Thirty-eight students and staff from the University of Ottow and Geissler (UOG), part of the Evangelical Christian Church in the Land of Papua in the Indonesian province of Papua, visited Perth from Tuesday 14 to Thursday 23 August. The trip was supported by the Black Pearl Network, a Uniting Church WA network of congregations supporting the partnership between the Uniting Church in Australia and the Evangelical Christian Church in the land of Papua (GKI).
In the week of Sunday 7 to 14 October, Christians from the Uniting, Anglican and Catholic Churches, as well as other traditions joined their efforts with a global faith-inspired response to the climate crisis. This comes as good news after the disturbing Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)special report, Global Warming of 1.5°C.
The report details how action to address climate change is urgent.
Uniting Aid is a caring service providing emergency relief and other services to vulnerable people in the City of Stirling. Years ago, we operated our op shop out of a garden shed at the back of the church’s premises, which comprised just a house converted as best we could into an emergency relief centre. This garden shed was very small and also very hot, and there were many days during the summer when we could not open the shop because it was too hot to work in.
Mundijong Heritage Uniting Church is celebrating 125 years since its founding. A commemorative service will be held on Sunday 2 December, 10.00am, at the church, 18 Paterson St Mundijong, as part of a range of activities
The church opened in January 1905 as the Mission church, the second in town after the Anglican church in 1896. It is thought to be partly funded by the Jarrahdale Saw Milling Co, in thanks for the care provided by Methodist nursing nuns at the cottage hospital in Jarrahdale during the 1895 Typhoid epidemic.
This week, from Sunday 14 to Saturday 20 October, is Anti-Poverty Week. Rev Sophia Lizares, Chaplain at UnitingCare West offers Revive readers this reflection. UnitingCare West is a Uniting Church WA agency providing care and support to many of WA’s most vulnerable people.
Hundreds of wildflower specimens drew a steady stream of visitors to the 93rd Busselton Wildflower Exhibition, held from Thursday 4 to Friday 5 October.
The exhibition provides wildflower enthusiasts an opportunity to learn more about the local varieties with advice from botanists on site or visitors can just enjoy the sights and smells of the exhibition as they wander through the exhibition.
At midnight on Thursday 26 July this year, seven Scotch boys and two staff flew out from Perth enroute to Papua New Guinea to embark on the world-famous Kokoda trail.
All the months of preparation were over, there was no chance to fill in the gaps, and in reality, most of us had very little understanding of the challenges that lay ahead. Seven days later, we walked through the trail’s finishing arch in the town of Kokoda. The physical and emotional challenges faced throughout the seven days of trekking had left an indelible and lifelong imprint on the spiritual psyche of us all.
As I write this, my 16-year-old nephew is on the trip of his lifetime (so far) on a school exchange in Japan. It was just over a year ago that my family and I were also holidaying in Japan, having an awesome time.
Japan is truly an amazing place. We went during cherry blossom season and there were trees blooming everywhere. We rode bikes through Kyoto, sang karaoke in Osaka and played video games all day in Tokyo.
We also visited the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima. It was there that I was reminded of the story of Sadako Sasaki, the 12-year-old girl who made over 1 000 origami cranes from her hospital bed. Those cranes are now recognised as an international symbol of peace.
There are more slaves on Earth today than at any other time in history.
‘Slave’ is a word that sounds so ancient… so distant. It evokes images of bare backed men working in fields under the watchful gaze of slave masters and women cooking and cleaning for wealthy families in far off lands.
But today, slavery is much closer to home. While the majority of slavery in our world today revolves around labour exploitation, across Asia, slavery often looks like a little girl (or boy), born in rural poverty, sent to the city at age twelve or thirteen on the premise of finding work to help her family survive. With no other options, she survives by selling the only thing she owns, her body, for the pleasure of men.
Some years ago I received several prank calls, the ones where the phone rings and there is no one on the other end.
It was rather unsettling to answer and find silence, when I expected a voice. For some of us, there are times when God appears silent. Maybe we have made an emergency call to God in the form of a desperate prayer and God didn’t seem to answer: we didn’t get the job we hoped for; the health of a loved one did not improve; or the conflict we faced got worse, not better.
In wrestling with God in prayer, we must recognise that God is not a divine Santa Klaus whose main job is to favourably answer all our requests. God is not at our beck and call. Disciples of Christ are invited to serve God and others, rather than behave like religious consumers who think that God should always be serving me.
Sometimes, I think that prayer is paradoxical; God answers prayer and God does not answer prayer. Jesus taught us to have a faith that will move mountains, not just smile at them. In the garden of Gethsemane, perhaps Jesus’ darkest moment before the cross, he agonised about doing God’s will. His trust in God is amazing, he cries out, “Abba Father, all things are possible for you”.