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Church Photos

Welcome to the AIMAS church photo album!

This album will show the life of the church from 2009 onwards.

To view a picture just click on it and it will enlarge. To return, just click the back arrow on the top left of your screen.

Enjoy!

When we took over at the church, we thought it best to go back to the foundations and work up from there. So we started teaching on the Sovereignty of God as this is so important. To reinforce this, Cathy painted the story on the front wall of the church. This story teaches that God is Boss over everything. He is Boss over law, spirit world, creation, the people of the world, the church (true/invisible), our family and He is Boss over us. This story also works the other way, which is another reason why it is painted on the wall - Christian ethics and our Christian walk. Every decision we make, everything we do, say and think will affect our relationship with family, the church etc and ultimately it will affect our relationship with God. So you've got to think - if I do, say or think this, will it hurt or make strong my relationship with God, (also with family, the church etc).

This is some of our church mob. Most weeks we have some of the Yirara kids. Yirara is the Lutheran Aboriginal Boarding School. The fellas and the girls come to church, sit and leave separately. Our numbers can vary from 20 to 70ish depending on funerals (sorry business) and many other factors.

Once a month we go out for a church bbq. This gets the mob out of Alice and allows us time to build on the relationships. For many of our mob, it is the only time they get out of town. These photos are from the time we went out to Glenn Helen gorge. And then on to Ormiston Gorge for lunch.

These photos are of another trip, this time out to Trephina Gorge.

Noreen, Sharon and my mum singing.

At church, we have just finished learning from the letter to the Ephesian mob. These are just some of the drawings I made up to teach the story. This first picture is about Ephesians 1:15-23 - Praying for others This one is Ephesians 2:1-10 - Once dead, now alive This is Ephesians 4:1-16 - God has one mob and they are to be a strong mob And this is just one picture from Ephesians 5:21-6:4 - Christians living in the home . These pictures are made using Aboriginal (Warlpiri) pictures (iconographs). Stories are told and passed on through drawings. The same is at church. You draw what the Bible story/passage is teaching and then talk about it.

Our next church outing was to go get bush tucker. The ladies wanted to get antyematye (witchetty grub), inarlenge (echidna. For some reason Aboriginal people call them in English - porcupine), and yerrampe (honey ant).

Noreen dug and dug for honey ant, but they were hiding from us.

This is the tree that witchetty grubs live in.

Eventually, the ladies came back with 2.

Porcupine was nowhere to be found today. So we settled on a BBQ.

For our November bush trip, we went out to Ellery Creek Big-hole. It was a hot day (about 39), so not many came. But it was a great day for those who did.

This is just some of our church mob. During the week, we put up a sail to get us out of the sun at morning tea, especially this time of year. It was 40 outside and not much better, maybe mid 30's inside the church.

This is one of our Yirara classes. Yirara is an Aboriginal boarding school for Aboriginal children from the Aboriginal Communities. It is run by the Lutheran church. On Tuesdays have a RE/relationship building class with them. Our class size is about 18 kids and we have usually over 40 that come to the AIM church. Their parents designate what church they go to, so if they come from a community that has an AIM missio, then they usually go to the AIM church. Our kids come from as high as Katherine in the north, Borroloola & Robinson River in the East, south as far as Elliot (which is still 800km north of Alice). The class dynamics are very interesting! For example, the fellas come in and leave 5 min before the girls, the fellas come in and leave in different directions from the girls and have to sit separately.

The Friday before Christmas, we had our last church outing. Off we went to the Telegraph Station and had our Christmas dinner. It was a great day and at only 29 degrees, it was 10 cooler than last months outing.

Christmas time thanks to a church in Sydney.

After the January rains a mob of us went looking for Honey Ant. No ants, but lots of flies, hence the fire for smoke to shoo the flies away.

Our new Sunday School room!

Our first official church outing for the year was out at 16 Mile. Once again we went looking for bush tucker, but still no real success except for the bush banana and the beaded dragon (we didn't eat him).

We started Bible study out at Amoonguna Aboriginal Community and this is where we have it - in the bough shed that they made for it. Here are some of our Sunday School Kids in the bough shed. It's a little worse for wear now.

The next church outing was at Simpson's Gap. Short on numbers, but it was still a great day out.

Church bush trip at Trephina Gorge.

Church bush trip at Ellery Creek Big Hole. Last time it was stinking hot, this time it was freezing cold. You gotta love the desert.

AIM conference at Noonamah, Darwin - July. Oh! which one's ours?

Josh preaching

Removing the stage at the front of the church to make more room for the growing congregation.

Time to clean up the mess down the back of the church.

Sunday School and crèche.

Some of our church mob.

Had a beauty of a storm one night. At 2am everything was quiet and then it was like a freight train coming through the yard. As the wind funneled through the Gap, it tore the church sail within seconds of us getting to it and we lost a few trees and received 55mm of rain in 2 hours. We started the shed reno (see below) that week and the water went in 1 door and out the other. There was about 40-50mm of water sitting in the shed (mind you the whole property was sitting in water). As we just moved all our tools and gear to make room for the reno, you couldn't get to most of it and it was sitting in the water. AHH!

The shed reno. We are converting 1/3 of the shed into a small room for visitors and short term workers. It will be semi-self contained. We removed a set of louvers and put in a door and a veranda.