Cloncurry Christian Church...

We went to Cloncurry Christian Church on Sunday. Initially we thought there was no christian church in Cloncurry even though this church building was on the main street. The building looked unkempt so we thought it was no longer running as a church. We phoned the number on the building and the website, one number was the wrong number and the other was disconnected, so that is why we thought this building was no longer running church services.
However, we were wrong. We found that it was still running, Yay!
We have been to so many different Churches on our journey, this was another example of how very different churches can be.
There were about 11 people at Church on Sunday, the pastor was unable to be there, and so we watched a teaching dvd....like I said, it was a very different service to us!

The communion message spoke to us, and even though I'm not a fan of watching teaching dvds in place of a Pastor preaching, the teaching on the dvd spoke to our heart which was good.
As always we worshiped God with all our hearts ( God had spoke to us many months earlier about worshiping Him no matter whether we went to a church with hundreds of people or a church of 10 people and so we did ) and thanked everyone for the service and went on our merry way :-)

Later that day Shane and I were sitting outside our caravan under the shade of the trees reading our bibles as we do. A vehicle pulled up beside us, it was the Pastor of the church (Shane recognized him because he had a quick chat with him the Sunday before). We had a chat with the Pastor, some of the things he said to us spoke to our hearts (we have been seeking God about quite a few things lately, in particular leading us in what step to take next on our journey). The Pastor very unexpectedly asked Shane if he wanted to preach at the church on Sunday, of course Shane agreed and that was that :-)

A few significant things have occurred while we have been here in Cloncurry, so please keep praying for us, pray for God to lead us, pray for God to use us, Pray for us to have impact here. All we want is to show people Gods BEAUTIFUL LOVE and bring them into a relationship with HIM!

I can see that God is working in us and through us, I'm EXCITED...I'm Excited for all the little things and big things HE is doing in us and through us xo Thank You GOD xo

So if you just happen to be in the area on Sunday, make sure you come to Cloncurry Christian Church and listen to my Husband share what God wants him to share :-)

This just came to mind...God says in His word (bible)... 

Matthew 7:7-11 New International Version (NIV)
Ask, Seek, Knock⁷ “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
⁹ “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Thank You God. Thank You that when we come to you in prayer and praise, You always meet us in those moments as we reach out to YOU YOU reach out to us. As we seek we will find, as we knock the door is opened, as we ask we receive....LORD YOUR goodness endures forever, I LOVE YOU xo

I Hope everyone is well and truly having a GREAT week xo
Love,
Dimi xo

The Travelling Bible, in Cloncurry, North West Queensland...

The Travelling Bible made it here at Cloncurry. The Bible is in bad condition unfortunately, it was left outside on the table overnight and it rained, so it got quite waterlogged, however, we've dried it out and it's ok, it's all part of the journey, Haha!

We ask that you pray for Cloncurry. We ask that you pray for Gods will to be done here. As usual we wil have a chat with those around us about Church and God, however, we also ask that you pray for anything specific God wants done here, especially since we have an unplanned extended stay here in Cloncurry.

We found a Christian Church here. It is a congregation of 8 people. We ask that you pray that we can have an impact here and bring some new people into the Church, that would be worth our stay here :-D
Thank you in advance for praying for Cloncurry and praying for us, we appreciate it xo
Take Care,
Dimi 

Introducing Cloncurry..and an Update...

Our spacious site...

Hi everyone, its Shane here thought I'd give this blog a go as Dimi is very unwell at the moment, so should be a quick one. Here we are at Cloncurry, this is our site at the Oasis caravan park. Plenty of space around us, the park is quite empty. We have been here for over a week now, still waiting for parts and prices for our vehicle. We have found out that the drive plate broke and had damaged the torque convertor which both have to be replaced. It may cost around $4000-$5000 possibly more if parts have to come from Melbourne, so all you praying people you know what to do, and its much appreciated. 

Cloncurry is a very small town in Northwest Qld, it is mostly a mining  and cattle town. There isn't a whole lot to do here but we make the most of it.

Fun game of skipbo...

Pool at the caravan park...

 

 

 

Library time...

church...

Serena getting bitten by a puppet...

We have had many card games with the girls and plenty of pool time and a walk to woolworths everyday is our highlight of the day. Haha.

