Sky and Mo

Officially Residents

2011-01-30T13:05:00.002+13:00

For all those who haven't yet heard, in late December, Skylar and I officially became residents of good ole' New Zealand. We are super excited and happy to now be able to stay indefinitely. It comes just before some trouble with our other teammates, Elijah and Kristen Peters, trying to renew their visa. Justin and Jennifer Cherry are waiting to hear back from Immigration as well. Hopefully it won't be problem to keep our other teammates in the country or there will be some major changes to the way things go around here. But as God is well aware of the work here, we will leave it in His very capable hands as to what happens next. Please keep it all in you prayers - both thanks for our residency and supplications for the continued presence of our teammates.

Baptisms!!!

2011-01-12T14:32:00.003+13:00

Hello all. Hope everyone had a good holiday season!

The summer is always an awesome time for catching up with people here in New Zealand. The weather is great and everyone is keen to go to the beaches.

Well during those times of catching up and going to the beach we've had two baptisms. One of the people is Willy from our after school program the Ice Box and another is Scott who is a friend we met working at Starbucks. Each time was a great experience both in the studies leading up to and the actual baptism. They both happened at Muriwai beach which is a perfect place to get baptized so I couldn't complain one bit. It was a very exciting time for us as a church and it continues to inspire me. We hope that we can continue to be an influence for Christ in these two individual's lives.

Please keep us in your prayers as we continue to preach and live out the gospel in our community.

My New Hobby

2010-12-06T13:56:00.004+13:00

Hello all. They say that most left hand people are more of the creative type. I knew I had it in me but just hadn't really found an outlet. Well the wait is over.

During the whole month of November we've been doing a Graffiti art class at the Ice Box. It was a blast. Three of the four classes we were painting on the canvas' I purchased. We had over 40 cans of spray paint so the potential was endless. I can't tell you how easy the pro's make it look, just to get a straight line is ridiculously hard, and the imagination these people have is amazing. So thanks to Janine and Charles for taking the time to show us some of the things you've learned.

On January 28th we will be having an expo of all the paintings the students did during the class. I also want to get a few more before then so I'll be organizing some time with the students over the summer to further expand our skills. Yes I said our skills, for graffiti art is my new hobby. I don't know what it is but something just clicked with this form of art! This will be a great opportunity to connect with some of the students that come to the Ice Box. One of them even gave me their new phone number as we crossed paths on the way to the store.

Now on to the surprise. Through various conversations with a few people I found a great opportunity for these students to make an impact on their community with graffiti. Their is a building called the "Community Waitakere Building" and they offered some of their outside walls for us to paint! They have a few themes they would like us to interpret so the next step is for the students to take these themes and put them into a sketch, bring them to the managers of the building and await approval. This is a really cool opportunity. The paint and everything will be provided and all they have to do is show the community their skills on a building that gets a lot of traffic. Bellow is a picture of that wall. I can't tell you how excited I am about this!

Back in the swing of things!

2010-11-08T10:35:00.003+13:00

Well it's been two weeks since my return from the States. After 4,600 miles of driving I finished all the presentations God put before me. It was a great journey getting to meet new people and sharing about God's work here. For the most part I just lived from phone call to phone call and when the opportunity arose I was there. I want to say a thank you to all of those that hosted me and gave of their time to visit with me, both individuals and churches, it was a pleasure. It was also really cool to catch up with my family. I even got to go on a motor cycle cruise with my dad, Harley style and a trip to Los Vegas with my brothers and Mom. It was a great 7 weeks. I'd do it again, preferably with Morgan though!

Once I got back I had about two days to hang out with Mo then things picked right back up. We had Paul Partlow and John Sanders from Austin, along with Jay Jarboe and Alan Phillups from MRN come visit us and do a team building seminar to help prepare for the new transition and addition of teammates. There was lots of good information and good dialogue. I'm really looking forward to these guys getting here!

Another cool thing that has started since I've gotten back is the graffiti art class with the students at the Ice Box. It's something I've been planning for a while and it's really cool to see it come to fruition. The first class was really cool and you can tell the kids are really into it. The first class was about some of the technical stuff and next week we'll start our paintings on a canvas. I can tell you now, mine is no where near the skill level as some of these students. It truly is an art form and I can't wait to watch it unfold. I also have a surprise for the students after the class is over. I'll let you know what that is after I reveal it to the students as well! It's gonna be way cool, promise!

The next thing on the agenda is "the Feed" here at my house tomorrow night. It's been a really long time since I've had the teenagers over so I'm looking forward to it. We'll be wrapping up our series on Whanau (family) and then talking about what's in store for us during the summer. I can't tell you how excited I am that it's summer here.

"On the road again"

2010-09-20T15:38:00.003+12:00

Hello all,

Time has just flown by in the two weeks that I've been here in the States. I'm back trying to raise funds for 2011 and the continuation of our work there in New Zealand. So far I've driven 1,200 miles visiting with churches and individuals seeking partnerships. One of the cool things that has happened so far with my traveling is with my rental car. Tony Gullo from Gollo Ford, Mazda, and Toyota was kind enough to bless me with a free rental car. This was and is a huge blessing. It's a simple little car that gets good gas millage and runs like a champ. With gas prices about $7.00 per gallon in New Zealand filling up a car is quite a chore so when I was filling up this car and the pump stopped at $22.00 I thought something was wrong with the pump, but to my surprise the tank was full. You won't here any complaints from me about this.

I've been able to visit with quite a few churches and share what God is doing through us in New Zealand. I still have a few more but haven't met our full need so please keep this trip and future opportunities in your prayers. I really hope and pray I can raise our full amount and raise it soon so that I'll get to spend some time with my family during this trip rather than just traveling around presenting. It has been really good though hearing people say how much they enjoy hearing about what we're doing in New Zealand. God truly is to be praised for the past 2 1/2 years that we've been in New Zealand.

Well, that's all I've got at the moment but if you'd like to hear more and want to catch up, just email me and I can find a way we can get in touch.

The Foundation

2010-09-01T09:04:00.006+12:00

For the past two Tuesday nights I have been laying the ground work for my lesson series on family with the teenagers. One of the students after I had a time of prayer with the teens said he considers this his second family to which many of the other kids said "yeah, what he said" thus the lesson on family. We will be talking about what it means to be a family and how we should treat each other within this family. But for all of this to work and make sense our "family" has to have the right foundation, and that is God.

My past two lessons have been on what God wants to provide for our "family" and what our response should be. These two lessons were very pointed in that I've made known to the teens the need to make God the Lord of their life. A lot of prep went into these lessons, both in creating the lesson and getting the relationships to the point that the gospel is welcomed. I had power point with the scriptures shown on the tv where all could see.

The teens responded very well. They all were open to the concept and asked lots of questions. After the lesson as a whole was over we could tell that there were some that still had questions so we talked to them individually and listened and helped out as best we could. With most of these students having little to no religious background the students responded really well. We will need to do some follow up to make sure these students understand what we're saying and for them to feel comfortable and willing to make this huge decision in their life.

We praise God for what happened last night and how well things went. Please, please, keep these students in your prayers as we continue to preach the gospel to them and that the Holy Spirit will convict their hearts to make God the foundation of their life.

It has begun.

2010-08-12T16:13:00.005+12:00

Watching things unfold and mold into it's final stages was really cool. Two artist located in South Auckland came and made a visit to the Ice Box to do a promo for our graffiti art workshop. Janine and her husband Charles spent two hours of their time painting the title "the Ice Box" on a 4' x 8' sheet of wood to gain a crowd of students that would be interested in the upcoming workshop.

Hopefully starting in September we will have a room dedicated at the Community House during the Ice Box hours for 15 students to come and learn the skills of graffiti art. Tagging (writing your name, gang, crew in spray paint) is really big here and though some demonstrate good skills they're still being destructive. So we wanted to give these students a proper outlet for their talents. For four weeks Janine and Charles will be teaching the students the ropes about graffiti. This will be a great opportunity for the students to connect with people of like mind so they can learn how to use their skills / talents to better their future.

After the four week workshop we will have an art expo in which the students will show what they've made during the class and sell their art work. Also, the top three will be doing a live demo of what they've learned, two will be on a slat of wood like in the picture and one will get to paint straight onto one of the walls at the Community House!

I'm pretty sure I've told you all about this before but it's cool to be able to report that things are happening and people are interested. As of right now we have 13 students interested with two spots saved when I get to meet up with the students so the class is full just as we wanted!!! We'll keep you guys posted as things progress and will be sure to take pictures.

Good Start!

2010-08-04T22:15:00.003+12:00

August is off to a really good start so far with the Ice Box, minus the non-stop rain. We're in our second week of our lesson series about family/belonging during our Tuesday nights. Family is a big part of the kiwi culture and since our Tuesday night gatherings are like a family it only makes sense to look at God's word and see what we can learn from there about being a family. The lesson series is more of a collaborative effort than usual with the AIMers helping out in creating some of the lessons as well as teaching them. I'll also have a format during some of the lessons where the students will have a chance to share and voice their thoughts, opinions, desires, etc. hopefully showing them they have just as much say in the direction of our Tuesday nights as anybody else.

Right now we've talking about a name for our group. We started with writing things that we liked about Tuesday nights and some words that described our group. After seeing all that on a dry erase board we gave everyone small sheets of paper and a few minutes to think of some creative names. After everyone was finished I shared all the names then we sat on them for a week. After this past Tuesday we are down to six, so here they are in no particular order: Horizon Hangout, Zero Degrees, The M.A.T.E.S.(Maori, Americans, Tongans/Tai, and Samoan) , The Feed, F.T.B. (For the Brathas), and IXTHUS. I'll keep you posted when it's all said and done. What do you guys thing about the names?

We also have our date set for the graffiti artist name Janine to do a live demonstration of her skills during the Ice Box to advertise for our graffiti art workshop coming in September. She'll be painting the words "Ice Box" on a large board while all the students are walking home from school outside the Community House. She will also be teaching a once a week workshop at the Ice Box on the graffiti art form showing these students a positive way to spray paint. I'm really excited about this project and hope everything comes together. We have spots for 15 students in which they'll have everything provided for them to learn a really expressive art form. After the workshop we'll host an expo at the Community House in which all the students will get to show their art work and try and sell it. The top three students will get to do a live demonstration at the expo of what they've learned and have a chance to sell what they've made. I can't wait.

So like I said, so far so good.

Our First Lock In!!!

2010-07-13T16:55:00.007+12:00

The Ice Box had it's first lock in on Monday. A handful of students showed up to my house ready for a day entertainment. Our first event on the agenda was to go to a place called big ups. You know all those cool blow up activities you see carnivals, well this was a warehouse full of those. For two hours we were full on at going from one thing to another and back. There was sumo wrestling suits, Zorb balls you could get into and be a human bowling balls, joisting, velcro walls that you could jump onto and stick, it was was a blast.

After that and getting stuck in a little traffic we headed back to Massey for some food and games. We hung out at our house until 10p.m. then headed over to the Massey Community House were we all attempted to stay awake. I only think three or four people were able to hang, and yes I was one of them. We played countless games with snacks in between, followed by a huge array of breakfast burritos.

I finished the event off with a devotional about our lives journey, specifically with God as the source and direction. I shared with the students some of my past and how God has brought me to an amazing point in my life and His desire to do the same and more for them.

All in all it was a good first step for lock ins in the history of the Ice Box with many more to come. I'd like to send a special thanks to the Tauranga AIMers for coming up and helping us out. You were a blessing and God was praised in your service.

New Job

2010-07-07T19:59:00.002+12:00

As of today, I've been working with Child, Youth & Family here in NZ for 3 1/2 weeks. So far I am really enjoying my job, but even better, I have submitted an expression of interest with NZ Immigration and been selected from the pool of applicants. They have transferred my case to our local office and are conducting some preliminary checks before inviting me to apply for residency.

Child, Youth & Family is the government child protection agency here in NZ. My job involves lots of laws, acts, policies and procedures, but it is worth it. It feels really good to be a part of something so important.

Having the job has changed our schedule quite a bit. I now have a much more structured time schedule which necessitates me leaving earlier from some of our evening events, like our Monday night hangout/craft night, our Tuesday night youth events and the random dinners we have. Admittedly it is hard to leave early from the youth events that are at our house on Tuesdays, but Justin and Elijah have stepped up and helped Skylar drop off some of the kids so that I can go ahead and get on to bed and be prepared to wake up and go to work the next day. It's been great to have that kind of practical support.

I have this job on contract until December this year so that I can get residency. Once I have residency, they can offer me a permanent position. I'm looking forward to establishing myself here in the workforce. It is such a different side of NZ to see and already I've met so many people. The office I work in has about 40 to 50 employees and it is really sociable. Every Friday, around 5 when the work day is over, the office has a social club and we get together in the break room to hang out. It has been great getting to know everyone and I am looking forward to our first work party and introducing Skylar to everyone.

Thanks for all the prayers that have gotten us this far and please continue to pray for our efforts to get residency!

contract, getting into/to know the community

New Opportunity!!!

