These days, coffee and smoothies are part of the blend of ministry work Natalie Cramer is doing in Australia.
It’s been an unpredictable journey. The New Palestine native went to Australia in 2019 for a Christian discipleship training school through Youth With a Mission. She graduated from the program in October 2019 and went with a ministry team to Papua New Guinea.
“Due to the COVID climate rapidly growing, a lot of my school had to leave before our graduation, but I had this utmost peace about staying and doing my work here … while the rest of the world seemed to be at a standstill,” she wrote in an email to the Daily Reporter.
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Though Cramer has done media and graphic design work for YWAM, more recently she was asked to help pioneer a not-for-profit café. YWAM’s Café Central opened in late August in a dining and entertainment district in Townsville, a city of more than 180,000 in the Queensland state of northeastern Australia.
The café offers work experiences for students seeking hospitality certification, provides opportunities for YWAM to build relationships with its neighbors, and generates proceeds that go toward dental, optical and primary health care in Papua New Guinea.
“My heart for coffee and its ministry feels like it’s consumed a lot of my dreams and desires these days,” Cramer wrote. “I long to see where it will take me down the road.”
Cramer took time for an email interview about life in Australia, ministry in the time of COVID, and what she’s learning from it all.
What might the average American not know about daily life there?
Daily life here is not at all what I imagined it being. My first time here I had quite the culture shock, but this time around, I sunk DEEP into the realities of living in a different country.
My language continues to evolve, calling my mom “Mum,” saying things like “I reckon,” and forgetting that’s far from normal across the sea. My friends at home pick on me when Aussie slang slips on the phone. …
They live pretty simple lives (here), in a lot of different ways: food, way of living. I was considerably shocked when my Amazon package took three weeks to deliver. …
Restaurants close at 3 p.m. and everyone hits the beach. It’s a nice life. I have to say, in some ways it makes me grateful for my country, but in others, boy, less is so much more.
How has the pandemic affected what you’re doing?
The pandemic hasn’t changed my life “that much.” Australia closed the borders just about a day after COVID landed in Sydney. Outside of a three-week, mandatory campus lockdown, life seems pretty normal. The highest number of cases in Queensland was 21, and that was months ago. It’s hard to imagine the vast difference between where I am now vs. what my people at home are experiencing.
What have you learned so far from this experience in general? What have been the spiritual lessons?
Spiritually, I’ve thrived here. I am continuously learning more and more about myself. … I also am realizing the Lord knows that I am indeed, who I am, and he … has reminded me he made me, just as I am. I continuously am seeing how the Lord has vast vision and dream for my life … I very much so underestimated him.
I never imagined being able to use a seed, to reach out to people who are lost — yet alone, at 20 years old. My heart for the future, and the peace of not even knowing it, continues to excite me.
I truly can’t capture all the things growing and changing me! It’s hard, very hard, but one of the most fruitful seasons I’ve had in my life.
How can people support you?
In the most obvious ways, I am always looking for financial support, as I am a full-time volunteer, and probably will be for quite a while.
Outside of finances, probably the best way yet people can support me is in prayer. Without prayer, without vision, it’s hard to remember why I do what I do, why I wake every day. Nevertheless, the support, the connection with home, the laughs, the phone and Facetime calls, the nearness in the middle of being so far away, has blessed me more than I ever could’ve asked.
