Before Chris and I got married he was rather enthusiastic about a teaching, or lifestyle, he learned from the pastor of Heartland Vineyard. The basic idea being that people are treasures in heaven. When Jesus says don’t store up treasure here on earth, but store it up in heaven, he’s talking about investing in people, not things.
Anyway, I want to introduce you to the incredible treasures we are blessed with already here in Brisbane.
This is Paola and Wez Coffey. Wez shares a name with Wesley, though they might spell it a bit different. These two are a beautiful example of this idea of treasures in heaven. They clearly enjoy spending their lives on the people they treasure, and aren’t picky about who God brings them, as evidenced by how well they love us. I am so thankful for the chance to know them and learn from them.
This is Wez and Paola’s daughter, Becky. She is studying at uni, loves kids and climbing trees still. I tried to get a picture of their son, Sam, that day when we were climbing trees, but he was too high for a recognizable shot.
This is Katie and Clayton McIntosh at a park they took us to, after feeding us brunch, the first weekend we were here. Clayton is my friend Kylie’s brother. Kylie is a dear friend who I met when I studied abroad here in Australia 16 years ago. She’s been over to the States to visit us nearly a handful of times and I still haven’t visited her, but I am making my way there slowly!
But Clayton is not just Kylie’s brother. He was a great friend before we ever landed, because he took the time to get to know us over email this year. He loves drawing, and teaching kids about it, so he was sending our boys drawing kits last winter. He’s been very helpful with many things, like connecting us with the Coffey’s, but most of all he’s been a friend. When I was here 16 years ago I learned that many people will be friendly to a foreigner, but a few will truly be your friend. In my experience there are a lot of Australians who excel at friendship.
This is Clayton and Chris doing a programming lesson last weekend. It was fun to see Chris get to teach a bit. I am thankful that he gets a break from the intensity of it back home, but he clearly loves it still. It was fun to have Clayton as our first guest in our new home.
This is Andy Yeh, the man Chris is collaborating with at the Queensland University of Technology. They met online and agreed it would be fun to work together, so Andy got us all visa sponsorship.
The day after we got here we walked over to the campus to meet Andy. What is about an hour walk turned into 3 hours as we got to know our way around. But it was well worth the hike. Andy was very kind to the boys and welcoming. We went to get lunch together when we got there. The kids were holding it together very well for being so tired and hungry. So we got them some pizza, and Andy insisted on getting them “juice,” which turned out to be some of the best smoothies I have had.
Andy and Chris have hit it off very well and he wants to have our whole family over for the weekend soon to show us around. We are looking forward to getting to know them!
The diversity is something we are relishing here. Wez is from Ireland, Paola is from Chile, Andy is from Taiwan. But they are all Australians. There are 46 different languages and cultures represented by the students and teachers at the school where the kids will hopefully go. Their school motto is: “We all smile in the same language.” All huge answers to prayers, because I long for our family to learn how to truly love across cultural lines, and we seem to be in a very good place for learning this!