2010-06-01T17:17:00.003+12:00

This past week I received a job offer for a Social Worker position with Child, Youth and Family Services here in Auckland. This is great news! Once immigration processes my work permit application, I will be able to start working. Once I start working, we can then apply for residency.

We are so excited to be able to apply for residency. This is what we've been trying to achieve for a while now and will allow us to stay in New Zealand indefinitely. It sure did pay off to get that degree in Social Work!

I dropped my work permit application off at immigration today and should be starting my new job on June 14th. This will definitely change our day to day lives. I will be much busier than usual and Skylar will as well since he will be picking up a lot of the responsibilities I used to take care of. But I think this is a good decision and obviously improves our ability to stay in the country and continue working here, which we are delighted about.

Thanks to everyone who has been praying for us along the way. This looks like the answer to many prayers!

Renovations

2010-05-17T23:09:00.003+12:00

We've had some recent changes as a Church in our normal routine as of May 11th. The Massey Community House is undergoing some needed renovations and had to be closed down from May 11th to June 14th...ish. The Community House is a big hub for our ministries so we've had to take it in stride and work around it.

The Ice Box unfortunately had to be cancelled but the Tuesday night meal/devo/hang-out is still going strong. We have a select few come to our house after school and carry on like normal until the 10 p.m. curfew. We also had to but Parents Night Out on hold this month while our Sunday services have been moved to the Cherry's house. Last Sunday was pretty full on. Justin and Morgan/Jennifer were brave enough to take on the mass amount of kids that day, thank you Veggie Tales.

Like I said, we're taking things in stride and making the most of it all. In many respects we're just learning new and innovative ways to do things. We look forward to seeing what the Community House looks like after it's renovations and getting back into the grove of things.

Reaching New Numbers

2010-05-01T13:15:00.002+12:00

Since moving into the Massey Community House for our church services our third Sunday we have to do something different. (There is a group with a standing reservation for the third Sunday evening.) This has challenged us to try new things. So, as a result, two Sundays ago we had a barbecue.

We invited everyone from the community that we already had a substantial relationship with. We ended up having 15 show for the day and another 10 who wanted to but had other plans already. It was a great event with so many there. We grilled outside and everyone brought a side. Just before praying for dinner Justin told everyone a little bit about our church and what God is doing through us in the community and invited them to our next service.

The following Sunday we had 11 people attend our church service. It was amazing to have so many new people all in one day. Most of them even came for dinner again afterward to the Cherrys' house. We are hoping to see them again this Sunday.

During May the Community House will be doing some renovations so we will be doing most of our services for the month at the Cherrys' house. We have planned two barbecues for this month and will be inviting even more people. I think our list has climbed to over 40 now!

We are very excited about what's going on right now. It's been amazing to watch as God put all this in front of us. It has reinvigorated the dream we have for the church here. Please pray that this growth and success is lasting.

Inconvenient News

2010-04-27T13:11:00.003+12:00

First off, we'd like to thank all of those who have been praying for our residency status. Although in many ways it has been a stressful process, the knowledge that others have been praying for us in it has given us a sense of peace. Unfortunately, our expression of interest for residency has been denied. Morgan prepared the application and in preparation even called Immigration on several occasions to determine the number of points we were allowed to claim. However, she was misinformed by one of the Immigration agents and our claim for some points has been rejected, leaving us just shy of the number of points necessary to apply for residency.

This leaves us in a bit of a predicament. We have valid work permits that will last us until February of 2011 but as far as we've been able to determine they are not renewable past that time frame. So we need to find some other way to be able to stay here in New Zealand legally. That was the initial reason why we were trying to achieve residency. We are still searching out what options we have available. Morgan will continue to try to find a job, now without the promise of getting residency. Along with trying to find legal ways to stay here after February we are also continuing to raise funds to get us through the end of the year and to find potential partners for the duration of our work here.

We are still committed to this work and want very much to stay here. We feel called to do this work and appreciate the opportunity we've had so far here. We recognize the sovereignty of God in the situation and know we will land where He wants us to in the end. We ask for prayers for wisdom and faith in the upcoming decisions we will be making and how to handle the near future.

Record Highs

2010-04-21T00:40:00.003+12:00

Today was the first day back at the Ice Box in the new school term. It started out pretty much like usual, kids grabbing chairs, staking out their spot in front of the Nintendo Wii. The vibe was pretty good. The kids seemed excited to get back in the swing of things. We had heaps of people still around by the end of the Ice Box and even had kids who couldn't come text us to let us know they still wanted to come to our house afterward. Out of nowhere we had several kids ask if they could come for dinner or if their mate could come. We usually only have about 7 kids come over afterward on any one day but today we totaled 12 kids.

That may not sound like much, but when they are all hungry teens and piled into your living room it adds up quick. We expected the night to be pretty chaotic and loud but it seemed like the extra people actually kept the evening calmer. We even had 6 girls come which is out of the norm for our group. Before tonight we have always only had guys come over. Everyone seemed to find their place in the group and settle in. Munro, Skylar's Project K mentee, cooked dinner for the group and the girls even helped clean up afterward. We played a massive game of Pictionary after dinner and gave packets of Kool-aid from our stash to all the members of the winning team (They love Kool-aid and Butterfingers, both of which you can't get here).

All in all it was a great night. We had to drive the kids home in waves but most of them live pretty close so it wasn't too bad. I guess we'll see next week how many of them come back. It would be nice to add some girls to the group. I think it was good for the guys!

One Step Closer

2010-04-08T00:14:00.003+12:00

I just found out that our Expression of Interest has been selected from the pool and that they are now conducting some preliminary checks regarding our claims. Assuming that turns out well, we will be invited to apply for residency.

This is exactly what we have been hoping and waiting for. This is really wonderful news. Please continue to pray in regard to our application, specifically that their checks happen quickly enough that our previous medicals are still valid rather than us having to pay for new ones.

It is vital to us staying here in New Zealand that our application for residency be accepted. It is such an anxiously exciting thing to be waiting on our application to go through. We have been looking forward to this part of our stay here since we moved here in 2008. It is really exciting to see ourselves so close to getting residency! Please be in prayer for us!

Expression of Interest

2010-03-25T00:20:00.002+13:00

Today I filed our Expression of Interest(EOI) for Residency. Our EOI will be put into a pool with all the others and then at the next set time, potentially pulled out of the pool at which time we will be assessed and then hopefully invited to apply for residency. We have more than enough points to be pulled out of the pool immediately next time which is really good for us. We will then have to submit all the forms that prove everything we claimed points for on our EOI.

Please keep this in your prayers. This is either make or break for our long term ability to stay here in New Zealand. We are excited to be so close the the end of this road. Hopefully we will hear back from Immigration New Zealand within the next couple of weeks.

Parents Night Out (PNO)

2010-03-23T14:21:00.004+13:00

The year is doing quite well with Parents Night Out. Our first event was a bit different than normal. We decided to kick off the year with a luau and have the parents stay for the whole event. This gave us a great opportunity to share why we do PNO and how we could further help them as families. The event was a success. We had games for both the parents and the kids to participate in. I think it has done really well in us getting to know the families as a whole in that the parents are staying a little longer when they pick their kids up and we get to talk with them.

This last PNO was a little bit more low key. We had fewer kids as we found out that there was a school disco going on and that some of the kids chose to go to that instead. You can't win every time. It made for an easier night and in my mind a better chance to connect with the kids one on one. We also had some extra hands which made it even more of a stress free time, so thanks to Tuan, Josh and Paul from Georgetown Church of Christ in Austin, TX.

Please keep this ministry in your prayers in that we continue to connect with the families that attend and share the gospel with them.

2 years already!!!

2010-03-07T13:33:00.000+13:00

Last Friday was the two year anniversary of the day we moved to New Zealand. On March 5^th 2008, Mo and I along with the Cherry’s stepped off the plane into Auckland International Airport. It was way too early in the morning but that’s another story. Since then it’s been an awesome rollercoaster ride. I like the parts where I’m hanging upside down.

New Zealand has been such a great place to start our life in ministry. As we’ve said before the people here are great, straight forward and honest. The past two years have been focused on plowing the grounds in the community, getting to know people and showing them Christ in our everyday actions and speech. This third year is going to be just as exciting with new lessons to learn and hills to climb.

We decided to celebrate our two years of being here the way most kiwis would, going to the beach. Our summer is coming to an end so it might be the last time we get to go for a while. After that we went into town and enjoyed a little of the night life. Nothing too fancy, just hanging out at a coffee shop and taking a stroll around the city.

Like I said, it’s been an amazing past two years, so thank you so much for those who’ve supported us both financially and personally through prayers, letters, and encouraging words. We praise God for what He’s doing through us and are extremely thankful He’s allowed us to be a part of what He’s doing in this country.

Relay for Life

2010-03-04T23:57:00.005+13:00

We recently attended our first Relay for Life Event. It was held here in Auckland and we participated as part of a team from here in West Auckland. We were invited to join a team already forming called the Wild West Sheriffs (since the whole team was made of westies). This past year we've known a few people that have been recently effected heavily by cancer and felt compelled to join the cause on their behalf.

We had never attended an event like this before and didn't know what to expect, but it ended up being quite fun. We met heaps of new people that ended up being on our team and the event had lots of fun entertainment. Our team even got second place for out team theme. I think it's because we took our costumes so serious. (Besides it can't hurt to have a couple people from Texas on your team if you're rocking a cowboy theme.)

Besides all the fun, the hosts for the event also put together a very moving portion of the event, including a candlelit lap and an impromptu talk from the 2008 Olympic gold winner in the shot-put, New Zealand's own Valerie Villi.

All in all, it was a good way to spend a weekend. In fact, our team already started throwing around ideas for next year's team theme.

Missed Package.

2010-02-19T11:22:00.003+13:00

During the Ice Box Morgan needed to come back to the house to pick something up. When she came to the front door she notice a piece of paper stuck to the door. It was from the post man stating that we missed a package delivery. It was from a different courier than the one we were expecting a package from so it got us a little curious. Later that evening after the days events we were doing our normal online stuff, you know emails, bills, facebook ect. when Morgan thought to check our visa status'. To our surprise it said we were approved, it had been less than two weeks since we sent them in. So the next day after a meeting I headed to the couriers office in hopes to find our visas, and sure enough they were there. We are approved for another year a missionaries in New Zealand!!!

The next step for us is to apply for residency. We didn't have the information needed nor the time to apply for this before but now we are quite certain we will be approved. All we need now is for our FBI background check. There's a little drama with that and we're still waiting to get this back. We're hoping this comes in before the time frame on our physical exams expires so we don't have to pay for another one.

We're really excited about staying another year in hopes to stay here longer. It's been a huge privilege to serve here these past two years and look forward to many more to come. Thank you to all of you who've been praying for us and our work.

Visa Apps

2010-02-08T23:42:00.003+13:00

As of last week, we have lodged our new applications for an extension on our current work visa. It is imperative that we get an approval on this application so that we may then apply for residency later in the year. Please be praying for this application. We had to lodge it while still waiting for our FBI background checks to come in. There is a chance this will cause a delay or even a denial of our application.

Also, our team just got back from our annual team retreat where we evaluate our previous year and plan for the next as well as take some time to renew our relationships and our spirituality. It turned out really well and while we still have some planning left to do, I feel we came out of the retreat with a strong impression of where we are headed this year and how we are getting there.

February has a very different flavor to it here in New Zealand than it does in the US. Because the seasons are opposite, everyone is just now coming out of summer. School is about to start back up. People are coming back from their summer vacations. Everything coincides well with the new year. It all seems fresh - like we are starting everything up again at the same time. It is nice this way. Tomorrow will be our first day of the second year of the Ice Box. This month will be our first Parents Night Out for 2010. It all begins again, fresher and hopefully better.

For all those who support our work prayerfully, please keep us in mind as we begin our newest year on the field in this amazing country that has so captured our hearts.

Surfing the Dunes

2010-01-14T21:51:00.004+13:00

Last Tuesday we took some of the guys to Bethells Beach to hang out. We played some game akin to criquet and baseball, then some bocci ball and then the guys surfed the sand dunes.

After that the guys went for a swim . . . it was a little too chilly for me at just under 70 degrees. It was a great day for reconnecting with the guys. We are looking forward to getting all the guys together again for Tuesday nights. I can't wait to see how their summer's been going.

We're Back!!!

2010-01-13T12:26:00.003+13:00

We are back from our furlough and our holidays were great. Our purpose was twofold. We spent time with our families that we haven't seen in nearly two years and we spent time raising funds.

We lost some funds this past year and were able to make up 55% of those lost funds. We still have some seeds out there and are waiting to see what they produce. We came back in early January in order to apply for an extension on our work visa. The work visa we are currently on expires in February and we have potentially one more year on that visa. We will be applying for that extra year just as soon as our necessary FBI background checks come in. Seeing as how this is just an extension of the visa we are already on, it should be rather straightforward to get. Then during this next year we will be working to apply for residency. New Zealand works on a points system and in order for us to have enough points to apply for residency, Morgan needs to have a job offer. So this year, Morgan will be searching for a job that will also allow her to continue to work with our team as a vital part of our mission. This shouldn't be too difficult as Social Work, her field of training, is on the needs list in NZ. As soon as Morgan has a job offer, we will be able to lodge an application for residency, which will then allow us to be in the country indefinitely, thereby making all future paperwork much easier.

