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.

Romans Bible Study

Here is a link to the Bible Study I talk about doing and that I presented to my Family group today:

http://gerhartreport.blogspot.com/2010/08/romans-822-30-bible-study_19.html

Please note that I am VERY much a beginner and it's kind of long. But if you want to take a peek feel free.

Funny Stories

I really hope these are just as funny for you and don't get lost in the typing translation.

Bible Quiz:

Randomly as I was sitting on the porch of the Homestead, I was asked by a girl here if I wanted to participate in a Bible Quiz that her church (we are all assigned churches to attend while we're here). I've never seen a Bible Quiz and had no clue what was entailed but I figured "why not" so I said yes. I then learn that their church had been going through a book for the last 100 days that goes over huge amounts of scripture. The Bible Quiz was the churches fun way of celebrating the end of this 100 day journey. None of us had done even a day of the book. The only reason why the students who signed up did was because one of our staff here signed up with a team of people and they wanted to beat him. His name is Glenn and our team named was "Beat Glenn". Pretty original. So after they had rounded up enough people (about 6) we decided to not prepare at all. It would be more fun to see how much we knew without doing any studying beforehand, or so we thought.

The day before the Quiz I found out that we needed to bring a dessert. We were going to try and make something but that didn't exactly work out so we defaulted to buying something. We figured it would be fitting that the least prepared team bring a store-bought dessert. So as we rushed to get there on time (which we didn't) we stopped and bought the cheapest desserts we could find, a couple of chocolate cakes that looked like giant flat chocolate cupcakes. I know my dad would be proud of the sweet deal we got on them. :)

Once we got to the church, late, we realized that it was not a dessert buffet like we had thought but each team just eats their own dessert. Bummer. Then we realized that the desserts are actually part of the competition and you get bonus points for how good your dessert is. Bummer again. We didn't get very many bonus points and they didn't even try our dessert.

We also tried really hard with the questions but lost. Not just lost but got dead last. We had a great time losing though.

So Lesson learned: Losing can be really really fun. Hahaha, or maybe the lesson is that you shouldn't enter a competition you are absolutely unprepared for in every way and expect to beat anyone.

Frank Prank:

Ok the second story. On Wednesdays we have "work days". Which is when we all pitch in and are assigned odd jobs around campus to do for a couple hours. It's pretty fun and we joke around quite a bit while working. This last week my job was washing off our walkways we have around the buildings with another student. I got to spray everything down with a hose and so when Frank was walking by I jokingly acted like I was going to spray him. I didn't actually get him wet but I got close enough to freak him out. It was so funny watching him jump when I would spray right next to him.

A little later as I was busy working Frank came up and dumped a bucket of water on me. Not that much but still I knew it was on and I had to get him back. I figured option A was to get him with the hose but that would be hard because I wasn't really using it at this point. Option B was to get him with a bucket of water but again this one seemed to take a lot of energy and I was tired from working. So I went with Option C which was to convince one of the staff to pretend that he was in trouble for getting me with the bucket of water and freak him out.

I talked to our cleaning lady (facility care person) Annalor who is actually also my mentor. She can be tough but she's really sweet once you get to know her. I asked her if she would help and she agreed. She went up to him where he was cleaning and asked him if he had in fact gotten me wet and Frank replied "no." Hahaha, I love how he immediately reverts back to responding like a 5 year old would. She then gave him the "Come, on, really?" look so then he says "Um, ok, ya I did but she got me first" Hahaha, again a classic response. She told him that it was unacceptable behavior and that he needed to come talk to her later.

He was so freaked out that he came back to me and apologized and was asking me why I told on him. I told him that I didn't think he would get in trouble. It was so funny to see how scarred he was. It was really hard not to laugh. Finally Annalor said she felt bad and had to tell him the truth so she did and he took it pretty well.

Nothing makes Work Day go fast like an old school prank.

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.

Wairere Falls trip

Last weekend we went on another hike to another waterfall, the Wairere Falls. It was incredible. This hike was a bit more challenging than the last one because we had about a billion steps to climb up. Here's a picture of us waiting for the end of the line to catch up. It pays to be at the front because you get more breaks to wait for the end. The end didn't get any because once they caught up with us, we would start going again.

We got to the halfway point and took a break to take pictures and eat a snack. It was so cool to look out and see this massive waterfall. Craig, one of the staff and leader of the hike said we would be going to the top of the waterfall which was hard to imagine since it looked so far away and high up. Here I am at the midway lookout point.

The hike path was really pretty with green everywhere. Here is a picture of me by this really cool mossy bolder. I liked the streams and stuff on the way.

Sure enough though we got up there and the view was absolutely breathtaking. You are standing right where the water is falling off the cliff. The water was really low so we got to walk out on the rocks and take photos and stuff. This is where I ate my lunch. I wish I could have a view like this every day. When we first got up there it was a little rainy which wasn't a big deal but after about 5 minutes it stopped and was nice and sunny.

Here's a picture of me at the top lookout point and another picture of the view when it stopped raining.

This is the edge where the water flows of the cliff

Here's a picture of some of the other students walking around the rocks since the water was low.

This is me, Leah and Frank. We tried to take an "artsy" cd cover photo. I don't know if I would classify it as artsy, more just that Frank and I look like we say something to the left and Leah is confused about it.

Here are some pictures I took from the van window on the ride back. The mountains are covered with trees and the grass is SO green. I also took one of the cows because back at school we live right next to a farm and they have cows so sometimes the cows are right next to the fence of the property. It's so weird to live so close to cows. I know I grew up in Nebraska, the beef capital with Omaha Steaks, but I only really saw cows when I was driving somewhere. I never heard them mooing or lived right next to them. It's a new experience. This last week they were "calfing" so we actually saw a cow give birth when we were driving up the driveway/road to school. Just random, right next to the road, a cow giving birth.

After the trip we stopped at McDonalds for icecream cones (only .60). They call McDonalds "Mackers" here. The best part was seeing this sign right next to it that said to "Look for Trains". We thought we'd better take it seriously and get a photo. :) This is Leah, me, Michelle and Frank. I don't understand what Frank is doing either.