Another Adventure

Hello everyone,

First off I would like to say thank you for all of your support in prayer during my time in New Zealand with YWAM.  It was such a blessing to me.  Right now I am about to start another adventure.  I am applying to go on staff with YWAM in Newcaslte, Australia.  If I am able to get on staff I would be leaving for Australia in only a few short weeks.  I would need to be there around the beginning of July and it is already the middle of June.  Seeing as it is only a few weeks away I don’t have a ton of time to get all the money that I need to go.  I know that God will provide all the money that I need so I am not worried about that at all.  What I am asking is that you continue to support me in prayer and if you feel led by God to monetarily support me then I ask you to follow God’s leading and support me however you can.  While I am in Newcaslte, Australia I will be staffing a DTS, so I would be helping to lead the same thing that I did last year.  The school I would be staffing wouldn’t start until October but I would need to be there in July to attend an STS which stands for Staff Training Seminar, to pray over the prospective students, to work out logistics, and to help with finding speakers for the school.  There is a lot to be done and I don’t have a lot of time to do it so I ask that you would continue to pray for me that this is what God is leading me to and that I would be able to go to Australia.  Your support in prayer means the world to me and I am so thankful that I have people who are praying for me.  If you would like to support me you can email me at maacalad@aol.com and I can give you more information.  I would also just love to hear that you have been praying for me, it encourages me so much to know that I have people praying on my behalf.  Thank you again so much for your support.

In Christ,

Malcolm 

Outreach: Part II

Continuing where I left off... (which means if you don’t know where I left off go down and read part I)

After another ten hour train ride we made it back to Calcutta and we settled back into Lee Memorial Girls School.  On Sunday after we had recovered from the train ride, which usually took about a day, we went out into the center of Calcutta in an area known as New Market and we did some street evangelism and how we did that was this:  We bought around ten five-liter water bottles and a few hundred cups and we offered a free cup of water to people walking the streets and when they asked why we were giving it away we were able to tell them about Jesus.  On Monday we worked with Mother Teresa and the ministry that she started there in India.  It is really awesome what the Sisters of Charity and the volunteers are doing for the city.  Hundreds of people come from around the world to volunteer their time to partner with the Sisters of Charity and the houses that they oversee.  While I was there I worked at the house known as Daya Dan which is a house for children who are physically and mentally handicapped.  It was so amazing to help out the children and to see how much people who aren’t even Christians are willing to give up their time to help others.  The three days that we worked with Mother Teresa were some of my favorite on the whole trip.

We worked with the Sisters of Charity and Mother Teresa Monday through Wednesday and on Thursday.  On Friday we got on yet another train ride headed for Jharsuguda.  Jharsuguda is ten hours southwest of Calcutta.  We decided that one of the places that we were going to go for our outreach was Jharsuguda because of a man named John Bridge.  John Bridge came to speak to us at the beginning of our school, I think it was on the third day of the school.  He told us the story of how he came to India over thirty years ago.  He also told us about the compound and how he has built up an orphanage and a school with over twelve hundred current students. The story was incredible.  Because of what John had said to us on that day our leaders, when thinking about outreach locations and after having chosen India, decided to go to where John had his ministry.  John had asked us before we arrived to have a program for the entire compound the second day we were there, so we spend the first day and a half working on an hour program for everyone which turned out really well.  During the three and a half weeks that we were at John’s compound we had a lot of time to play with the kids in the afternoon when they weren’t working on their schoolwork or their chores.  The kids there are amazing, most of them speak english fluently as well as two other languages and they were only ten years old.  Our schedule while at the compound was usually pretty full.  John planned out a schedule for our entire time there so that made things a little easier for our team leaders.

