The Ugly Duckling Company

From left: Paul, Frank and Sharon take in St. Peter's Cathedral in Adelaide. Today is in the running for our busiest day yet in Australia. We caught a tram into the city for a morning meeting with St. Peter's cathedral Dean Frank Nelson and spent our time discussing the role cathedrals play in the Adelaide community.  Paul and Sharon share a laugh during a radio interview at LifeFM.  Our next stop was radio station LifeFM! Thanks to an interview with Lyn Arnolds, Sharon and Paul were able to share information about UDC and our hopes regarding Australia with a larger audience. We look forward to hearing the finished product! From left: Sharon, Paul and Andrew meet on a sunny day to discuss UDC resources. The day continued still with Church Development Facilitator at Baptist Churches of SA Andrew Turner and his insights on further connections within Australia's Baptist community. Finally, we were joined for dinner by Greg, Mark an...

        Two planes later, Paul, Sharon and Sarah have made it safe and sound to Australia and have successfully made it through days one and two in Melbourne. Because of our location for the month of November, prepare for us to refer to ourselves as the UDCDU contingent (the Ugly Duckling Company Down Under).   Cross Culture We are so fortunate to be set up with an office right along Swanston Street, which features a downtown hub for dining, the stunning architecture of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and access to the river that flows right through the city. Nestled into the midst of this, right across from the Queen Victoria Library, is Cross Culture, and therefore us! Cross Culture is a congregation of roughly 600 with services that cater to Australia's English and Mandarin-speaking populations, and they are serving as our office hosts and for the week. Resolve We've been sure to make the most of it today. Together with our ...

Every eye in the room is glued to the little pink head. The baby can barely keep its eyes open, but it pokes out its tongue, time after time. The screaming of another child out of shot deters no-one: we’re all transfixed. The clip ends. It was at the start that the Dad, out of shot, had explained he would poke his tongue out at his child and observe the response. The baby was only an hour old. Facilitator Nigel now explains that we’re hardwired to respond to other people, even from such a young age, which is why the baby responded as it did. As we move on, we’re set an exercise: work in a group of five so that we have a square each, all the same size. The one catch: we’re not allowed to communicate. I found this to be a generally enjoyable task: everybody in my own group moved their own pieces into the centre where we constructed them together. In no time at all, we were pulling them back towards us, all perfectly the same size. I noted that one person took charge from the star...