Big Boys Camp - The Man 2015

In August 2015, Daddy and The Man went to the Bogong Mountains. We stayed at Bogong Village in a small hotel for two nights. In the morning, we went up to Falls Creek. First we went tobogganing, which was very fun. After a while we went for a walk and looked around and decided to ski. It was hard at first, but soon l became good at skiing. I managed not to fall on one of the trails. We skied until the lifts stopped. Then we went down to our hotel. In the morning we got ready to go. When we were ready we went the rest of the way down and went home.

While we were away we read a special book together about being a man. In the story the boy went with one of his friends to a museum.

Written By The Man

Our New Studio: Man

Yesterday a truck came with the parts for the studio. Mum said that they were like a big jigsaw puzzle since they were made to the right size before they came.

Today carpenters came to do the frame of the studio that we are making. We took pictures of them putting up the frame. Soon after they had done the frame the windows came. They used tools like angle grinders, cement drills, nail guns, power saws, drills, hammers, and chalk lines.

They used the chalk line by lining it up, once it was in line one of the men flicked the line and that put the chalk in a straight line. They didn't have to use a ruler. The chalk line is an ancient tool that was used in ancient Egyptian times.

Written by The Man

Christmas 2015

The Pastor's Family - taken at Sovereign Hill

What a whirlwind of a year 2015 has been!

Homeschooling, Renovations, Christian and Tiger going to Germany, Pastors Conference, tornado, repairs and insurance dealings, General Synod, a visit to Sovereign Hill, and then toping it off with extended Fandrich family for the week before Christmas.

And yet in all of the busyness there is so much to be grateful to God our Father for!

Grateful for a steady, but slow recovery of Christian's mother's health in Germany.

Grateful for a tornado that has allowed us to fix things that we didn't think we would be able to do (Look for further updates on this in the future, we should be finished by Easter).

Grateful for wonderful friends to spend time with when we went to Sovereign Hill and Adelaide this year.

Grateful to my parents for the wonderful rest they gave me during General Synod.

Grateful for our 6 beautiful children, all growing in God's grace, wisdom and stature. And grateful for the wonderful friends we have made homeschooling this year.

Grateful to be living in the country, raising our own veggies, orchard, sheep, ducks, geese and now 18 chooks! Yes, some of these will be dinner in the future. We really are living like "Little House On the Prairie", except as the kids say, we have internet, electricity and running water.

Grateful to Christian's brother and his family and Christian's Dad for the delightful memories we made over the time they were here.

And we are also grateful for a wonderful church family here in the Burrumbuttock Parish who support us in our work sharing the Gospel with the people here. They continue to be a great source of encouragement to us both, and are so generous with us.

Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)

 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
 they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

Christian and Sarah Joy

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