Since the whole idea of our missionary work is to come along side missionaries who are already established in other countries we were willing to do whatever John needed us to do.  Most of what John had in mind for our team was church meetings.  You are probably wondering what that entails considering it is in India and so the churches are not like our normal churches at home.  Well, I will enlighten you.  John, during his thirty-year ministry in India, has pioneered many, many churches.  Before John had come to India the area of Jharsuguda and the surrounding area and just about all of the state of Orissa had basically no Christians whatsoever so almost all of the churches in that area were started by John.  Because John pioneered many of the churches he has the responsibility to oversee them and to make sure that the Indians running the churches correctly.  What John had asked us to do for all of the churches was to encourage and build up the believers in those churches.  The way that we did that was with testimonies, skits, songs and stories.  Almost every single day we were there we went with John to different churches and day cares.  John had us go to different churches and hold programs for the children there.  John’s main focus is children which is why he has a school and why he had us go to these day cares.  The children there were always so good at paying attention to whoever was speaking and we always felt so loved by all of them, it was so amazing.  Day care visits usually consisted of the same schedule as church meetings except that we usually didn’t spend any time actually praying with the children because after our hour they usually started to lose focus and become rowdy.  After every church meeting and every day care visit, without fail, we were given a meal to eat.  The meal almost always consisted of bananas, chai tea, rice, and sometimes a trail mix-type plate of food.  Everywhere we visited the people were so kind and hospitable to us.  We were never in want of anything.

Our time in India flew by so fast, it felt as if we had been there only a few days instead of almost a few months.  During our last week in Jharsuguda we got on yet another twelve hour train ride.  This time our destination was Jaypore.  Jeypore is almost directly south of Jharsuguda.  While in Jeypore we had a full on schedule and I mean full on!!  Every day that we were there we had between two and three church visits.  And, if you remember what I said about church visits and how long they usually last, we were completely exhausted every night.  Most of our visits were not in the actual city of Jeypore but in cities surrounding it so we almost always had a couple of hours in the bus everyday.  We never really got bored though, my group was so close with each other that we were basically family.  We were able spending so much time with each other without wanting to strangle each other and that was a huge blessing to all of us, especially the leaders who had to deal with us.

We stayed in Jeypore for a total of four days and we went to at least ten different churches on visits.  We were all extremely exhausted by the end of it and we, as much as we could, enjoyed the rest on the train ride back to Jharsuguda.  We only had a day or two back in Jharsuguda before we had to head back to Calcutta so that we could head home.  Outreach was almost over.  But just because it was getting close didn’t mean that we were done.  Our last day or so we spent a lot of time finishing up some painting that we had started in the orphanage building at John’s compound.  In each of the rooms we painted different Bible stories.  In one room we painted David and Goliath, in another we painted Jonah and the whale, in another Moses in the reeds, and in the last we painted Esther and the king.  It turned out really well and all of the children really liked it.  We took our sixth and final twelve hour train ride east back to Calcutta from Jharsuguda and we spent our last day in India starting our debrief time.  It was a good time to recount what had happened throughout the entire outreach.

Our first impression of India was at the Calcutta airport at three in the morning.  The first thought that we had when we got there was “Wow! This place is a dump.  It’s so dirty!”  On leaving India we went through the same airport and when we got into the airport our first thought was “Wow! This place is so clean.”  Our view on life and the way that Indians live was completely changed in the time that we were there.  We flew from Calcutta to Bangkok, Thailand.  The other students on my school, who had gone to Chennai, India on the other outreach team, were already there.  We met up with them and we were able to enjoy some good catching up time as well as seeing some of the city before we got on our final plane flight back to New Zealand.

The final two weeks of the DTS consisted of a debrief week which we learned all about re-entering into the “real” world after this amazing experience that we had.  We were also told about how we were to deal with the change that happened to us and how to put that to use when we got home.  We spent the final week of DTS in Auckland at the Pacific Regional Conference.  It was a great time where we got to hear all about what God is doing in the Pacific.  We had people come and speak from all over the Pacific and give presentations on their country.  It was amazing to see that God is working everywhere, and how God is using people from everywhere to enhance his kingdom.

