Welcome to winter in Australia

Published on Monday, May 12th, 2008

Welcome to winter in Australia. Just thought I would start off with an interesting fact of the land we now call home. Now winter here is a bit different than up north. The days stay around 50-70 degrees (F) and no snow. The key difference is that there is no central heat in most homes, so it can get colder in the house than outside. Interesting fun fact.

Two praises and one prayer point

National Workplace Evangelism Conference

Thank you for your prayers for this conference. We had great attendance and interest in workplace evangelism. Here are some of the highlights.

Great talks : God’s love for a great city (Jonah) and the challenge to not flee the cities but be the salt and light we are to be within the cities. “As the city goes, so goes the culture.” –Tim Keller

Reaching the Culture: How do we answer the “Defeater beliefs” and why should the culture even listen to us?

Electives on Prayer and evangelism, sharing your faith at work and organizing events and groups.

The goals of the conference were to challenge people to share their faith in the place they spend the most hours in every day; work.

We had people travel in from Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Dubbo.

“I did not know what to expect from this conference, but I leave with a completely different perspective on sharing my faith. Thanks for the weekend and please do it again.”

Women of Worth: Ladies Pamper Day

Cathy, Rebecca, and Hope ( also, our adopted daughter, Amalie) participated in the Ladies Pamper day at our new church, Glorious Hope Baptist. The pastor’s wife, Lody Bassari and the ladies of the church put together a pre-Mother’s day outreach in the community. Many of the ladies in the community would not be able to afford a ‘pamper day.’ So, the WOW group at church puts together a massive project to pamper the ladies in the neighbourhood. Over 60 ladies came. Cathy was thrilled because she has able to do hand massages on most of the women. She was able to pray with all of the ladies she came in touch with on the day and share the Gospel with them. She said, “The experience was like Jesus washing the feet of the disciples.” All of the ladies heard a great Gospel appeal and good music. All of the ladies who worked on the day communicated “The love that was shown to the ladies was unlike anything that they had experienced before.” Pray the ladies come to church and come to know Christ as their Saviour.

Prayer point:

Over the past three weeks, Russ has been experiencing back pain. Yesterday, he was laid out on the floor for the whole day. After, finally, going to the doctor and chiropractor it is most likely a slipped disc or pinched nerve. Today, he will be going to get scans and tests done to see what can be done. We would appreciate your prayers for this situation.

Kid’s corner:
Hope starts guitar lessons, Josh is now a “sixer” leader in Scouts, Becca is writing a new story daily and Caroline singing and reading all the time.

Thank you for all of your support and prayers. We love hearing from you via e-mail. It helps us to know how to pray for all of you.

The adventure continues…
The Matthews Family


Permanent Visa

Published on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Thank you for your prayers! It is an exciting day in our home. We received our Permanent Visas today. This is a huge answer to prayer!!! Praise God!

The Matthews


Praise and Prayers

Published on Sunday, April 20th, 2008

I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself.
Psalm 89:2
 

Our God is the mighty God of all creation and we are thrilled to be apart of His work in Australia. Thanks for being apart of this work in support and prayers. We will be sending a full update in May, but we wanted to send prayer requests to you.
 

Praises:

  • Completed the nine week series through the Book of Numbers, “The City, Seduction and Jesus.” Had numerous people interested in knowing more about Jesus and people acknowledging Christ as Saviour during the series.
  • Safe arrival of Russ’ parents, in Australia, for a two week stay.
  • Official transition to Glorious Hope Baptist Church
  • Amalie Parmerlee’s continued and faithful work with our ministry

Requests:

  • National Workplace Evangelism Conference on 2-4 May.
  • ‘Living For Jesus’ course at numerous locations throughout the city
  • Conclusion of ‘Six Steps to talking about Jesus’ Course at Oracle
  • New series “Power: Nothing Else Comes Close,” Four week series in Daniel at City Bible Forum in May
  • Permanent visas will be processed quickly for the family this month
  • Continued opportunities to sharing our faith with people in our community

Thank you for all of communications and prayers.
 

The adventure continues…
The Matthews family


Celebrating Resurrection Day

Published on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

We hope this update finds you well and celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. This is the reason we do what we do, for the glory and worship of our God and what He did for the world through the death, burial and resurrection of His Son. This beautiful, scandalous day of grace and mercy brought together in the vision that is the cross and the empty tomb. This is the day in history, giving us the invitation for a relationship with the creator of the universe that can only come through His Son. We pray that you would join us knowing the joy that can only be found through the knowledge and acceptance significance of this day, Easter, The Resurrection Day.
 

Quick update:
Busy few months in ministry in the Sydney. Teaching a course “Six Steps to sharing about Jesus” at Oracle. This is a great class and we receive stories each week of people sharing their faith in the workplace. We had over 200 people come to the events at Telstra to hear from the Biblical Historian, John Dickson on the historical truths of Jesus’ resurrection. Over 150 people came to the events in the “Easter and the City” presentations given at the City Bible Forum. Pray for those who prayed with us during the invitation that was offered at the end of the sessions. We had people fill out forms with interest in becoming a Christian. We will keep you updated over the next few weeks.
 

