We are off to the south island tomorrow bright and early on the ferry!! I cannot tell you how amazing this past week has been. Kids camp was so much fun, and the eight girls in my cabin were a joy to be with all week. Two of them accepted Jesus into their hearts which was awesome! Heading to Christchurch is going to be a very new experience because the city still experiences daily aftershocks from the massive earthquake they had last year. We have been praying over this trip to the island for a couple of weeks now, and we could not be more ready for what God has in store! We are praying that He would completely lead the way and that we would follow in His footsteps and be so intentional about serving and ministering to the people there. I have a feeling we are going to see some incredible things happen in the form of healings and people coming to Christ, and it's all because of Jesus, not us.
I can't believe that we only have two more weeks in this beautiful country. This place has become a second home to all of us, and it is going to be extremely difficult to leave. My teammate Wes and I were chatting the other night at the top of the flying fox (zip line), and he was telling me how he sees that New Zealand is going to be a mission base where people go out from here to bring the gospel to nations rather than being a mission project for people to bring the gospel to. God is building up youth here that are going to impact this country big time, and it could not be more exciting. The leaders who were here the past two weeks for kids camp are a testimony of that for sure.
And for those of you who get frustrated when you feel like God isn't speaking to you, I understand. I gave the message at a youth group tonight, but before we were supposed to leave I had no idea what I was going to speak on. I thought that maybe at church this morning God would spark something in my heart that Lawrence (the pastor) was saying, but that didn't happen. I thought that surely God would give me a passage or topic to speak on during the day, but that didn't happen either. Lo and behold, God gave me the topic that He wanted me to speak on while I was visiting…the bathroom. I was just sitting there when God gave me the name Enoch. I immediately thought, "Who the heck is Enoch?" Turns out, Enoch was the 7th descendent from Adam, and he was the father of Methuselah. Methuselah was the oldest man who ever lived. Anyways, it says that Enoch walked with God for 300 years, and then God took him up into heaven without having him experience death. It was pretty cool for me to see how God could totally give me something that I had never heard of before and then completely speak through me to the youth who were there. So you never know when God is going to give you a word or something that He wants you to do, even on the toilet of all places.