So that is my outreach to India.  I hope you enjoyed hearing about what God has done in my life during my time in India as well as all that He has been doing in India just in the short time that I was there.  I had an amazing, amazing, time and I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything in the world.  I would like to thank all of you who have been so very faithful in supporting me with your prayers.  It has been greatly appreciated.  Prayer is so powerful and I would like to ask all of you to continue praying for me as I figure out what I am going to be doing come Autumn.  I have been thinking and praying about returning to Newcaslte, Australia where I spent some time after my DTS ended.  There is a YWAM base in Newcaslte and while I was there I felt right at home.  I have been praying about returning there in October to staff a DTS, the same school that I just finished, and I ask that you would pray for discernment for me in making this decision, it would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you again for all of your support.  I am so grateful for all of you who have been praying for me, it has meant so much to me over this time in my life.  I have posted some pictures below to show you a little more about my trip.

This is everywhere I went by train while I was in India.

This is the where we stayed while we were in Calcutta. 

We stayed in the guest rooms on the top floor.

Some of the smiling kids at the compound in Jharsuguda.

Another one of the constantly smiling faces that we were able to see every day that we were in Jharsuguda.

I probably shouldn't have favorites but if I could this kid would be it.

My team mate Myles and I finishing up painting in the childrens rooms.

This was the room that I stayed in with one other guy.

My bed is on the right with all the stuff on it.

A group of the boys saying goodbye to me before we had to leave.

Outreach: Part I

Hey everyone!  I’m sorry that it has been a while.  Everything has just been so hectic recently.  I’m back from India.  India.  Where to begin?  I don’t really know where to start and there is so many things that happened that I don’t want to bore you with small things so I hope that you get an idea of what my outreach was like with this.  There is so much that happened on outreach that I know for me to tell it all is going to take a number of blog posts so please, be patient and stick with me on this and you will see the amazing things that God has done in my life.

I left New Zealand on the 26th of November on route to India.  My flight had a three hour layover in Thailand and after that we finally made it to India.  Our flight arrived in Calcutta at three in the morning so everything was dark and scary.  Being in a foreign country at night for the first time was pretty creepy.  We were taken from the airport to where we were staying which was a guest floor at a girls school called Lee Memorial Girls School.  We arrived there in the middle of the night and there were crows cawing and goats wandering the streets and lots of homeless people who looked very creepy walking about.  The first thought that I had about India was ‘what did I just get myself into?’  

The first five days that we were there we basically got used to India and how different it is from any country that I have been to before.  We went shopping in the area known as ‘New Market’ and we spent a lot of time praying about our time in India, that it would be fantastic and that we would be effective in whatever we do and that we would be able to help as many people as we could.  After we had kinda gotten used to India and Calcutta and the people here we left on a train with Darjeeling as our destination.  The train only took between ten and twelve hours to arrive.  The trains in India are not like the trains back home.  They are overcrowded, they smell terrible, they are way too hot, and they aren’t safe because there is no privacy.  The train left at ten at night so it was an all night train ride, which is usually a good thing but I’m not sure if it is a good thing in India because anyone can walk onto the train and into your car and take your stuff when you aren’t looking.  Luckily nothing got stolen throughout our entire train experience, experience is the best way to say it because that is just what it is, an experience.  Myles and I decided to try to stay up all night to make sure everyone and everything was safe after we had a lovely encounter with some transvestites.  It was not as exciting as it sounds.  We didn’t make it the whole night but once we saw a man walking around with a shotgun we felt safe enough to go to sleep.  

That next morning we arrived in New Jalpaiguri which is the closest train station to Darjeeling, from there we had to take a three hour car ride up the mountain to Darjeeling.  The road to Darjeeling was crazy.  We hired two Sumo’s which are basically jeeps that can hold twelve people, not comfortably I might add but it can hold twelve people.  The entire car ride was extremely bumpy and cramped.  After three hours of sitting in the crowded car we finally made it to Darjeeling.  When we heard that we were going to Darjeeling we were told that it was going to be cold but we all of us thought that it couldn’t be that bad, it was India, but when we actually got there we basically froze.  Darjeeling, for those of you who don’t know, is situated in the Himalayas near Mount Everest and right next to Kangchenjunga which is the third tallest mountain in the world for those of you who didn’t know.  Even thought Darjeeling is so close to Everest I actually never got to see it because the weather was so bad that the clouds blocked everything.  We arrived in Darjeeling on a Thursday and took all of Friday to do a scavenger hunt so that we could get to know the city.  Later that night  we went to a village outside of Darjeeling.  To get to the village we had to walk for a long time, and when I say that we walked for a long time I mean it.  It must’ve been for at least three hours that we walked just to get to the village and, if you figure that you walk between three and four miles an hour, we walked at least ten miles.  

