New Dreams......

The End of One Season.....

.....The Beginning of Another.


Hi there every one! 
     Ok, The students returned with many crazy stories of  thousands of healings and numerous salvations from India to Fiji, and the Philippines to China, working in extremes from the Slums, to orphanages, in the red light districts, and with the underground church.
Lives of  everyone involved have been changed for good!

My time has also been productive, though not quite so radical. 
I was put in the position to really talk to and influence the lives of a number of young people, and a few families, to share with an open heart and the love of the father. To speak truth and identity. 
It was altogether a lovely time, and through the contacts I have made, and the time I was able to spend just concentrating on the Lord, He has been opening my mind to a few things that might be in my near future.

Now another school complete, not with out many sad good byes and breaking up of a beautiful family. Time again to see the backs of so many brothers and sisters, both older and younger that are so close to my heart. This marks the farewell, not only of students I love, but other staff members who have been with me from the beginning.
As this year comes to an end, I want to thank God for all the phenomenal people that I have met, and the lives I have been able to be a part of, the wonderful parts of the world I have seen and the amazing power of the love and faithfulness of God that I have witnessed. 

As this door closes, and I look forward to the new one in the New Year, I feel God is pulling my vision up into the slightly further future. 
He has given me a heart to do further training for the mission field.
I will stay on in YWAM Zion for the coming school, possibly for a year or more. then I am looking at getting a job to raise money for a second level school, to train further in mission work.
This is all in the prayer process, I have no details on when, where, what or how.... 
may the Lord lead and guide.

Meanwhile, I pray and wait on the Lord for wisdom, as I begin this next period of life, and my living expenses have been raised, so I ask for your support in both prayer and finances, as I continue to follow the Lord into the unknown territory. 

Middle Earth Calls

Hello from the beautiful Waikato!
All the students and their outreach leaders are spread across the globe yet again! This time around I decided to move down to good old Matamata, and get a taste of the real world again.

When I decided to do this the Devil tried his best to overwhelm me. Many small things added up, emotional struggles, alongside the struggle to trust the lord with what He was calling me to do, going against all wordly logic. It came to the point where I truly felt like I was drowning, I fought for things to hold on to, promises to cling to.... but all this head knowledge didn't help, my head said one thing whilst circumstances had my heart convinced that I couldn't trust Him, that He wasn't going to come through, that He was looking elsewhere.  One day I came to the end of it, I was alone on base so in my overwhelmed state I poured out my confusion to my mother over the phone. She kept pointing me to the Lord, and I knew that even though I was struggling to trust Him He was the only one who could get me through.
Then the Lord brought the story of Peter to my mind, God called Him to do something that defied worldly logic, and He does out of faith, while he has his eyes on the Lord, he walks on on water and is able to glorify the Lord, the minuet he lets the I circumstances tell him what is going on, he begins to drown. I realized that I needed to focus my eyes on Him and His glory alone, but how to do that practically I had no idea!  By this time it was time to hit the kitchen again.  I had achieved some sort of release by getting it off my chest, but the problem was far from gone. The Lord led me to put on some beautifully worded songs from King and Country. As I worked He lead my through all the junk that was around me, He helped me set it aside and focus on His overwhelming Glory.  Once I looked at that,'all the things of earth grew strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace'. The problems did not disappear, or even diminish, but they faded and paled in comparison to His all surpassing glory and grace.  They where put in their rightful place.
Things chirped up from there as I continued to walk through the storm on water. Falling in love with Him anew.

The Lecture phase ended and after many sad goodbyes to the amazing group of phenomenal students, some quite teary, and after closing up the kitchen, I boarded a bus for the 6 hour trip to "Middle Earth".
Once I was settled down at my Grandparents, I started the tedious job of job hunting. Creating and printing CVs, going from door to door, looking for work.
Many times these waves threaten to overwhelm me, but as I focus on the Lord and listen closely to His voice all continues to go according to His plan, not mine.And though I don't understand, I know that His was are always the best.
Now as I have slide into this "normal" lifestyle for the next 4 weeks, hanging out with friends going to church and youth group, visiting family, I pray that the Lord has and will continue to provide opportunity after opportunity to spread His love, and I pray that as people look at me, that they see Him.
That through these last few weeks, His light will shine ever greater.

