Outreach Baniyala Arnhemland

Last Friday Eric and I had the opportunity to go on an outreach to Baniyala(Yilpara).

Yirrkala bush and beach walk

What is the way to forget about your daily sorrows and to meet the local Yolgnu and to see more of Yirrkala?

Eric had a day of today and so after our cleaning and reading it was really time for us to go out and explore. This did us all so well! We found a new path through the bush that leaded us to the dunes. Hannah found it a little scared but at the same time exciting to go through the bush. She hold my hand when she felt scared,but let me go and run forward to Naomi and Aron when she got excited.

We immagined to put our tent up at the top and camp there.

The girls made drawings in the sand.

We watched the sea and breath,

We watched the clouds and what we saw in them.

We met Yolgnu people at shady beach and had a chat with them and found out that some were our family.

Aron climbed in a coconut tree, try to get a coconut, he made it to the top but couldn't get the coconut out.

So we loved, lived and laughed!!

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Homeschooling

We have had a really good brake from the schoolwork. The kids have had a good holiday. Although we didn't stop with having time with God! And we are continue with bible memorizing. For this year, we have challenged ourselves with the whole book of Collosians!!Mum is doing it too! It's fantastic how much Lois is picking up from this, I had different Bible verses for her, but she is learning the same scripture now as the older ones!
I have spent more time with the Lord. To ask Him for guidance for the coming year.

My verse is: Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
And amazing, God is so good, He has spoken to me a couple of times and He has already given me so many ideas and answers to prayers! My concern was Naomi: as she rather wanted to go to school than to be homeschooled. Although she is more than happy at home. I asked the Lord what to do and clearly His answer was perseverence, go on with it, I'm with you!
He has given me new ideas for Naomi for this year: Naomi wants to be a hairdresser, so one of the ideas was to go and asked in the hairsalon in town(20 km away) if it was possible for Naomi to learn there. What a great outcome: The owner was so possitive, has learned it the same way. Naomi was welcome and is already working there!! And the owner is so happy with Naomi and she wants to teach Naomi! I have already asked her about schooling for it. She would need University/aprentenship Darwin or somewhere else after her college.

The other Idea is: That Naomi can go to the homeland MAF families to help with the children homeschooling and with the little kids to entertain them, baking, cooking, games etc. for a few days a term. Naomi is a great helper at home, I will miss her here but see that she can be a blessing to other families and so this is her little missionary work. With these ideas it will be a exciting year for her and all of us.

Homeschooling is not the easiest thing to do, but I don't want to miss it. There are so many rewards!( Family bonding, teaching them Gods ways, God molding me the most maybe,one on one teaching)
The hardest thing I found is that we are nearly the only family here that are doing it.People don't really understand it, because why don't you send them to school, if their are schools?
Compared to New-Zealand it was so normal there, even when you were living close to schools.
It is against the flow, that makes it hard.

One day as I went for a walk to shady beach by myself and sat on a roch and cried it out to God for help, how than Lord? How can I teach, how can I love? Straight away He answered: Come to me. And than I remembered the rest of the verse: all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.(Matthew 11:28)
He gave me 3 words: Love (giving my everything), Live(go out and explore with them), Laugh(have fun together)

I know with Gods help we can do it! It was God Himself that layed it on my heart to homeschool. He gave me verses to confirm: Deuteronomy 6:6, Psalm 78:3-8
And so we go on, following His footsteps, not my will anymore, but His will be done!

A knock on the door in the middle of the night

Please pray with us for our Yolgnu family:

Last weekend we woke up at 3 in the middle of the night from screaming. I said to Eric: it's like someone wants to make an end on his life. 5 min. later there was a knock on the door. It was our Yolgnu family and they asked if we wanted to search with them for their son. He left home angry and drunk. Praise God we found him alive soon and we could bring them all back home savely! 15 min. later they knocked on the door again and asked for some food for their son. So we invited them in and gave him some food and we prayed for them. They were all calmed down. The next day we went over to see them again, and they did well. But had a big fright from last night.

And I must say it had touched my heart deeply, when I thought of that scream, I cried.The next night I couldn't sleep very well. I had to bring it before the Lord.

Please pray for hope for their son and the people of Yirrkala. And thank God that their son was found again and alive!Pray that God will continues to use us.

Boys ceremony from our Yolngu family

We were invited by our Yolgnu family to the boys ceremony. We had asked around Maf people and Yolgnu Christians if this was ok. But the best way to find out is to go and find out yourself. We felt quite privelaged and decided to go. They had asked us to bring some bread and soup to share. So we went after church with warm soup and the bread. It was a big happening. The whole week there was clapping on sticks and dancing and the sound of the digeridoos. 4 boys would become a man...by circumcision. The boys were dressed up with a skirt and waiting to be picked up by the dancers.

Brought to a place where they got a painting on their stumich, a story of their family which took 3 hours!! While the Yolgnu man sat around the boys there was entertainment by music(clapsticks and didgeridoo) and singing and and dancing. Telling stories from baby to man.