We went to the village to help out and encourage a woman who was trying to start a school there for all of the children.  While there we were not only able to spend time with the kids and see how amazing they are, but we were also able to go out into surrounding villages which had never heard the gospel message before and share it with them.  We stayed in the village for two nights and on the last day before we left all of the guys were asked to stay behind to help with some work that was needed to be done while all of the girls were able to go to church with the children.  While the girls were at church we guys helped dig and fill a place for a chicken coop which took most of the morning.  After we had finished with that we were asked to go to someone’s house to have a small church meeting with them.  We were able to share a testimony and a story from the Bible and explain it.  We also sang a song for them which was interesting because the guitar that they had was so out of tune that it couldn’t be fixed without taking some time to do so, so we four guys sang a cappella to them.  After we had finished sharing with them they asked us to come into their back room and pray for a woman who was bedridden because of a problem with her spine.  We were able to pray for here and after we had done so she had told us that some of the pain had gone down.  When we had finished with the people in the house we were asked again to come to another spot  to pray for some land and, as we followed the man who had asked us to come. an uneasy feeling came over all of us. The land that we were asked to pray over had been the home of an alcoholic and drug addict and everyone who had stepped onto the land could feel the presence of something evil.  We had been asked to pray over the land because some of the men in the village were wanting to build a church on that property.  We prayed over the land and when we had finished doing that we left the village and made our way back into Darjeeling.

Over the next week we partnered with YWAM Darjeeling to help them with the Christmas festival that was going on during the week.  In the mornings we would have devotions and then we would practice for our program in the Christmas festival. One of the main things that we practiced was the Lifehouse Everything skit.  It was the main focus of our program on the festival and I got to act out Jesus in the skit.  It was a lot of fun.  There was a lot of spiritual warfare going on the whole time we were in Darjeeling.  Over the week we helped the YWAM Darj team with setup and preparations for the festival and with advertising for it.  By advertising I mean that we handed out free chai tea and biscuits and invited people to come to the Christmas festival.  On Monday, for the beginning of the festival, the two other guys on my team and I dressed up as the three wise men for a living nativity scene.  On Thursday we performed our program for the festival and it went really well.  Thankfully the lights and sound didn’t go out on us because it had been happening the whole week and it was making everything really frustrating.  Our program turned out really well, we performed the Lifehouse Everything skit and afterwards we were told that some people we brought to tears.  We also had a few of my teammates give their testimony and the Gospel message and there were at least five hundred people that got to hear it.  The day after that, Friday, we headed back down the mountain to catch the train back to Calcutta and that was the end of our adventures in Darj.

India, here I come!!

Hey everyone! This is going to be my last blog post before I go to India and I am going to try to kind of sum up some of it so that it doesn’t take three days to read. While I am in Inida I will try my best to post a blog or two, depending on how often I am able to have internet access but please, it I do not get a chance to, please don’t hold it against me. I will write heaps about the entire trip when I get back from India, so don’t worry about never finding out what happened. Here is what has happened these last two weeks before outreach.

