G’day Mate!!

Where to begin?  Well, God is good and got all of us here safely and with all of our luggage!  We had very uneventful-but long flights.  We arrived on Wednesday morning, Australia time, which means it would have been Tuesday night at home.  I think we figured our total travel time was about 32 hours!  We tried to help the jetlag by staying up all day, so by last night we were exhausted!  We were met at the airport by Bob and Gail Gierhart, missionaries here, and they helped us get our rental car and then led us to the church where we are staying.  Dr. Taylor was the lucky one who got to drive on the “wrong” side of the car and road.  He did a pretty good job, but the blinker is still giving him problems.  He reaches up on the wrong side and hits the windshield wipers instead.  So, every time we turn we signal with the wipers, which is especially amusing when you haven’t slept in 2 days.  One turn he even managed to get the back wiper going and squirting wiper fluid!  After we unloaded, Greg, the pastor of the church, took us down to the beach.  It was about a 20 minute walk and gave us a chance to see Dee Why, the suburb of Sydney where we are staying.  Dee Why is very multi-cultural.  You will find as many people from other countries as you will Auzzies.  The beach was beautiful, but very cold.  We went back to the church and finally got to take showers.  It was wonderful!  Once we were clean we went to Bob and Gail’s for dinner and then to a different church for a young people’s service.  By then we were fighting sleep and I think all nodding off during Bible study.  We came back to the church and crashed for the night.  We slept on mattresses on the floor, but I don’t think anyone noticed.