Good-bye Brisbane and flooded Queensland

Our time in Australia is ever drawing closer to the end. We only have 16 more days in this lovely country. Today we are leaving Queensland for the drive down to Sydney.

The last two weeks here have just flown by. Unfortantly Queensland has suffered some very serious flooding during that time. We had so much rain in the last 10 days of Dec and then 9 days at the beginning of Jan. It was just to much for the Brisbane river to hold, plus water from the rivers up north that were swollen were travelling into the Brisbane river. The areas of the city centre that were close to the river flooded big time, shops, banks, restuarants, botanical gardens, boat transit terminals. Plus there were a number of residential areas lining the river and they all got flooded out. It has been so heartbreaking for the Aussies. The guesstimated cost of all the damage, and to rebuild/repair is in the billions!
But I am so impressed at the Aussie spirit of reaching out and helping that neighbors and locals have been giving. There has been so much clean up that has had to be done, and the mud and water are extremely dirty and contaminated. Thankfully it has been beautiful weather and dry for the last 11 days so the river has gone down alot, though it is still high. Andreas and I drove into the city yesterday to clean the windows for our last client. The river looked incredibly muddy and still quite high in it's banks. We will be donating some money to the government flood appeal account.

Our last two weeks of work went well. We have so enjoyed not only the opportunity to work together, but of meeting some lovely elderly people who genuinely needed our help. So many of them were so sweet and it was interesting hearing abit about their life story. We loved meeting Effie Munday who was a strong Baptist and a genuine and lovely lady. She is in her eighties but still sharp as a tack and pretty good on the computer. Effie had a heart for missions and is still trying to get Bible material out into Africa. She was an inspiration!

We also had the opportunity to pray with one client who was actually quite young, in her 30s but with a nerve disorder from a complication of anathesia. She needed some encouragment so we talked with her and prayed with her and it was a special moment. We do hope and pray that this next year will be so much better for her.

Our last full weekend here in Brisbane was lovely so we finally went to the Gold coast and Surfer's Paradise. The beach was so good and the waves were spectacular. It was our best beach day that we've probably had for the last half a year. Of course we used spf 30 but still got sunburnt!

Now we hope to sell our Mandy Mazada quickly and for a fair price, to pass the vehicle road worthy inspection and spend some time with our sister Cessi before we fly to Vancouver.