Ken Mulligan, our director here at Reef to Outback, was recently awarded ‘Citizen of the Year’ award. The city recognized him and his work over the past 15 years in Townsville. It was really amazing to see the mayor of Townsville, Tony Mooney, publicly recognize us as an organization. I’m not sure if he is a Christian, but he has been very supportive of what we do here.
Here’s a short video of the ceremony:
Stable on the Strand just finished about three weeks ago. I put together a short video to give you an idea of how it looked this year. Stable on the Strand is a week long event during Christmas that’s held at our local beach. Almost every church in Townsville gets involved to tell the public the true meaning of Christmas. This year they recreated the town of Bethlehem. There was also live music by James Morrisson, a very famous Australian jazz musician.
Every year we meet people at Stable that had no idea what Christmas is really about. After they walk through Bethlehem and see baby Jesus they are so amazed that they’d never heard about this before. It’s an amazing event to share our faith at and just let the city know that the local church really does love them. Check out the video below:
View high quality quicktime video (17MB)
Flickr photos from Stable on the Strand:
My friend Stephen came over the other day to roast some coffee. He started buying green coffee beans over the internet and has been roasting them in two popcorn machines. Check out the video I made (sorry about the poor audio quality. I didn’t realize how loud the popcorn machines were):
Check out our latest video news here at Reef to Outback.
Here’s another update from the road. I put this together at 3am while we were driving from Denver to LA. Enjoy!
What’s th first thing most people do once they’re married? Go on tour with a band, right?
Sara and I were married just over a week ago and that’s exactly where we are, in North Carolina. We’re on tour with Sara’s band from Australia, Five Star Streets. Don’t worry we are having a honeymoon but not until mid July.
The purpose of the tour is to seek change in a broken world. They use their passion for music to convey God’s heart for various issues of injustice. Scroll to the bottom see a short video update.
As for the wedding everything went very well. Sara and I were so glad to see so many friends and family. It really mean a lot to Sara and I both. We’ll be posting some photos as soon as the all get developed.
Sara here.
So, I have this thing where I don’t think that Nick can ever surprise me because I am always searching for clues. Every little thing he says, I analyze into a trick that’s being played.
Well, he told me he was going camping last weekend with his friends Peter and Sebastian. I fully believed him. And I even said before he left, “Are you sure you’re not coming to New York instead of camping?” He whined and said how he wished that were true.
Liar.
So on Saturday evening, My mom and my cousin Emily and I came home from shopping. Not ten minutes before, I was bemoaning the fact that I felt single all the time and that it was more like planning a party for someone else than a wedding.
We walked into my house and my mom gasped. I turned around and in the living room was a table a chairs, surrounded by rose petals. On the table was a setting for two and a boquet of pink tulips.
I froze.
Either my dad had made something really special for my mom – which was so awkward – or there was something else. I asked my dad what was going on. Nobody said anything. My mom giggled a little and Emily and I looked at eachother in confusion. My Dad said something I can’t even recall and then from around the corner, like an apparition, walked NICK.
I SCREAMED LIKE A LITTLE GIRL. My mom said I was shaking at one point and I think I cried a little. It was like a dream, telling my family to pinch me. I could not believe it.
But now he’s here until the wedding and we can be engaged again! It’s so nice to have my best friend here. I can’t believe we get to share everything now until the wedding!!!
Thanks to all the people who helped make this a surprise. He definitely got me this time….he’s next!
To see my reaction, go ahead and watch this clip.
RTO (Reef to Outback) is going back to its roots. That means that more of our outreaches will focus on people in isolated communities in northern Australia. To get up there we needed something that could handle the terrain. There aren’t many roads so that’s why we recently purchased ‘The Oka’ (pronounced aa-ka). The April DTS will be the first school to take this beast on outreach. We can hardly wait to hear some of the stories that will come of this!
Watto, our all Australian maintenance guy, spent time fixing up the Oka and you can see him in the video below (created by Matt Thomas) talking about why RTO decided to purchase it.
Quicktime 7 or higher required:
High – (450×253 1:19 7.8MB)
Medium – (320×180 1:19 4.6MB)
Low – (160×90 1:19 2.9MB)
Before Sara and I came home in December we made a little tour of the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) Base here in Townsville. We hope this will give you a little better idea of where we work. Enjoy!
Our communications department have been working on this video for a while and now it’s finally done. Check it out:
Sara and Nick are crazy missionaries in the land of kangaroos, vegemite, and hot Christmases. They’ve been working with YWAM (Youth With A Mission) since 2004. They don’t receive a salary for what they do and rely on wonderful people, like yourself, to live and do ministry in the land they call Oz. RTO (Reef to Outback), the YWAM centre Nick and Sara work at, has a large focus on Australian youth and the people of Papua New Guniea.
Read our November 2010 newsletter by clicking here