My Beautiful wife and I making love heart shadows...

Anniversary dinner...

We were supposed to be in Alice Springs for our 13th wedding anniversary but we were stuck here in nowhere land, but we made the most of it.  It doesn't matter where we are in the world I'm just happy to have been married to this beautiful woman for 13 years. I made the love of my life one of her favourite meals, chicken and chorizo paella. She loved it. (points to me)

With all the unfortunate things that have happened and being out of our control, I am so proud of our girls who have handled this with calmness and strength and they have continued to turn to God and pray. 

Although there hasn't been a lot to do we have had plenty of time to hang out and relax and also spend a lot of time seeking the Lord. We are praying about our next step in this faith led journey of ours. We Know that God has a plan for us and we will continue to trust him in all that we do.
When hard times come, ( and they do come) its easy to just give up and throw in the towel, but this is when you have to continue and get up and fight.
If you are going through any sort of struggle right now, I want to encourage you to not give up, but hand all your burdens to Jesus. Psalm 55:22 says "cast your burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken". God LOVES you and wants to be there for you, all you need to do is cry out to Him.

Thanks and be blessed.
Shane

And then this Happened...

So we left Normanton at about 7:30am to drive to Cloncurry. We worked out it would be about a 382km drive, and it would take us 5 hours plus a half hour rest stop, so we'd get to Cloncurry about 1:00pm. We were a little too excited about the fact that Cloncurry had a Woolworths (the other 2 towns we stayed at didn't have any well stocked and well priced grocery stores), we wanted to buy some icy poles and a few other things, then have a little explore around the info centre and town before we get to our site, set up, get refreshed in the pool, eat some dinner, and hit the sack for a good nights sleep. We then would wake refreshed in the morning and head towards a free camp in Camooweal for one night which is just under 3 1/2 hours away from Cloncurry...So that was the plan!

Well as we all know not everything goes to plan and this day certainly did not...
This is our drive to Cloncurry...

244km to go...

Just under 3 ours into our drive we stopped at our first ever Roadhouse for a rest and refresh...Burke and Wills Roadhouse...

More outback, Red dirt Scenery...

And then this happened! We were driving along, doing well we thought. I looked down at the Nav man and seen that we had just 46 minutes until we got to Cloncurry, we were excited because we wanted to go to Woolworths and get some icy poles and a few other items.

Just before this happened, maybe about 5 or 20 minutes earlier we discussed the rules of the bush that we had read about the day before (see pic above). We have discussed travelling/driving rules with the girls many times, however, I just felt to have another discussion about these things on this day. We discussed how we are very prepared if we ever got stuck on the side of the road again (we got stuck on the side of the road on new years eve 2015 in Lismore, Victoria). We discussed how we all would need to stay calm and remain with our caravan and vehicle, and that we had plenty of supplies if we were stuck for a while. I thought we had a good chat!

As we were driving we suddenly heard a loud thump sound and are grinding sound, I actually thought we had run over some metal. I looked directly at Shane and I immediately could tell by the look on his face something was wrong. Shane had just enough time to pull over to the side as the vehicle DIED! WHAT, OH NO NOT AGAIN! My heart started beating quickly, I asked Shane what happened? Did it die? His response was YES! I turned to look at the girls, their beautiful faces just dropped..I quickly turned into Mama Bear and concentrated on reassuring them and making them feel that all would be fine, and made them feel comfortable. Shane looked over the vehicle but didn't know what was wrong. It was a stinking hot day, thankfully I had put some primas and zooper doopers in the freezer the day before, so I gave the girls the zooper doopers to cool down, and made sure they felt reassured. The girls began praying while Shane and I prayed and worked out what to do next. What was quite Amazing was that we actually had somewhere to stop safely, and we actually had just a couple of bars of reception on our mobile phones...THANK YOU GOD xo 50 meters back and about 50 meters in front of us there was no where to stop and no reception. In fact, everyone who stopped to ask if we needed help, asked us how do you have reception...THANK YOU GOD xo And that is another thing, so many people stopped, so many other travellers and people driving along that road stopped to ask if we needed any help. Every time someone stopped I got a little emotional (but I sucked up the tears so the girls wouldn't see me emotional and get more emotional themselves) because it warmed my heart to see so many people show such care/love/compassion to strangers. One couple in particular that stopped, we had met back at Normanton, they were our neighbours at Normanton. They stayed with us a while until they found out that RACV was coming to check out our vehicle.