A few prayer requests:
 * That I will have wisdom, guidance and purpose in the last few weeks here
 * Continued financial provision and trust in Him as my living costs are about to go up again

Continued thanks and gratitude to all those who constantly support me with their love, prayers, finances, time and energy. Each of you who help me out in any way, are enabling me to do what Christ has called me to and help me change the world around me, and the world further afield in ways that I would never be able to do otherwise!

The Sun has risen.

Yes the Sun has risen on a new School!!

Week Six of the school has come and gone and are  having a load of fun, just because our Father in Heaven loves us!

The Heavenly Father has challenged me a lot already, in putting our relationship first, before anything else, including the work I do for Him. I feel like I am stepping into a new realm of thoughts, processing, prioritizing and views as I now step into my twenties and realize that I am now no longer a teenager. 

I am being challenged in many new areas of the heart, learning to stay content in where I am at with things, keeping a correct heart posture, and always keeping a positive view point.

I am still kitchen manager here at Zion, and am learning to spice it up, and be creative, while balancing everything that I need to do, and that quite literally, the Joy of the Lord is my strength!

I am also a part of the Revival School which has been a lot of fun! We speak in Churches, Youth groups, and on the street. in the last few weeks we have had 7 salvations and seen a number of healings and encounters with God. We like to follow up the salvations with a bible and the ability to stay in contact, because I believe that discipleship is the key!

Many of you may have heard of the "Burn" that we are planning on doing this upcoming September,
As of the 17th of September, all 50 of us are heading north, to Kaitaia, to join with the local churches there and worship the Lord for 72 solid hours, and to set this place alight with the Glory of the Lord!! We want to bring heaven to earth in this place and shake the atmosphere! We believe that God has called us to do this, to change the spiritual climate, and to help usher in an amazing work of the Lord in this nation! So, please join us at the A&P Sow grounds! Get your singing voices on, focus, your eyes on the Lord, and begin to prepare your hearts for what is about to come!

I am sending a prayer request out, I have a few major decisions to make in a short time and I have having trouble figuring it out. Please pray as these will affect me quite majorly.

Six more weeks and Outreach begins! We are sending teams to India, the Philippines, China, Fiji and NZ! A little heads up on this, and you shall have more info on this soon!

This is just a short update, hope you have an awesome week and God bless you all!

To the Promised Land and Back!

                

Ok Shalom and time for another update! this is late coming, my apologizes 

I am now home safe and sound! 

This is the story of  our trip to Israel from Turkey, our time there, and our interesting trip home. 

After a 2 or three hour flight from Turkey, we had no problems with immigration in Israel, except an extremely through immigration official.  We where met at the gate, after a little bit of confusion, by a friend of the family that we where going to be staying with.   I had breifly met the family when I was young, so I had no real idea what I was to expect.  The family we would be staying with was away for the day, so we would be sharing Shabbat with his family till they got back.

 On the trip from the airport up into the Judean mountains,the couple that picked us up where able to point out biblical sites, and tell us historic stories of nearly every place that we where driving through, We reached the house rested, then joined the family for Shabbat.

 Shabbat is a traditional meal celebrated on friday night, and is a day of rest that extends till Saturday evening.

Later in the evening our host mum came and picked us up, and took us home. I did not remember her at all, but on arrival to the house, we met the father, and he was just as I remembered him

. The next few days we got to meet the rest of the family and explored some of the old city of Jerusalem got to see the western wall, Davids tomb, the upper room,'and a number of other sights. We tried to get on the temple mount, to no avail as we where never there at the right time. The next day we went to a messianic picnic to celebrate Shevot/ the feast of weeks. There was a lot of dancing, music , drama , food, and conversation. It was an amazing experience for me. It brought back many child hood memories, of dancing and singing the same songs in our community back home.

We got to met another young family, and their adorable little children. We got to help them out a lot that week, as well as see and pray around more of Jerusalem. 

