The winterless north

Hi again everyone

I've just come back from 6 days in Whangarei with Paul, Sharon, & Josh Buick and their church, Life City Church. A team of 5 of us went up and we had a blast. Unfortunately the weather wasn't quite the best of spring, but still the week was bliman good. We joined in on the church's activities for the week. On Tues night we met with their leaders & emerging leaders - just told them how we'd discovered God's call on our lives to be a missionary. It was flippin cool to see how much the leadership team enjoys being together. They put on a good feed for tea, which always adds to the enjoyment. Everybody was extremely welcoming & very hospitable all week; a real honour. We also got a great welcome from our hosts' dogs; this 1 is called Sox.

On Wed we did some walking around town as individuals, asking God to give us insight into the city. I hadn't done much of that sort of stuff before but it was really cool when the 5 of us got back together and compared notes: we all detected similar stuff. On Wed night we took the cell group and looked at some Biblical principles of sharing the news of Jesus Christ cross-culturally. Asked them to give us their ideas of various cultural groups in Whangarei and think about how they could present God to them. Did some other stuff too; probably tried to fit too much stuff into 1 evening but it's all good. It was cool that some of the stuff we'd felt on our prayer walk was what they said about Whangarei too! Reassuring eh.

Thurs night we led the prayer group. Paul led worship with Josh & another young guy Pomaka, and we just listened to what God was saying to them as a church in Whangarei. It was great to hear what God was saying Scripturally & prophetically!

On Sat we helped out a bit at their garage sale, with profits going towards a team of youth going on a short term trip to one of the islands next year. Did a sausage sizzle too. The hall they hired was chocka with stuff & it's surprising what went (1 man's junk is another man's treasure eh). But they raised $1100!! Flippin cool.

Sunday morning we preached & did communion and on Sunday night I preached and I think it went reasonably well. Really cool to see a good proportion of Maori & Pacific Islanders in their church; gotta love that cross-cultural stuff! One of the cool things that happened up there was the buzz I got seeing the church people having fun when they got together no matter what the occasion. And that was even more significant given the variety in age, race, & socio-economic situations. We're all 1 in Christ! Over the course of the week a fabulous connection was made between Life City Church & WEC - all credit to Paul & Sharon's openness & loving hospitality.

That's pretty much all the goss for now. I'm REALLY looking forward to seeing all you Chch people again soon. I'm driving home over Labour Weekend so not long now.

Em