The LCA had previously invited the Lutheran Church in Singapore (LCS) to join Giraffe. So far we have sent five people over the last ten years. The last group that went was in 2006, when three young people attended Giraffe International. When they came back, they approached me about started a Giraffe in Singapore. So […]
It’s an amazing thought: a country with fewer people than Sydney and a Lutheran Church smaller than the NSW district hearing God’s mission call to China. Mind you, if it comes to Singapore you expect it to be well thought through and well executed – and it is. The LCS decided to focus on Henan […]
Men shuffled slowly into the church and sat on one side puffing on their cigarettes, while women and children sat on the other side staring back at me with wry smiles as I sat facing them from the front of the church. Together with the pastor of the Lumban Julu congregation and Pastor Rein Justin, […]
I am a firm believer that the best, most enduring travel memories are formed largely by the people you meet along the way. The best way to experience another country and its culture is to meet people in their daily lives, to see the world from their perspective and to walk in their shoes for […]
What an amazing privilege to be part of the first tour of Australian Lutheran teachers to Papua New Guinea! When I first heard about the visit to PNG I jumped at the chance. I had never experienced a country such as this and had heard so many stories that I had to see it for […]
Dear reader of this article: thank you! You might not realise it, but right at this moment God is working powerfully in Malaysia and Singapore – and you are contributing to that! Yes, that includes every one of us in the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand. A part of our weekly offerings goes […]
Two brief visits to our LCA partner church, the Basel Christian Church of Malaysia (BCCM) in Sabah on the island of Borneo, can hardly qualify me to write with any authority on the BCCM. However, the church – the people of God – active and passionate about the mission of God is what I treasure […]
Myriad thoughts and emotions are evoked by the new title of our mission magazine. There are elements of apprehension, uncertainty and even fear as we approach the unknown, but there are also elements of anticipation, expectation and excitement. That’s how it was for us as we planned for and made our own border crossing. For […]
Next to the airport road is one of the cemeteries. Like all the others this one is not really a cemetery but a mass grave. Around 2,500 bodies were unceremoniously shovelled into this one in the rush to stave of disease. There are no markers. There was barely time to dig the pits and bury […]
Those of us who have travelled internationally know the excitement of visiting a different country, meeting its people and learning the culture. This was the experience of Indonesian teachers Flutner Purba and Yentie Simanjuntak, who spent four weeks in Brisbane recently. The visit of the teachers from the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (a partner church […]