Now on to the fun stuff. A lot has happened since we were gone, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Morgan's Birthday. We were able to spend both holidays with our families, something we weren't able to do last year. We also got to celebrate Morgan's 26th birthday (on the 26th of December). She got to have a party for the first time and we even had a pie fight with her niece and nephews, an Ely family tradition. It was good having all the family close, all within an hour's distance from each other. We got to see lots of family and it was a good trip all around.

Since we've been back, we've been reconnecting with some of the people we haven't been able to see in 7 weeks. We had dinner with the Team the Saturday after getting back where the team gave Morgan 26 presents that made them think of her, like sticky ninja stars and cherry slushy mix. Sunday we hung out with Morgan's Project K mentee, playing baseball and then headed to our first church service since being back. Monday we got to hang with Jess and got our first New Zealand quiche and bottle of chutney (still trying to figure out what to do with that one). She always brings us homemade delights from her house (I think her mom makes them). Tuesday we got together with some of the guys from the Ice Box and Project K mentoring we do. We went to the beach and then treated them to a night downtown at Mexicali, (it was Taco Tuesday night). We've been busy since being back but it's been awesome to get back in touch with our people here. We've still got more to see though.

The team is also planning our yearly retreat where we reflect on our past year and make plans for our next year. That will be occurring in early February.

We'll be sure to keep you posted as things pop up in our ministry now that we're back. Hope your holidays were wonderful too!

Furlough

2009-11-24T07:35:00.003+13:00

The past few weeks have been quite chaotic for Morgan and I. From packing, to cleaning, to finalizing things for the year with the Ice Box, to flying in four airplanes to get back home.

Before coming back to the states our team had our November Parents Night Out. Once again we were filled near to capacity with hyper kids. This time we had a pajama movie party. As most of you know some kids can only handle a movie for so long before they are ready to play. We had board games for them to play but that just wasn't enough so most of the night was just chasing each other around. Next time we'll come prepared with more active/structured activities.

The night before we got on the plane we had our last Tuesday night with the Ice Box kids. At the request of some of the students we cooked out on the grill. We had chicken wings and a sausage sizzle. It took a little bit longer than expected to cook so everyone was starving when it came time to eat. So much so the house actually got quiet for a few minutes, more than once I might add. The night was a good night and I decided to end it by telling the students how much we appreciate them and are thankful that they trust us enough to let us be a part of their lives. After that I asked if they had anything I could pray about for them and then we prayed together. Before we prayed though, one of the students said how much he appreciates us doing this for them and that he considers our group a second family, which the rest of the guys agreed with. It was good to hear that and we are looking forward to getting back and meeting up with those guys during their summer break.

We'll as I stated earlier we are back home!!! We'll be spending a lot of our time with family and some of that time on the road. With that being said, we are going to take a break from our blogs and will be sure to write about everything once we get back. Thanks for taking interest in what God is doing through us. Grace and peace

Getting Residency

2009-10-30T23:58:00.003+13:00

I've recently done some more in-depth research on applying for residency and discovered that rather than the $1100 we were expecting it to cost, it will actually be more like $3100. There are additional fees at each of the three phases of applying for and getting accepted for residency status.

We are also trying to iron out the points system that visas and residency work on here. Basically, you have to have so many points, based on everything from age to work experience, in order to apply. The more you have the more likely you are to be accepted. I'm trying to make sure I'm finding all the possible points we can have. It's a little like doing your own taxes - you have to read everything several times because you're just not sure you understood it all the way and you keep trying to find some kind of hidden deduction.

We still have about 5 months to get everything together, but that's not as long as it sounds when it comes to visas. Thankfully, we are a bit more prepared for the process after having done it two years ago in order to get our first work visas.

Please put this one in your prayers. Getting residency would be so much better long-term than applying for a one year extension on our work visas. Plus, once granted, it would simplify all our future dealings with Immigration. We are really hoping everything comes together in the next couple months.

'Parents Night Out. October 09'

2009-10-24T21:38:00.008+13:00

What an awesome turn out at last nights Parent Night Out (PNO). We had a turnout of 27 children!!! What made it even more fun of an event was it being a costume party. I was a police man, keeping it safe you know, while Morgan was Medusa, she's scary enough if you ask me.

We had a bunch of festivities the kids could take part in. Painting pumpkins, a piñata, coloring, the wii, an egg race, painting faces, limbo and the list goes on. The numbers keep increasing and so does the appreciation from the parents. This is an awesome ministry into the families of West Auckland and it is our prayer that God continues to allow this to grow.

Awesome 2 Days

2009-10-07T00:54:00.005+13:00

Around 1 p.m. today the youth from the Otumoetai Church of Christ left Auckland after an awesome two days of ministry. They arrived Monday around lunch time and shortly after getting all the housing arrangements sussed they were put to work.

Around the corner at the Massey Community House, where we host the Ice Box and Parents Night Out, Jane Livingston had a list of house cleaning chores we could help out with. We washed windows, cleaned cobb webs, cleaned toys, swept, vacuumed, scrubbed walls, and the list goes on. It was a great privilege to have the youth, led by Nick Laspina and Rebbeca Raine, come share in our efforts to show Christ's love in our community.

The following day, after some time spent in prayer over Massey, the group headed back to the Community House to help out with the School Holiday program. Nick and Becs had the 12 - 15 kids split into four groups to play heaps of fun games. There were lollies for prizes so the kids were definitely keen to participate. They did an awesome job and you could tell the kids appreciated it. Below are some pictures of the day. There are plenty more so let me know if you'd like to see them.

Once again, I'd like to say thanks to the Otumoetai youth for coming out and helping our work. May God bless you above and beyond how you've blessed us.

I'm a committee member.

2009-09-25T22:16:00.004+12:00

At the last minute I was informed that the Massey Community House was having an Annual General Meeting. We use the Community House quite often, for things such as the Ice Box and Parents Night Out so I decided to attend.

I have to admit, at first I was completely lost. For example, one of the committee members was asked to do an intro and chose to do it in the Maori language, well I thought they were praying so the whole time they were saying thank you for coming I had my eyes closed and head bowed. It seemed like the "prayer" was coming to an end so I decided to lift my head, only to realize that everyone else was looking at the speaker with smiles of appreciation and interest. One of these days I'll get a clue. It took me a little while to catch on to what was being discussed throughout the meeting, simply because this was my first time, but in the end I felt fully informed.

One of the motions that were being discussed was who is going to be the new Chairperson (Don't worry I didn't suggest myself). I've met and talked with the lady who was voted in before and I really enjoyed her personality. She expressed that she is going to issue a lot of changes, and I fully believe her. I got to talk to her a little more after the meeting and I really felt good that I had come to this meeting and got to hear what she had to say. It was also really good to hear her sing our praise for the Parents Night Out event. She's going to bring it before the committee to see if the fee for hiring/renting out the building can be waived, which would be really awesome cause that would save us $50 a month.

All in all, I chose to become a committee member and am really excited that I get to be apart of some progressive changes that are going to take place in my community. My prayers are that God will be praised and His kingdom will expand through this opportunity. Please prayer that I could be a positive and effective influence in my new role.

Applying for Residency

2009-09-10T21:58:00.003+12:00

Our current work visas expire in February of 2010 so we recently looked into what it would take to renew them. We found out that they are only renewable for up to one year, after which we would then have to apply for some other kind of visa. So instead we are looking at applying for residency.

New Zealand awards residency based on a points system. You get so many points based on your qualifications, age, work experience, etc. From what we've looked at, we have enough points to apply and be awarded residency. Getting residency will make our time here in NZ much easier and make it much more likely that we can have a long-term work ahead of us.

I've looked into the price of applying and including the necessary medicals, the total price for the both of us will be around $1100. So as soon as we can get the funds together, we will be lodging an app with the New Zealand Immigration Service.

Please pray for this, that we would have the available funds and that we would be approved. We are really looking forward to a long-term work here in New Zealand and this is the next step to achieving that.

Project K kids

2009-09-06T11:20:00.002+12:00

You may remember us telling you about our Project K training before. We have finally been matched with our kids and were able to meet their families at a celebration hosted by Project K. I've even been able to hang out with the family of my match and him a couple of times. It is a really good match and I enjoy spending time with him. He may even be able to teach me a couple of things.

We were matched with teenagers from a local high school so they don't live that far away from us. We even see them around town. It makes it so convenient to hang out with them.

It is exciting to be starting this year of mentoring with these kids. It fits in so well with some of the things we are already doing. I was able to invite the guy I'm mentoring to our Tuesday night hangout with the Ice Box boys. He fit in so well and was able to seriously impress the other kids with his Guitar Hero skills (he plays on expert).

Teaching at SPBC

2009-08-31T22:06:00.003+12:00

Well it's official. I, Skylar Ely, the man who could barely pay attention in class have taught at a Bible College. I'd never thought I'd do something like that but it happened. This past weekend Justin, Lij, and I taught a Friday class on Evangelism at SPBC(South Pacific Bible College). We split the lesson into three sections, our theology, done by Elijah, our methodology, done by myself, and some insights into church planting done by Justin.

I decided to throw in some experiential learning techniques and had the students try to keep as many balloons off the ground as possible. With 10 participants they managed 13-17, I can't remember the exact number. The exercise was geared towards thinking as a group, communicating and recognize a common goal and figuring how to get there together. It was quit a sight to watch by the way. I accidentally hit two people in the head as I was throwing the balloons in, sorry about that Paul and David.

It was a great experience all around and a huge land mark for our team. Thanks SPBC for letting us be a part of your influence in God's kingdom.

Taking it one step further

2009-08-12T22:41:00.003+12:00

As some of you know, Morgan and I have about five to seven of the Ice Box students come to our house on Tuesday nights. It's an awesome time for more fun and games, with a feed of course! It really has been a great privilege to get to know these guys on a one on one basis.

I've been thinking of adding a new element to the night's events. I want to offer the students some specific guidance and mentoring in a teaching format. I want to share with them some of the things I've learned in hopes to make them more well rounded individuals that will one day be the leaders of this community. Though I don't have the entire format or topics ironed out yet, I really want to see this happen. They are a great group of teenagers with heaps of potential. Like I said before, I consider it a great privilege to get to know these kids, I just want to do what I can to offer any assistance to help them reach that potential. Please keep me in your prayers and thoughts in regard to this. The Ice Box has been a huge blessing and I want to do the best that I can to give it back to God as a form of praise and worship to Him.

Visa Challenges

2009-08-02T01:15:00.002+12:00

We went by the local New Zealand Immigration office yesterday to get some information on re-applying. Without going into too much detail, we found out some information that might make re-applying difficult. Please pray for this as we go about searching for the best way to re-apply. We may need to change the way we applied but we may be able to apply for residence as well, which would make all our paperwork coming in and out easier.

We feel like there is much more work to be done here. Our original intention was to be here for at least 5-7 years. We still feel like that will be necessary and will make all the attempts possible to secure our stay here.

Men's Challenge

2009-07-22T20:30:00.003+12:00

Every year the men from the Churches of Christ around New Zealand and surrounding countries come together in an effort to gain some encouraging biblical teaching and support from other Christians. The retreat is split into two sections. The first is Thursday through Friday and is a Leadership forum, while the second is just a general retreat for all men from Saturday to Sunday.

This will be our third time to attend. Our first one was while we were on our survey trip. This time is a little special for me seeing as how I was asked to speak. So on Saturday, the 25th, a little after 10 a.m. I will be teaching the 30 and under class. My lesson topic is never being alone. This comes from Jesus' promise to His disciples in Mt 28:20 where He says "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." I've been working on this lesson for quite a while now so I'm really hoping all the work will benefit those who are listening.

While I'm in Rotorua where the retreat is being held Morgan will be at home enjoying some time to herself. She says she can't get anything done while I'm around because she always wants to talk to me. I think it's because I'm really cool and she just wants to be doing what I'm doing. Either way, she said she's really looking forward to it. Without a doubt she'll miss me before too long!!! I hope?!

Questions

2009-07-15T23:23:00.000+12:00

Well the holiday break is almost over and that means the Ice Box will be starting back up. It’s been a good break and a great opportunity to reassess how everything’s been going and where we need to go next. Something I always appreciate is people’s opinions and insights. It usually takes a while for me to form my own, so I want to ask you some questions and hear your feedback.

-As a parent, what do you want your child doing after school?
-Do you have or know any resources in developing young leaders?
-What are some good ways to keep a program like this fresh?
-What are some good ways to get some cheap computers?
-What would an “Ice Box” look like in your community?

We really feel blessed to be a part of this program and want to do the best we can to keep it going and make sure it’s running at its potential. We look forward to your comments and/or replies. Thanks for your time and consideration.

