We're Here!

We had our first Sunday at Shore Community Christian Church and it was great to be back. We saw some familiar faces from our first visit to Auckland and we met many new people. Shore is coming up on it's ten year anniversary-this is so exciting to our team! Shore was a church plant by South Pacific Christian Fellowship and has now grown to almost 400 people. We will be working with Shore for the first year leaning about the culture of New Zealand, the way ministry is done here, and learning from their leaders. It excites us to think that in ten years, there might be another healthy and growing church in the Auckland area because of God using our team to start another church.



After church, there was a young adult lunch back at the house we are staying at. It was great to meet so many people our age and begin to learn about their lives here. We had alot of laughs about how different some things are here in New Zealand compared to the States for people our age. Joe and I felt like we were learning alot by listening to them. The 'lunch' lasted until about six, but we couldn't stay the entire time.

At six o'clock, there was a ministry team meeting at Shore that we were invited to be at. This was a great chance for us to see some of the vision-casting of the church and also to meet some of the ministry team leaders. The meeting helped give us an overview of what the church is doing right now, where it is headed for next year, and how our team can be a part of that.

We took the first week to get acclimated to New Zealand and to do different cultural activities before jumping in to all of the events at the church. We are very thankful for the time that we had to get to know the country and the people a little bit better during that time. As soon as we got to Auckland, our calendars began filling up with different youth events and committments at Shore.


We have a very busy week ahead of us that includes car shopping, looking for a more permanent place to live, and meeting with many people, and beginning to participate in the events at Shore. Thank you for all of your prayers! We are so excited to begin this chapter of our lives!