The Sunday following Patrick Dodson’s teachings I co-led the older children’s Sunday school service at the Maungaturoto church. That sunday night, instead of our normal lectures, we had an Indian couple come and speak to us about India and what is going on there concerning missions. On Monday we started our normal lectures for the week. The speaker was named Teki. He spoke to us on Cross-Cultural Introduction. It was very interesting and he taught us a lot about Muslims and their beliefs that I did not know before. One of the main things for the week that Teki was trying convey to us was about how we should act in different cultures. One question that really got me thinking was “What makes you an American?” Besides the fact that I was born there I couldn't really give an answer. Teki told us, “while you are in India be an Indian,” and that is what I am going to strive for while I am there, to be as one of the natives in how I relate to them. That weekend we got to go camping as our last adventure as a school. We went to Pahi and camped near the beach. It was amazing, the sunset that was there the first night was so beautiful. At the beach there is a huge rock called Lion Rock and it really looks like a lion sitting at the waters edge. On the way home from camping we stopped at the airport to pick up two Mission Builders and while we were waiting I got to eat Dunkin Donuts. It was amazing! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, I had no idea that New Zealand would have Dunkin Donuts. It made my day.

Jono Turner was the speaker for the last week of lectures. His topic was on the Holy Spirit. The whole week was one of the best weeks that we had. It was just what we needed to finish off the Lecture Phase with. One amazing story from the week was that on Tuesday during lectures we decided to pray for healing in a few different people so we started praying very fervently. One of the girls we prayed for had some pretty severe Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in her wrists and all throughout her forearms from playing the piano and drawing (she’s pretty artistic). While we were praying for her she was healed and she had absolutely no pain in either of her wrists. It was definitely God performing a miracle. It was truly amazing to see God work in such real ways and I know that this was only a small taste of what will be happening while we are in India. The rest of lectures wasn’t quite as exciting as Tuesday but it was still a really good week and I think that Jono was one of my favorite speakers overall. On Friday we had a fancy dinner as an “End of Lectures” dinner. After that we had a Talent show that was pretty awesome. As the end performance me and two other guys got up, dressed in tights and danced to the Cotton Eye Joe song, it was so much fun.

This past Monday morning we had a pancake breakfast as a final breakfast with everyone from both outreach teams. On Tuesday we said goodbye to the Chennai outreach team. It was so sad, I may have cried, I don’t remember, it was probably just that dirt unfortunately got in my eye the whole time the Chennai team was saying goodbye and driving away. What bad luck I have with dirt, that it would happen when I don’t want it to. After they left we went to the beach to help get our minds off of the other team and to stop us from skulking around. It was a really nice way to get us to not think about being sad. I realized that after this I will probably only see the people from the other team for another three weeks and then most likely never again after that and that made me really sad.

I leave tomorrow the 26th of November which will be the 25th for all of you. I am extremely excited and only a little nervous. We have a twelve hour flight to India. Here is a rough itinerary of what I will be doing and when so that you have an idea about what I will be doing when I am there.

MY ITINERARY:

November 26: Leave New Zealand for Calcutta

November 27-30: Orientation on culture by YWAM Calcutta

December 1: Travel north to Darjeeling (hopefully see Mt. Everest :] )

December 2-10: Partner witth YWAM Darjeeling ministries

December 11: Travel back to Calcutta

December 12-16: Partner with YWAM Calcutta ministries

December 17: Travel south to Orissa

December 18-

January 9: Partner with John Bridges’ ministry

January 9: Travel north to Calcutta

January 12: Depart India and arrive in Thailand

January 12-14: Debrief and relax in Thailand

January 14: Leave Thailand for New Zealand.

January 16 or 17: Travel south to Tauranga for the week and serve at YWAM ‘Jubilee

Celebration’ followed by ‘Call to All’

January 24: Return for report back week

I have some pictures that you can look at in a second but first I would really like to thank you all for your continued support through prayer and I implore you to continue praying for me and my entire team as we are in this foreign country that is very dangerous. I ask that you would pray for our health while we are there, some of our team is not feeling well and have been in bed resting and it would be terrible if anyone were to get that sick it would be very disastrous for our team and ministry. We need everyone to be in full health. I would also ask that you keep our safety in your prayers. We have many long train rides and many trips that we require us traveling great distances and traveling can be very dangerous. Some of the leaders who have been to India before have told us that on trains anything that is not secure on your person can easily get stolen and we do not want anyone to lose anything. Again I want to thank you all so very much for all the prayers and support that you have given me during this entire adventure that I am on. Your prayers mean so much to me, it truly is an encouragement to me to know that I have people back home who are interceding for me. This school so far has been amazing and I know that God only has more amazing things in store for India. God sure knew what he was doing when he led me to this place. I love you all. May God bless you all richly and may he reveal himself to you in new ways everyday.

