Less than a month

Wow. As lame as it sounds, time really does fly. It feels like just yesterday that I was packing up my things in Omaha and getting ready to come to New Zealand. Now, I only have a few weeks left here and it's hard to wrap my brain around it.

I think one overarching theme of my time here is God's faithfulness. I was SO intimidated by the thought of living in a different country. I had to really trust God when I quit 2 jobs and moved out of an amazing apartment not to mention leaving behind close family and friends. I had no clue how I would ever have enough money to come. I wasn't sure why God wanted me to go to bible school and you can guess my general hesitations towards Adventure Bible School.

But God provided again and again. He allowed me to continue graphic design with freelance and then opening up the door for my internship here. He provided ways to keep in touch with people back home (I will now permanently remember my talk'n'save phone card pin number) and provided good friends here at school. I also was kind of a part of a family over Christmas when I went down south and stayed with my friend Esther's family. God floored me with how He provided monetarily for me coming. I seriously still get overwhelmed when I think about how many people gave for me to come.

I still wonder sometimes "why". Why did God have this planned for me? Couldn't I have learned what I have learned here back home? I don't think so.

God made me and knows how best to teach me what He wants me to learn. He knows I can talk until I'm blue in the face about trusting God but that's not trusting God. Trusting God is doing what He asks us to do when He asks us to do it. I've had to walk by faith by coming here and not just talk about faith.

I also have seen how much I had to learn about loving others. (I still have a lot to learn about loving others). Back home, I thought if I was nice to someone, I was loving them. Most of my close friends and the people I did life with were easy to love. We had similar interest and they generally understood me. But that's not the kind of love that God calls us to. The love I showed back home was done on my own strength. It didn't push me outside my comfort zone and didn't really push me to rely on God. At Bible School it's very different. You are in community pretty much 24/7 and with people from different cultures and with hugely different backgrounds. I saw that I use to blame personality differences or circumstances for me and someone not being friends but here I've seen, I'm also to blame. I've seen how opening up when God asks you to, doesn't always mean you're going to get hurt. And loving someone goes way beyond being nice, it means opening up your life to them and walking along side them.

And lastly, I've learned to let go. Ok, so this one is by far the hardest so I probably should phrase it that I'm learning to let go. When you live so far away from people that you care about you really have to trust God with taking care of them. I've seen how sometimes I try and fix people or control my circumstances but God is showing me that I can't. It seems so simple in theory but so hard to put into practice. But, when I get glimpses of it, it is so freeing. I believe that with the power of the Holy Spirit, I can live a life free of worry and anxiety. One that is open to the adventures God has for me and ultimately to glorify Him.

So the plan for right now is that I'm done with school on July 1st. I then fly out to Fiji with a few girls from school and stay there until the 6th. Then I fly back to Omaha and get home on the 6th because of crossing the international dateline.

I have a few prayer request for the next month:

- Praise for all that God has done over this last year

- Prayer that I would finish well here at school

- Prayer for safe travels and a good time in Fiji

- Prayer for a job when I get home

Thanks again for reading, praying and supporting me in this adventure!

I survived ABS!!

Ok, so the obvious thing is that I haven't posted anything for quite some time. The short story is that I went down to the South Island for 5 weeks over Christmas break. I stayed with a friend's family near Christchurch and they were super sweet to welcome me into their home for 3 weeks and to include me in their Christmas celebration. [December 19 - January 8]

Then my sister came over and we traveled around for about 10 days and had LOTS of fun and adventures. I'll do a proper post on where we went and stuff really really soon. I promise :) [January 8 - 18th]

Then I made the long drive back up to the North Island and more specifically back up to Bible School. God provided me a place to stay at the school where I could help do some cleaning before school started and also got to help out with a conference that they had here. It was nice to be back at school because it's kind of been the closest thing I've had to a home here in NZ. [January 19 - 30]

Then I headed off to Adventure Bible School, which is where I've been the last 6 weeks. It was an AMAZING experience and I didn't know I could be stretched so much physically, emotionally and spiritually. I grew a ton and was humbled more times than I can count. I also can't wait to do a proper posting on some of my experiences and share them with you! [January 31 - March 11]

And now I'm back at Monavale (Bible School) and I'm about to start my graphic design internship. Time has really flown by and it feels like I was just down in the South Island not too long ago. There are TONS of students this semester and I have already been encouraged by their hunger to grow in their faith.

