When I was at university, we used to run missions in local country towns during the semester breaks. One of these was in the far NW NSW town of Collarenebri. We never heard much about the ongoing fruit of the Gospel in those places. Today I received this great email from a Uni friend, Ian, who was on the Collarenebri Mission:
Hi Richard,
Thought this would encourage you. Billy Williams is a dynamic indigenous leader and preacher up here in Qld. We had him come and preach at our Church last Sunday. Here is his story:
Last Sunday night I was preaching at North-East Baptist church for the first time. In order to fill the congregation in I commenced by telling them I was originally from a small town in North-West NSW called Collarenebri. After the service concluded the Senior Pastor, Ian Hussey, came over and told me that in the early 1980's, when he was living in Armidale NSW (400km away from Collarenebri), he and some other students had travelled there to conduct a kids holiday program. I asked him, "Did it have a frog in it?" to which he replied, "I think so." We both cautiously agreed that I may have been a participant because there wasn't much to do in Colly during holidays and one of my Aunties was part of the Anglican church at that time and I remember going to a program when I was about 10 before I left for school in Tamworth (356km away from Collarenebri). I remembered that I had kept a memento from the program (why is only apparent now!), a folded A4 sheet of paper with encouraging notes from The Adventures of Ernie the Frog leaders; so when I got home I dug up amongst some old papers and found it. My Mum, who is staying with us, heard me cooee and wondered what was going on. There on the front page was this message, "Dear William, Good luck in the future. Remember that Jesus is always there waiting for you... Ian Hussey." How true those words from 1984 proved to be, truer perhaps than Ian, and certainly I, could have ever imagined as 15 years later I came to faith in a Baptist church in Townsville (1410km away from Collarenebri) and 26 years later I came to preach in Ian's church in Nundah (645km away from Collarenebri).
Now doesn't that send a shiver down the spine!
Kind Regards
Ian
God works in amazing ways, sowing seeds and reaping when he wills.
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