Hey everybody! Hope you’re doing great. I am doing well here in the outback! I have had a very fun past week, but first I need to update what I said about our outreach on last week’s blog. We are no longer going to Auckland, NZ but instead will only be going to Christchurch, NZ. No more fun road trip, but that is ok because that’s not what we are going there for anyways J Arrangements for Auckland were just not working out, so our leaders told our group about it and decided we all needed to pray together to see if we feel we should even be going there. We were told to pray and then write either “Auckland” or “Christchurch” on a piece of paper. So we all prayed and wrote down where we felt we should go…..and 4 of us wrote Auckland and 4 of us wrote Christchurch. We had to laugh about that. We discussed a little bit about why we felt led toward one or the other and then decided to repeat that process. This time everyone wrote down Christchurch. So that was really neat! And we will be there in ONE month!!!!
We had lectures over the topic of “Missions” last week. Our speaker, Merv, was really great. He presented a lot of good information that opened our eyes to how necessary missionaries truly are! At one point in the week we watched a video about tribal people who received the gospel for the first time. It was amazing! Before being preached to, they had absolutely no hope. The video had footage from a funeral and the people were actually jumping down into the grave site because they couldn’t let their loved one go-they didn’t know where they were going, if they would ever see each other again. Public mourning of the people lasted weeks. It was heartbreaking. A couple of missionaries went to them and lived with them for some time and taught them about Jesus and how amazing He is. The people listened with such intent-they wanted to hear this Good News so badly! They knew they NEEDED it! When they finally realized what this meant for them, they rejoiced. And I mean they jumped up and down and danced around for hours straight! They were completely filled with hope and joy. It was absolutely wonderful! The missionaries then trained the tribal people how to tell others about the Good News. A tribal group a few miles from this one came and actually offered to pay the missionary to come and live with them and teach them what they knew! What I took from this was that a lot of time people want to hear what we have to say. They want to know how they can stop trying to work towards being saved, or where they can find a True Hope and Love. They want to know Jesus, even if they don’t know it!
Thursday afternoon ,Merv (our speaker) arranged for some of us to go to the Mosque that is right down the road from our house and speak with some Muslims to learn about Islam. It was quite the experience to say the least. Never thought I would have tea with a few Muslims! It was shocking to me how much Islam and Christianity are similar. We learned a little bit about their religion a couple of weeks ago during our Evangelism week, but hearing the beliefs from people who are actually living that out was pretty interesting. Part of what they believe is that there is an angel who writes down all the good deeds in their life and then another angel who writes down all the bad deeds they do. Whichever one outweighs the other determines whether you go to Heaven or Hell. There is no grace. It is all about how you can earn salvation yourself. There is no freedom.
I was put back on dance team for YouthStreet this week-just in time to perform what we have been working on the past couple of months. The crew had so much fun performing for their friends at YouthStreet Live (as did I!!). It turned out really neat. It is so cool to see how many middle and high school students are so talented! It was heaps of fun for me to learn how to break dance and just have fun with the crew! I was really sore on Sunday though…I must be getting old or something!
Outreach is right around the corner! Less than 2 weeks away. Please continue praying for God to prepare His way for us and to provide finances for those who still need them. Hope everyone has a fantastic week!
”Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should”. Colossians 4:2-4
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