Thank you for all your prayers! Especially on ABS, I could feel the prayers from back home and I knew that people were thinking of me and it meant SO MUCH. Here is just a short list of some prayer request as I head into my next adventure.

- Time Management. That as I have lots of fun projects to get started on, I would prayerfully use my time and not do things to do them but really rely on God to show me how to be productive and not just busy. I really don't want to burn out.

- Community. I'm in a room with 3 girls (2 from Canada and 1 from Denmark) and I really hope to connect with them and other students here even though my schedule is different than theirs.

- Finances. I'm trusting God to provide and I've had a couple big expenses lately. I had to reapply for a student visa to stay here longer which came with a large expense I wasn't expecting and my car is up for it's "Warrant of Fitness" and I'm pretty sure I have to replace the windsheild. So, please pray that God would continue to provide and that I would be a good steward of the resources He has blessed me with.

Thanks and I'm looking forward to posting more consistently :)

Then I headed

Coromandel weekend

A couple weekends ago, I went away with a few other students to the Coromandel Pennisula. It was a long weekend because of Labor Day so we wanted to head to the beaches.

The first beach we went to was Cathedral Cove. It was about a half hour walk down to the cove but it was definitely worth it. Here is a view from where we parked at.

Here is the path down. It was not as fun coming back up.

Cathedral Cove. The water was pretty cold but there was another island, bigger than this rock, a little out in the ocean, that we all swam to and jumped off of, which was really fun!

Laying out is one of my top five favorite activities :)

After a day at the beach... heading to our campsite.

One of the students said we could stay on his family's land for the weekend but he stressed it was just land with no facilities and wasn't anything fancy. We didn't care as long as we didn't have to pay to stay somewhere. When we got there we realized it was on the top of this hill and had an incredible view! It was such an amazing blessing to get to stay there!

Me on the campsite hill in the morning.

My tent is the blue and orange one. I bought it on 2 week break and then didn't end up using it so it was nice to get it and it worked really well. (and got a really good deal on it)

We went to a church on Sunday that was super sweet in Whitianga.

Classic beach necessities... Blublockers (thank you Mike), journal and water bottle :)

The second day we went to Hot Water Beach. Here's how they have hot water :"Some volcanos develop huge underground reservoirs of superheated water. Over time, this water will escape to the surface — cooling on the way." - Mercurybay.co.nz

So everyone brings a shovel and you dig in the sand and bam you have a hot water pool. It's only in the one area on the beach so it's funny to see all the people gathered in this one spot.

That night, when Leah and I went for a walk, she heard something and it ended up being a hedgehog and of course Leah had a pet hedgehog so she picked the little guy right up.

The last beach we went to on Monday was Whangamata Beach which was also lovely. It's hard to go wrong with beaches in NZ, especially when there were basically no clouds in the sky that weekend. It was really nice to just relax. We have lots of projects this semester so it can get overwhelming but then you go to the beach and listen to the waves and remember how big God is and how silly my problems are and sigh, all is good in the world.

Prayer Request:

- Praise for an awesome roommate this term

- Praise for me getting up early everyday and going to prayer meeting

- Praise for being able to run and warm weather so we can now go in the pool

- Prayer for my 6 week summer break coming up in about a month

- Prayer for time management with assignments and hanging out with friends

- Prayer against worry for what I'll do after Bible School

Random bits

Here are a few things that aren't really big enough to write a whole blog post about so I thought I'd combine them.

On Sundays, like I've blogged before, me and two other students are assigned to St. Andrews in Cambridge for church. It's Anglican and very different from CCC but I love it! The people are absolutely amazing and so welcoming. This past Sunday we had a pot luck after church and here are a few pictures from it.

