justice

We live in a country which nobly tries to perpetuate justice through the legal system. While there are many issues with such a system it does do well in ensuring that people are justly tried without prejudice or partiality. One of the repercussions of such a system is that people who should be convicted are not because of a lack of evidence or incorrect procedure, even if it is clear to everyone that they are guilty. The alternative though would be to allow justice to be administered by those who believe they know the truth, or worse by those whose prejudice would cause the 'truth' to be fabricated or twisted.

There are many examples in other countries where people are unjustly tried for their religious beliefs or for their political convictions. There are also examples where local courts made up of elders in the community function well. I would hazard a guess that these systems do not work any worse than a highly centralised legal system. In the end any legal system depends on the integrity of those involved.

Recently we experienced the nature of the law much more intimately when four juveniles broke into the house that we had been moving out of and proceeded to ransack and vandalise it. There was not a great deal of damage, it was just destructive. Thankfully we had a lot of people to help clean up the mess and finish packing up our stuff. A good thing about it was that it sped up our move, although we still have a lot of boxes to sort through.

One of the things that I learnt about the legal system in this country through the incident is that you can't commit a criminal act if you are under 10 years old. Is it true that you can't commit a criminal act under 10? Of course not. In this country though there is no accountability for such an act if you are under 10. Now I am not recommending that a child under 10 should be put through the justice system, however to have a situation where there is no accountability at all is only going to produce negative results. Surely parents should have some accountability for the actions of their children. Knowing about the family situations of children who are often involved in these actions it cannot be left up to the good will of the parents.

For me it was not hard to forgive the children that were involved. It was easy to see that they were victims themselves. Even though I could forgive them logically, I still felt a lot of anger towards them because of what they had done. Emotions are a tricky thing and they are not dismissed easily. it is important not to dismiss them or cover them up but find a way to express them.

One thing that I have learnt through experience is that God brings good things out of bad. I was able to meet with two set of the parents and talk with the children involved. I had a good time talking with one, prayed with them and shared with them about God's goodness. The boy came around and helped me clean up the yard. The family is struggling but was upset about the actions of their son. At first it didn't seem much use in seeing the other family as they are in a very broken situation, but I knew that God wanted me to see them. About a week later the mother came and saw me after the school presentation night and apologised for what had happened. She said that they were going to be getting counselling for their son and really appreciated me coming to see them.

I don't know what will be the outcome for those families, but what I do know is that God has already been bringing about goodness through this whole thing. At the very least the boys have been on my mind and I have sent up many prayers on behalf of those families.

"In all things God works for the good of those that love him and have been called according to his purposes." Rom 8:28

Holidays part 3

Another place that we really enjoyed is Mt Gambier. There are some fantastic lakes in the craters of the old volcano, right overlooking the town. One of the lakes has a great blue colour, and there are some great walks around the lakes and craters. The kids loved this great playground park in the mountain, which was just huge. We probably would have stayed there longer, but we got a bit sick of the rain. It turns out that it does rain in that part of the world quite a lot. Camping in the rain can get a bit annoying after a while.

That part  of the world has quite a lot of forestry. It also has the Coonawarra wine region which would be nice to come back to without the kids.

For us there was a fair bit of exploring and learning about the region. Seeing things that we might like to come back to at a later point. One place that I would like to come back to is some of the ponds that are in the limestone formations. They are very popular with diving as the water is crystal clear from filtering through the limestone on the way to the ocean, so the visibility is supposed to be brilliant.

We were hoping to make it down to the Glenelg River National Park to camp down there, so we will have to go back there at some point. The weather reports though predicted sever weather with gale force winds and hail. We really didn't feel like camping out in that so we thought that we would head up to the Grampians early. Unfortunately we couldn't escape the weather as it was very widespread, so we decided to pull into a motel at Hamilton. Heaters, TV and take away food for the night. We did enjoy it, especially when we could hear the hail outside.

Holiday part 2

One of the great places that we visited was Naracoorte. We stayed in the National Park where they have some great World Heritage Caves. The kids really enjoyed exploring the caves. They have some great variety from limestone formations to Megafauna fossils. I also took the 3 older kids on an adventure cave tour. They got to crawl around in the dirt underground, squeeze into some tunnels and tight places. Good fun stuff.

There is a great camping area there too. In South Australia you can pay for a 2 month pass to camp in National Parks for only $50. So you don't end up paying much for camping at all.

Holidays part 1

It has been a while since the last update. Since then we have been on holidays. We had a great tour of the bottom of South Australia and up through the Grampians. We camped in our camper trailer for the first 2 weeks and then got a house for the week in the Grampians. 

It was the first long camping trip that we had done with Ben. He was pretty good, but it meant very early mornings and early nights. We did have a fair bit of rain and even a couple of storms and it was colder than we expected, especially the water. So we didn't swim as much as we hoped. We did do a bit of fishing though, and I hope to return at some point with a 4wd as there are some great beach fishing spots down there. Even the boys caught some fish.

The bottom of South Australia is known as the limestone coast, obviously because of the bed of limestone that the coast is built on. It means that the coastline is quite rugged, with gouged out cliffs. Our first stop was Robe a small fishing town. The boys and I enjoyed some fishing and we had a good walk along the coastline. We stayed in a caravan park on the beach. The first night we almost blew away with gale force winds. There were lots of people at the hardware buying extra guy ropes after that night. Millie and I found it a bit hard to sleep, but the kids slept right through it.

Isaac turns 10

Isaac recently turned 10, a significant move from single to double digits. We had a great party at the park with some of his friends, some friends of the family and those in the community. One of the highlights was a game of monkey heads. You can ask Isaac about it sometime.

As you know Isaac is full of energy and often very cheeky. Isaac's name means laughter and comes from the time that Abraham and Sarah laughed when God told them that they would have a baby in their old age. We think that it is a very appropriate name.

This year we are focussing on his education a bit more intently as he didn't do so well last year. He seems to be going pretty well so far. He likes his teacher and he is sitting at a table with some girls, so that seems to be less distracting. He can be easily distracted when there is a lot of activity going on.

He got a few things for his birthday, but mostly money which he was very happy about. He likes money, although not when it is spent. I think he would like it if it replenished itself somehow. Here are some pictures of the party and an older one of Isaac that I really like.