We were still sitting on the ground on a bamboemat, while the soup got colder and the kids got bored and hungry. We decided to start eating and after that the kids had enough and decided to go home. I had to wait for the boy to finish, because than he could eat, before the real circumcision took place.
Done by the Yolgnu people themselves.
We didn't want to see this part and went home.

it was a privelage to be part of it although we didn't understand it at all. We were really welcome and part of the family.

Christmas and New yearseve

The last day of the schoolyear was a real surprise for the kids.

I had made certificates for each one with a personal writing on them. We started the day first in bible reading and prayers, praise and worship. Thanking God for this schoolyear! He has guided us through.
Then it was time to hand out the certificates, the kids were blown away! It was so fun to do this for them, as they had worked hard and done awesome work in this year of moving everywhere. This was not the only thing we had for them, we also surprised them with a meal at the Gove house!

And as the holidays started so did the rain. The temperature dropped by 10 degrees, we really enjoyed it, and the kids played even outside in the rain, they had lots of fun with their togs on, on their bikes going through puddles. There was a Cyclone coming our way, so we had to teach the children about it and what to do. We made a box with extra food and found out where to go if we had to move. We had some bad weather from the cyclone, but it didn't come towards us, but went south.

Christmas was different again: In a new envirement, culture, new friends, and without family, and with a different Christmas tree, a Jesse tree. We had focussed on the familytree of Jesus, from Genisis to Matthew, the birth of Jesus, that started the end of November. Every day we did a bible story and a devotion and the kids hang a symbol of the story in the tree, that they made themselves. It was waiting for something exciting to happen...Jesus birth, Jesus taking more place in our hearts, and now waitng for His return.

On Christmas eve we went to Yirrkala church, because the kids from kidsclub had practised some dances on Christmas Carols. The plan was to go out on the streets and sing songs, and dance, but it poored down with rain they had to do it in church.

We also had invited our Yolngu family for a Christmas dinner. I had cooked a meal and Eric had to pick them up, they forgot. Only our 'yapa'(sister) came with her 3 grandchildren.Usely they sit on the floor, but our kids had made the table so nicely.The conversation went a little bit hard, as yapa was sitting with her back towards me and didn't look at me when I asked or told her something. Once we were sitting on the couch, it went better and we had a nice conversation.

On Christmas day we came together with 5 new families, we enjoyed each others company.Everyone had prepared something.


Eric went fishing with 3 men, they enjoyed it al.

On New years eve we had invited everyone to our place to celebrate the new year. We had made the tradional oliebollen and some other snacks. We had fun by playing a game: spoons. Even the Paas family could still come. Aartje was already overdue. They put the girls to bed at our place. After 12 they took the youngest, Tamar with them home.

At 5.30 in the morning Arjan called that they had to go to hospital.So I rushed down to their house to babysit Tamar.

An hour later he called me already that they had a healthy baby boy: Ethan! What a joy to start the new year like that!!

see www.bushpiloot.nl

Christmas outreach!

Photo left Yolgnu women and children at Garthalala, photo right people at Birany Birany!

Over the Christmas period the evangelism team Yolngu for Jesus planned a few outreach trips to the homelands, but due to the ex-tropical cyclone Grant we couldn't go untill Thursday.
Initially there would have been an overnight stay, but instead we did an afternoon trip where I took the team to 2 homelands! Because the people didn't expect us to come, it came a bit as a surprise so soon after the cyclone had passed through.
The first homeland we visited was Birany Birany (pronounced Brang Brang) I had to work hard to get landed, first I did a so called runway inspection at 200 feet. Then when I wanted to put the plane on the ground the wind blew me completely off the centerline and I had to go around for a second attempt, which succeeded!
Afterwards Eunice told me she was praying that we could land at Birany Birany because it is her homeland and the people needed to hear the Message about Jesus!
The people you see on the photo was all that was left, the rest were visiting other homelands or went to town.
We would all share our personal testimony about how we celebrated Christmas before we were Christians and the difference after we became Christians.
The Yolgnu people are very open to the Gospel and especially when the 2 Yolgnu ladies Eunice and Faye began to talk in their language they were all very excited and they began to share some miracle stories. One man was taken by a crocodile and another man from his village, named Andrew, rescued him. The man told us he is thankful to God everyday for his life.
Andrew promised Aron to make him a fishing-spear, which indicated that he was really fond of him being around. Kevin also a member of our team, preached the Word to them and told them about how Jesus was born into this world to save them so that they can have eternal life if they put their faith and trust in Him! Because there were 6 men from the village, Kevin warned them about the consequences of the ceremonies the Yolngu have, which are done only by the men!
Our next homeland was Garthalala and also over there were only a few women and children around, almost all the men had gone out. Aron shared some candies with them and also we shared our testimonies. The lady we met at the village is into discipling the children and is strongly related to the Yirrkala church. She told us that she was praying against the cyclone in the name of Jesus for several days! Eunice and Faye shared in Yolngu and Kevin was leading in worship with the guitar! The children were a bit shy but loosened up after we gave them some presents. Tiina Higham our MAF homeschool support teacher received those from her home-church in Finland!
Please pray for more Yolgnu people like Eunice and Faye to participate in evangelising over Arnhemland, they speak the language which opens up so many doors. But they themselves need to be discipelled first. Also that God will open up some funding for outreaches like that to take place more frequently, the next trips we are planning are at Easter, but Yolgnu for Jesus would like to do more in between. Pray for Kevin and Gerard and encourage them to keep going on with this great call to evangelise and disciple among the Yolgnu!

