Maybe some of the best people to help country kids are other country kids. After the shooting deaths of two police sent from the small Queensland village of Tara to a property in Wieambilla, plus an innocent neighbour, the Combined Churches youth group in Chinchilla, the next town, rallied to help.
Chinchilla Church of Christ Minister E. K Liljegren visited Tara, where Constables Matthew Arnold, and Rachel McCrow, 29, were stationed, where Good Samaritan neighbour Alan Dare had lived in that town for some time.
After being called into Tara as a Chaplain, as Liljegren tells The Other Cheek, he “saw a need for some community uplift and the Gospel”. The youth leaders from Chinchilla, 37 kilometres up the road but next-door neighbours in the bush, were up for it.
They might have come from the Church of Christ, Baptist, Uniting, Presbyterian, or the Lutherans in Chinchilla, but they went together with Liljegren and two of their parents.
“We did Christian carols, and I did a short gospel message linking the Nativity with the Cross,” he says. “The youth group also gave out some books and tracts.”
But the talking was the vital thing.
“Just sitting down with people and having that conversation is vital in times like these in the face of death, have a conversation about a saviour who gives life.
“We had the opportunity to have those conversations and to answer those difficult questions that gave arisen from this evil situation.
“We also had the opportunity to have conversations about the love and support that exists in the Tara community and to show how God has graciously built up that community together to help one another. This love is very much evidenced by Rachael and Matthew’s commitment and willingness to support and protect a community like Tara. Likewise, it is seen in Alan’s willingness to care for those around him enough to give up his own safety to help.
“This is a community that loves one another and supports one another we went to support them in this and to share the Gospel, the light of Christ, in a dark time.”
“Tara is a community that sometimes gets a bad rap, but they deserve better. I pray this does not define them,” says Liljegren.