Here we are in the hall singing show tunes as part of the festivities of the pot luck.

Here is Kelsey, Foongi, Diane (Di) and me. Di (pronounced "die") was the first person we met at tea after church. She is hysterical and all three of us look forward to each Sunday when we get to see her.

Here is Kristine (called baby Kristine), Deborah, and me (called mama Christine) on our way to a concert at a church about a half hour away. The band was Sons of Korah. They were really really good. They're an Australian band that sings the Psalms.

A couple weeks ago we were all talking about home and showing each other on google maps where we live. It was so cute how excited everyone gets when it's their turn to talk about their home towns. Later we were watching a movie and someone popped some popcorn and then yelled out "Hey, Christine, this popcorn is from Nebraska!" I was so excited that I immediately got my camera.

and yes, it was delicious :)

Prayer Request:

- Praise that my kness are all better and I didn't have to go to the doctor for them

- Prayer for 2 week break that is September 23 - October 11 (yes, I am aware that it's a bit longer than 2 weeks). Prayer for planning and that we can keep the cost down when we travel.

- Prayer for ministry week next week in Cambridge. That God would work in the hearts of Non-Christians in Cambridge and that lots and lots of people would come to the events.

- Praise for how God has been stretching me in how I look at missions and how God calls us to REST in Him not work for Him.

a wonderful weekend

Last week and weekend was amazing.

Last week, despite my intense bible study preparations, I went for a bike ride and it was so fun. The school has about 6 bikes that we can use whenever we want which is awesome.

Here's a picture of me and Frank being silly, as usual. When Frank, Natasha and myself were riding we saw Michelle going for a long run.

She was super tired and didn't want to run back so Frank gave her a ride. It was pretty hilarious.

On Saturday morning I talked with some girls about going to Hamilton Gardens. It's really the only outdoor thing to do in Hamilton and it's free :) So off we went.

Here is the Indian Char Bagh Garden. It was gorgeous. It had the 4 areas of all sorts of flowers and super detailed architecture for the building on the far end.

Isn't this picture so cool? I look like I'm going to heaven or something. It was after this bamboo area that we were in.

Here I am at the entrance to the Japanese Garden of Contemplation. It was cool because it had all these sand gardens and stuff. Also a neat pond area.

This is the Italian Renaissance Garden. It was by far my favorite. The colors are so vibrant. There were a lot of areas that I want to go back to once the weather gets nicer and nicer.

This is at the top of the Chinese Scholars Garden. We almost ate our lunch here but it wasn't that comfortable. We were there for quite a while and only saw one fourth of the gardens so we'll definitely be back!

Later that night I went to the movies and saw Inception. I think I may be one of the last people to see it and it lived up to all the hype, I really enjoyed it. Before the movie me and some others got food in the mall's food court which is always a great place to take some photos :)

At one point during the movie I forgot I was in New Zealand. It becomes kind of surreal at times. Like I know I'm here but I still can't wrap my brain around it.

One Sunday after church, Mac, myself and Kelsey got invited over to this ladies house for lunch. We go to an Anglican Church in Cambridge and I love it. The worship music is quite different than CCC but the people are SO amazing. Every week after church they have tea and biscuits and everyone chats so that's how we've gotten to know so many people.

The lady, Marilyn, lives outside Cambridge on a dairy farm with her husband Merv. Their daughter and her two kids came over with us. After lunch Marilyn gave us all clothes and gum boots to wear so we could go walk around the farm. The first stop was to see the new born cows.

Here is Jack (Marilyn's grandson), Mac, Kelsey and me. Yes, I know you are jealous of my sweet looking outfit :)

The calves didn't really like us that much. They were pretty scarred of us actually. Mac and I got in the pens with them to see if we could pet them and this is as good as it got. They were so cute! (Probably because they are small)

Here's me and Jack with the calves.

Next we walked up this hill on their property to get a really amazing view.

Here I am at the top of the hill. It seriously reminded me of the Sound of Music.

Their property was SO amazingly beautiful! I was overwhelmed by how generous they were.

