BUDDY SMITH CHECKS IN FROM QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA

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Dear Praying friends,

   Quite a few of our prayer supporters have written or rung asking if we are all ok as they have seen the floods reported on the TV.

     We had a little cyclone go through aur area on Christmas day early. It was very weak and didn't have much wind in it at all, but it pulled a monsoonal (low pressure) trough behiund it and wandered off down south about a thousand miles. That caused a lot of moisture to come in off he Coral Sea and it just about hasn't stopped raining since. We got, maybe 50 inches in two weeks, but down south and inland they got cloudbursts every day for over a week.

Here is how one of our friends, Hughie Seaborn, described it, 

"There's water, water everywhere over here.  Mostly, it is affecting Central Inland, Central Coastal and the southern part of the state.  Pastor Buddy and I live in the Far North, also called the Wet Tropics, so we are not being affected by the current disasters which are being reported by the media."  (Besides that we are used to it by now. Hughie was born here, and though we weren't we did get here as soon as we could. ha. Everybody up north here says that after a few years in the tropics, you grow webs between your toes.)

"There have actually been major flooding events occurring for about the last three months, mainly in Western Queensland away from the big population centres where the run-off went inland and headed south rather than east toward the coast where our big cities are located.  The torrential rain that has been falling since Christmas, however, has fallen where the run-off mostly heads East toward the Pacific Ocean."

"Rockhampton, Central Coastal Queensland, was the focus of the news for about two weeks, with many homes in the city flooded, but on Sunday a super storm system settled over the South-East inland from Brisbane and it rained, and rained, and rained for about three days.  Falls of up to 500 and 600mm (18 inches to 2 feet) over 24 hour periods were common.  The items on the news of cars and people being swept down flooded streets was on Monday in Toowoomba and that water is now headed down from the hills and towards Brisbane (the capital of Queensland) where evacuations are currently being conducted.  Serious flooding is already taking place there, but some time tomorrow the floodwaters will peak and Brisbane will be mostly out of action.  Keep your eyes open for some pretty interesting flood pictures coming up.  They have predicted this morning that more than 20,000 homes will be flooded."

 "My brother lives in Toowoomba, but he and his family are safe.  Ironically, most of the area hit by this rain storm has been in drought for the last seven or eight years.  All of the dams that supply the area were empty.  Toowoomba council was actually in the process of trying to convince their people that they should drink recycled sewerage.  They were even thinking of building a pipeline and pinching water out of our rivers up here.  Last year we were all doomed to perish from thirst, according to the global warming crowd, but now we're all going to drown, and for the same reason, apparently." 

 "Since May last year we have been in a La Nina weather cycle, which should persist until May of this year.  Consequently, anything can happen weatherwise in Australia.  In our part of the country we have really only just started our wet season, the dreaded cyclone season, but, hopefully we are ready and prepared for whatever comes.

Thanks for your concern for our safety.  

Best wishes,

Hughie Seaborn"

So that tells it like it is.

Thanks for praying,

Bro. Buddy and Susan Smith

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