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.