Another view from the hill.

And heading back down for afternoon tea.

I love random weekends. I love getting out into the different parts of New Zealand that I haven't seen yet. The longer I've been here the more I really see how beautiful the land is and also how kind and wonderful the people are.

Prayer Request:

- Continued prayer for 2 week break travel plans

- Continued prayer for my driving lessons with a stick-shift

- Prayer for my knees because they have been hurting. I think it's from this workout I've been doing that involves a bunch of jumping so hopefully they will get better from rest.

- Praise for Marilyn and her family showing us more of NZ beauty. Also Praise for our church family that continues to be such a blessing.

Bible Study maddness

Ok, sorry for not blogging since August 4th. I've been keeping my head in books as I've done two Bible Studies these last two weeks. So far I've completed 3 and the last one that I did I presented to my family group during the time we meet together. It was about 4,000 words and included Greek word definitions, scripture references, illustrations and my favorite part, a creative idea. I now have a new respect for pastors who have to do stuff like this weekly for sermons and juggle all the other responsibilities they have.

This will be a short post but I wanted to fill you in on my last couple of weeks. Sorry if it's a bit choppy.

I gave my testimony on the 11th in front of everyone which was really cool. I get pretty nervous talking in front of people but everyone said I looked really natural and they couldn't tell I was nervous so thank goodness for the Holy Spirit!

I started my ministry last week which is Bible In Schools (BIS). Me and a kid named Brayden teach a class of 7-11 year olds each Friday for half an hour. It's pretty cool to be in a classroom and be able to teach a verse and talk about Jesus. We have a book we use for our curriculum but the first week we got to do whatever we wanted and just get to know the kids. We played a game where all the kids told us about themselves which was really fun. The kids were all really fasinated by the fact that I came all the way from America. I showed them how far away Nebraska is from New Zealand and they all said "wow" and then I told them I walked the whole way here and their eyes got really big but quickly caught on that I was joking. We ended with a game of Simon Says that I led. The last thing I have them do was "Simon Says say 'we had a really really fun time today'" and they did so I just said "aww thank you, we had fun too". It was really funny. Oh, and their little accents are AMAZING!

Last weekend I mostly hung out with the girls and went into Hamilton the closest city. We would just explore and did a lot of window shopping. It was fun singing in the car and just being dorks.

This past week seems like a blur. My Bible Study that I presented was on Romans 8:22-30. It's a passage that has SO much good stuff in it and it was hard to break it down to just a 40 minute Bible Study. My general theme was "Through the Holy Spirit we are being made more like Christ."

Our guest speaker this week was a guy named Clive Wilson, a paster here in New Zealand. He was incredible and I took tons of notes. His main theme was Living like Christ. We went through passages in Luke and it was cool because he would challenge us to read it like we had never heard any of the stories before. One of the illustrations he used was he showed us 2 pictures side by side. Both pictures were taken looking out a window. One, the camera was focused on the spots on the window and the other one the camera was focused on the view. He related this to how we can focus on what's right in front of us instead of seeing the big picture. He said to focus on eternal things which are God and people.

I've been reading a lot and since we have a library here I figured I would take advantage of it. I wanted to read some autobiographies and since 90% of the books we have are written before 1970 I knew I would find something interesting. I ended up reading "Confessions of a Contemporary Jew" and "Black and Free". They were both actually really good. One was about a Jewish-raised Christian and the other was about an African America pastor who came from Harlem and at one point was the gang leader of about 120 guys. I don't think I'll ever get sick of reading about the transformation that Jesus does in people's lives. It's so incredible.

Thanks again for everyone who has been praying for me. God has been showing me how much I need Him to love people and how big He is. I also have really really enjoyed getting into the bible on a more academic level.

Prayer Request:

- Praise on getting my Bible Studies done

- Prayer for my two week break and planning that

- Prayer for time management. I'm still finding it hard to fit everything in.

