Yarrabah Living Waters Community Church is an organisation that has been established since the month of April in 2001. The organisation is affiliated with the Assemblies of God in Australia and Senior Pastors Paul & Natasha Munn oversee the organisations functions.
Yarrabah Living Waters Community Church has been servicing the Yarrabah Aboriginal Community since its establishment and the organisation envisages to be continuing its community services in the long term.
Yarrabah Aboriginal Community is situated on the North Queensland coast approximately 45 minutes south east of Cairns. The area surrounding Yarrabah is an Aboriginal reserve and extends from False Cape in the north to the Russell River 100 km south totalling an area approximately 154km2.
Our community has a population of approximately 4000 people - [98% Indigenous] and currently has various community services such as: Shire Council, Health Services, Pre School, Primary and High School, Community Hall, Museum, Bakery, Community Store, Petrol Station, Centre link, Day Care Centre, PCYC and local Pub [take away only].
Local sports include football, touch football and basketball.
Alike all communities on the spectrum, our community also has its fair share of problems and these include: overcrowding, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, gambling, boredom, chronic diseases, suicide, poor nutrition etc.
Our community has been known in the past as one with a high rate of attempted and successful suicides, however recently there has been a huge improvement due to the implementation of social, emotional and spiritual services.
Senior Minister, Pastor Paul Munn himself grew up in an overcrowded three bedroom home. Overcrowding imposes huge social and health implications in this community. For example if one occupant in the home is ill with influenza, then quite often the remainder of the household will become ill as well.
Alcohol and drug abuse is quite common and a large percentage of it is consumed in or near the home. Low income and scarce employment is responsible for the large amount of boredom that our people experience and this issue leads to frustration and then anger develops and thus a cycle of hopelessness and depression has been created.
Having grown up in this community for most of his life, Paul felt that he wanted to do something about this and the Yarrabah Living Waters Church was birthed in April 2001. Since then Paul and his wife Natasha have not only been preaching the gospel, but also servicing the community, offering counselling, marriage and support services for people with social and emotional problems, teaching life skills, promoting life, facilitating youth activities such as sports, music, dancing, and special life skills are also taught to the youth.
Paul initially started this group in his lounge room at his home in Workshop Street, however numbers of people needing assistance became too large for this to happen in his house, so he then moved to the local community health centre. Again this centre was too small and now services are held and being conducted out of the Leisure Centre for Youth in Yarrabah.
This centre will be appropriate for the interim however Pastor Paul & Natasha have a dream to construct a building that would house all of the much needed services that the organisation delivers. Initially our plans were to plant a church in our community; however we have found that the church is currently servicing the community in a much more holistic way.
Pastor Paul is currently working in full time employment but after the building is built, he plans on working full time in service to the community. We are a non profit organisation, so we rely heavily on sponsorship and financial assistance that is given as gifts.
We both have dream to one day turn the economy around in our community as well and be able to offer employment of some description in latter days. We hope to set up activities for the young and the elderly, the unloved, the unwanted. We both have a dream to help put a smile back on the face of our people. We both have a dream to see our community restored.
To date we believe that we have already helped many lives in our community, with many testimonies being shared in some of the meetings.
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