Here are two pictures of the sunset at Pahi.

This is 'Lion Rock' and see, I told you that it looked like a lion.

Here are just a few random pictures that I took at Mangawhai on Tuesday.

The red algae was really cool.

Yet Another Post...

Since the last blog post a lot of things have happened. On Sunday before our new speakers Hinrich and Katrina talked to us on their topic of Back to the Basics, we got to play rugby. It was pretty awesome. I don’t understand why we don’t play it in the states. Although it was fun, I did get a little hurt. What a surprise. During the first lecture Hinrich and Katrina had all of us take pipe cleaners and make our dreams out of it. That was really cool because I got to see what some of the dreams of the other people on my team. The next Tuesday was a good day, I made friendship bread. Mmmmm, so delicious! It was also a good day because, instead of normal lectures, we got to act out stories from the Bible with a partner. Not to brag or anything but we were pretty much the best, my partner and I did so well that we were asked to perform it again for open meeting on Wednesday.

For our biweekly adventure we went to Waipu caves and got to rock climb. That was a lot of fun. I never knew how much fun climbing things actually was until I got to rock climb here. There was a cave there at the caves, wow, fancy that, a cave at the caves. Anyways, the cave was massive, it wasn’t huge as in the ceilings were super high but inside you could just keep going it you climbed far enough. I went pretty far inside, far enough so that I couldn’t see the light from the cave entrance. As soon as I got far enough into the cave as to not be able to see the light from the entrance I noticed little lights on the ceiling. Glow worms! Glow worms are so cool, there must’ve been at least a thousand little green dots on the ceiling. It looked so awesome, it is too bad that cameras can’t get that kind of image. If you could see into my head though, you would be amazed at them. I would say that that was a really successful adventure. That was a friday, so that night we had a team of DTS students from Newcastle who were on outreach come to our base and stay with us for about a week. At first when they came I wasn’t too sure about them because they were very quiet and didn’t seem to want to interact with any of us, but after a while they eventually opened up to us and I was able to get to know them actually pretty well.

Kevin Stitt was our new speaker for the week. Hew spoke on the topic of the Character and Nature of God. That week started off really frustrating. Something about the topic made just about everyone in the group start to hate Kevin, but someone mentioned to us that no matter who the speaker was, everyone hated the person who spoke on the Character and Nature of God. Once we started to realize this, we were able to focus more on figuring out what we believe because the things that Kevin was bringing up were challenging us in our faith and in what we believe in. It was overall a good week, lecture-wise. But it was a really good week mainly because we had the Newcastle team stay with us. Over the week I got really close to just about all of them. Now that they are gone I really miss them a lot. During the week while we were having lectures the Newcastle team was speaking in schools and other places advertising about the main program that they were doing which was a huge event on Friday night.

Friday night was amazing to say the least. Friday morning we woke up and found out that the power was out. That was not very good at all. As you can imagine, we needed power to do everything that we wanted to do for that evening. Everyone was praying for it to be turned back. Apparently a major power line had gone out and just about everywhere north of Auckland was without power. It was such a major line that we were told that it could take up to a few days to repair, thankfully it was fixed in a matter of hours. We were expecting somewhere between one and three hundred kids and there ended up being at least three hundred, maybe more. The whole program was amazing, first we introduced the Newcastle team and then they played a few songs for the kids. A few of the guys on the Newcastle team are in a band back home. After that my team got to play a song for everyone and yes, I played bass in front of all of them. Go me. After that they did a pretty sweet skit that I will try to add a link to it or add it to this page but i’m not too sure how that will work out, we will see. Anyways the skit was very similar to the Lifehouse skit which some of you may or may not have seen and they did an amazing job with it. After that some of the Newcastle students gave a testimony and talked to the kids for a little while. When they had finished with that one of the Newcastle students hopped on his skateboard and did some fancy tricks for the kids and they all loved it. Afterwards the gospel message was given to everyone and then anyone who wanted to talk more about it was encouraged to come to the front and talk to any of the YWAM students. That was where the real fun began, I got to lead two boys to the Lord. Pretty sweet if you ask me. Anyways that was the main event and it was a huge success. The Newcastle team had to leave the next day and that was a sad day for sure.

