Gnomes, Cricket, and BBQ

Our weekend began with theft and will end with baptism-things are improving quite quickly! The youth activity for Friday night this week entailed kidnapping a gnome from a church member's garden and completing different tasks around the city. There were heaps of students at youth on Friday night who split up into different groups. Each adult drove a different group of students around to complete the tasks. Pictures were to be taken of the gnome doing various activities such as drinking coffee at a cafe, going for a swim at the beach, getting caught by a security guard, shopping for veggies, and the list goes on with much more crazy and embarrassing tasks! 

Saturday morning we went to our first Cricket match. A student from the youth group plays cricket for his school. We had played some pick-up backyard cricket while we were on the south island, but other than that, have very little experience with it. This was a very good cultural experience for us! As we got closer to the match, we realized that we had no clue what was culturally appropriate as far as where to sit, how to cheer, how to react if the ball comes near you, and how close or far to sit from the match. This match taught us some about cricket, but much more about the culture in NZ. Competitive high school sports practice on average of two days a week for less than two hours. When someone made a mistake in the game, everyone laughed and joked about it. We couldn't tell who the coaches were, in the states they are usually the ones standing nearby yelling plays at the team, but no one was doing that. At one point, a ball went over the fence and some players sat down, some went to get drinks, it turned into a perfect time for a break! 

This evening we had a BBQ with some other church planters in the area. These church planters are Kiwi and their church has been running for almost five years. They were very encouraging to us and our plans for church planting. It was a great way to do some informal survey work as they told us about some of the challenges of reaching people who are content without God. 

Tomorrow Joe and I will both be teaching separate kids groups at church and helping with the youth fundraiser in between services: a car wash. After church we will be joining some of the youth for a baptism at a nearby beach.