Getting into the swing of things

Well this last week I was a busy bee working on my first Bible Study assignment. We all did one on 1 Timothy 2:1-7. Mine ended up being about 8 pages and around 3,000 words. I worked really hard Monday and Tuesday and finished it on Thursday. It was funny because as I was finishing mine up some people were just starting and it was due on Friday. I really enjoyed digging into the passage and looking up words in the Greek. I don't think I would have the discipline to do a project like that back home so it was cool to have someone kind of force you into it. it's interesting to think that I've never really studied the scriptures on my own before. I either read books about the bible or listen to people talk about the bible or do bible studies done by someone else. I don't think any of that is wrong but it's so cool to actually look stuff up for myself.

We also had a visitor from the other New Zealand Capernwray school last week. Her name was Jen and she does missionary teaching at the other school. She talked to us about being a missionary in Africa for three years and her testimony of how she came to know Jesus. It was really encouraging. One of her quotes that I liked was "If you are not a missionary, you are a missions field". Her point was that if you are a Christian, you're a missionary. You don't have to live in a third world country to be one.

On Wednesdays each week we have work days where we help out around the school's campus with various jobs and I've been lucky to help out with graphic design. It's been a real blessing to work on projects for the school and continue to use my skills. I work with Elizabeth Thomas, our principal's wife who is super sweet and fun.

On Thursday we had family night where we hung out with our families and played games and stuff. My family and another family went out to the field by the ABS lodge and played dark games. We were in the area of really tall trees and played different games in the pitch black. It was so much fun and the stars out there are amazing.

I've also been waking up early and going to a prayer meeting in the mornings before breakfast which has been a super great way to start my day. There's only about three of us there each morning and we read a chapter in the bible, then pray and then close with a psalm. I like starting my day out early and focusing on what's most important. We meet in the Homestead Lounge which is in the main house and has a nice fireplace that gets used all the time. Nothing like having a cozy fire for prayer time. Maybe that's why back home at CCC our staff prayer was always in the "fireside room." :)

Prayer Request:

- Praise we got car insurance for pretty cheap

- Praise I was able to talk to some people back home on the phone last week.

- Prayer for the two week break we have in about a month in a half. People are already trying to plan stuff out and I don't know what Michelle, Frank and myself will do.

- Prayer for being consistent with running. Last week was hard to fit it in with all the studying.

School's first impressions

I started Bible School yesterday. I've met lots of people from all over. There are a lot of Canadians. Also there are Kiwis, Americans, a couple Germans and a few British. My first impression is that it's like a retreat center our college group has gone to before but with a more scenic view than Iowa.

The first day was a blur. I got picked up by a shuttle at my hostel in the late morning because it was running late. We picked up a few other girls along the way and got to school around 2pm. When we arrived, we found out who we would be rooming with and in my room there is a German girl named Mirjam (pronounced Miriam) and a Kiwi named Esther. They are both really sweet and Mirjam is only one year younger than I am so I don't feel like such a geezer. I know God put us together for this semester for a reason and it's a blessing to be with such awesome girls. Normally there are 4 to a room but this semester they have really small numbers (only 33 students) we just have 3 to a room. That also means we'll most likely be a close knit group by the end of 5 months.

The second day was mostly orientation and going over the rules. Michelle and I drove into town with another guy here named Kyle to get our car registered. There were a few screams from Michelle and I as we cautiously drove on the other side of the road but made it there ok and got the name of owner changed over. It was quite an experience!

The food here is amazing. We have lots of veggies and fruit and other yummy dishes they make for us. I love having morning tea break where we get tea, coffee or hot cocoa and then usually some type of cookie or treat. We won't really get into the swing of things until next week.

I feel blessed and overwhelmed that God has let me come here. I think I'll learn a lot and it's a neat experience to take such a break in life to listen to God and see what His calling on my life is. I'm sure it will be challenging to live with everyone but in a good way. I feel like I've already learned so much. This is just the icing on the cake. I also appreciate all your prayers and support SO much! Thank you thank you thank you for praying for me!

Prayer Request:

- Pray for discernment for what insurance to get for our car

- Pray for continued motivation to get up and run with a group of girls

- Praise for our car working and great roommates!