That was the other thing...We were on the phone to RACV for quite some time. We were thankful we had reception to call them. Shane told RACV about the situation we were in, Shane told them we had full total care with them, RACV told Shane that our names were not coming up, which meant we had no cover, WHAT! My heart beat raced that little bit more once again. How could we have no cover, we arranged FULL total care cover before we started our trip (we'd be crazy not to), in fact, we had used our cover back in January when they again made a mistake and let us stay on the side of the road on new years eve for 10 hours because they had mixed us up with another couple in Lismore, N.S.W, we were in Lismore, Victoria...Anyway we remained calm and just did what we had to do to get us and our beautiful girls in a much safer situation. We were told over the phone we would have to sign up there and then to basic cover for 2 years and pay for it over the phone, so we did, we were told we would not have total care and that someone would come out and asses our vehicle and may tow our vehicle but possibly not our caravan. We accepted what RACV said and decided we would deal with it when we and our children were safe and sound at the caravan park.

A little while after our neighbours from Normanton (Doug and his lovely wife) left us, they had called us to see how we were doing. They were actaully going to go and stay at Julia Creek (about 1h 40m drive from Cloncurry), however, they decided to wait around for us at the caravan park in Cloncurry, so that they could drive over 45 minutes back to us and tow our caravan back another 45 minutes to Cloncurry using their vehicle, WOWSA! 
These people we had met the night before paid to stay at a caravan park they hadn't planned on staying at, just so they could drive 45 minutes back to where we were stranded, so that Doug could hitch our caravan to his vehicle and then tow our caravan back another 45 minutes to the caravan park...THANK YOU GOD for GREAT, Compassionate, Beautiful People. Thank You to Doug and his lovely wife xo We appreciate You xo

Well, 2 1/2 hours after our vehicle died on the side of the road a tow truck arrived and picked up our vehicle and caravan and gave us a vehicle to drive ourselves to Cloncurry, YAY!

We arrived at Cloncurry at about 3:30pm. We unpacked our vehicle, and watched our vehicle get towed away once again to the tow truck depot.
We have now been here in Cloncurry since Saturday (nearly 1 week)...We still don't know what is going on with our vehicle and we don't know if RACV is going to cover the tow and our accommodation...We don't have a vehicle, so we are walking everywhere..it's great exercise! We are just waiting and praying. 
Shane has made many phone calls to the mechanics, RACQ and RACV, but we really aren't any closer at knowing what's going on. We were initially told the problem would most likely be the crank shaft which could cost us in excess of $10,000 with many labour hours to fix it...(Please God No)...and last we heard, we were told it could be the drive plate which could cost in excess of possibly $3,000 to $4,000 with many hours of labour to fix that, Oh No!

You know what..I may sound crazy, however, in all of this drama going on around us we are all handling it very well. I am proud of our girls, they have learned to cope well and pray in times of difficulty. Shane and I have become better at handling difficult situations also, I think that comes with practice and most of all Trust and Faith in GOD...Our FAITH in GOD has seen us through many things, and Our FAITH in GOD will see us through many more.
We truly believe God has us in the palm of HIS most Beautiful hands xoxox

Please pray with us! Pray for all things to work out well regarding our vehicle, our finance, RACV and RACQ. Pray for God to use us while we are stuck here in a small mining town, with nothing much here. I know we will make the most of our stay, we always do. So please cover us in prayer during this time xo
Thank You in advance for praying for us we truly appreciate it xo

So we will see how things turn out and I'll update you all when anything changes...For now we will make the most of being here in HOT Cloncurry :-) We will still smile and laugh, have fun, explore and make the most of this time here together...It's not the end of the world, it's a Hiccup!

Hoping everyone has had a great week xo
Take Care and Tell your loved ones you Love them :-D
Love Dimi xo 

Our Next Stop..Normanton...

Our next stop was Normanton, only 155km from Croydon and it took us about 2 hours to get there, so are nice short drive. The road was much the same as the drive from Mareeba to Croydon, single lane and double lane roads, many road trains speeding past, and a whole lot of wildlife. As always we had to be very careful of all the animals that border the roadsides and at times dart across the road. Some of the animals/wildlife that we have seen inland so far either on the road side, or darting across the front of our vehicle have been, tree kangaroos, a large rat, many large cows, large flamingo/duck looking birds, emus, eagles, and some vulture type birds that enjoy eating the road kill and that dart at your windscreen at any given time.
At some stage as we drove along, a road train came flying past us as they do, we were pulled over allowing it to safely pass and some little stones came flying off the truck and onto our windscreen and chipped our windscreen in 2 places, bummer, however, everyone was safe and that's the main thing (later that day we had the windscreen repaired, it wasn't cheap but worth it, we didn't want to risk any further damage to the windscreen).
 
When we arrived to Normanton we stopped and explored the town first this time. We checked out the information centre and the small museum they have there. We checked out and took many pics of the huge crocodile replica that is on display in the town park, and then hurried to our site so that we could hop into the pool because once again it was a beautiful, dry, stinking HOT day! 
Normanton had the biggest pool we've seen in any campground/caravan park, it was amazing and we believe it once was the towns public pool, Wowsa! 

Our drive to Normanton, and Our Exploring Normanton Pics... 

Driving from Croydon to Normanton...

Nearly there...

Welcome to Normanton...Population 1500, Wowsa!

Very interesting info...Do you believe this is the actual size of a croc being caught many years ago, however, there is no evidence...Believe it or Not!

Oh NO!

This was the towns information centre. The centre also had the usual interesting museum, this one was a small museum but it was interesting as always...

This is the drive we are doing along the Savannah Way, the only difference is we plan to go down the middle first (well hopefully)...

Keep this in mind! We read this and explained it to the Girls...we've actually explained this and many safety rules (for travelling) with the girls many times, we just went over them once again...

Interesting Museum...

We were hungry, it was lunchtime but we thought we'd stop in the town to explore before we had some lunch. Not even a minute after we stepped into the info centre, the lady who worked there offered us some treats, YUM, Thank You Very Much!

The Travelling Bible made it to Normanton :-) As we've been travelling around, we pray for each area we visit, we share Gods Love, talk about Church, and show people Love by random acts of kindness, and sometimes God shows us exactly who to talk to and what to say to them, our hearts jump for JOY when this happens....THANK YOU GOD xo

The Travelling Bible...

We both enjoy having a chat it is a big part of what we are doing chatting with people around Australia... however, Shane really LOVES to have a chat all the time, he is on a whole different have a chat level, Hahaha! So as Shane was talking to a man named Steve, he knew straight away God had somethings to say to him. Shane arranged to catch up with Steve and chat with him some more once Steve put his children to bed for the night.

That night myself and the Girls went to bed while Shane was able to minister to Steve for many hours. Steve was an example of quite a few people we have come across on this journey, people who once knew and lived for God, however, something happened in their life and they turned away from Him.

Both Shane and Steve knew God had sent us to minister to him, and we all believe God was preparing his heart to turn it back to HIM.

We weren't even meant to stop at this caravan park, we were meant to go straight to a free camp, however, the sun was extremely HOT and we decided we wanted to refresh in the pool and have air conditioning for the night (we aim to buy a generator in the future, hopefully, so we can run our aircon at all the free/bush/farm camps we go to), we are so glad we changed our plans, so VERY glad :-)

God directed us to Steve. It warms our hearts to know we played are part in getting him connected with God once again...Thank You God for Your AMAZING perfect timing xo Thank You God SOOOOO VERY much for using us xo

We ask that you please continue to pray for us, for Normanton and for each and every area we visit. THANK YOU SOOOOO VERY MUCH xoxox

 

Our Normanton Site...

The Girls were so happy to be so close to the large Pool..Can you see it?

The Huge Refreshing Pool..We were in it for hours, then went back in for a late night dip and then went back in at 6:30am for a dip before we left Normanton in the morning, it was so much Fun...we even enjoyed star gazing in the pool.

And that was Normanton! We explored it, enjoyed the pool, rested for a night with our cool airconditioner and left in the morning for our long drive to Cloncurry...now brace yourself, the next post is a bit different to the last few posts...

Hoping everyone is enjoying their week xo
Take Care,
Dimi xo