We also visited the house of prayer in Jerusalem, we meet and got to  fellowship  with the believers there before spending some amazing time in the upper room, praying for the country, and for the people. We also had to rest for quiet a bit of our time there as a couple of us got sick.

The Western Wall

The Garden tomb - so peaceful! 

The House of Prayer

Part of the Jerusalem, outside the walls.

Me and the wee man at the Shevot picnic - cute ain't he?

Half way through our week there, who turned up to stay as well? None other than our neighbors from back home! We got to hang out with them for a while, and they where amazing enough to take us down to the Dead Sea and to see Masada. It was a great trip and made many happy memories!

Masada - the fortress of Herod  and last standing place of Jewish Zelots

In the fortress, under the Israeli flag

Hiking to Davids Wadi in the Engedi Valley 

Waterfalls at David's Wadi

Floating in the Dead Sea - so much Salt!

 Then we moved on to live with a family in the Negev desert. Yep the desert! Lots of sand, dust and rocks every where! In fact as far as the eye can see. 

The family was amazing, we got to live in their house, as one of the family, and joined in with everything they did. I felt right at home there. Their eldest was the same age as me, and they had six younger children. who I loved to look after. We would help finish building the house, cleaning, cooking, dishes, and my favorite, helping the kids with their homework.

While we where there we would go for evening strolls on the canyon rim, or down into the valley. We also went to a water hole in the middle of the desert, and then hiked out to a Bedouin camp before hiking the long way home. 

We also got to visit with the local believers and their home church, see a talented local Jazz band and

celebrate Brent's 30th Birthday!

The family and us!

The Village

My Israeli sister, Kai.

In the middle of the desert is this little oasis...

Canyons

sand, dust, rocks,

and more canyons.

Bedouin Hospitality

Home Church

local talent

Pool time with the little ones!

From here we kinda flew more solo, we headed on up to Tiberias for our last week in Israel.

We where working with a YWAM contact there, but renting our own apartment. 

It was along bus ride across the country, stopping in at Tel Aviv - the city that parties.

Lake Galalie - where Jesus walked on water....

On arrival we met up with our host, and he gave us a run down n what our week could look like, the lay out of town, and then let us settle in. 

I called dibs on the big room at the end of the house, then went to suss our kitchen out.  I soon found that everything could do with a bit of a clean, so that kept me busy for the rest of the day. 

The rest of the week consisted of resting during the main part of the day, (any thing more was exhausting , it was 42-45 degrees Celsius and humid!) Then shopping, and talking to people on the streets, and singing worship songs. We struck up a friendship with a pair of ladies that we got to see a number of times, we got to share the Gospel with them, tell our testimonies and love on them. 

We got some much needed team time, and processing time.

We also got to meet a guy from Kona, who we hung out with, and he blessed us, prophesied over us.

On our last day there we managed to get to the biggest messianic gathering in Israel with more than 300 believers!  

One of our days was spent traveling to Nazareth, where we got to meet an amazing pastor who brings teams in from all over the world, and trains them  up then sends them out to the surrounding villages.

This got me so pumped to bring a team back into the country and get them working here. This trip though set a record bus-wait for us, breaking our last one of 2 hours, with a 5 hour wait!!   

The view over Tiberias (you can see Syria on a clear day!)

After Tiberias it was time to return home! 

The hourly count down till we landed in NZ began, at 28 hours...

We packed our bags, and caught a bus to Tel Aviv. On boarding we bumped into a Dutch Australian, also traveling home, and happened to be a believer! He traveled with us all the way to Tel Aviv, on to the train with us, and then we parted ways at the security in  the airport. 

The Airport was an interesting story, whilst standing in line for check-in, a security official came up and pulled the boys out of line, well I was not letting them go without me! So I joined them. 

The Officer took us aside , each separately, examined our passports and questioned me so thoroughly about my trip, who I was with, why I was in Turkey, who I met in turkey, why I was in Dubai, what I did in Dubai... I was pretty sure he knew me better than my team did!

 He was very nice about it though,  and put me at ease very quickly.

