Kia Ora from the greenest place on earth!
I cannot believe that I have only been in Tauranga a month because it has already started to feel like my home away from home.
From leaving LAX airport at 11:00pm Thursday night January 11th, it took 12.5 hours, 300 passengers and a whole bunch of jet lag later to finally arrive in Auckland, New Zealand around 9:00am Saturday morning the 13th.
So now I can say that I have officially experienced time travel, due to our crossing of the International Date Line.
I don’t know what happened to Friday...
I had the privilege to travel with two girls from the states: Madeline Thorpe from Pennsylvania and Maeve Cooney from Maryland. It was so cool that God connected us because the biggest doubt I was having in the transition to New Zealand was just that: the transition. I have never taken that long of a flight in my life and between customs and baggage claim I was basically dreading the whole thing. So the fact that I was going to be traveling with girls heading to the same place as me was a huge relief.
I laughed on the shuttle bus ride that was taking us to the Marine Reach Base in Tauranga because I don’t think I’ve ever seen sheep, deer and cows all in same car ride before.
Upon arrival at the base we were immediately greeted by our lively staff and given the tour of the base. The moment I walked out the back door my breath was just taken away at the view that I would now have the privilege to call my backyard.
Then I was shown to my room, aka “the treehouse” (Not literally)
Although I soon learned that it was going to feel somewhat like one with five other girls living in this camper-style mod-com with bunk beds to sleep in. It was also interesting to find out that four of the other girls were from different countries– making a total of five nationalities in one room... this was going to be fun. Two girls from the US. One from Germany. One from Norway. One from Sweden. One from Switzerland. And I have never adored such a diverse group of girls in my entire life.
At first, I thought “We are all so different this is never going to work.” And then I realized how much those differences brought us together and before I knew it we were treating each other like the sisters we never had. Just the second night I found myself in the chapel around 11:00pm talking with my favorite Latino-Swede friend, Rebecca, about how blessed we are to even be here right now.
The fact that people from all around the world felt called to come to New Zealand at the same time is remarkable. And the cool part is that the first week was dedicated to telling life stories. So not only did I get to meet these wonderful people, but by the end of the first five days I felt like I had known them my my whole life. We started going on adventures in Gideon’s Valley with people we hadn’t even talked to yet and found that we were all falling in love with it as fast as the people around us.
And the thing that brought us all together was the fact that we had all struggled with the same things. We were able to empathize with each other and accept one another for who God created us to be and not the mistakes we’ve made. I never imagined the people I’m planning on spending the next five months with as being so broken... but that just makes us able to relate to each other so much more.
When it came to sharing my own story I was actually quite intimidated because I didn’t feel like mine even came close to measuring up to theirs.
These are people who have gone through it all– emotionally and physically. It broke my heart every time one of my brothers or sisters in Christ bore the most darkest parts of their hearts and souls to us. I cried with them as they relived every painful detail they had shoved to the deepest parts of their memories, prayed for them as they learned how to let it all go and accept the forgiveness our Father is dying to lavish on them, and laughed with them as God replaced the bitter holes in their hearts with his abundant love and joy.
At first it seemed unfair how good the Lord has been to me so that I was ashamed to share at first.
Then He convicted me because my story just goes to show how God has come through again and again in my life. Mine is a testimony to God’s good and perfect timing. Not that my story is short of hardships because it is not. But I learned that my story is one worthy of being told and one that people want to hear.
After I shared I got to spend some personal prayer time with staff members from my “Wild Heart” stream. It was amazing how through just sharing about my life, our school leader, Cheyne, was able to see the things I was struggling with even when I was not. The staff helped me pray though the root of these, laying down the sins I was still holding onto and allowing the Lord’s overwhelming peace and contagious love envelop me and it felt like weights were just lifted from my shoulders.
During this precious time of reflection I was exposed to the vision that God can give us when we set down our sins before his feet. An even richer level of communication and relationship is formed. One of the staff members actually started to see a beautiful picture that caught my attention. She told me that when she saw a globe; and specifically she saw my feet touching the nations of the world and a light radiating from the places I encountered.
My heart jumped into my throat.
What she was describing sounded vividly like an art sculpture that I created for my senior year AP Literature project less than a year ago. I’ve never met this girl before in my life and all of a sudden she is telling me about something that I made! Tears of joy filled me as I knew how God was working through her even if she didn't.
That is just a small way God has been moving while I’ve been here. He’s been connecting some of the most amazing stories in what a better place than New Zealand?
The lectures have been so transformational and challenged me so much that I’m growing stronger into the person God has intended me to be every single day. The speakers literally turned any presumptions we might have had about prayer and the way the Holy Spirit works inside out. One of the coolest takeaways I’ve learned is how prayer is creation. We have been co-creating with God since the beginning (ex. God asking Adam to name the animals in the garden) and he really cares about our opinion. Prayer has the power to move mountains and save lives.
The first week of lectures was dedicated to learning about wisdom, the second to hearing God’s voice and this past one to the Nature and Character of God. Learning the Father’s heart and Will along with the roles all the members of the Trinity play has been so important especially in making the decision of where we will be going on outreach.
Each person had to pray and ask God where He wanted them to go. When I received my word I was kind of skeptical at first, then asking God for confirmation lead to whole new levels of trust. When I took that step God provided even more confirmation than I had hoped for—through scriptures and people.
After much prayer I landed on the outreach team going to the Solomon Islands! These islands are just north of Vanuatu, one of the other common outreach locations.
The other outreach locations include:
The Cook Islands
Japan
Thailand
Hong Kong
Indonesia
and our very own Hollywood.
It’s a small world after all.
Thank you for reading!
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
Ephesians 3:20-21