Christmas greetings

For us a Child is born,

to us a Son is given.

And He will be called:

Wonderful Counsellor

Mighty God,

Everlasting Father,

Prince of Peace,

Emmanuel, Jesus.

We want to thank everyone for their support and prayers for this year!

We Wish you a Merry Christmas and a blessed 2012!

Lots of love from Eric & Adriana Naomi, Aron, Hannah, Lois and Ruben Koch

Last weekend, we had to take away the swimmingpool, because it isn't proper fenced. We find it really hard to deal with the rules and regulation as they are made out of fear,we think.But what do you do? listen and obey. And so it's sad to see this efecting the children and the Yolnu children, as they had already lots of fun together.

Eric is into the flying now, and is enjoying it. On Tuesday he had to fly some people from centrelink around and so he had to wait for a few hours in every place. As he had to wait he walked into every village and prayed and met some people with interesting talks.

On Thursday, the kids and I went to the MAF hangar to pick up some letters and parcels. We stood outside to see the planes coming and going. We said to each other: that would be so awesome if daddy was here or fly in...we had just fun watching as one of the pilots came to us and asked what we were looking for...daddy...the pilot thought that dad was washing the plane. So we drove up to the Layna hangar to have a look out there. I parked the car and there Eric was...we were so happy to see him...and he was too! We had morningtea together, it wasn't busy with flying. After having a nice time together, we decided to go on to Nhulunbuy for a swim. So Eric waved us goodbye while I tried to turn the car forwards a little bit then backwards, but as I turn we heard a big bang...what was that?? I had hit a 10 cm iron pole, sticking out of the ground and so the tire had popped...O no...we both hadn't seen this iron pole! But no worries, it went all so smoothly, Richard, another MAF pilot came to see what had happened. So Eric took the spare tire and they started fixing it...pfff with a little sweat it was quickly fixed and we could go again.

Party time

And finally: Lois her 4th birthday! She was looking forward to it already for a long time. She enjoyed the whole day. But at the end she was so tired that she asked herself if she could go to bed.

And eindelijk was het dan Lois haar verjaardag. Wat heeft ze hier naar toe geleefd! Ze heeft de hele dag enorm genoten
maar aan het eind van de dag, vroeg ze zelf of ze naar bed mocht gaan, zo moe was ze.

As every year we celabrate our Dutch Sinterklaas on the 5th of December. This year we did it a little bit later, on the 10th. together with the Paas and Giles family. We had so much fun.And of course with the little gingernut cookies. Aron and Naomi were dressed as Black Piet.

En ook dit jaar was Sint ons niet vergeten. Het was wel wat later, maarja hij moest natuurlijk helemaal van Nederland naar hier toe vliegen.Samen met de familie Paas en Giles hebben we een gezellige Sinterklaas avond gehad. Naomi en Aron verkleed als zwarte Piet. en niet te vergeten de overheerlijke pepernoten. Christie Giles had van haar familie in Nederland een heel pakket met lekkers gehad, wat ze met ons allen had gedeeld. mmmm.





On Sunday we had church on the beach which was great! It seems easier for the Yolnu people to come down to the beachchurch than to the churchbuilding. Praise God, one man gave his heart to the Lord!

Zondag hadden we kerk bij het strand. Echt geweldig. De opkomst was beduidend hoger dan in het kerkgebouw. Prijs de Heer, 1 man gaf zijn hart aan de Heer!

Naomi is so confident in cutting Lois hair, I wasn't as a lot of her curls are gone

Naomi heeft Lois haar haar geknipt. Ze wil kapster worden, het zelfvertrouwen heeft ze al, nu nog de kneepjes van het vak. Ik was er niet zo zeker van, want de meeste krullen zijn er nu af.

On Sunday evening we had our first Christmas dinner with all the MAF staff in Arnhemland. Soo many kids!


Op Zondag zijn we naar ons eerste MAF dinner geweest waar alle MAF werkers van Arnhemland elkaar konden ontmoeten. Er waren zoveel MAF kinderen!

Naomi's birthday party
having a masterchef baking competition with a compliment that the girls have to start a own cafe in Yirrkala named the Shed:)

Naomi's verjaardagsfeestje met een masterchef bakwedstrijd. Met als compliment dat ze een cafeetje moet open hier in Yirrkala: "Eetcafe de Schuur":)