Next Few Weeks

2009-07-02T00:56:00.000+12:00

Tomorrow is the last day of the Ice Box for the next few weeks while the students are on holiday. I’m hoping during this time we will be able to assess how this last term has gone and how we can improve. We’ve definitely had some good inroads with some of the students. We decided to add a little something extra to our normal Tuesday pizza night yesterday and took the students to the Imax to watch the new Transformers movie (which was awesome, by the way). We got our tickets a good 20 min before the movie started so we all headed downstairs to the game room just to add to the cool time we were having.

Friday the 3rd, we will be attending our normal monthly Raise-Up-n-Represent event. For the last 4 events we’ve been providing youtube videos for the students to watch while they take a break from the dancing. It’s cool to watch the walls break down when you get a group of the “gangstas”, popular people and not so popular people all laughing at the same thing. They all have this image they want to maintain but when you see something funny you can’t help but laugh and that’s when you realize that in some way we’re all the same. Since this group of videos are already made we can’t add anything to them, but we want to start doing a little more advertising for the Ice Box. One of the ideas is to do a “text to win” thing in-between some of the videos with a question they have to answer. We’ll see how that progresses.

We will also be hosting our very first Parent Date Night on July the 10th. Part of this is a follow up from our family seminar a few weeks ago, but it is also just a service we want to offer the community. From 5-9 pm we will be providing free childcare for up to 30 children ages 3-15 while their parents have some time to themselves. I have a really good feeling about this project and can see it making a huge impact in the families that attend. One of the best ways you can take care of your family is to make sure you’re taking care of yourself and your marriage. The next day is my birthday so I’ll be sure to do something a little more relaxing after a night of watching children.

Morgan and I will also be volunteering at our fourth holiday program at the Community House. We usually only have three or four kids signed up but as the morning progresses we end up with 10-12 each day. Morgan and I will only be helping out the second week instead of both. We always try to make sure we’re there on the field trip days. Last time we went swimming, this time I think we’re going bowling. Since we’ve volunteered for eight weeks we’re really hoping to get some of the parents to come to the Parents Date Night on the 10th.

Well that’s our next couple weeks in a nut shell. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on how each event went.

Busy Weekend!

2009-06-23T14:06:00.002+12:00

We have been beyond busy this last week, especially the weekend. Last Monday a group of campaigners from Harding came in to help our church out. There are 7 of them, but including the 3 Aimers we currently have working with us, that makes 10 college age students looking to our team for work. We are currently hosting two of the aforementioned students while the others are divided up among the rest of the team.

It's been good to have our small numbers boosted by other Christians while we work here. We've also been putting these students to work. While they are here, we are responsible for providing them with some entertainment and devotionals but also with ministry. So we had them help with the Ice Box both Tuesday and Thursday. Then we had them pass out fliers for the Parenting Seminar we hosted on Saturday. We did two flier handouts, one on Wednesday and one on Friday.

Our Parenting Seminar was held at the local YMCA on Saturday afternoon. We currently have Charles and Cara Speer visiting from Sunset Church of Christ and were able to use their experience to teach the Parenting Seminar. We offered it to the community for free and even offered free childcare during the event so that parents could really give their full attention to the information presented. We were pleased with the turnout and how the presentation went and were able to meet several new people as well as see others we previously knew who were able to attend. We are planning some follow-up events to keep the contacts we've made from this seminar involved.

After the Seminar we then hosted everyone over at our house for an All Blacks game that night. Our team did prevail thankfully, but it was a rough game. The following day we had church and dinner for everyone at our house again, which lasted late into the evening.

Normally, Monday would be our day off, but since the Speers are leaving soon, we had a meeting with them to finish up some stuff from our team retreat a few weeks back. The meeting was wonderful and particularly productive, but also went longer than usual. We made it home by about 10pm that night, and are now back to our original schedule of ministry. I'm just about to leave now to head up to the Ice Box where Skylar is already setting up furniture in preparation for the kids arrival this afternoon.

The Harding students leave Wednesday morning and the Speers leave Thursday morning and then we'll be back down to the 6 on our team and the 3 Aimers we have here working with us, and back to our normal routine. It's been exciting to have so many people around and we look forward to next year when, hopefully, the Speers will be back.

Happy 26th Elijah

2009-06-16T23:52:00.003+12:00

Today was Elijah's 26th birthday. Admist the normal Tuesday business we managed to celebrate at Burger King. I had been secretly sewing his birthday present for the last week or so. I was so excited to give it to him.

At Burger King we hid all his presents in the slides and he had to open them one by one and then slide down the slide with it. It was a blast.

There he is with a candy bar from the Harding students that are visiting.

And here he is with the present I made for him. It was specially requested by him earlier in the year but I'm not sure he really expected them because he seemed quite surprised. I had a blast making them. I think they will be very important additions to the Peters family now.

Happy 26th Elijah!!! Hope it was good.

Project K Mentoring

2009-06-13T22:32:00.002+12:00

Last year Skylar and I heard about an awesome mentoring program here in the Waitakere area high schools called Project K. We asked about being involved, but they already had enough mentors for the year. Last month though, I received an email asking if we'd like to be involved this year.

Today was the first of two Saturday training sessions. It was a blast and really productive. Instead of lecturing, the day was full of tons of experiential learning activities where we performed some kind of task in groups and then reflected on what it taught us. It varied from discussing our opinions with a partner on certain subjects to trying to keep as many balloons as possible in the air as a group. (Our group of 16 was able to get 19, but we had good strategies ready to employ if given another chance.) We had fun learning and bonding with the other mentors and we managed to meet some really neat people in the process.

We have one more training Saturday to go on July 4th and then we'll be ready to be matched up with a Waitakere teenager. We are really looking forward to the privilege of mentoring a youth here in New Zealand. I think it has the ability to positively affect both us and the youth and it goes hand-in-hand with some of the ministries we already have going.

Good Times

2009-06-12T00:30:00.001+12:00

You know those really good friends that can say what you need to hear in the way you need to hear it, and can listen at the same time? Well, Charles and Cara Speer are that to us. They’ve recently made a trip here to New Zealand to visit with us as a team and to fellowship with some old friends.

This past weekend we had a team retreat in which the Speers helped facilitate. It was a very refreshing and encouraging time. Prior to this we all as a team had a “Charles and Cara day”, where each family got to spend the day doing something fun and enjoyable while mixing in some quality time. Morgan and I took Charles and Cara to play at this really awesome putt-putt place, where Cara won and I came in solid last, after lunch at a great Italian restaurant, only to return after the game to treat ourselves to an awesome cheesecake.

The Speers are with their kids right now enjoying the memories of their times past while touring the country. They will come back next week and Cara will teach a parenting seminar that we are hosting at the local YMCA. Their time here is priceless to us and we praise God for servants like them, so if you have friends like I described above be sure to say a prayer of thanks to God and enjoy every moment you get to spend with them.

Cheers Charles and Cara, good on ya!

Through the Grapevine

2009-05-19T20:35:00.002+12:00

Last Thursday at the Ice Box I was interviewed by a women going to Unitec, a local university. She is majoring in Youth Studies and had to do an assignment on a local youth group. Interestingly enough, she and her professor had heard of the Ice Box through their local networks. This is great because we haven't even done any major advertising. We've mostly just kept it contained to the kids at Massey High School. So the fact that adult networks are talking up the program is really good news.

She came in to observe the program but also needed to ask a bunch of questions. She asked how we got started up and what the goals of our program are. She seemed really impressed with the program and said it was much better than some others she has seen around. She even mentioned her professor is keen to check it out. We talked for close to 30 minutes about the program, the local youth, what we see as the potential for the youth in Massey and how the program can help them.

It was really encouraging to find out that people have been talking positively about the Ice Box. To realize that, after only about 13 or 14 weeks of putting the Ice Box on, we are impacting the youth and positively raising eyebrows in the community inspires us to put even more into it. We have some big plans for the future of the Ice Box. I can't wait to see it in a couple of years, when there's been some returning kids and a crew set in place. I'm keen to see the changes it can make in the community!

The Ice Box and Beyond

2009-05-19T20:24:00.002+12:00

It is Tuesday night and right now, our living room is filled with four high school boys playing Mario Kart on our Nintendo Wii with bellies full of pizza. You see, Tuesday is pizza night in our house because Dominos has $6.90 pizzas. A few weeks ago we invited a few of the kids who usually stay and help us clean up after the Ice Box back over to our house for pizza and video games. It was such a hit with them that it has become a feature and now every Tuesday night we have some of the boys over.

We all sit down and eat some pizza and then play several hours worth of games. Everything from Nintendo to ping pong and a couple of good, old-fashioned Nerf gun fights. These Tuesday nights have added a whole new level of community and friendship to our fellowship. We are hoping to turn this into a regular thing for our Ice Box crew once it gets set up.

Pray for us on this though. It can get really crazy at our house with so many teenage boys running around shooting each other with Nerf bazookas or competing in Mario Kart, and I'm sure it'll only get crazier when more kids start coming. But so far it's been an awesome opportunity to get to know the kids on a more personal basis.

1st week back

2009-05-06T23:15:00.003+12:00

The Ice Box has successfully completed it's first week of the second school's term. Even after the break the numbers have thankfully been steady. We generally have about 10% of the students who come stay at least an hour or two after the mad rush. We've recently added some new games for the students to play and it seems to help keep them entertained and willing to stay. We've added Jenga, Connect Four (which I"m not very good at. It's quite an accomplishment and joyus occasion when I win), Checkers, and coming soon, Operation.

This term, seeing as how we have a steady "fan base" we've decided to add some competitions to the agenda. Wanting to give as many students as possible a chance to be apart of these competitions we have a writing competition, an art competition, a ping-pong tournament and a dance off. Each one will have it's own prize to win. This Thursday will be the first of three ping-pong tournaments so we've been trying to play it up as much as possible and I'm really looking forward to the turnout. We'll be sure to keep you posted on the other events and their turnouts as well. Feel free to ask us questions about whichever event.

We continue to see heaps of potential for this program. We really want to help develop young leaders in our community and have around 10 plus students who want to join the Ice Box crew so please keep this program and the students in your prayers.

Backup

2009-04-17T14:06:00.003+12:00

After being here for little over a year I really feel that we are starting to get the swing of things. By the swing of things I mean service projects and what needs we can meet in the community. One of the difficulties we've been dealing with is not having enough man power. Through a variety of events three able and willing AIM (Adventures In Missions) students decided to come to help out our new church plant. Though they've only been here for three days I can already feel the weight begin to lift off my shoulders. So thank you Sunset and those who partnered with the students for sending Amy, Dan and Darren to help us out.

Ready,,, Break

2009-04-13T10:11:00.003+12:00

For the next two weeks the Ice Box will be taking a break while the students are on school holiday. Though the Ice Box is taking a break we won't be. During this two week period we will be trying to iron out the next term (10 weeks or so) of the Ice Box. We've gotten some good feedback from the students as to what they would like to have and what they thought of our ideas for the Ice Box, so now it's time to make them happen.

I'm really excited about this next term. We've always wanted the Ice Box to be a place the students could express themselves so now with the new events and competitions going to be put in place we will really be able to see a West Massey youth flavor to everything.

This past Thursday was the last day before the break and we had the best turn out all term. I felt privileged to have them stay and hang out and for us to be able to serve them. I hope we can continue to provide the safe, transparent, and fun atmosphere the students need. Please, please keep this ministry in your prayers. We want it to grow and make a huge impact in the community. It has lots and lots of potential we just hope that we can help it come to fruition.

I've got skills!

2009-03-29T22:42:00.002+13:00

This week, I had the opportunity to use my car unlocking skills yet again. During the Ice Box, a man came in to ask for some help unlocking his van. Once again, my teammates pointed straight at me, volunteering my unique skill to the public. I didn't mind at all of course.

Once I got outside, the man explained that he actually locked his little boy in the car after buckling him into his carseat. So the little boy couldn't help his dad out at all. Luckily I was able to undo the lock in just a few minutes so there was no danger to the little boy sitting inside the car. The man's partner drove by just as I was walking back to my car, and she was slightly upset. So I wasn't able to save him from all the repercussions of locking his kid in the car. But it did feel great to help someone else out with my mad skills!

I just might have to figure out how to market this skill to the community. Maybe I should make business cards. =)

New Addition to the Team

2009-03-29T22:34:00.002+13:00

As of 4am yesterday morning, we have another guy on the team. He's the Peters new little boy, Caden Andrew Peters. He's adorable with his cute little scrunchy face. You can head over the the Peters blog site to check out pictures if you like at LijandKris.com.

We saw him for the first time today when he came over to our house for church. He's still tiny and brand new. It'll be fun to watch the Peters learn to be parents with their new little kid. I'm sure him and the Cherry's boy Gavin will grow up to great friends.

Ministry Skills

2009-03-19T22:37:00.002+13:00

I need to add another item to my list of ministry skills. For the second time this week, I broke into someone's car . . . per their request of course.

On Sunday a friend locked her keys in her car and I used a wire coat hanger and popped her lock for her, in under three minutes I might add. She was super excited and I was glad to have helped out a friend. Afterwards I chunked the coat hanger in the back of the car just in case I needed again and went about my business.

