Mid-Winter Christmas Party

Though the days are getting longer and the sun is out more frequent for most of you in the States, our days are very short and with each day the weather gets cooler and cooler. In honor of winter, the youth group had a mid- winter RED Christmas Party last night! The party was complete with Christmas trees, Christmas dinner, Christmas crackers, which are a popular party toy at Christmas time, Christmas music, dancing and prizes! The theme other than Christmas was that everyone had to wear red! Here are some pictures from the evening:

This is Devon, he won the prize for wearing the most red!

 

This is a picture of a game we played. It is similar to a pinata, but instead of something hanging with candy in it and kids hitting it with a plastic bat, this game is different. For this game the kids get a 2x4 and have to hit the clay pot to bust it open and there is a bag of lollies (candy) inside! It was interesting to us! 

On The Rise

The United States are not alone in their soaring oil prices. In the six months we have been here, we have seen gas prices go up at least forty-five cents. This may not sound like alot, but that would be per liter, not per gallon. The picture of the Caltex Gas Station sign probably catches your eye with how inexpensive gas seems here. Just to help clarify, that would be $2.00 a liter that this sign advertises for. There are four liters to a gallon which makes gas $8.00 NZD a gallon! This would be $6.32 USD! 

What do people here do? We have noticed that most people live, work, and shop all in their same community. Very few people drive very far to do daily activities. We have also noticed that if something costs too much here, people just won't do it. 

We have tried to be conscious about combining trips as well as cutting out our visits into the city for now. We filled our gas tank last week and the $101.00 ( for about 17 gallons) we paid will help keep us in one spot for a bit! 

Encouragement

Today was a long day. Our team meetings and survey meetings have been filled with some bigger decisions and some very deep and important discussion about strategy, timing, and future steps. These are all good discussions but when they are over, we are usually quite (mentally) exhausted.

Tonight after a long day of discussion we had some friends over for dinner. They had also had a long day and we really enjoyed just relaxing together. Before they left they asked if they could pray for us and our team.

Their prayer was so encouraging! They prayed for exactly what we are in needof right now, peace about where God wants us to be, clarity about deciding on the right place, and unity for our team in making such big decisions. Their prayer was filled with the spirit as they prayed in such detail about our lives, our ministry, our relationships, and our calling.

When they left we felt such a sense of peace and were so energized by their zeal for God's work.

We know that many of you are also praying for us as we continue on to the next steps of our work in New Zealand. Please know that your prayers mean so much to us! Thank you for keeping up with us and with what God is doing in New Zealand.

Hamilton

We spent two days in Hamilton at the end of last week conducting survey work. Hamilton was the eighth city on our list. Hamilton is a city of almost 180,000 about a two hour drive south of Auckland. 

We did our typical survey work in meeting with school leaders, church leaders, and making connections with people that we met in our street interviews throughout the community. Hamilton is home to University of Waikato which is home to about 10,000 students. 

Hamilton is a very multi-cultural city, the most diverse of all of the city centers that we have visited. Were able to see this diversity played out in the malls we conducted street interviews at, the school we visited, and the net-ball game we went to. 

We came away from Hamilton without any strong feelings one way or the other, but the same overall sense that like so many other places in New Zealand, there is a lack of strong and healthy churches in this city. 

Here is a picture of the four of us that went to Hamilton next to the Waikato River, the longest river in New Zealand! This is our Rock-Star pose, we know, we are cool! 

Cooking Class

One of the interesting things in moving to New Zealand has been adjusting to some of the food. Most of the food is similar, but the combinations that people use are very different! It has been fun to learn about the different ways that Kiwis cook. 

I have a friend that had vouchers for a cooking class and invited me to join her. We had a lovely time! Though the cuisine was Mediterranean, I still think it was very Kiwi-lots of lamb, seafood, and cream! Here are a few of the dishes: 

Lamb and Fig Tagine served with Spiced Couscous

This was good and something that I would make at home. I might not use such big figs! But a rather practical recipe for Lamb.

Spanish Paella with Chicken, Seafood, and Chorizo

Let's be honest. It was a big step for me to do fish and chips when we moved here. This is taking it a bit far. I stuck with the rice and choizos and tried to avoid the part that looked like the bottom of a fishing boat. Probably won't be making this one! 