 This then led to a night in the Turkish airport, before boarding a plane for China, where surprises awaited us...

Upon flying into China, our plane stopped at an unexpected destination, where we where all made to disembark. Upon doing so, we where all gathered into an area and quarantined, before having our temperature checked and being observed before going through security. They where checking us for the Middle East Respiratory Disease that was apparently going around..  

In quarantine, we made friends with this french couple, to soon find out that they too where both headed for New Zealand! Upon going through customs, we went out into the airport, back into security to re-board the same flight! This put our flight behind schedule, so we would have to run at the other end to catch our connecting flight.

On arriving breathless at the check in counter in Beijing, we found that we had JUST missed our flight! The next 3 hours was spent in communicating with the attendant - who's english was quite poor - that we needed a new set of flights to Auckland, and her talking to head quarters. 

After a while she booked all five of us tickets home, and told us that there was reservations made for us in a hotel in Guangzhou! Boy did that get us excited, We ran for our flight, which apparently boarded in 5 minuets! Security held us back and there was no one around at passport control, everything seemed to want us to be late!  Upon finally run marathon (Ok, that's what it FELT like!)

we reached the other departure lounge, only to find that our plane had been delayed.... Oh my gosh!

We had a few more hours to wait, so after eating the food that was handed out to us by airport staff, we all found nooks and crannies to sleep in, to pass away the time.

Eventually we boarded our plane for Guangzhou at some crazy hour in the night, with a quiet plane ride, us all dreaming of what was the first thing we where going to do when we checked into the promised hotel! 

Upon arriving there, we where barraged by taxi drivers wanting to take our luggage, we pushed our way past and tried to find some one to speak to about our reservation..... there was actually No Body! Granted it was 3am in the morning, but still!

The running joke was that "Home is where your luggage is" . Soon the unanimous decision was made to just find a corner and make it home for the next 28hrs of our stay here. 

So home was made in a little nook behind a Wifi station. By the way, the Wifi did not work for us at all and our servers would not let us log in at an internet cafe, so no one back home knew that  we had missed our flight! Bravo! "We're getting a story!"

The next 28 hours was filled with sleeping -lots of it - eating, talking, exploring the airport till we knew it inside out and back to front (well, almost...) and failed attempts at contacting home, then a repeat of the above.... oh and attempting to shower with a drink bottle in the disabled toilets :P

We did manage to make one successful call back home, and informed them that we had missed the plane and that plans had changed! 

Chinese food -  not sure why the egg is brown.....

Games in Beijing

Home No. 1

Home No.2

Starting to get a little bored....

and then a little more bored!

Heading for the plane!

A life time later, we where able to start the process of getting toward our final flight home...

We checked in, went through customs and security and our last wait in the departure lounge.

We arrived in the departure gate three hours before boarding, and decided we where not hanging around there! it was crowded and noisy! We waited else where till boarding time. 

When we got in line I instantly recognized a number of New Zealanders, I felt so happy I just wanted to run up to them and throw my arms around them! I managed to restrain myself though!

Just as we started boarding the plane, our traveling companions, Manuel and Mari got pulled aside and detained by immigration. We feared that they where going to miss yet another flight! We prayed fervently that all would go well, and just as we thought all hope was lost, and the cabin crew prepared for take-off, they arrived and boarded! 

Arriving in New Zealand was so relaxing, recognizing not only the language, but the accent! Seeing friendly faces, and not being treated like just another number, being in familiar territory!

Out of customs and security, to see Nana Beryl there waiting to meet us and take us straight home!

Oh Happy Days!

Then the students returning, hearing their stories and Graduation!

more coming soon......

From the Ends of the Earth!

Shalom from Zin Valley in the Negev desert in Israel!
Our time out of New Zealand has been diverse and amazing, with a little disorder mixed in to it!
We spent three painful and amazing days traveling from New Zealand to Turkey.
We spent a cold night in Sydney, where I got to see my best friend for the first time in almost a year and God provided bus tickets for all of us, so we went to bondai beach for dinner!
After encountering quite some difficulty in customs, and nearly missing our flight, we boarded the plane for a 15 hour plane ride to the amazing city of Dubai. We spent 21 hours there, exploring the skyscrapers, the amazing buildings and architecture, and getting baked in the desert heat.
This was followed by another night in an airport and an early start for Istanbul.

