If your mother only know

So I've been working on my beat boxing a lot lately. I still can't do that, but my basic beats have gotten pretty rad I think. My snare hit could still use some more high end, but my bass is booming. That's pretty much all I have to report. Check you all later.

Okay right, just kidding. So like so much has happened you guys. Seriously. Where to begin. According to the Sound of Music I should start at the very beginning because it's a "very good place to start."

I arrived in Australia on Thursday the 20th after nearly 3 full days of travel. Twin Cities, MN to Los Angeles, CA (4 hour trip 4 hour lay over in LA); Los Angeles, CA to Tepei, Taiwan (20 hour trip 1 hour lay over in Tepei); Tepei to Kaida Lempor, Malaysia (3hour trip 9 hour lay over in Malaysia); Malaysia to Sydney (6 hour trip 6 hour lay over in Sydney); Sydney to Adelaide (3 hours). Yeah seriously redic. And our plan was to watch all the extended LOTR flicks but they only provided laptop electricity in business and first class so we were screwed. But on Malaysia Airlines from LA through to Sydney, we had a screen inset in the seat in front of us which had video games you could play. I played a ton of Lost Vikings II which is a seriously fantastic old sega / pc game. My unit went out half way through the 20hour flight though, that pissed me off. We got to go to a hotel for the lay over in Malaysia and we met some cool girls who were traveling on our same route. One of them names Robyn was especially cool. She was on her way through to New Zealand just to travel for the year. We might get a chance to meet up with her later in our tour because she is coming over to Australia and has no concrete plans.

Once in Australia we got right to work for the most part. Peter, our main contact here, scheduled starting that friday. We had services to go to, lots of "cuppas" to partake in (that's what they call it when they stop everything like 4 times a day and have coffee, tea, and some small food items), programs to perform. It was awesome. And we are so well recieved here. The appreciated us so much. It is such a ministry tool to be foreign. People listen to us before we even start speaking. We don't have to prove ourselves first. It's also a great responsibility obviously.

Speaking of responsiblity, I'm one of the drivers over here. I'm driving a manual 14 passenger van with a trailer on the wrong side of the road, with the drivers seat on the wrong side of the car, with the stick shifter on the wrong hand...it's madness. But I'm pretty much already used to it. It's fun. Driving is like new again for awhile.

I went into down town Adelaide, SA (South Australia) for my day off on that Monday. It was sweet. Gorgeous around the city. They have a big ped mall that they call "Rundell Mall" because Rundell is the name of the street that is bricked off. They have these huge arcades (not as in video arcades) everywhere that pass through from the ped mall area into the building and through to the other side sometimes. Just lined with shops. And everything is wide open because they don't have to worry about different weather types really. It's different than places I've been in the States. My plan was to go to an Op Shop (Thrift Shop) and get a bunch of Aussie clothes for cheap. I was told they had good second-hand stores so I purposefully didn't bring enough clothes with me. But the Op Shops were lame. Super small and crappy compared to the one in Rockford. I guess they are a lot better in some of the bigger cities, but that didn't help me. So I ended up spending $104 Aussie dollars just on 4 t-shirts. Pretty much everything in australia is expensive because it's all imported. They are just a big desert island. Their clothes primarily come from China. I also got one pair of jeans. Yes you heard it folks. I bought jeans. I haven't worn or owned a pair since like the 7th grade but hey, I like them. And get this, the cheapest....cheapest pair I could find was $59 aussie dollars. (conversion is $0.75 aussie to $1 american dollar roughly). REDIC!!! Corey and I looked at getting some cigars tonight and they were $11.95 for the cheap kind that come in a 5 pack! And electronics are off the wall expensive.

We went to a cricket match that Wednesday which was Australia Day. What an experience. Imagine watching baseball for 9 hours where 5 of those hours are spent in the blazing summer sun. I hit a point where I didn't think I'd last. Then the weather got really nice for the last bit and I felt like I could sit and watch the game forever. It even got exciting. I won't go into the rules of cricket, you can find that crap online if you really wanted. It's interesting though. Sometimes they play 5 day long test matches...crazy aussies. I was so dehydrated the whole game I must have spent at least $30 on food and drink even though we brought some water with us. We also met up with some aussie girls who we befriended. Kirby and Vivian. They are rad and came to a couple of our shows in a row.

During this whole week I stayed with our main contact Peter and his family. The other teammers had other host homes. They were so fun and nice. So understanding, helpful, and caring. Nothing more to really say about that. It was hard to leave them on that friday and I look forward to seeing them again.

We had orientation on what we can and can't say in the public schools we will be going to. I have to say I'm really psyched about doing public school ministry. It is so cool that we get to go into schools like that and be completely open about our faith. We are allowed to be very bold and explicit about what we believe, that's what the schools want because they call it religious education. But we aren't allowed to "recruit." No invitations of any kind to pray etc. That's cool because we don't do a ton of that anyway. What a great idea for secular schools though. Religious education. Most secular people recognize the benefits of religion, why can't our school system and government?

We went to a small town called Wyalla next. We stayed with a Hungarian gentleman named Paul. He was very hospitable and all, but it was very awkward too. He told us right when we got in the car that he hated america. What an ice breaker huh? Especially coming from a hard to understand older gentleman. It also came to light that he was pretty racist towards "blacks" as well. We did our best just to make it through the experience. Then on the last day he outright just said that he didn't believe in God and he just goes to church because he has "nothing better to do." We got to talk to him for about an hour and a half about it. He basically doesn't believe in God because suffering exists in the world. I offered some answers but he was posing the questions in more of a "awwwww snap, take that" kind of fashion and wasn't really tuning into my responses. But I think some got through. I hope he thought about the conversation later.

Now we are in Ceduna. We had our day off today and I just called a bunch of people, went to the beach, got food in the main area of the town, and watched a star trek episode from my host family's hot tub. It was sweet. Oh yeah, and Deron almost died. We walked out the back door and there was a huge black snake and Deron almost stepped right on its tail! It slithered off straight away but it was big guys. Apparently, they are poisness, so it's a good thing Deron missed it's tail or it may have struck him. (Mom & Dad I hope you aren't reading this for your sanity). And the beach was kinda precarious. Only because of broken glass though. But you should have seen Deron and I...we were so freaked out by the water just because of all the crap we'd heard. We were really funny about getting in, but we didn't leave until we fully submerged ourselves.

Anyway,I'm getting so tired of typing this and I'm betting you're getting tired of reading it. I'll try and post pictures soon, but I haven't gotten internet that I can hoke my laptop up to yet. So tata for now.

in Christ,
jason

p.s. I'm checking my voice mail every so often and it's great to hear your lovely voices. I don't have access to phone numbers though so leave your number if you want me to try and get back to you. But I don't know yet how much I'll be able to do that. you can reach my be email too at jasejc@aol.com. Love you all peace.