Then today while we were at the Ice Box, someone wandered in the Community House looking for some help. They had accidentally locked their keys in their van. As soon as they told us, everyone pointed to me. Luckily I still had that coat hanger and so I popped the lock on his van too. Again, in under three minutes.

I have to say I kind of enjoy having such a random skill on my list of ministry skills. It's quite practical too.

But, just to clarify, I did come by this skill honestly. There are no stolen cars in my past. I learned when I locked my keys in my car for the first time and further honed this skill the multiple times that Skylar has since locked his keys in the car.

New Community Ed Classes

2009-03-19T16:07:00.003+13:00

With the new school year also came new community education classes. I'm signed up again for my sewing class and still loving it. Skylar and I also signed up for a Maori language class. Elijah is also taking it with us. We are really liking it and have plenty of reinforcement for what we're learning all around us.

New Zealand's culture as a whole has really embraced the Maori element. There are Maori channels on TV as well as news broadcasts completely in Maori. Also many signs are written in both English and Maori. Over the past few decades there has been a resurgence of Maori learning in schools as well.

Our class is on Friday mornings and most of the activities are group oriented. We've been really encouraged through taking the class and are learning both the language and cultural aspects of Maori.

One Year

2009-03-05T23:10:00.003+13:00

As of today, we have been in New Zealand for exactly one year. We would like to thank all of you who have made this past year possible. We really appreciate you believing in us and allowing us to pursue such an amazing dream.

It's been a productive year. We've acculturated to an entirely different country. We've started a new church. We've started an after school program. We've become involved in the local community on several levels. We've done more than can be easily communicated in a blog. And we have much more planned for the upcoming years.

The year has pretty much flown by. It's weird to think that in just 9 more months we'll have to re-apply for our visas.

Over this past year the New Zealand culture has really grown on us and has become like a second home. Thankfully God led us to this field. Even though our time here may be limited, we foresee ourselves somehow involved for the rest of our lives in New Zealand.

On a lighter note, this past year has also meant 366 days of no

Sonic!
Authentic Tex-Mex food
American Mountain Dew
Taquitos
Bar-b-que Hut
Kolaches
American hot dogs
Sausage - the good stuff anyway
Real Texas beef
Olive Garden breadsticks
and Blue Bell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the face of all this sacrifice though, we have gained

Goody Goody Gumdrops ice cream
Meat pies
Hokey Pokey ice cream
Bethells Beach
cheaper electric bills since there's no need of A/C
roundabouts - we've come to appreciate them
Nando's
Noodle Canteen
Rugby
A great city skyline
and a summer Christmas

All in all it's been a great year, one we'll not soon forget.

Fruits of our labor

2009-03-03T23:26:00.003+13:00

To start off, Mo and I did not steal the title for this blog from Justin Cherry, he's just a little faster at writing blogs than I am.

Now on to the blog. Mo and I frequent a fruit an veggie stand right down the road. There is a hard working couple / family that works there and we really wanted them to know that they are apart of a community that cares. Mo and I have been cleaning their store in various ways over the past month or so and recently found out that the city council's inspection stated that they needed to have their floors in the back repainted. They've done it before but because it's such a high trafficed area the paint wore off in less than a year. We looked into some ways to make the paint last and started the project Sunday night. It's a two week process and have to do it in segments so over the next few weeks we will doing the best we can to get their shop up to code and really give them a well deserved break.

We've told them that us helping them out is free. We just want to show them God's love in a practical way, but each time they insist that we take some of their produce. So below is a picture of the "fruits" of our labor. No Dr. Peper is not a fruit but is good for the soul!!!

Like I've said, they are a great family and we've appreciated getting to know them. Some of their staff have asked why are we doing this for them, especially for free. We can tell that we are getting noticed we just hope and pray that through all this God is getting the recognition and his good news of care and concern is being spread. Please keep us and the family in your prayers as we strive to make Massey a better community.

grace and peace

Ice Box Picking Up

2009-02-28T15:04:00.003+13:00

Well, it's the end of the second week of the Ice Box and it is definitely starting to pick up. We are getting more and more kids that hang out at least for a little while before heading off. This week Elijah had the brilliant idea of putting the couches and stereo outside in front of the building, kind of as a promo and for the kids to be able to sit and chill, but also to enjoy the last remnants of summer. It worked well! The kids started hanging around on the couches and Skylar even sat and talked with several of them for a while.

We've also had several girls who are interested in being on an Ice Box crew - meaning a crew of kids interested in helping us plan and organize Ice Box activities. I've asked them to look for some guys who are interested as well so we can have a well-rounded crew. We'll hopefully be having a meeting next week with all those interested parties. It should definitely help with our staying power on the Ice Box.

Please pray for this ministry. We want it to do more than just feed some hungry kids a snack. We want it to provide a safe, positive atmosphere for them. Please also pray for the Ice Box crew that forms. It will help determine the future direction of the Ice Box.

And it begins. . .

2009-02-17T22:38:00.005+13:00

Today was the first day of our after school hangout at the Massey Community House. About 15 minutes after three, hundreds of kids walk down Don Buck Rd heading somewhere. We wanted to give them a cool place to come hang out and "chill" thus the name "The Ice Box." We served about 75 kids drinks and snacks, but it being the first time not all of them stayed. I think they're still trying to figure out whether or not we are cool. We had about 20 or so that hung out on the basketball courts with us and another 7 or so that hung out inside. We had games to play inside, as well as couches to chill on. We also had a ping pong table which was a hit with the guys. Considering that our advertising was fairly slim so far we had a great turn out.

We envision this program as something the Massey youth can own and really influence for themselves. We are currently trying to encourage some specific youths to step up and work alongside us to help organize and run the event. We met some today that seem to fit the bill. They've already given us some more great ideas on how to appeal to the rest of the school population and get more kids in the door.

We see in time that we'll be able to instill the vision that this is something they can utilize to impact the community in their own way. We plan to incorporate donations from the kids back into local and potentially global charities as well as the community house itself.

Please keep our and their impact in your prayers as this program continues to develop. We still have a lot of kinks to work out, but this has a lot of potential.

Starting to pick up.

2009-02-13T17:57:00.002+13:00

Things are really starting to swing into action here. It’s been almost a year since we’ve been here, which has gone by in a flash. We are really starting to find our groove and opportunities are opening up quite a bit. This Saturday will be a great Saturday as it will be mixing some fun with serving the people. We will be heading to Bethel’s Beach to hand out free drinks to make this hot weather a little more bearable. Below is a picture of my car loaded down with a little over 500 drinks ready to be put on ice and enjoyed. It’s riding a little lower than usual but for a good cause.

Also, this Tuesday is the beginning of the after school hangout at the Massey Community House. The title of the program is called “The Ice Box”. I’m really excited and scared at the same time about this project. I really want to make it a fun and safe place for the high school students to come to rather than going home to an empty house. It’s only been seven years since I’ve been in high school but things change so quickly so please pray that this effort is both exciting and encouraging to the kids. We are hoping that this could be a project that we can hand over to the students one day and watch them make it something that is truly theirs.

Another thing that we as a church are hoping to accomplish is to clean and serve our local stores. Morgan and I have already cleaned, in various ways, the veggie/fruit store down the road. This coming Monday we’ll be cleaning their floors and large cooler’s ceiling in the back.

All these service projects are to show God’s love in a practical way and to share the joy that God has given us. Please pray that these projects have eternal impacts and that people will begin to see Jesus wanting and able to work in their lives as well.

Sock Animals with the Holiday Program

2009-02-02T21:13:00.004+13:00

Last Friday was the last day of the School Holiday Program. It was a good couple of weeks. We went to an indoor swimming pool, watched a couple of movies, played on the playground, had a talent show, did arts and crafts and just generally hung out. This being our second time, we got to know the kids better and even met a few new ones.

Since I love to sew, we tried to incorporate that into the arts and crafts we came up with. So, last Tuesday we all made sock animals. It worked out well because it was a rainy day and the day after a national holiday. All the kids were a bit tired and relaxed. They spent hours working on their animals. It may be a craft we have to do again. We had several people choose to make elephants.

And one little boy who decided to make a bird. Halfway through he decided it was actually a bird-fish, that way he can fly and swim. He also added a last minute pink mohawk.

The kids were much more relaxed this time around, probably related to it being the end of summer vacation. We weren't working on the last day, but managed to drop by for afternoon snack time. It was one of the kids' birthday so we all had some cake.

The kids all asked if we were coming back for the next one which we assured them we were. It felt good to know they were looking forward to seeing us again.

We've also been able to get to know the other workers a bit better and have even been able to hang out with Jess, one of the other workers outside of work. We really get along well and enjoy each others company. She's just about to go into her next year of University and has most of this week off. So we've been hanging out and taking a break together to help her chill out before going back to school.

SIBI call

2009-01-31T04:42:00.003+13:00

It is 4:40 AM here in Auckland, NZ and Skylar and I just got home from the team's 3:30 video call with the Sunset International Bible Institute's chapel. (I said I wasn't going to write a blog until I woke up, but I'm still a little wound up from the conversation.) SIBI had a focus on New Zealand week ending with actually talking to some missionaries here - us!

It was a long day, staying up till so early in the morning, but worth it to see the faces of people we sorely miss. It was interesting seeing the chapel room from that perspective after being gone for a few years.

Charles Speer coordinated the whole chapel week and had prepared some questions to ask the team during the call. We got to talk about our work here, culture shock issues, how our team formed and what kind of person we think fits the New Zealand culture. We enjoyed talking about what's going on here, sharing it with students just about to set out into works of their own. We thoroughly appreciate all the interest in our work and all the support we receive from people back home.

Well, that's about all the upper level thinking I have left this late/early. It's time for me to head off to bed.

Holiday Program Gears Up Again

2009-01-19T23:04:00.002+13:00

Today was our first day at the second Holiday Program we've been able to help out with. The beginning of February all the kids go back to school, so they are all trying to get the last good tidbits out of their summer. The next two weeks we will be working off and on with around 10 kids who have enrolled in the program offered at the local community house. We are working with the same coordinators as last time and are hoping we get to know them a bit better as well as the kids. There's a lot of fun planned for the program, including a slip and slide and going to the indoor swimming pool at the YMCA. It has a huge water slide that all the kids are excited about.

Thanks to the recent revamping of the park by the community house, there's plenty to keep the kids busy. They take turn after turn going down the Flying Fox. We'll try to get more pictures of this holiday program if we can.

Wish us luck. We'll have kids crawling all over us for the next two weeks! =D

Cleaning a store project

2009-01-16T22:30:00.000+13:00

As some of you may remember I wrote a blog about the service projects we had in mind. Well, Mo and I decided to try one out, and it went great. About a mile down the road from our house there is a fruit and veggie store, which by the way sales the cheapest Dr. Peppers around, 1.83 per 12 oz can. Don’t worry, I only have one or two a week, a habit that’s been hard to stick too, seeing how Dr. Pepper is my favorite drink.

Back to the project, so after I got my groceries I went up to the store owners and told them that I’d like to help clean their store for free and wanted nothing in return; I just wanted to help them however they saw fit. At first there was a glazed look over their faces, as if I was speaking a foreign language, then it turned into a polite smile but I could tell it wasn’t fully sinking in. I gave them my business card and told them to call me when they had a project they’d like me to do.

A week went by and no call, so I decided to go back, just to reassure them that I was serious. Upon that visit they told me to come whenever and they would have something for me, so I told them I would show up the next day. We were asked to scrape the dirt of the baseboards outside their store. All in all it took 30 – 40 min and made a world of difference. An older couple walked by and said it looks great and that we could do their house. I told them we would but I guess they didn’t think we were serious and continued on their way.

Though we told the store owners we wanted to do it just to help them out and expected nothing in return they insisted that we take an ice cream cone to eat on our way home. It was an excellent ice cream cone by the way, a citrus sorbet surrounded by frozen pineapple. The next time we came to help they asked us to clean their outer windows. Once again the project only took 30 – 40 min, but the outcome was well worth it.

It was a great project and made Morgan and I feel really good that we were giving back to our local community. We’ve offered to come back in a couple weeks to see what else we can do

Bringing in the New Year

2008-12-31T23:51:00.003+13:00

Well it is 11:51 pm on December 31st. Just almost the New Year. We just got back from hanging out with some folks from churches around New Zealand. The Morningside Church of Christ has a New Years camp out every year out in the Waitakeres and we were invited. We went out for dinner and a bonfire and threw the football around (something we haven't done in awhile - it was nice since they thought we were experts, you know being American and all). We decided not to camp out, but will return in the morning to go hiking up to some nearby waterfalls - another yearly tradition for Morningside.

It has been nice creating and being a part of some totally new holiday traditions and having great people to share the holidays with while we are away from home.

Well, I've got to go so I can check out the fireworks going off downtown from our front windows. Happy New year everyone!

Kiwi Holidays + New Addition

2008-12-27T12:28:00.008+13:00

We had a great summer Christmas which included a trip to the beach,

a trek to some waterfalls,

a church gift exchange and grilling out for Christmas dinner.

