First Communion

Princess and The Man had communion for the first time this last week. It has been something they have both been looking forward to for some time, but most particularly over the last two months.

Making their confession of faith

Being welcomed into our congregation

Hot and happy after church.

We were privileged to be able to time it at the same time that Christian's father and brother and family were with us. Christian's brother was the one who remembered to take pictures for us on this big milestone. When they arrived at our house a day earlier someone asked The Man about what he was up to and his excited reply was: "I'm having communion for the first time tomorrow!!"

The Man is currently expressing a great desire to fly planes in remote places and tell others about Jesus. He loves the work that Missionary Aviation Fellowship are doing and would like to join them. This all came about from watching The Wild Brothers and an SBS show about the world's most dangerous places to fly.

The morning of their first communion I gave Princess a cross to wear and The Man a silver love heart with a cross in the middle and the Lord's Prayer in German on  it.

Princess was amazed that her visiting cousin didn't know that it was a cross she was wearing (she kept calling it the letter T). Because of this, she determined to buy a bible for her cousin to read that she may know about Jesus love and forgiveness for her. We are always astonished at how easily Princess talks about her faith with her friends.

Remembrance Day

Remembrance day is held on the 11 of November. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month 1918 a peace treaty called The Armarctice was signed and the fighting between the Allies and the Central Powers stopped.

A moment of silence is held each year to remember those who fought and those who lost their lives in World War 1. 10 million people were killed and 20 millionaire wounded. The war had been on for 4 years. It has been 100 years since that dreaded war but we still remember it.

We should remember Remembrance Day because it is apart of our heritage, and it is part of our nations story. Many people died in that war and just forgetting them would be terribly sad, it took human lives to win that war and neglecting the fact that people died for you to live (like Jesus) would be horrible.

If we keep on remembering this day we will know what happened and what it cost for you to live free.

Lest we Forget.

Written by Tiger

Renovations Mark II

Our kitchen now!

I thought that renovations were finished...and then we had our tornado.

So now, thanks be to God, we have had our kitchen painted (covered by insurance), and our chimney repaired to better than it was (covered by insurance).

How good God is!!! We were struggling to work out how we would do this on our own, what looked like a disaster in the tornado has turned out to be for our good.

The kitchen when we arrived

One Year Here

13th November 2014

What an amazing year it has been! We have done so much in such a short time. Of course, it really does help to having a tornado help you along with some of the clearing, although they are rather indiscriminate so I don't recommend them if you can avoid it. You can see a seat on the verandah in the first picture, this was taken by the tornado.

13th November 2015

As you can see from the second photo, we have removed a few trees...but...our car was parked in front of a 130 year old pepper tree in the first photo and in the second photo it's just a black stump. This tree was removed by the tornado, burnt by us in an attempt to get rid of it, but it's hollow, so we are now keeping it...and the amazing tree has started to grow again! It just shows how wonderful God's creation is...designed to repair itself.

People Power.

 My wonderful younger brother arranged a working bee for us to get some order out of our tornado damage. We both underestimated how it would go. He underestimated how many would be here to help and I underestimated how much would get done.

BEFORE

Taken in the evening after the tornado

The garage, lying flattened in front of our blue van, was taken away three days after the tornado. This was a part of the "make safe" that the insurance company does.

AFTER

Taken after our working bee yesterday.

There were large quantities of trees chainsawed into fire wood for the house. Sheet metal, papers, clothes, bits of plastic and glass were picked up. Fires were made to get rid of the leafy branches. It was amazing how much we managed to get done.

The Man's Tornado Experience

I was walking through the damage and I saw mama's
PJ's on the bush. It was very funny.

We were in the house having rest time. It was very, very windy. More windy than it normally is. The tornado took just a short time.

When we went outside and saw everything down I felt very sad and scared because we had just finished all our renovations and now we had more work to do. I was worried that the big tree in our back yard would fall on the house. I was frightened because we had never, ever seen a tornado in action.

This is outside our front gate after the working bee left.

I walked through the damage looking for my geese Martha and Marguerite. It took a long time to find them. Marguerite died in the storm and Martha died later, after the storm. The gander, Zachary, left Martha to find Marguerite once Martha died. It was very sad.

Two news paper reporters came and channel 7 and 9 news came to interview Mummy and Skipper.

People from church and friends came to help clean up a week later. They chainsawed lots of fallen down trees and cleaned everything up and started some fires to get rid of the excess wood.

As Told by The Man

This a photo of our backyard after the workmen left.

Princess Tornado Experience

I had been reading a book on my bed when I decided to go and look out the window to see how bad the storm was. I saw the archway fall down and so I called the kids into my room and we saw a tank land on the verandah and a 100 year old tree with our property sign on it fall down.

