me. Well, even with Memorial Day thrown in there, I got nothing from my case officer. So, I sent an email to the Department of Immigration and Migration services in North America threatening to call my state representative if I didn't get an answer or even just some sort of communication from my case officer.

Today, I called the hotline again at 3:30 pm. I talked to a woman who acted very annoyed with me, saying they had already notified my case officer of my concerns and that "The embassy is aware of your situation; now all we can do is wait because we have a high volume of student applications this time of year." Well, that was utter crap! So I asked if I could please get a refund and cancel the paper process, allowing me to start an online visa application. Robin did hers online and got approved in 24 hours. The lady on the phone told me that while they could cancel my visa application, my money was non-refundable. At this point I was beyond angry. I told her I was going to call my state representative if I didn't hear from my case worker by tomorrow. She said, "I understand your nervousness but that is our policy." And we hung up.

I then emailed HILC to see if anyone over there knew someone in the Embassy that could get the process rolling for me, and I began typing an email to my US-TX state representative. Literally, as I sent the email out to HILC, right before I sent one to my rep in DC, I got an email from my case worker approving my visa.

8 months, $450, 4 phone calls and 3 emails, and 2 threats later, I finally got my visa.

Was it a coincidence that 2 hours after I b****** out the phone operator and sent a threatening email to the Department of Immigration and Migration I suddenly got approved? After 8 months with NO contact from the DIAM? I don't think so.

The moral of the story, young ones, is just do your visa application online and save yourself the worry.

The closer I get to leaving for HILC, the more God heats and beats my heart, much like iron. He's definitely preparing me to be open to His Spirit when I leave.

A few nights ago I woke up at 4:30 am with some words rolling around in my head. Usually I ignore anything that comes to me that late at night, but I felt like I needed to write the words down. They were words that were tender for me. Things I didn't want to admit to myself or to anyone else. I went downstairs and wrote them all down, and started arranging them into something that made more sense to me. It ended up as a poem, and now a song. Songs just seem to make sense, you know? I can follow the idea and the emphasis of a song much more easily than anything else on the planet.

The words, like I said, were tender to me, and I don't think I fully realized how tender they were until they came out on paper. I guess I just pushed those feelings into the back of my mind. The words were about a specific person that I came to care about very much. I didn't understand that I cared until I left this person, and I don't think this person cared about me to the same degree. We disagreed over a lot of things, but agreed on a lot too, and had some very intense moments where I almost felt something emerge. However the situation we were in really didn't allow room for anything else but the tasks immediately at hand, and when the task was done I left and haven't seen that person at all since then. But over the past few months, I come back to that person in my head over and over again. There's not anything I can do at this point. I am leaving, this person is otherwise occupied in a different part of the country and even if I could do something about it, I don't know if I would. It's frustrating because I don't want to feel that way at all and I don't understand why those feelings are there. I developed them quietly and they snuck up on me all at once a little while ago. Hopefully other people know what I'm talking about and I'm not out in crazy town by myself.

I wrote the words for that person, and wrote our story specifically, but the longer I sat looking at them, singing them, playing with them, I realized that they could be for any number of people in my life. I didn't attempt to write about God mending anything or about a hopeful ending. I just wrote how I feel, at a dead end, stuck with this longing for another person and the bitter regret that we are separated indefinitely and I'll never really know their side of the story. I feel that way about a few people who were very important in my life for a while and now have virtually no contact with me. I can't help but wonder how Jesus would guide me. I know I haven't deliberately hurt anyone, but there have definitely been things unsaid and relationships lost. Does Jesus mourn the loss of friendship for me, the loss of love? Am I losing people who were supposed to be an integral part of my life?

The thing that bothers me the most about myself is that I put on this armor against other people and often don't let my tenderness come through it. I feel like I have to be uber impressive, spiritually and mentally and emotionally. I'm sure a psychologist would tell you that it's because of the situation that I grew up in with people watching me all the time, and watching my family, but I think it just comes down to fear. In fact, I know it does, because when I do finally feel comfortable enough with someone to show a little bit of my heart I do it in an awkward way and then immediately become afraid of their reaction. Why can't I just tell people when I think they are doing wonderful things? Why can't I tell people when I admire their character? Why can't I just tell someone I love them without feeling embarrassed to feel that way?

I feel a deep sense of sadness for all of the people I have let slip in and out of my life. I feel a sense of guilt for not maintaining contact out of the fear that the other person would find me annoying. It's all so unreasonable but I do it all the time! And I keep telling myself how awful it is that I did it.

Matthew 18:21-35 tells me that if I don't forgive myself, God can't forgive me either. That's a very weighty thought for someone like me, who wants everyone to love her and is very conscious of each slip up. But no doubt about it; If I am unforgiving to anyone on earth, including myself, I can't receive the forgiveness of God. So that will be my first priority: forgiving myself. Forgiving myself for being silent when I could have been loving. Forgiving myself for being talkative and advising when someone else needed silent understanding. Forgiving myself for not hearing others and living too much inside my own head. I am going to let it go and accept a clean slate.

I'm going to remember that as a Christian, I only need to feel guilty if the Holy Spirit rebukes me and brings my sins to light. Half of the things I get upset about are not really bad at all, and I just create this huge battle in my head that no one else sees. So if the Spirit isn't rebuking me, I'm not going to worry about it. And yes, it is VERY clear when the Spirit is rebuking me. There are times when He does, and times when it's just me rebuking me.

I am going to let God, the giver of consolations, speak into my heart and tell me He loves me. I want to be loved so so badly, and He is just the one to do it.

And last but not least, I am going to put my feelings into view as I'm feeling them, if it won't damage another person. No more fear of feeling what I feel. So. Do I call that person up out of the blue and drop a bomb on them? Probably not. That opportunity has passed for now. I feel like the door could re-open in future years, but God is moving me out of that season of my life and into my new Australian season. But, mystery person, if you are reading this, it should be clear who you are. And you should know that even though it makes no sense and I am not sure, and it actually makes me laugh at myself, I....I....I think I may love you. Yeah, I think I may.