Then we celebrated my birthday with a trip to another local beach, dinner at Nando's (our favorite Kiwi restaurant) and then a trip to the Auckland Luge (a place you should definitely go if you ever come for a visit).

It was a blast. The holidays are definitely different when done in the summer, but they're still fun. I quite enjoyed it all anyway.

Then to top it all off, the Cherry's had their little boy Gavin around 6pm that night. Another Boxing Day birthday! They came home from the hospital tonight and everything seems to be ok. Please pray for them as they get used to having another little one around the house.

Sorry

2008-12-20T16:42:00.002+13:00

So apparently I've posted the past blog about our service projects like four times. After you write a blog you're given the option to look at what you just wrote. Each time I chose that option it didn't show what I just wrote so I'd try to post it again. I thought it was a matter of my settings as to the time it was suppose to post so I waited til the next day. Even then it didn't show up, so to be thorough I tried again, and again. I do think the ideas were cool but not enough to beat you over the head with them so sorry you've had to see the same message over and over again. Oops, live and learn!

Servive Projects

2008-12-19T22:01:00.002+13:00

I have the privilege of being in charge of the service projects for our church. I’m a hands-on kind of person so this responsibility really suits my personality. So with this responsibility I decided to read some books, look online, and listen to the advice of others to find some projects to propose to our church. I wanted to share some of those ideas with you all.

Back packs for the homeless: fill a durable backpack with very practical gifts i.e. toothbrush and toothpaste, socks, a map, soap, clothes, etc, and give them to those in need.

Clean stores: Go to your local supermarket or convenience store and ask them if you could clean there store. If you’re brave enough, tell them that you want to do the jobs that no one else wants to, bathrooms for example. Or it can be as simple as cleaning tables at your local coffee shop.

Free carwash: Most of the time you see car washes going on to raise money, but what if you were to offer a free carwash where donations are NOT accepted. Have a big sign out in the front that says donations are not acceptable and if they insist on paying you just tell them you’ll only accept a payment of their time and have them come serve with you.

Baby gift bags for new moms: This may sound stereotypical but what woman doesn’t enjoy newborns? Go to your local hospital with bags of practical and useful gifts to hand out to new families. If you’re an established congregation with a trusted reputation you could think long term and offer them free child care for a certain time period. The key is to help them in this new transition as much as possible.

Shoe cleaning or shining: Pick a mall or high trafficked area and offer free shoe cleaning. Be diverse in this, don’t just offer to shine a business like shoe, have tools and equipment to clean all kinds of shoes. If you can, offer people a free drink while they wait.

Breakfast for students: Most students are rushed for time, so meet them where they are at, in a hurry. This is probably best done at a college or university. Provide them with a breakfast burrito, granola bar, fresh fruit, etc, and a drink. Let them know you know what it’s like to be in a hurry and you’re just there to help.

These are various projects that we hope to use to show God’s love in a practical way. Each culture is different so maybe some of these won’t seem as impacting to you. Feel free to use and adapt these ideas as you see fit. If you do choose to use them please let me know how it went, even if you got yelled at and got thrown out of a place.

Triangle Park Opening

2008-12-02T20:50:00.004+13:00

Last Sunday the park around the corner from our house re-opened. They had closed down a few months ago in order to redo all the park equipment. Massey Matters, an organization we have worked with in the past, started planning a big community event around the reopening and Skylar and I were invited to help organize and plan it. It was great getting in on such a big event.

Our church volunteered to give out free drinks on the day to coincide with the free sausage sizzle that one of the other organizations was putting on. It turned out to be great publicity for the church. We handed out several fliers with our info on them. We even saw some of the people we volunteered with at Operation Christmas Child.

The opening was all about the new park equipment that had been added, specifically the Flying Fox - a 40 meter zipline.

The sad part was that they had to close down the zipline halfway through the opening so they can make some adjustments to it for safety's sake.

They also added a rope jungle gym referred to as the Spider Web.

We decided it would be a great photo op for the church.

An International Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T22:12:00.003+13:00

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving with all our American friends. It is not a Kiwi holiday, so it's not a special day here, which meant that all the stores were open for that last minute shopping. I was incharge of making pecan pie and sweet potatoes. Not as easy as it might seem though. There isn't any Karo syrup here and I had to go to 4 stores before I found any glucose syrup, which works as a substitute for Karo. (But it is way stickier and completely grossed me out, not to mention making my counters sticky beyond belief.) Then came the sweet potatoes which you might think would be straight forward. But there aren't any regular marshmallows to go on top. They only sell flavored marshmallows, either rainbow or vanilla. So I chose the vanilla flavored ones. The funny part was that they are white and pink. So when they melted, the colors melted together. It was pretty awesome looking!

I was told that the colors clashed though.

We of course ate leftovers today and reheated the sweet potatoes for everyone. Since there was a large empty part of the pan, as the marshmallows heated up, they melted into the empty part of the pan and it looked even weirder!

I have to say it has taken us a while to get used to cooking with what is available here. It's not that it's bad, it's just that everything is called something different and some of the dishes that are so normal to us aren't even known here, like pecan pie, red beans and rice and jambalaya. People here don't eat those dishes so it's hard to find the stuff to cook them. But I am slowly figuring it out.

Overall, it was a great Thanksgiving. All the important dishes were there including turkey, ham, green bean casserole, stuffing, deviled eggs and fruit salad. It was a little dose of home.

Official End of the Series

2008-11-25T14:37:00.004+13:00

Last Sunday we met and officially ended our first lesson series. We are going to be meeting at Starbucks for the lesson part of our series for the summer and so met there this Sunday. We discussed how the lesson went, everyone's favorites and what had the most impact. It was interesting to see what each person took away when we all heard the same lesson. It was good to look back on it and have a sense of completion.

While the guys were teaching the adults, the girls had all been taking turns, in four week increments, teaching the children's class, which just consists of Rylee, the Cherry's little girl for now. The last four weeks were my turn and our very last lesson just seemed to be the best. The series started in the beginning of the gospels and has gone through different stories about Jesus. The last lesson was about Jesus going into the temple and turning over the money tables. At first I kind of struggled with how you teach that effectively to a three year old, but it turned out great. The lesson came with a great, uncomplicated story we were able to read. But then to really cement the story in Rylee's head, I brought all the toys we usually play with when she comes to my house. Rylee is really into pretend play and likes to have different stuffed animals and dolls play a part in the story. We set up an entire marketplace in our classroom and had all our favorite friends pretend to be sellers in the marketplace. And our favorites got to pretend to be Jesus. Batman stood in as Jesus once and Spiderman took a turn as well. (These two seem to be Rylee's favorites at our house.) And just so you wouldn't all feel left out, we took pictures of our class!

If you look closely you'll see we even put money on the tables and each person had animals they were selling. We didn't have the cattle, sheep and doves from the story, so we had our other animals pretend. If you look carefully at the middle picture, you can see Batman sitting at a table with a huge hedgehog behind him. There's also a large giraffe, a polar bear, a horse and a couple of dogs. They are all of course pretending to be the animals from the story. At least that's what Rylee thinks. Turned out to be the best class for the two of us. Even the activities worked together to make it a particularly fun and fruitful class. We had a secret message to discover and Rylee got to make up a story about herself standing up for something like Jesus did. We actually didn't have enough time to finish all our stuff before we were called back to finish service with the rest of church. But we were having so much fun and learning so much that we both agreed to finish up afterward.

Wrapping it up.

2008-11-15T00:05:00.004+13:00

I finished putting together the last lesson of our 12 week series of "No religion just Jesus" today. It's been a great series and I'm extremely thankful for what I've learned. I really enjoyed putting my lessons together and challenging myself to find creative and effective ways preach God's word. Our next series will be about the various parable of Jesus. Once again keeping the focus on Jesus while looking at what applications we can make for our lives.

Please keep us in your prayers as we make our transition to our summer series and seek new and different ways to spread the gospel in New Zealand. We really want to do the best we can to share the message of Jesus and are always trying to learn what the needs are of our community and how to best meet them. Each day we are growing in our understanding of the kiwi culture which will ultimately prove fruitful when it comes to teaching them the gospel.

Grace and Peace

New Neighbors

2008-11-01T00:17:00.002+13:00

We met one of our new neighbors yesterday. A friend of ours had come over to pick up a book and was chatting with us before leaving. We got a knock on the door and it was one of our neighbors. She asked if we had a gray car parked across the street, which we didn't. However, our friend perked up and said that he did. Then she informed us that the car had rolled down the street!

So our friend took off down the street after his car. Luckily, his car hadn't hit anything and had just rolled right onto the other side of the road just in front of someones fence. It looked like he had just parked right there in front of another neighbors fence.

We were all pretty glad that nothing had been clipped or hit or anything. It was fairly bizarre though.

Operation Christmas Child

2008-10-25T23:45:00.003+13:00

Yesterday we went and dropped off some boxes for a local Christmas charity. It is called Operation Christmas Child. To participate you fill a shoe box with a list of different types of things for a child in a particular age group. We picked a boy from age 5-9 and a girl age 10-14. You have to include lots of different things including something to love, something to play with and something to wear.

It was interesting trying to get all that kind of stuff into one medium size shoebox, but we have quite a bit of experience at packing now. So, we did a pretty good job.

Next Friday we are going down to the drop off zone to volunteer. We'll be going through all the boxes to make sure they don't have anything in them that they aren't supposed to have and that they are full as well. I'm looking forward to seeing what others have filled their boxes with.

Friend in the Hospital

2008-10-23T14:34:00.001+13:00

I recently found out I have a friend in the hospital with cirrhosis of the liver. He is only in his twenties and may have to have a liver transplant. Please pray for him! His name is Jason.

He will be talking with the doctor over the next few days to decide what is the best course of action for him. I will update you all as I get information.

Holiday Program

2008-10-23T14:13:00.002+13:00

Here in New Zealand, school is done a bit differently. Instead of two semesters, kiwi kids have 4 terms. The summer break (which incidentally includes Christmas) is only about a month and a half long. Between all the other school terms, there is only a 2 week break. So, during those 2 week breaks, all kinds of places host school holiday programs. This is a place where parents can take their kids during the break and the kids can play, learn and generally just have fun. Each program is unique, all varying on how structured and educationally minded it is.

Our nearby community house has been hosting a school holiday program for years, but just so happened to be short on staff this past school holiday. And we jsut so happened to walk in the week before and ask if the community house had any volunteer opportunities. So Jane, the community house leader jumped on the opportunity to get some more volunteer staff around. So in the midst of packing, painting and moving, we helped out with the school holiday program.

It was a blast! There were anywhere from 10 to 20 kids on any given day and we mostly just organized different ways to play, do crafts and cook with them all day - 8:30am to 5:30pm. By the time we got home, we were completely worn out!

We made pinatas, cooked homemade pizzas, put on a play, a fashion show and a talent contest, among other things. The kids all got a certificate at the end of the program commending them for something they did well. It was a really fun experience and Skylar was extremely popular among the kids. He was the only guy on staff, so all the little boys were happy for a big boy to play with. We also learned all the names for the New Zealand versions of playground games. For instance, they don't play 'tag,' they play 'tigi' and you're not 'it,' you are 'in.' Also, the don't play 'freeze tag' - they play 'stick in the mud.' But all the rules are completely the same. Or, they play a different version of freeze tag called 'octopus' where once you are frozen, you turn into seaweed and have to wave your arms around (like seaweed) and try and tag the remaining players until everyone is tagged.

It was great to be surrounded by so many kiwi kids. We learned so many norms, that we hadn't picked up on until we were surrounded in kids. And we also met several adults, either staff that we worked alongside, or some of the kids parents who have been involved in events at the community house for years.

It was a really great opportunity to meet people in our community. I'm pretty sure we will volunteer at the next Holiday Program in January.

We made the move!!!

2008-10-14T23:33:00.003+13:00

We are really excited about our new house. It's a lot more open and spacious than the other one. We did give up a few things but in the long run what we gained will definitely be better. It's a four bedroom house with an internal garage and cheaper rent!

The picture above is from the corner our our dining area looking into the livingroom with the kitchen to the left. As you can tell it's still a little messy. You should see how messy Morgan's craft room is, the room can't contain it. I don't think she would approve of me posting a picture of it on the internet. You can also see that one of our curtins are green and the other is tan, we wanted to see what it looked like before we bought the new rods. Morgan is fixing them right now as I'm typing this. Don't worry, I would only be in the way if I was helping her other wise I'd be offering a helping hand.

The move was fairly easy, we only had to move a block down the road. We can see our old house out our livingroom window, the one with the tan curtin on it. Another thing that made it so easy was the amount of help we had, so thanks to Lij, Kris, Justin (and Jenifer for watching Ry so Justin could help), Neil, and Tufi, who is quite the muscle man.

Our first hosting event will be a card playing night. Neil and a girl we met during a holiday program we helped out with (which we'll right another blog about to let you know of all the fun details) wanted to learn some of our favorite card games. It will be a fun and casual night so hopefully we can have our house cleaned by then or at least not so messy that people can't feel relaxed!!!