We did two other mains, a Suquet with Clams, which I (surprisingly) really liked. We also did Paupiettes of Beef with Pate and Mushrooms. This was also good and another practical dish, though I would substitute the pate for something a bit more appetizing, such as Garlic and Feta Hummus! 

The desserts were delicious! 

Vanilla and Chocolate Bavarois

Fantastic! 

The other dessert was a lemon tart

Here is a picture of Rochelle and I enjoying our food! 

In addition to learning more about Kiwi food, it was such a fun way to meet so many other women from around the Auckland area! 

We are off to Hamilton tomorrow (for 2 days) for survey trip number 8! More on Hamilton when we get back.

Learn the Lingo: Full-on

You may notice that it has been a slow week for us on blogger-that would be because we have had a very busy week and a full-on weekend. Full-on is a term commonly used by Kiwis. 

full-on (adj.)

1. possessing a particular quality to the fullest extent 

2. all-out, taken to the limits

She was full-on while training for her race. 

In order to better describe to you full-on, here is a glimpse at our weekend: 

Friday was our regular all day team survey day. We didn't go anywhere but we had a meeting with an expert in the Auckland area as well as some in depth discussion about the next phases of our work here. 

For youth Friday night we had a Guys Night/Girls Night...

The girls did Karaoke, had a make-over, ambushed the boys, and laughed...a lot! 

The boys played video games, cards, ate a lot of food, and got ambushed by the girls! 

 I went to a "Kichen Tea" on Friday night for my friend Maxine. Maxine is getting married and a Kitchen Tea is similar to a Bridal Shower. 

We had some friends, Chris, Abby, Charis, and Ethan,  in from Tauranga, about two hours south of Auckland. They stayed with us Friday night and Saturday. We had a team lunch with them really enjoyed having them around for the weekend.

On Saturday, we went to a pajama party themed birthday party for our friends in West Auckland.  Their daughter turned 3! 

Joe was not able to go because he was with the guys on our team meeting with a developer to learn more about one of the areas in which we are looking at to start a church. 

Saturday night was another party! We went to a going away party for our friend, Rochelle, who will be traveling through the US and Europe for the next six months. 

Sunday was a very exciting day for us. In addition to our regular Sunday

 morning responsibilities, Joe was able to help with a baptism. 

Yutak, the one getting baptized,  is a boy that Joe mentors. Josh, the boy helping with the baptism is another boy that Joe mentors, they are in Joe's life group. 

After church, we went to lunch with Bree and Antonia. 

These girls have been coming along to church for just under a year and are amazing girls! They had some great questions about Christianity. We were able to talk with them for a few hours and hopefully help answer their questions. It was so cool to be able to share God's word with these girls in a way that spoke truth to their lives. 

We finished Sunday afternoon with a nap! Our full-on weekend was exhausting! 

Wellington

We just returned home from our trip to Wellington, Lower Hutt, and Palmerston North. We had been able to spend more time preparing for this trip than others, yet were able to make very few connections. We had done much research for these areas and done everything that we could to help make this trip be successful, but before we left we were just not feeling good about the trip agenda. This of course, caused us to pray even more for God to guide us and introduce us to people and to fill in the days with the interviews, meetings, and places to go that we could not make happen. 

It's funny that we act surprised when God does what he promises he will do! This seemed to be one of our most successful survey trips! Each day was full on and packed! We had such a sense of unity among our team about the information that we were finding. Through the one interview that we had set up, we were able to get information about so many people and places. We ended up meeting with more people, visiting a couple of churches, and had great success in the people that we connected with in street interviews. 

We came away from the trip feeling great. We saw that Wellington is a place of great need, much like what we have been hearing. We learned that, like most places in New Zealand, Lower Hutt and Palmerston North are also places of need, but much less so than Wellington. We found that Palmerston North is considered the "Bible Belt" of New Zealand, with 16% of the people involved in church-that's about double the national average. 

We now have only three places left to visit for our first round of survey work! We will begin the narrowing down process in June and begin round two of survey work. This will be a process of narrowing the ten cities down to two or three. We will then do some more intense research on those three cities to get an even better picture of them to help us make the final decision!