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.

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.