Free Drinks

2008-10-04T16:42:00.002+13:00

Within one hour around 200 people were given a great sense of refreshment. As a service project we decided to go to one of our local parks and hand out free drinks, we had powerade, soda, juices and water. We split up into two groups to make sure that as many people as possible had a chance to get a drink. One group was near the playground area while the other was at the skate park. Mo and I were at the skate park and as soon as everyone noticed that we were giving away free drinks it was like a mad house. People flocked to us and had a look on there face of pure joy. We saw plenty of double takes as well. Justin had a convesation with one guy where he had to convince the guy that it was free, you know, the free, free. The powerades were the first to go but we had back ups and most everyone was willing to pass on the water and wait for the powerades.

We wanted to show the people God's love in a practical way and I think the drinks worked just fine. It was a perfect day at the park and the people looked thirsty. We have some other projects that we plan on doing out in the community so please pray that they go as well as this one did.

Last 2 weeks

2008-09-29T17:24:00.002+13:00

Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks. About two weeks ago, Jenn, Kristen and I all went down to Rotorua for the annual Ladies Challenge for all the women from the churches here in New Zealand. We didn't get to stay all the way through the retreat, but even just the couple of days we got were great. We really enjoyed ourselves. The lessons were really good and the fellowship was even better. I was able to meet ladies from all around the country and it was a real encouragement for me.

The Friday after we came back, Skylar and I and the Cherries went down to Tauranga for a lock-in they hosted for NZ's church youth. We also brought Neil, a regular attender of our church with us. We all showed up around 6:30 for dinner and stayed until 8:00 the next morning. I'm proud to say we both were able to stay awake the whole night. But by morning we were pretty exhausted. So before our 2 1/2 hour drvie back up to Auckland, we crashed at a friends house for a couple of hours. It was enough to last us for the rest of the day, thankfully. Neil was able to meet lots of the great youth from the church around the country and we all had a great time fellowshipping, singing and not sleeping.

That was last Friday. The next two weeks, Skylar and I are helping out with a Holiday School Program at the local community house. Skylar just walked in the other day to see what kind of community programs they have going on there and it turned out they needed some help. We just started today and it was a blast. There are about 15 kids that come to the program, sometimes more, sometimes less, and we get to spend the whole day with them. There are a few other workers that also help out. Turns out, one of them is interested in checking out our church. She is a young university student here in Auckland and says she's been looking for a local church lately. Good timing!

On top of all that, we've got to start packing pretty soon since we are moving in a week and a half. Lucky for us, we haven't accumulated too much junk just yet. Of course that doesn't include all my craft stuff!

New House

2008-09-23T18:56:00.002+12:00

A couple of months ago, we found out our landlords were looking to sell the house. So we started looking around for a new house and just found one down the street. We are moving on October 10th.

Our new house is actually a much better space for a better price. It will work out better for us.

I am kind of excited to move. I am just ready to get into a space that I will be able to keep for a while. We were able to set the lease agreement on this house to last until three days before our visas expire. So just about perfect timing. Skylar on the other hand is not so excited. He really hates moving. He does like the new house though, so there's a chance he will be able to work through the pain.

So prepare yourself to see pictures of us moving again and then some of our new house after we get settled.

Unexpected Intermission

2008-09-14T22:40:00.003+12:00

So we had our third official Sunday service today and had quite an unexpected intermission between the lesson and the communion. Just before Justin was done with his lesson, Kristen came in from outside and quietly asked Elijah for some help outside. Thinking nothing of it, we continued on with the lesson. A few minutes later, Justin finished and we went to gather everyone together for the communion. That's when we found Elijah outside, determinedly holding down the tent from blowing away. You see, Kristen has been teaching the children's class outside in the front yard underneath a party tent. It got pretty windy this morning and the tent sort of half collapsed on her and Rylee during class. That's when she got Elijah. He told her he'd take care of it while they continued class inside. Elijah apparently hadn't anticipated how he would be taking the tent down in the wind by himself. It very nearly blew away into the neighbors yard while they were mowing. Thankfully, Elijah managed to hold onto it before the rest of us hurried outside. This is what we looked like.

That's Niel, our steadfast visitor and my sister in the picture with the team. We are holding the tent during some wind gusts. Actually I don't guess it really was gusting - it was pretty much consistent. Didn't take us too long to pull it all apart and get back to service though.

Some of the poles were bent to the point we probably won't be able to use them again. Not sure if we'll have to get a whole new tent or what. But I imagine we were quite a sight to see.

So instead of singing a song before communion, we took down a tent!

Aswesome weekend.

2008-09-08T11:25:00.002+12:00

It all started about five in the afternoon on Friday. Once a month the Massey Leisure Center allows an event called Raise up and Represent to be hosted in their building. It's an event for teenagers from 13-18 to come and enjoy some really loud music, play basketball, jump on trampolines and just hang out. Justin Cherry and I showed up to help set up at five but the event started at eight and went to eleven. It was great. The kids were awesome, you had a few that have to prove their toughness every once and a while but other than that it was great to see the kids just get to be themselves. Justin and I were part of the staff for the event and just had to walk around and make sure the peace was being maintained. It was easy for me to blend in seeing how small I am and how young I look. I got offered some gang protection by some kid and was also told that my red sure could mean that I'm part of a gang so I better watch out. Thankfully I have the church as my "gang" and have God as the one watching my back!

I got home around twelve or so, clean up at the event went fairly fast, but when I got home I couldn't fall asleep. I really needed to because at five in the morning on Saturday, Brandy my sister in law, was getting off her plane to enjoy a two week holiday with us. So Morgan and I staggered into the airport to pick up Brandy and make sure we keep her awake until later that night, it helps with jet lag. I have to confess, I cheated, I took a nap. It was while the girls were out shopping. It was only two hours, just enough to clear my head so that I could finish my lesson for Sunday morning.

Sunday morning was good. I've been by some that they enjoyed the lesson but as for me it was one of those lessons that you knew what you wanted to say and how it was suppose to come out but it just didn't happen. It was the first time I manuscripted a lesson so the next time I'm going to try something different. I'll still manuscript the lesson for us to keep a record of but I'm definitely going to change the way I present it. We didn't have any new visitors but all in due time.

Well that was our weekend. We had some good whether and some good times. We'll definitely keep you guys posted as new things come along. Thanks for your time and interest. Grace and peace. SkyandMo

In the bag

2008-09-02T00:10:00.002+12:00

It wasn't 10:33 but we did start our first public service yesterday. The tea was good, the biscuits were good, the bread was good, the lesson was good, the conversations were good, even the weather was good,what can I say it was a good day.

We were blessed with three visitors, John, Caroline, and Neil. It made for a good personal setting. We all knew house church was going to be a different feel for us so it was a learning experience as to what things were going to look like at the Peter's house. Next week is my turn to preach so I will do my best to take what I've learned and use it wisely.

We're really looking forward to how this church is going to evolve. We know that there were many prayers offered on our behalf so a special thanks to all of you. We know that you are going to continue to pray for us so thank you in advance.

Ready...Set...Go!!!

2008-08-30T23:43:00.004+12:00

As of 10:33 tomorrow morning we will begin our first public worship. We're all looking forward to this new journey God is about to take us on. Lots of fears to concur, roads of unknowns to uncover, faith's to be stretched, joys to be shared and laughters to be heard. It's hard to put in words what my mind is thinking right now, so for those of you who can read minds will you tell everyone else what I'm thinking right now. Forward the message to me as well.

It's awesome to think that all our preparation is about to come to a culmination. Mo and I have been painting signs for the past three days, so were glad to see that preparation finished. Everyone else has been using there gifts adding bits and pieces to make this new journey all point back to God. I'm really excited about this 12 week series we've put together. Everyone has shared some input so each lesson will have it's own unique flavor. I've never planned this far ahead for any lesson so the anticipation has been building for quite a while.

Thank you to all of you who have prayed and partnered with us in this mission. It really means a lot to Mo and I that you believe in us. It wasn't to long ago that I was just some punk on the street, looking for my next thrill with no direction in my life and now I'm a Bible School graduate on a church planting team, on the other side of the world about to launch a church! Who would have thunk it?

So, ready...set...and we're off !!!

A day before the Throne

2008-08-24T22:25:00.002+12:00

I don't want to sound selfish, but I like it when people pray about me, it's even better when you have a full day of it. Our morning started with the North Shore congregation inviting us to worship with them while they had the elders and their wifes lay hands on us to pray over us. It got even better when we were given a free lunch.

We had to leave a little early to get ready for the rest of our day. The Peters were hosting a prayer meting at their house to prepare for our church launch on the 31st. We were blessed with about 15-20 people showing up from various congregations to show their support in our work. We were really encouraged by the amount of assurance we received and really feel like we have strong backing from the established churches here.

So all in all it was a good day, even though all the prayers weren't about me.

Team Update

2008-08-22T00:51:00.002+12:00

Well if you've been reading our teammates' blogs, then you already know about the following news. But just in case you prefer just to hear our angle, here goes:

Jennifer has almost completely recovered from the Bell's Palsy she came down with about two months ago. She is feeling much better and looking very pregnant at 22 weeks. She is due in mid-December and hoping for an early delivery. They are expecting a baby boy!

Kristen is also pregnant and due in March. They don't know yet whether it's a girl or boy, but we'll try to keep you updated on that.

So, one way or another, we are growing the church! That's almost 20% growth right there!

Hitting the books

2008-08-16T11:33:00.002+12:00

As of Thursday the 14 we finished our brainstorming meetings for our 12 week teaching series for our church plant. We really wanted to collaborate on our ideas to be more organized and inventive in sharing the word of God.

I wanted to write this blog just to let you know what the lessons are that I'm doing and ask for your prayers.

1. "March of the unqualified" How God can use imperfect people to bring about His perfect plan

2. "The devotion of Jesus" Showing the extent that Jesus went through to save mankind

3. "King of fools" God's ability to use what is "foolish" to shame the wise and save man

4. "What Jesus give us" Describing some of the eternal blessing found in Christ

So those are my four lessons for the next 12 weeks. I'll be doing to of them almost back to back and then I have a huge break in the middle. I'm hoping that during this break in the middle I can spend a lot of time doing follow-up. Our team is getting excited and anxious about our near future so any prayers or thoughts you want to share with us would be appreciated.

Another round of classes

2008-08-14T18:11:00.003+12:00

Since last term's classes went so well, we decided to go ahead and sign up for another round. I am taking the sewing class again and Skylar is taking an Italian Cooking class. Yum!

Our classes started last Monday and I realized I hadn't shown you all how it turned out. So here goes:

I made this jacket during our last class. Well, actually, I made most of it. I didn't quite get it finished until a couple weeks after class finished. It was a bit involved. But I totally love it and wear it almost all the time.

My class this time has about half of the same people as last time, so it'll be great getting to know them better. This time I'll be working on something for Skylar - a hoodie to be exact, as if he didn't have enough already. Stay tuned to see how it turns out.

Massey High School

2008-08-13T22:00:00.003+12:00

Through our involvement with Massey Matters Skylar and I have been asked to participate in a project with some kids from the Massey High School. The high school has an environmental group that are interested in doing some kind of service project around in the community. We were put in contact with Angie Wiggins who works both with the high school and with Massey Matters. She has been working with the group in the past but will be needing a break to take some maternity leave. She's going to show us the ropes in the next couple of weeks and then leave us to it for a while.

We will just be the facilitators and motivators of the group. The point is really to encourage them to make some decisions on their own and help them to achieve their goals.

The group has decided to improve the local bus stops, some of which have been vandalized and are unsafe. They will have to make a case to the City Council for their desired changes and then will have to present their plan for improvement. We will be helping the kids think through and develop their proposal.

It seems like a great chance to work alongside some very intelligent and motivated kids from the community. We met several of them last Tuesday and they were very impressive. They had some great ideas for how they wanted to work together to achieve their goal. It will be awesome to see the relationships develop over the next couple of months as they pursue making this positive change in Massey.

Massey Matters Community Forum

2008-08-13T21:53:00.003+12:00

Tonight was the Massey Matters Community Forum. Massey Matters is an organization that the Waitakere City Council developed to bring the Massey community together and address social problems in the area. Each month they have a community forum with differing topics. This month they were going over projects that were funded this year through Massey Matters and also discussing ideas for next year. We volunteered to pass out fliers for the event and to help set up and take down all the chairs and such.

We were able to participate in some group discussions on ideas for improvement of Massey. It was sort of a brainstorming session with people throwing all kinds of ideas out there ranging from improving the local parks to market days to mentoring programs. It was amazing to see local people stepping up and getting interested in their community. The range of ages and ethnicities was amazing. All kinds of people turned out for the event. It sounds like there will be a lot going on in Massey in the year to come. It will be interesting to see which projects get the go ahead and what comes of them all.

Imagine

2008-08-05T18:50:00.002+12:00

We decided to be a little creative in presenting the hopes and desires we have in our mission here, anywhere for that matter. Hope you enjoy. If you'd like to present or show this in your congregation just email me and we can get it to you.