Amalie Parmerlee has arrived in Sydney for the work in 2008. We are thrilled with her willingness to work with our ministries. She has been a blessing for the work in the city, church and youth.
 

Family front:
We will officially be moving to a new church in April, Glorious Hope Baptist. Please pray for the family adjusting to a new church and for the future ministry and church planting opportunities with Glorious Hope Baptist.
 

We celebrated our sixteenth anniversary on Friday. What a blessing it is to have an incredible spouse to work in the ministry. Thank you for all of you who pray for our family. The stronger our relationship grows with God, the stronger our marriage grows.
 

We have applied for our permanent visas and hope this will come through quickly. Please pray for this process. It will be a blessing for us and give us freedoms that will make us more effective in ministry. All good things come with a cost, it will cost close to $3000 for the visas. We appreciate any church that would be willing to assist us with deferring these costs.
 Thanks:
We are grateful for the opportunity to serve in this amazing country. It really hit us the other day when we went to celebrate Good Friday at church. Based on the statistics of Australia, we drive by all of the homes in our neighbourhood and realise that out of 100 homes (100 families) we would only be one of two families celebrating this day. The day is a public holiday, but more people would be celebrating the beach or the Easter Bunny than the resurrection of the Son. There is so much work to be done here and we are grateful for your support of His ministry in Australia. Please be praying for the opportunity to introduce people to the one and only true God.
 

Happy Resurrection Day
 

The Matthews family
 

You can receive our updates through www.matthewsdownunder.com (RSS feed) and Russ Matthews on Facebook.
 


Visitors, the City and exciting news

Published on Friday, February 15th, 2008

TEAM AUSTRALIA,

Welcome to the first official update of 2008 from the Matthews.

Beebouts:
Don and Patty Beebout from Faith Baptist in Knoxville, IA came to spend for a week with us and to participate in the ministries of Sydney. They were able to serve in many different capacities. Street evangelism, Small groups, Men’s group, City Bible Forum and two of our local churches. We were so blessed by their ministry to us while they were here in Australia. Thank you to the Beebouts for their willingness to come and serve with us in Australia. If your church has the opportunity, invite them to come and share their pictures and stories of what God is doing in this area of the world.
Exciting news:
We committed to share with you our financial needs twice a year. We want to thank you for your prayers and how many of you have helped us with our monthly support. We are excited to announce that at the end of this month we should be at our 100% monthly support goal. What an answer to prayer and we are grateful to God for his provision.

Many have asked during this time if there are other areas that you could assist our ministry financially. Even with our monthly support being solidified, we still have many expenses, some more immediate than others and these expenses go beyond our monthly support. Tires for our van, permanent visa application fee, school curriculum fees for the children, payment for prayer cards and payment to fix our school computer.  If you would be able to assist us with these areas please contact us at matthewsdownunder@bigpond.com.
* Many have sent us personal gifts. (Things for Birthdays and holidays.) Thank you. We were encouraged to inform you that any gift sent to ABWE marked as a “personal gift” will go into our account, but is not tax deductible. If the tax benefit is not a necessity to you and you still would like to send us a gift. Please contact us and we can direct you to a different service that will expedite this process for you quickly. This is due to the size of the ABWE system; many times the gifts will not get to us for 2-3 months. Thank you for all who have sent gifts.


City Bible Forum:
Russ is overseeing the City Bible Forum at the beginning of 2008. We were excited to see an attendance of 206 people during the first week of the new season. Please be praying for this outreach in this first world mission. To find out more go to the most recent link to Message Magazine / ABWE: http://message.abwe.org/features/Christ-at-the-Crossroads-of-Commerce.html


Church plant:
Many ask. How is the church plant? Thanks for the interest. As many of you know that we have come to the end of our “introductory period” on the field. With this we are given the approval to partner with an Australian for a future church plant. Exciting! After meeting with our team leader, we have changed the direction of our potential focus for a church. Our plan is to evaluate and seek direction into the heart of the city. Most of ABWE’s ministries and churches are working in the suburbs of Sydney. We have decided to look into the city instead.
“As the city goes, so goes the culture. Cultural trends tend to be generated in the city and flows outward to the rest of society… the people who live in cities in the greatest numbers tend to see their values expressed in the culture.” –Tim Keller
Many things are needed to go forward with this ministry. We will keep you updated on this during this year. If you have more questions, please contact us. Please pray for us and that Lord will show us the next steps in the process.
Thank you for all of your support and prayers.
Please go to our Facebook page to see some of the latest pictures of our ministry. Facebook / Russ Matthews
Cheers,

Russ, Cathy, Becca, Hope, Joshua and Caroline