Vacation with God time!

  18 day break of Capernwray NZ life. This is currently our 5th day touring the North Island. Us includes me, Elise (Netherlands), Seline (Kiwi (NZ)), and Scott (USA). After we said long goodbyes to everyone on Thursday, we headed up to Auckland to get our rental car, went ice skating for an hour and than across 3 and a half hours to Coromandel. 

  

On Friday, we went to Cathedral Cove which was featured in the Prince Caspian movie. It was a 45 minute walk down to the cove and then back up but the scenery was beautiful!

Saturday, we headed to Whitianga for the day. We explored a designer's dress shop and a glass-blowing shop. 

 Sunday was my favorite day in all so far in that it was very relaxing. I got up at 6 a.m. for a swim out to an island but I didn't get even half way out before I had to turn back. The water wasn't too cold but I was afraid of sharks:) By the way, I don't think there were any in that calm bay. After that, we checked out of our little cottage on the ocean and headed to church. The worship and sermon was really good and then there was morning tea afterwards. After mingling with the good church folk of Coromandel, we hiked up to a view point of the ocean admist Kauri trees. Driving down to lake Taupo turned into the whole afternoon and we got to the house late to meet another group which we're staying with for 2 nights. The other group includes Raphael and Anna (Germany), Emily (USA), Ryan (USA), and Julianne (Canada). 

Huka falls where we went today

Today, Monday, we went to see the waterfall (Huka falls) where the hobbits went down in barrels. The water was so blue and the noise and sights majestic. 

Left to right: Elise, me, Seline, Julianne, Emily

And finally there's been plenty of time to have my quiet time with God, of prayer and Bible reading and enjoying the early morning atmosphere. We also are doing devotionals as a group every couple days and taking the time to talk about the past term together. There's lots of good opportunities in the car to talk about the lectures and what we have learned the past 10 weeks and applying now what we have listened to. 

Ministry Week

On Saturday the first of September, everyone left Capernwray to be billeted out to different houses around New Zealand. There were five different teams going to five different locations to help out churches around the north island. Of all the teams, my group was assigned the farthest location four hours up north in Whangerei, NZ. Everyone was gone for eight days and then we all came home yesterday on Sunday. I was a group of 10, the biggest group of all. We helped the church do different projects like cleaning and church services and youth groups. They also hooked us up with the primary school next door where we went for four days and were like first-year teachers to the kids in the classroom. I was in classrooms with 5, 6, and 10 yr. olds. I also got the opportunity to go to a rest home slash hospital for old people. It was a very busy and full week but it stretched all of us to get out of our comfort zone and be initiative to talk with people and do tasks. It was beautiful there too but at nights it was so cold. NZ homes don't have central heating all the time like we do in the states so the bedrooms would be as cold as outside 42 degrees. In my billets house, we had very good food because she made her own applesauce and everything just like my Mom does. She was gluten free as well so we had cauliflower based pizza and cookies which I found out is called biscuits in NZ. Everyone we talked to was very purposeful. We got talkings on different subjects we helped in like teaching in a primary school, being an assistant in a rest home, what Chaplins in hospitals do, etc. Everyone had a devotion prepared to share and something they'd speak at like a youth group or young adults group. I was prepared to give a Bible story for a youth group of 9-12 yr. olds. All week, we made relationships at the school and then invited them to come on Friday to the event which was called 9-Up. I was handed a microphone last minute which was super intimidating but once I got up there, my quiet shell fell off and I conformed to the role of presenter, storyteller, and extrovertedness according to my group even though I didn't feel it too much, it came naturally thanks to Mom. Even though my voice wanted to shake, I told about the story of Caleb and Joshua, had the sin chair skit prepared which half of my group took part in, and then shared the gospel at the end because most of the kids were non-christians from the school. This was Friday night when I had the whole week behind me of busyness and I could just focus on the kids. God did an awesome work, bringing about 40 to 50 kids to 9-Up that night compared to the 17 they usually had I heard. Our whole group participated in it through the skit, working downstairs with the youth, and then our leader led a huge competitive round of musical chairs that got the kids pumped with candy or as the New Zealanders say lollies, at the end. On Saturday we went to the beach where we relaxed on the sand and I explored the tide pools and brought back so many beautiful shells. Wednesday and Thursday night and then most of Saturday were our only free days. It was a lot of driving and working but we had to rely on God all the more because we got tired so easily on our own strength. Michael the leader and I were billeted together and driving to pick and drop every one off plus the drive up and back down and every where else resulted in almost 24 hours of driving! I definitely learned some new songs since we played soundtracks constantly, over and over. Some were fun and others....ugh, I got them stuck in my head! I want to upload all my pictures so badly but my computer won't let me right now so I'm going to post without them.