After our arrival in Istanbul and a domestic transfer to Izmir, where we arrived late in the evening, we promptly did not know what to do! 

I had my instructions as to get a bus or taxi, so we headed out to find out if we could get a bus. We soon encountered a language barrier, and had trouble getting across what we needed. We ended up missing our bus, the last one of the day, and the taxi driver could not understand me! We ended up standing there in quite a prediciment, at a loss as to what to do!

I stood there praying quietly, then I heard a voice speaking english behind me. I turned around and saw a young man approaching Douglas, at teh same time he carried on speaking to the guys, and both his accent and his looks said loud and clear "Kiwi/maori". 

It turns out that he recognized Douglas' style of dress and approached us, he was also he found out that we needed to get to our hotel, and had language problems. He introduced us to a turkish friend that he had made on the plan that would help us out. he asked us why we where here, and we told him why and he turned around and said, " so am I!" He was staying in Istanbul for the night and was going to meet us in Odezre in the morning. 

His friend took us over to the taxis and soon got us some one who would drive us there for quiet cheap. So we piled in to the taxi - on the wrong side I must note - and took off. 

We wound our way through strange and beautiful landscape for nearly an hour, by this time the sun was starting to set. just as I sarted to despair that our trip was ever going to end, we rounded a cornerr and we got a perfect view of the place we where going to stay.

A beautiful place, as we drew up, I was in awe of the place, I had never been any where so grand...

We checked in and found our rooms, I dumped my gear, and as sweaty and tired as I was, I was going to explore!!

I soon found out that many of the people in the hotel where from the Netherlands, and I got to bask in the sound of the language again and to practice it. I soon found out where everthing was, and explored the pool area, the pool lounge and disco room, the bar and the resturant, then I found the stage show....with music dramas and dancing, wich I joined,  I knew that this was going to soon be my favorite!                                   

  

The next day I managed to rise fairly early in the morning and attend the AMAZING spread that was put out for breakfast, I then proceded to explore everything in the day light. 

Soon I was convinced to join in with some of the competitions and games set up by the entertainment team. We quickly made friends and I spent the rest of the day hanging out with them, and alot of my spare time during the week aswell. 

I joined in with the zumba and the dart games, proved my hand at table tennis. I swam in the pool and filmed crazy times on the waterslides, along with swimming out to the platoons in the adriatic sea, and got my groove on at the disco!

 

This of course was in my spare time! The conference started the evening of the first day there, and always had one session in the morning and one in the evening after dinner. 

It was an amazing confrence, we learnt a lot about the history of Turkey, and the dealings of Australia and New Zealand with Turkey. We also learnt quite abit about the turkish church history .

We also spent a lot of time in worship, and prayer and intercession for the country and it's people. 

We also got to go to the Selcuk museum, though there wasn't enough room for me to go, that's all good, because we then got to explore ancient ruins of Ephesus. 

There was also a lot of reconciliation, firstly between the turks and the Anzacs, brought on by a powerful haka, lead by Ray Toterewa, our national director in NZ.  This lead to repentance of one nation after the other first to the Turks, then to others, on behalf of thier armies and what they had done to each other. God was present strongly through so much of the entire thing. 

I learnt, so much that I hope to retain, though it was a lot of information cramed into such a small amount of time. 

      I also got to make some amazing friends with the some of the outreach teams that where also there at the confrence. 

I love the turkish people, my room mate was an older turkish woman and she bacame a mother figure to me, she said she loved me like her own daugther. The guys on the entertainmet team where awesome, language barrier or not, we had lots of awesome long talks, as they put up with my endless amounts of questions about thier culture and country. They where alot of fun and I hope to one day see them all again some time, especially my turkish "mamma". 

After a week at this beautiful little corner of the world, we said our sad good byes and headed for the airport.

Another night in the airport and on to Israel! The promised land, WOOOH!