2 week break part 2

So where I left off on my last post was about when we were in Queenstown. After Queenstown we went to Manapouri where we stayed at a house that the people I stayed with for ministry week had down there. It was a huge blessing but also came with frustrations. At that point there were 12 of us all traveling together and when we all stayed in one house together it was hard for me. In my last post, I talked about learning to love others. Well, in Manapouri, I realized how much, I was still trying to hold onto control of my plans for the trip and my plans for what others should or shouldn't be doing. It all came to a head and I felt like God was asking me "Will you trust ME, and only ME even if all your plans fall apart and people drama happen?" I had intended to make the trip about God but it was in Manapouri that I really saw how much I needed to surrender to Him.

Here is a picture of me outside a church we went to on Sunday in TeAnau near Manapouri. It was a really cute church and after we went there we headed to Milford Sound.

Milford Sound is one of the top three places everyone tells you to visit in New Zealand. It had just had snow the week before we got there and was closed down because you have to drive on this crazy windy road to get to it and it's super dangerous to drive on when there is snow. Luckily, there was no snow and it was a clear sunny day when we went. We took this scenic cruise around the Sound to get up close to the waterfalls and mountains.

Here is part of the Milford Sound. It was so incredible and huge!

Here is one of the many waterfalls. This one was cool with the rainbow in the mist.

Here is a picture of the lake we stayed at in Manapouri. It was small but really pretty and the windows of the house we stayed at had this view.

After Milford Sound we started making our way back up north and took the west coast so we could see the Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers. Here is some water on the way to see the Fox Glacier. It was this incredible blue color.

Me by the Fox Glacier

After the Glaciers, we went to the Pancake Rocks just north of Greymouth. They were really cool looking rocks and they are called Pancake Rocks because they looked like stacks of pancakes. I imagine large round rocks when I heard their name so I was very surprised when we actually saw them :)

Only a couple of people wanted to go to the Abel Tasman when we got back up to the north of the South Island. Here is on our way to the Abel Tasman. The sand color is orange-ish on this side of the island. It was so pretty with the color of the water, making it look blue, then green then yellow.

Jellyfish. First time I've ever seen one outside of the zoo.

Me walking the Abel Tasman. We didn't get to see very much of it so I'm excited to get back there and do more hiking because it's super gorgeous.

After this day, we stayed in Nelson for a couple days and then went back to Picton to cross the ferry again.

When we were in Picton, we went to church at this church we randomly picked. It happened to be a congregation that had an average age of 75 I would guess. To make it even funnier, we went on a Sunday where they were having a special service to honor the elderly. Only three of us went and afterwards we met this guy named Paul. He was really nice and really wanted to show us around Picton. We hopped into his van and he took us to all these sweet lookout points and then we went back to his place and he made us amazing scones and told us a billion cool stories. I think we made his day and he definitely made ours.

Here is a picture of the Interislander Ferry we took across.

We got across to Wellington on the North Island around 2am and decided to drive to school which was about an 8 hour drive. Mitch drove for 5.5 hours and I drove for only about an hour and a half. The crazy thing was we hit snow about halfway up after being south for over 2 weeks and not even having rain it was a drastic change. We stopped in at a gas station and they told about another road to take so that we would have to drive in the snow which was helpful.

We got back to school and hit the ground running. We lost about 5 student to Adventure Bible School (ABS) and we gained about 6 students for a Business Ministry Leadership (BML) program which is a new thing they are starting this term. It was good to be back in a consistent bed and take a long shower and eat delicious meals! I have a new roommate this term named Sun who is South Korean and is 42 years old, so they put us to oldies together ;) It's a huge blessing to live with her.