Second 19 Day Break

  How do I begin to describe this 19 day break? Each day was a mini explosion of gorgeousness and adventure. There were 17 to 19 of us teenagers screeching the corners in 4 cars. We stayed in 9 airbnb's in total - 6 on the south island and 3 in Wellington on the north island. It was always a fun surprise to enter a new house and find rooms for those one to three nights. My favorite house was probably our second house we stayed in. It was a rustic little cottage near the beach. There was a trail only trailblazers could follow and a ravine so like Parkdale that led into a creek. The kitchen and dining room in the house were not wall papered so people were encouraged to write their names as a creative guest book on the walls. Surprisingly, there was already another Avonlea from Washington State written up on the walls from February. Weird.

The guest book wall.

Whararaki Beach - I'm third from left.

     Favorite place that everyone needs to go check out is Whararaki Beach in Nelson/Golden Bay. There are giant rocks, caves, seals, seals in caves, and seal pups. Take a meandering trail through the grasses and sheep to emerge onto a wide expanse of my favorite New Zealand beach ever. Hey, this beat Matapouri Bay that I raved so much about up north last 2 week break. Stay for the sunset. Only four of us did but everyone should have. I wanted to have my finger glued to my shutter button but that wouldn't capture the beauty. 

     One new thing I did was driving on the left side of the road. I don't like driving but I've missed it after not driving in such a long time so I gave it a go for about 2 hours one day. Brodie was having to drive 10 hours all that day so he got a break and I got to drive. Good deal. I didn't expect Brodie to use part of his time in waving his legs out the window to Ryan who waved his legs back enthusiastically in the car ahead of us. Nor did I expect a police car to come cruising up after we stopped for a break about 7 minutes later. "You guys look like you're about 12." - NZ police officer quote. Thankfully he hadn't seen the leg incident and after looking at our licences, he wished us a good day and left. 

     I had my birthday the day after Easter which was so weird not celebrating it with my family. I got to face time them still though and got a box the day after when we came back to Capernwray along with other boxes and cards - so nice! The group was super great and I got to have burgers (easter dinner) and gluten free brownies and ice cream with chocolate sauce. I had to blow out 19 candles with 17 people watching - phew, that was a challenge. We played body body which is a game like Mofia in the dark, and I got killed in the first round. There were pianos in the house and I got to play my heart out. It was a good day.

This picture was the night we stayed in my favorite house. We rode down to the beach at like 10? and made a fire but someone booted us off that part of the beach. We asked later and the locals said their was no fire ban or anything. Just a grumpy man, I guess. So we made a fire further down. I found Makenna's guitar in the back of the car and she strummed out some worship music while we listened or sang. The tide came in closer and closer and finally we left the rocky beach and went home to warm beds.

In Queenstown, we had a second worship night with another group and a devotional. It was so good. Song after song was played on the guitar while people harmonized their hearts out. This house we stayed in had an amazing view and heated tile floors in the bathroom. It was by far the most expensive house but it was worth the cost of $47 a night. All the airbnb's we stayed at had some form of free food for us and this house was no exception. One of the favorite parts was the milk frother and high scale coffee maker. We lived like rich students. It was awesome!

I'm fourth from the right in another jumping photo. This one is in front of Mt. Cook which you can spot between Corina's legs whose to the left of me. We spent quite a bit of time here, skipping rocks and taking pictures. There was a few moments of tenseness when Jason's phone died on his drone and it had to come back to the location without him being able to control it. On cue, we heard the sound of a plane just over the hills. Drone + plane = bad things happen. Thankfully, the plane never showed up although we heard it come closer. The drone landed back where it had started and everything was fine after that. Phew.

That night after exploring lakes, we decided to stay at the Church of the Good Shepherd for a cuddle puddle time. There were some sleeping bags in the car which we put over our legs and backs and then everyone drew close for warmth from the bitter cold. There were the random moments of people grabbing your leg, "whose this?" or, "can someone put these knobby knees somewhere else?" Because it was so dark, it was hard to figure out who was next to who. It was just us until from out of nowhere, about 20 Asians showed up in front of us to photograph the famous church behind us with all the stars. And there we are smack dab in front of the church. One guy went up to us and asked, "do you want us to take your picture?" Nathan held out his phone and the guy reached down as if to take it, then backed up, saying, "Oh that camera is trash." And then he left! Who does that? We were surprised and disgruntled. For a minute, we thought he was teasing and would come back but he didn't. It wasn't until like 2 minutes had passed, that he came back with a huge camera on a massive tripod. He told us to shine our phone screens at our faces so they'd light up while he took a 10 second long exposure time to capture the stars and the church in the background. We gathered around him afterward to see the final product and told him we were Bible school students. "ahh, then we are brothers and sisters!" Was his response. SO cool!

