Category: Australia & Oceania

Thank you to all IACAC members for your prayers, words of support and generous donations.  It has been a busy time for the team in Melbourne as our airport went on a fund raising drive where an initial $500,000 was donated by the Airport Management, then for every dollar raised up to the end of February by staff and the airport community the Management would match dollar for dollar up to another $500,000.

I am glad to report that apart from some very remote locations all bushfires have now been extinguished and we have also had some significant rain over our drought ravaged regions.  We are moving from relief and emergency response into the long-term recovery of those communities that have been affected.  Of course we are also feeling the effects of our borders being closed to flights from Mainland China.  We rely heavily on tourists and students coming to Australia at this time of the year and the airport is eerily quiet.

For many weeks and, in fact months now, devastaing fires have raged across the east coast of Australia destroying people’s homes and livelihoods, burning millions of hectares of bush, farmland and towns, taking lives and killing our wild life and farm animals. Most of these fires have startrd as a result of lightning strikes but sadly some of these fires have been deliberately lit.

It has been just on eighteen months since I stepped into some very large shoes and followed on from Winton as the Coordinating Chaplain at Melbourne Airport.  What a journey it has been.  So many things to learn, so many people to meet, and the constant demands of supporting the airport community, both staff and passengers.

What an incredible privilege we have in loving people all who have been created in the image of God.

We have the joy of serving a multi-cultural, multi-faith community.  This was evident through the recent celebrations of Ramadan.  Last year I was a bit caught out and we had bottles of fruit juice and food galore brought into our prayer rooms so people could break fast and pray.  The problem was, chicken curry and unrefrigerated fruit juice are not very inviting the next morning.  So this year we placed posters in our prayer room with a greeting for our Muslim brothers and sisters and said our team would provide the water and dates to break the fast.  It was amazing, the feed back from passengers and staff was incredible with emails, phone calls and great conversations thanking the team for caring about Ramadan and providing those small refreshments.  We had not food or juice that could prove a danger or we had to clean up.