It was very quick. It only lasted two minutes or so on our property. It wasn't scary at the time. But when we went outside we could see the tornado over our neighbours place. That was a bit scary. The main scary bit about it was that our place was really messy and we lost two geese.

But it had it's funny side on some things. When the car window got pushed in and the light sucked out Mummy's PJ's which were still in the back were sucked out and thrown onto a bush. One of the 20 000 litre tanks got smashed up and disappeared!

The garage was ruined. It had all our unpacked things in it. The silo collided with one of the tanks in the middle of the house yard at a tree where you drive your car around. We lost a whole heap of trees and our big pepper tree in the front yard became a weird sculpture. Our trampoline got smashed up after it went cartwheeling across the yard.

Since then we had a working bee and got the place really tidy and cleaned up. We are really grateful for that.

 Written by Princess

The Adventures of Princess

10 years ago in 2005 Christian and Sarah Joy fandrich had a baby girl with they named Princess Grace Fandrich. Princess had a older brother named Tiger. Tiger and Princess liked playing together. Christian was a Doctor. Sarah Joy used to be a teacher, but now she is a mum. 

When Princess was nearly one Christian decided to be a pastor. So they moved to Adelaide. Christian learned to be a pastor at Sem. They lived in one of the Sem houses. Princess liked playing with her friends at Sem. While they were still there Sarah Joy had 2 boys whose names were The Man and Tank. 

When Princess was 4, Tiger was 6, The Man was 2 and Tank was a baby, Christian finished studying and they moved to Toowoomba. There was their first church. They lived there for 5 years and while they were there they had two more babies whose names were Joybug and Skipper.

In 2014 they got there first call to Burrumbuttock, they moved that year. They bought their own property, it had 13 acres. Princess liked to see how different the place looked. 

Then in July on Saturday the 11th, at 3pm a tornado hit their place. The place was a mess!! The shed was destroyed and the tanks were ruined. On Tuesday the shed was taken apart and put in a pile. On Saturday they had a working bee come out. 

It was one of Princess' adventures.

Written By Princess
Mummy changed the names

Tiger's Three Minutes Of Terror

Three Minutes of Terror, that's what the Border Mail is calling it. A 10 days ago a Tornado ripped through our property of Stoneleigh leaving uprooted trees everywhere and our garage was completely flattened.

We were all resting when suddenly we noticed that it was really windy outside. Princess called us to her room and we saw the tree with our property sign on it fall across our driveway so we couldn't get out. Mummy was calling for Daddy and Joybug was screaming. The tornado was only over us for a few minutes and then we went outside and we saw it over our neighbours property. We were all pretty frantic. Mummy started calling people whilst Daddy assessed the damage and I went to check on the sheep and see if we could get out the council gate.

During the storm I was pretty shocked but didn't have time to be scared. When we saw the storm over our neighbours property it was pretty distressing but I kinda coped with it. Now that we can see all the damage it all looks like a lot of work.

Over the next few days we were making headlines. We were on the front page of the Border Mail, in the News Weekly, on Win News, and Prime 7 News and even had a radio interview with ABC Victoria Statewide Drive, it was quite a hectic few days. After the insurance assessor came, workmen came to clear away the garage, trees on our home and metal lying around.

On Saturday we had a big working bee and in that one day we got the whole place cleaned up...well, sort of, all the branches and leaves were in burn piles, all the logs were chopped up for fire wood and any junk was put in pile that were to be taken away. During the working bee I worked with my cousin, he cut the wood with the chainsaw and I pulled the wood away and organised them into piles.

All in all it was hard work but in the end we survived.

By the Tiger.

Tank's Tornado Story

This is my uncle cutting up a log.

When the tornado hit I was awake, talking to Mummy on the bed. Then I heard a weird rumbling sound. I thought it was lightning and throwing cricket balls. The trampoline went flying like it was an aeroplane out of control.

The trees fell down like they were made in weird shapes and most of them were broken down. I was scared. I wasn't scared of the wind. I was scared of the big tree falling down on our house. I was thinking: "can people jump into a tornado and go up in the air?"

This our geese. The grey one died.

Since then, most of the time we have been working lots of days to clean up the mess. We've nearly done the whole mess. Most of the place looked like a big, big tornado came over. It was good that it wasn't a cyclone because they go slower.

It is good that people came to help us clean up the mess. Most of the people there had chainsaws. We had one and that one was enough to help. We liked the people that came over. One person brought 4 chainsaws. We like people helping us.

As told by Tank

This is my cousin. We found a lamb in the paddock
and we caught it.