This past week we had Patrick Dodson as our speaker and he talked about Identity, the Character and Nature of God, Biblical Worldview, and Your Future. It was a really packed week, especially because we had two lectures a day since Patrick had to leave on Tuesday night to go to his son’s sixteenth birthday party. The week was really good, it went by way faster than I had expected it to. On Friday a few of us went to the primary school in Paparoa and held a disco/dance party for about half of the kids at the school. YWAM has had a disco/dance party for the school kids for about four years now and we were told that we had done the best out of all of them. Probably cause I was there.... just kidding. Because some of us had gone to the disco party we were able to have Saturday afternoon off to ourselves. It was amazing how quiet the base can get when you take out most of the loud people. It was a very appreciated day of rest. There are only a little over two weeks until outreach and the time keeps going by faster and faster. I can’t believe that it has gone by as fast as it has. Before I know it I will be back home with all of you. So that has been my update for this time. I hope you enjoyed it and I want to thank you for all of your prayers, it really means a lot to me. Have a wonderful day.

Another post.

Its been a while and I’m sorry about that. Things are kinda crazy around here, and super busy, not to mention intense. A lot has happened in the past few weeks. I guess it has been about three weeks since the last post, so I will start kind of where the last one ended. The week after we had gone to Mount Manaia and Ocean Beach we had Kim ... as our guest speaker and she talked to us about relationships, not relationships between guys and girls like I though it was going to be, although I think she did touch on the subject, but it was more of learning things about ourselves and our relationships with others in a non-boyfriend/girlfriend way. I learned that I am pretty much a phlegmatic but with a good bit of sanguine in there, which means that I don’t care and I like to have fun. Sounds like me, eh? On that Tuesday, instead of having base recreation time, everyone went to Pahi, which has one of the largest trees here in New Zealand. That was a lot of fun and it was a nice change to go somewhere and just have a little fun. The lecture we had that night was interesting, they split us up and we talked about girls and the girls talked about the guys. That Thursday I gave a sermonette to the group and that was actually not too bad, and for me to say that means that it went really well cause I don’t like talking in front of lots of people. On Friday instead of having an Adventure like we were supposed to we went down to a town north of Auckland and we went shopping at the Westfield mall which is one of the biggest ones on the north island. After that we went to the Waiwera hot pools. It was pretty much a small water park with some pools heated by some hot springs. It was a lot of fun. That Saturday we went to the Mauri Museum and spend the morning there. There was some interesting stuff but its just a museum so it wasn’t really that interesting to me, but thats just me. After that we had Youth Group and Epic Kids which are the youth programs that we host for the kids in the community.