In order from left to right: Tobias (German), Corina (Canadian), Marie (German), Me, Jacob (Canadian)

 We stayed in Christchurch for several days which is the city that had a 6.3 earthquake in 2011 and then a shooting that killed 50 people just last month. We didn't die though and one day, five of us visited Akaroa area, just east of Christchurch. We spent the day exploring the land and then headed back after a gorgeous sunset and fog rolling in from the hills.

We're missing 3 people in this photo. Names left to right: Tobias, Jacob, Makenna, Jackson, Gracie, Ryan, Scott, Grace, Mallie, Corina, Brodie, Ceanna, Jason, Me, Marie

   
For Easter, we visited an Elim church and bombed their youth get together after. It was about 8 to 10 of them and 18 of us. We payed for our half of the pizza but got free soda, hot chocolate, coffee, and tea. They were very kind and we got to know all about their lives from Singapore, etc. and they got to experience Capernwray students for the first time which hopefully was a good thing for them. Afterwards we went to this museum which featured huge wax figures representing people of world war 1. My hand was about as big as half the figure's ear to put it in scale. I was a little creeped out by the realistic sweat, pores, and blood so I diverted myself to watching a lady try to park her car far down in the parking lot. It turned out to be a lot more painful then looking at bomb shelled people because I felt like this was much more truer to how my life will look like. Instead of death or honor after the grime and intensity in war, most of us are chosen to park a car. And this lady spent 10 minutes in the parking lot trying to park her car in a normal parking space. She got in other cars way as they tried to go around her. She wasn't even backing in! I learned from her that turning your wheels while not moving is terrible for your tires. And opening a door and hitting the car beside you is not great as well. My only hope is that when I park my car in life, Jesus will be at the wheel...not me. Because I know that by myself, I will probably take longer than 10 minutes to park my car - and that's both figuratively and literally.

Fiji. Beautiful green lush fields. Opaque pristine waters. Palm trees swaying in the warm tropical breeze. That's how the tourists see Fiji as and that's what they find. They don't venture inland into the squatter huddles around the bit of muddy river. They don't see the impact when the river floods and takes the little possession they have of land and belongings. The beautiful lush fields turn into a mess of mosquitoes and red clay the second you step into it. The clean waters are filtered - you don't find pristine blue waters in the interior. The palm trees are still beautiful - no comment needed.
A team of 11 of us headed out from Capernwray for two weeks of mission trip work. We experienced heat 100% humidity the second we stepped off the plane. The first couple days we were dead from the heat but it got better once it rained and clouds came in. Although it was hurricane season we thankfully didn’t get to know what that was like. Basically a normal day at island encounters went like so:
- 6:30 wake up time
- 6:45 devo
- 7 really good breakfast made of fruits (fresh watermelon, pineapple, bananas, avocados, passion fruit, guava, and papaya!)
- 7:30 to 8:30 was quiet time with Jesus (I read through Zachariah and half of Romans)
- 8:30 we met with sunscreen and bug spray ready for the day
We worked for 4 hours (except the last day when I got in 4 and a half hours) each day with a break for morning tea of fresh juice and cookies and Busa - a Fijian trail mix of raisins, nuts, curly crisps, and dried peas.
- 1 lunch ranging from bread and rice to boiled cassava - lots of starches!
After lunch we usually hung out, had a nap, or played some games. This was also a good time to prepare crafts for the kids activities we did in the afternoons.
- 3 or 4 we had kids ministry! We did a skit, song, and lesson around the Good Samaritan story in modern day life.
- 6 was dinner which was soup and rice or curry and rice or chutney, chicken, and rice.
- 7:30 was testimonies and going around the circle saying a high and low of the day and what we learned. That was really cool to hear what people had experienced that day. Afterwards, we played some games that people had in mind or oftentimes we had Deans Deep Discussions. This was when we plyed our leader Dean with questions about life and then after he gave his answer, we all discussed what he had said with what we had in our slight store of knowledge.
For tourist activities, we went to beachcombers island and experienced mud pools and zip lines upside down in a jungle under the hills of the sleeping giant. It was actually sad to see the stark difference between the tourist realm and the actual life of Fijians who live in dirt poor. But it was a very good time overall and our team bonded amazingly well!