2 Days..2 Museums...

The Mary Kathleen Museum...

As we've travelled we've all come to realise that we enjoy going to museums, we really do. we enjoy getting to know the local area better, and taking a stroll through history. The girls especially enjoy anything interactive in the museums and have actually asked to visit a few of them a second time...so museums have become a part of our journey!

We managed to visit 2 museums here in Cloncurry in 2 days...Both of these museums were interactive, rich in history and very educational. One of them we will even be returning to next week (Mary Kathleen Museum) to have another look and enjoy a picnic by the playground. 

Mary Kathleen Museum...

Checking out the many different crystals and minerals...

A very old Australia Post bike...

This women to the left of the pic frightened me many times by jumping out at me, Hahaha!

Old style Printing Machine...

The Lookout behind the Museum/Info Centre...

Some playground Fun!

So we all enjoyed Mary Kathleen Museum in particular the outside section. The girls enjoyed climbing on all the machinery on display outside and checking out all the different amazing looking crystals and minerals!

I'll continue with our second museum in a later post.

Hope all is well xo
Take Care,
Dimi

Exploring Cloncurry..and a Big Update...

We are still here in Cloncurry and we will be here for possibly 2 weeks maybe longer. We have been without our vehicle for over 2 weeks now. We spend most days walking about 20 minutes to town and 20 minutes back. Once in town, we usually go to woolworths to get some groceries (we usually only get 1 or 2 days worth of groceries because the bags get heavy carrying them home, and we enjoy the walk everyday), we often visit the library, and sometimes the bakery. We've also been down to the skate park so the girls can have a skate on their scooters. We will also be visiting a few museums over the next couple days, but other than that not much else is walking distance.
As always we make the most of it, and we've enjoyed many days by the pool, and evening walks also. The sunsets are beautiful here and although it gets to the high 30's here during the day, the mornings and evenings get very cool and sometimes quite cold which is a nice break from the heat. The starry nights here are just GORGEOUS and some of the best we've seen so far!

At times it has been difficult being in the same spot for so long without a vehicle because you can only walk so far, and we are not at all used to spending more time than ever before around our site, we are usually out and about most days needing to book ourselves a rest day...however, as I said before we always make the most of our situation and I love that about us!
The last week the girls have made some friends here and they've all enjoyed hanging out together, so that has been good, and we have delayed school holidays for the girls and have accomplished a whole lot of extra homeschooling work, including projects on specific things about Australia, so that has been good to do together!

Walking and Exploring the small town...Notice the perfectly blue sky!

DELICIOUS Pastries at the very popular local bakery, YUM!

The skate park beside the pcyc...

Resting in front of the local library...

PCYC...

The Local State School...

We were updated on what was wrong with our vehicle. The drive plate cracked and needs to be replaced and the touqe converter has been damaged and we need to get a reconditioned one built in Melbourne. We are waiting for second hand parts to come from Melbourne hopefully by the end of this week. So far it will cost us around the $4000 mark. However, we've been told that once the job is done and the car is started again, they may find other problems, however, this shouldn't be the case. We are glad the price has dropped from the initial $10,000 plus, however, it is still a huge bill we did not need at this stage of our journey. We've asked what could have caused this and there was no answer, things like this just happen! 

Just pray with us...Pray nothing else is wrong with our vehicle and pray that by some miracle the bill is reduced again. Please also pray the mechanic does a great job with fixing our vehicle.

We are basically taking each day as it comes and crossing every bridge when we get to it! Thank you in advance for praying for us xo 

On a much more positive note, yesterday when we went on our regular walk to town to go to woolworths and the library, we bumped into someone we recognized...do you believe we bumped into one of the three German backpackers that Shane had ministered to about 3 months earlier when we camped at Bulladelah free camp :-0

If you read that post you would know that Shane ministered to them, we gave them coffee and breakfast and we soon learned that we were the second people in 2 days to minister to them. Once the backpackers had left us, the next night they messaged Shane to tell us that a third person ministered to them and they were heading to church that Sunday, WOW (this was about 3 months ago)! 

Well we had just bumped into them in Cloncurry, WOWSA! Shane walked to the motel to say hello to the other guys, and everyone spun out that we would meet once again in Cloncurry. What do you think? Do you think it's the hand of God making all this happen? As always, I think God is up to something :-) 

Shane is hoping to catch up with them in a couple of weeks if we are still here (they work shifts of 2 weeks on and 1 week off on someones farm, so they aren't able to come to church with us the next couple of weeks). 

So that's our long update...Some difficult times, some unexpected things happening, some exciting things occurring, and believing that God has us in the palm of HIS Beautiful hand.

It is a strange feeling not knowing where we will be in a couple of weeks, and what God is going to do next...however, we are taking one step at a time and relying on God in a HUGE way...even when life gets tough (and the last couple of weeks have been tough and tested us...most people only know about the vehicle issues, we've had some pretty hard kicks to the gut the last couple of weeks) we love holding onto Gods hand through it all and making the most of it all, Life is still good either way. 

I'm hoping everyone is well and making the most of each and everyday xo 

Love Dimi xo

 

 

 

 

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