Goldie Gibson was the new speaker for the weeks topic of Identity. I don’t know why but it was really hard for me to concentrate that week and I don’t know what it was that was not letting me pay attention to what Goldie had to say. What I did get out of her talks was that I need to invite God into my problems so that he can help me through them instead of thinking that I can do it on my own and that I have to go through my problems alone. I think that is really going to help me a lot. On Thursday we were finally able to relax and have a little fun, we played ultimate. It is so much fun, I love that game. I also learned a new dice game, called barboot, that is really fun. Its really simple. That night was super fun, we had a random rave, but without the drinking and drugs and everything else that goes along with them. We had lots of techno music a strobe light, fog machine, laser light and some pretty sweet colorful lights. The next day, Friday was a free day and so we were able to sleep in. I slept in until eleven, it was amazing! I haven’t slept in that late since before I got here and it felt great to do it. I want more days like that. That night was Korean Night, we had some amazing chobob and kimbob along with a few other things but I don’t remember what they were called. The kimbob is Korean sushi and it was really yummy. I didn’t realize how good sushi actually is. On Saturday we got to work, lucky us. Part of the group went to a house to help get it ready for some new renters. The lady who had lived there with her family was crazy. Let me just say that I will never let anyone staple anything to the walls in my house. There must’ve been at least four or five hundred staples that we had to full out of the walls. I think the lady went out and bought herself a new staple gun and wanted to make sure that they got their money’s worth out of it. She staples just about everything, there were even staples in the doors. That night, as a group we watched Braveheart to relax and hang out. Such a good movie.

This week started off with our lectures from Beryl Henwood. Her topic for the week was spiritual warfare which is a very interesting subject to talk about. I am learning a lot and it is really testing me on what I think and believe. Some of the things that I have seen are pretty crazy and if I weren’t a Christian and I saw what has been happening around here I would think that everyone here was loony and that they belong in some mental hospital or something but I know better than that. On Tuesday we had some pretty intense stuff happen which I won’t get into but trust me, it was crazy but amazing. Tuesday was an exciting day, Besides lectures which were pretty stodgy for the most part we play more ultimate on a field littered with cow patties. Any sport or activity just gets that much more intense when you add some cow patties into the mix. I also got a nice haircut on Tuesday, so it was a pretty good day. Wednesday went by so fast, I don’t even know what happened. One minute I’m in morning lectures the next we are done with open meeting. It was crazy. For our small group time which we always do on Wednesdays we went into town, Mungaturoto, and hung out there for a while just to get away from the base. When we got back we had open meeting which is our Wednesday night church service that the whole community is welcome to come to and hear from our speaker. So far I have had such an amazing time and I know that I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. I love the people here and this country is amazing. I think it would be awesome to live here permanently. Anyways so that was pretty much an update of what has been going on the past few weeks.

Fun Times

Hey everyone. It is now four weeks and it only feels like I’ve been here for a few days. It is crazy how fast the time has gone by. It also feels like I’ve been here for months because of how close I have gotten with everyone, Especially this past week. There are some amazing people here and I’m so glad that God has brought us all together. Everything has been amazing and has far exceeded my previous expectations of New Zealand and DTS before I had gotten here. I have also been a lot busier than I had though that I was going to be. I had thought that there was going to be more free time but we do a lot of hard work and it seems that the work never ends. My duties that I have to do just about every day is cleaning bathrooms. It is really easy so I don’t mind that I have to do it. I usually have to clean dishes about once a week and that isn’t too bad.

And as a forewarning: in case you don’t see many blog posts it might be because they just put in a new internet system and now we have to pay for the internet that we use ourselves and it costs a lot, but I will try my best to update it as much as I can. Also time really flies here, its all going by so fast that I don’t really get many chances to take some time and write a blog for you. God has been teaching me so much here and I’ve learned so much already. I can’t wait for the rest of this trip and I am so excited that we are going to India. Me and the rest of my DTS are going to India for our outreach and since I’ve heard so much about India and the need for people to go there I am excited that we get to go there.

This past week we went on one of the adventures that are part of the DTS and so we climbed Mount Manaia which is near Whangerei [pronounced fun-ga-ray]. It was a really fantastic view from the top. There are some pictures that I took on the way up and at the top at the end of this post and there are also some pictures of the beach that we went to which was called Ocean Beach. How original, I know. But it was a beautiful beach and I am glad that we were able to go to the beach, even if it was only for a little while. I wish we could’ve spent more time there then we were able to. This week the topic was the Father Heart of God and it has been really interesting. I love our lecture time when we can learn more about God from the amazing speakers that we have like this weeks speaker, Frank Naea. Anyways thats pretty much what has been going on so far. Here are the pictures:

Mount Manaia:

Ocean Beach: