A newsletter from Jon and Lisa Owen
Email: jonowen@unoh.org, lowen@unoh.org

Kids Cooking Group

The seasons with their ebb and flow, often reflect back to us the very nature of our souls.

Within them we well up with joy and pride, as well as anger and sadness, and often like the weather, all in the same day.

Honestly, I don’t know much about the soul, many I meet prefer to call it “their gut”, well, whatever it’s called, it’s the seat from which the most exquisite acts of rare beauty emanate.

It’s also the birthplace of courage, that indefinable virtue, that leaves us breathless, when we see the heroic women of our local neighbourhood take a stand against domestic violence. Within their courage lies a resolve that exists not in the absence of fear, but a deep willingness to proceed in spite of it, we are constantly in awe of it.

Kids Cooking Group

On the weekend we had a knock at the door that was so quiet it almost went unnoticed. It was from a slight, beautiful dark skinned girl who almost jumped out of her skin when I opened the door. My wife immediately set to the two most important missionary tasks of anyone engaged on the frontlines – making her feel welcome and making her a cuppa.

It turns out this young girl has 7 kids and desperately wants to leave her drunken, abusive partner. So between cups of coffee and about 2 loaves of toast for her little ones, they made a plan. The first attempt was thwarted, but the next try, on Wednesday night, was more successful. It cost her a broken foot, as he smashed it with an iron bar as she sheltered her kids – but they made it away at 2 in the morning, with Lisa hiding 2 doors down then scooping up the children and driving them secretly away on a balmy evening.

Egg & Spoon Race

Today she still limps around, but, in between the grimaces, there sneaks out a smile that breaks anyone caught in it’s glare for too long into pieces. Her kids are running around, still sticking fairly close to her side, but skipping along a little freer and as she reaches out to embrace them you can see in their eyes that which can never be manufactured, hope.

A new future does not come without sacrifice, it comes through the heroes who, in pursuing a brighter tomorrow often fall today but do not give in, and rise again. It occasionally helps to have someone cheering you on from the sidelines, to remind them that they aren’t alone. It also comes as a great surprise that we share with them a God who not only understands her pain, but has been through it, all of it – the agony of not only

Egg and spoon and 3-legged races at the Sunday School picnic.

suffering violence, but being despised because of it. She receives a lot of scorn from family and friends who have long ago given up telling her to leave him.

We worship a God who not only understands pain, but draws near to those in suffering.

Thank you for helping us stay near to those who need it most.

P.S. Jaz is nearly finished her Year 12 exams, thanks to all who have supported her through. She will be the first of her family to have made it, and that isn’t all, she hopes to continue to University after that!