newsletters


Dear family and friends, August, 2011

It was heartwarming to see so many people at the airport, who we love! Thanks to you all!! Also for the people who wanted to come but couldn't be there.
It felt the same as leaving Holland, leaving our family, it wasn't easy for you and for us.
Thanks to God that the flights went well! Especially with all the luggage.
We flew first with Air-New Zealand and from Cairns with Yetstar.
They have different rules with luggage.
I had some stress moments about this the day before.
Air NZ allowed us 23kg main luggage for Ruben and 7 handluggage.
As yetstar didn't allow any for him. So we bought 20 kg extra before we left Nelson.
But we weren't allowed to put in 1 suitcase.
So the problem was that when we arrived in Auckland we had to change the suitcases in different kgs. and weigh them again.
God gave us the idea to divide all the extra kg in little bags of 2kg,
because we were allowed 25 kg main luggage for Yetstar..
And this worked out so well, no stress anymore in Auckland.
We just divided the luggage and prayed along and  checked in. And it was fine!

We had some delay in Auckland so we arrived late at night in Cairns. We were really tired as you can imagine. But we were glad that we had arrived safely.

Sunday the 24
th of July, our first day:
I immediately emptied all the suitcases and put everything in it's place. Put duvetcovers on the kids bed, to make it a little bit home.
In the afternoon we went out for a walk to explore the area and to find a shop for our groceries. We found only a dairy, so for the big groceries we had to rent the car from the lodge.
It was shocking to see that the bananas were so expensive $16,- a kilo!! This is because of the cyclone not long ago.
The temperature is quite warm, around 26 degrees. We had some rain but mostly early morning, and then on the day sunny.
We're staying in Tree Tops Lodge with a beautiful view and surrounded by variety of trees and plants and the sound of the birds, dancing butterflies in all kinds of colours. There's a swimming pool on the park which is used by our kids every day!
We started training on the 25th of July. For the little kids there was a creche and Naomi, Aron and Hannah were homeschooled by a lovely old lady, Clarice, she even went into the pool with them!
It took a couple of days for all of us to get used to the change. Especially the kids.
Ruben and Lois didn't like to be left behind so when Ruben was due for a sleep, I picked him up again from creche, which was upstairs from where we were having training, and brought him for a sleep in his own bed.
For me, Adriana, it was difficult to sit for the hole day ..I ended the first week with huge toilet problems. I changed my diet and started excercising(running, walking) early morning, lunch time and afternoon, praise God it became better.

The training overall was really good. We have learned a lot about:
  • Spiritual Warfare, every day we had 1 or 2 sessions about it ,
  • Cross-cultural information was really interesting, to learn more about the Aboriginal culture and also the problems there are in Arnhemland.
  • Maf info, stress, depression, health and marriage course,
  • Language course. We decided to involve the kids in this aswell. They enjoyed it.
It was also good to hear about great expectations. To have it all balanced to go out and serve others in love and bringing the gospel.

In between all this, we are dealing with a lot of paperwork, because of the move from Nzto AUS. Setting up a bankaccount, taxnumber, work and income, applying for a medicare card, arranging things for our home in NZ, crates that needs to be shipped over. We are working every night till 12 doing these kinds of things. And often it's not good after the first time, some things need to be added. These are huge mountains for us to climb and we need perseverence.

It's great to see in this all that there are lovely local people that we didn't know, but Eric's dad knew, that are taking care of us. They have visited us last Sunday and today, they came with 2 cars to pick us up and take us to the market and afterwards to there home for a barbecue.

Tomorow, Eric will start his flighttraining. The first week is groundschool here at Tree Tops Lodge. From next week Eric and 2 other pilots will go to Mareeba every day to do the real MAF flight training for another 3 weeks.
I, Adriana, and the kids will stay here to do some schoolwork, and other activities.
We already know where we are going in Arnhemland: Yirrkala. This is a little community 11 km south of Gove. We know that there is a lot of alcohol problems under the Aboriginal people . In Gove there is a little shoppingcentre and a swimmingpool.
Please pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests, thank and praise God for the following:
  • that we made the move to Cairns, only because of Him who gave strength and serving hands from others!
  • that we could do the orientation-training!
  • For wisdom and perseverence in filling out forms and dealing with these things.
  • For providing the finances.
    We have to pay the lodge, flight-training and groceries and car-rental ourselves.
    We are in an “in between” time, because of the move NZ-AUS. No income, no childsupport, no homeschoolincome...nothing till Eric will start flying for MAF and all the papers filled in correctly.
  • For Eric's flight training
  • for Adriana homeschooling the kids, finding a new rythm on our own.
  • For a touch of the Holy Spirit on the Aboriginal people, for their alcohol problems.
    We thank you all for partnering with us!
    With love from: Eric & Adriana Koch
    Naomi, Aron, Hannah
    Lois and Ruben