Re-dedication of Laidlaw College

2008-08-05T00:20:00.002+12:00

Saturday night I attended the re-dedication of the Laidlaw College with Mary from Tauranga. She was coming up for the event and invited me to come along. The College was formally known as the Bible College of New Zealand. They decided to rededicate and re-name the college and settled on Laidlaw because it was the name of one of their founders.

It was a great event. They began with a Maori welcome and dance. They also had a middle school choir sing the national anthem and do the haka. It was great to see some of the Maori culture first-hand.

For the re-dedication, they also re-purposed the college. They had several speakers for the event and they all melded together well. They spoke on the main goal of the college, for people to know the gospel, to know the culture and to translate well. They spoke about being fully Christian and fully immersed in your community. One of the speakers included the top Youth Court judge in NZ. He is a Christian and yet is also perfectly positioned in his community to make a difference.

It was a really inspiring event. Three hours flew by like nothing. I couldn't believe it had actually been that long. It will be interesting to see how the community reacts to the new name and goal of the college.

It also felt good to be in the know on an event happening in my community before others. Usually we still feel like we're catching up since we are still so new in NZ.

Men's Challenge

2008-07-31T01:10:00.003+12:00

This weekend the guys and myself will be heading three hours south to Rotorua for a men's challenge, and leadership seminar. It starts on Thursday and will end on Sunday. This is a weekend for men in the New Zealand Churches of Christ to pull from each other's resources and gain a few more insights into the ministry. We were fortunate to go in 2006 and hope that we will only build on the relationships and community we've previous formed. It's a tad bit colder and way more saturated with rain then last time so we'll be spending a bit more time inside than out enjoying the different scenery.

Your prayers would be appreciated in regards to travel seeing as how there's a large storm blowing through. Also, please pray that this will be a time that we as a team can be benefited and further spurred on in spreading the gospel in this great country.

A walk in the park

2008-07-22T18:41:00.002+12:00

From out one of our windows we can see quite a bit. A huge reserve (land dedicated to wildlife where no houses could be built) the tail side of a park and the backside of another park, and yes the famous Sky Tower. It's easier to tell all this because of an aerial map I just received. I wouldn't need the aerial map to see the Sky Tower though, it's quite obvious.

With this map I was asked to take a walk in the park. Massey Matters and the Waitakere City Council is looking to make some investments in West Auckland's parks. I was asked to take a look at the parks and request certain objects such as BBQ grills, extra tables, etc to make our local parks a little more inviting.

I must admit, at first I wasn't to excited but then I started to think about the potential this has. I was asked to make the park a better place for more people to come and spend time with each other. Fran from Massey Matters said one of the things they are thinking about doing in the future is to have a park movie night. Which is awesome because that is something we were wanting to do as well we just didn't quite know how to go about it. So what I got from this "walk in the park" meeting was, I get to think of all kinds of ideas that would invite people to get together and have a stable organization to work alongside with to make it happen.

So, please be in prayer about this. One, that I can get others interested in this opportunity, two, that my creative side will come out, and three that whatever happens in this that God will be evident and exalted.

Pray for Jenn

2008-07-08T11:26:00.002+12:00

This weekend, Jennifer Cherry, our teammate came down with Bell's Palsy. Please keep her in your prayers. While the condition typically clears up in a few weeks to a couple months, there's a chance it won't. Apparently this is fairly common among pregnant women in the winter.

Jenn is worried about it not going away and stressing somewhat, naturally. Please keep her in your prayers. Pray that it does not keep her down and that she will continue to embrace her new life here in New Zealand. Pray that we would be a good support group for her while she is dealing with having Bell's Palsy while away from her family.

Fourth of July weekend

2008-07-08T11:17:00.002+12:00

This weekend was Fourth of July weekend which doesn't mean anything in New Zealand. But we celebrated anyway. We all headed over to the Cherry's house and grilled even though it was around 50 degrees and raining. We had a blast! We stuffed ourselves silly and then all hung out and played games. And then we ate some more!

Fourth of July in another country isn't quite the same as celebrating in your own country. There weren't any fireworks and everyone was working since it wasn't a national holiday here. But at least we had each other!

Massey Matters

2008-07-03T15:46:00.000+12:00

The other day we had a great and insightful meeting with an organization called Massey Matters. It’s an organization that started 2 yrs ago and is funded through the Waitakere City Council to help the community.

We wanted to meet with them to figure out ways we could work together to help out our local community. Since they’ve only started a few years ago we are getting in at ground level and hopefully can find a place to make a long term impact. They were extremely excited to have a group of volunteers. They said they are used to people asking for funds but to have a group ask how they could be of service was quite unexpected. There are a lot of people connected to Massey Matters so we’re excited about meeting people of influence in West Auckland.

Partnering with them will provide us with great opportunities to serve that we wouldn’t have otherwise known. Here are some needs that they’ve shared with us that Massey has that you could be praying about as we seek to find ways to help.

-Early childhood education

-Youth activities

-Prevention of family violence

-Connecting neighborhoods

-Creating more physical activities “Active Massey”

Right now we are on an emailing list that will let us know where we can help so hopefully our mailbox will be filling up with ways to be Christ to the world.

Sweet aroma of productivity!

2008-06-26T11:11:00.003+12:00

Last night was a very productive team meeting. We had a full list to talk about and got all the way through with little distractions, which is good for us. Two major decisions came out of this meeting, our start date for our launch and the curriculum we'll be teaching.

Our launch date will be August 31st. This will become a very important date in our team's history so we request that you pray that this be a successful and memorable day. Right now for me I'm excited and filled with anticipation but as the day drawls near I'll probably be stressing out and have heartburn like crazy so please pray that I can keep that excitement up to and through that day.

So from now until our launch we will be developing our 12 week series of "No religion, just Jesus". In this series we are hoping to let Jesus speak for Himself. So many times we come to the table with our preconceived ideas and false impressions rather that letting history speak for itself. We're hoping to share with people the real Jesus and the impact He desires to have on this world and our lives.

This is a huge step in our efforts to impact New Zealand. I hope that in your prayers you will share in our joy and praise for what God has done through us so far. I want to thank all those who have been in prayer for us, for we know that your prayers have been heard and been a constant reminder to me that this dream of ours can and will be done. We're thankful to have all of you as our partners and pray that God continues to show His blessings on you as you've blessed us.

A great dinner

2008-06-19T00:45:00.002+12:00

Fellowship around a meal is always great fellowship. A young adult from my Counseling community class invited Morgan and I to have dinner at his house. We ended up staying for about three hours.

His family migrated here about 16 years ago so he to knows what it's like to adapt to the New Zealand culture so it made for a great time. He is a great person of peace who is seeking to go to a Bible college wanting to get a degree to help him go into full-time youth and family ministry. We plan on inviting him over to our house and continue this great contact for we have a lot of common interest.

Sewing Class

2008-06-16T21:54:00.002+12:00

Tonight was my fifth sewing class and I'm very excited with the progress I've made on my jacket. But more exciting was the conversation I had after class with my teacher and one of my classmates.

They were making a reference to American politics and needed to verify something and that's where I came into the conversation. It moved on to something else and I made a comment that involved my Social Work degree. Turns out that my teacher got into Social Work after retiring from the clothing industry. She offered to bring me some information regarding Social Work associations here in NZ. We talked more about visas and working and volunteer opportunities related to Social Work.

The whole conversation just really excited me. We've been in the cultural adaptation phase of our mission where the main concentration has been on getting settled and used to our new culture. This phase was also provided for culture shock. The two of us haven't felt much in that area so we've been rearing at the gate to get to some "real work." As much as we may feel otherwise, this phase of settling in is necessary. It just felt really good to have that conversation. It just felt like it had been specially placed there in my day by God, just for me. I'm looking forward to having many more of those conversations!

1st All Blacks game

2008-06-15T12:01:00.005+12:00

Man what an experience. In celebration of Elijah's birthday, he chose to go to an All Blacks game.It was the All Blacks versus England, and yes we won. You haven't experienced New Zealand culture until you've been to an All Blacks game. Normally you have a stadium full of people split in half, each cheering for their own team, but when it comes to the All Blacks the whole nation cheers for them. It was quite a sight to see when the All Blacks scored, the whole stadium went crazy, not a single person was sitting down. We even had to stand on our seats at times just to see everything. The stadium was completely full. Elijah said it could hold 40,000 people. It was a massive migration of people once the game was over flooding into the streets, I felt even smaller than I normally do.

Above is a picture of the All Blacks doing what is called the Haka. It's a traditional warrior dance that the Maoris would to intimidate their opponents. I think there might be a little more to it than just that but intimidation is definitely the main thrust of their dance. Everyone quiets down just to hear these men shout that they are a force to be reckoned with. Just "youtube" the event and you will know what I'm talking about.

Since it was an international game they sang each team's national anthem. What was cool about New Zealand's national anthem was they did it in both the native Maori tongue and also in English.

Anyone will tell you that it's not just the game that makes it an experiance. It's also the crowd and the section you were sitting in. Ours was a rowdy one. I believe there were 2 or 3 people kicked out because of fights. To the left of us was a section that started a wave that went around six or seven times. This was an event in and of itself. Each time it came to your section people would throw their plastic bottles up in the air. It was fine at first but then people starting running out of their empty ones and started throwing their full ones. Thankfully we never got hit by a full one but Morgan did get a little beer or coke in her hair. We weren't sure which it was so we began referring to it as the mystery fluid.

Go All Blacks and Happy 25th Birthday Elijah!!

Movie Star

2008-06-13T13:47:00.002+12:00

I always thought it would be cool to order Chinese food from one of those restaurants that give it to you in a box, like they do in the movies. I can’t explain why I just thought it was an interesting way to eat your food, seeing as how I always eat my food on a flat plat or round bowl. So just the other day Morgan and I decided to be like a movie star and go to a restaurant called Noodle Canteen, we ordered number 30 the Nasi Goreng. It was fried rice, veggies and pork. I can’t quite do the chop-sticks so I guess I’m only half a movie star.

It’s been quite exciting getting to experience the different foods here, I don’t think I’ll be “excited” enough to eat sushi though.

Rough Rider!

2008-06-05T21:06:00.003+12:00

When we moved here, we decided we would need two cars. We would just be going in too many different directions all the time. So we split our car budget and have been waiting to get our second car till we found something that would work well for us. We wanted one car that would be a good all around car, 4-door, able to pull a trailer (that's what they do here, cars pulling trailers) and with plenty of room.

That's what we got in our first car.

So for our second car we wanted something that would be really great on gas, pretty efficient, and small (which means easy to park). That's when we found our mini!

It's a 1993 Rover Mini and was nicely priced, easily within our budget. It's everything we were looking for in our second car and we're really happy with it. Although it does ride a little rough! It's kind of like a big go-kart. It's worth it for the great gas mileage though.

A little bit of home

2008-05-31T00:52:00.002+12:00

Recently we got some boxes in the mail from home. Some from my sister (sending me seriously missed craft supplies) and one from Skylar's dad.

We were fortunate enough to get some long missed American favorites in that box. We now have Miracle Whip, Nestle Chocolate Syrup Mix, Velveeta and Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing Mix.

It was amazing to open that box and see some old favorites. (The mayonnaise here just isn't quite the same and you can't even find Miracle Whip, much less Velveeta and all the rest.) However, it has started some reminiscing about some of our old favorites that are not available here. Like:

dill pickles
American Mountain Dew
Blue Bell Ice Cream
Jack-in-the-Box tacos
Sonic
cherry sours (I think I miss these candies the most)
Pace Picante Sauce (or any real salsa for that matter)
Beef jerky!
Jalapenos and banana peppers
Cheetos

I know we can survive without these but sometimes we just get the taste in our mouth for one of these and it's hard to shake. We also really miss free refills. Typically all drinks are sold in a bottle or you only get one fill on your cup. A few places will give you one refill and Burger King gives free refills. That's been a bit hard to get used to.

But it's all been worth it! I would do it over a thousand times and not regret coming here. I firmly believe God led us here. I can't wait to see His plan further unfold in our lives.

But still . . . our first furlough back to the states we're probably going to be binging on all our old faves!

Sewing Class

2008-05-29T21:01:00.002+12:00

This week I had my second sewing class. I've purchased all the material for my project and really got to get into it this class. All the girls in the class seem to really be getting into their projects. There's a kind of camaraderie that's starting to develop among us.

It's been really great to hang out with others living in the same city. We've also been able to meet some of our neighbors living down our right-of-way. Our neighbors right next door, Kipper and Rhonda, have been very helpful to us. They even helped us chop down some of the overgrown trees in the back that were getting in the way of our clothing line. We have some other neighbors across the way, Tongi and Caroline, who have also been helpful with important info, like what day is trash day and allowing us to borrow their phone book until we got ours in.

Kipper and Rhonda also told us that everyone living in the right-of-way has barbeques together in the summer time. They seem to have a sense of community built up.

We are looking forward to the first summer barbie!