Guest Blog

Hi -- I'm Suzanne. Penny's been staying with me for the past 4 nights.

Wouldn’t you, Penny’s community, like to know what she is REALLY up to, ‘down under’ here in Melbourne, Australia. And you thought she was hard at work, eh?! Penny, right now, is just standing around, chatting. She is on a street corner or at a tram stop, hearing the dinging of tram bells, the chatter of many different languages, smelling the aroma of good Italian coffee mingled with that of freshly cooked food from all around the world, under what has become a brilliant blue summer sky (after this morning’s chilly start). She is there with a local Aussie student inviting innocent young international students to church tonight. That’s why she has given me, a local AFES staff worker, the opportunity to tell you what she is up to these days.

The team meetings and training times she’s been a part of yesterday and today provide a reasonable excuse for not writing herself. However, if she hadn’t been playing games at the beach yesterday afternoon, bush-dancing the night away last night, sitting in a local food court snuffling her way through wasabi sauce on sushi today, hanging out on street corners soaking up the atmosphere this afternoon or standing up at the front of a grand ‘old’ church (the Aussies think it is old, anyhow) playing a part in the service tonight, then she’d have been writing herself. She thinks she is tired, but she doesn’t look any wearier than the young Aussies alongside whom she is working.


Cricket at the beach yesterday was a ‘first’ for some of the international students. One enthusiastic young Chinese student held the cricket bat over her shoulder like a baseball bat. Oops. Frisbee throwing provided an opportunity for some great snapshots – ask her to see them. The baby son of one of the local AFES staff workers provided lots of entertainment and a talking point for students, both international and local. Penny and several students tore themselves away a little early to set up the church hall for the evening’s bush dance.


As they left for the beach outing, Penny got chatting with a visiting professor from a leading university in Beijing. The professor was delighted to find someone she considered a peer – she attends the international student programmes, but despite following the egalitarian Aussie way of using her given name when speaking English, she (quite rightly) knows that she is NOT amongst equals as far as academia is concerned. Later in the evening, just before the meal of barbequed sausages and salad, Penny had the opportunity to share how she became a Christian from the front of the hall. The professor listened intently, nodding her head throughout. May Penny’s words sink deep into the professor’s heart.


Following the barbeque dinner, an Aussie worker from the church which hosts the programme gave a presentation. He then asked people to talk at tables, and Penny had the privilege of answering questions from one particularly deep thinker on topics such as the nature of eternity, why an individual's death isn’t punishment enough for sin and more… Then the bush dance began - about forty people skipped, stomped, spun and even took turns at hiding as part of a dance.

This evening there will be a final meal together with her team and some students, and the evening ‘Unichurch’ service, before she heads for the last time to her temporary ‘home’ 35km east of Melbourne, after dropping off a couple of students. She has been staying out there, in the place where evening brings a cacophony of deafening cicada music that locals don’t even notice, with this local student worker. Tomorrow she will move on to the next stage of her trip. We’ll miss her.


Thanks, IFES, for sending Penny to work with us on this student outreach following SPRTE. We’ve appreciated her quiet wisdom combined with a refreshingly crazy personality. (We’re not at all crazy down here, you must understand, least of all the writer of this ‘guest travel blog’.) We hope Penny forgets all the tiring and frustrating aspects of the past few days, and take with her only the good memories, of which there are plenty. It’s been great having her down here, and we wish her a restful and rejuvenating holiday during what is left of her adventure ‘down under’.