My team ventured down to the South Island of New Zealand this past week. It's been an amazing week! We all met as a team before we left and decided together that we wanted to focus this trip only around Jesus. So we spent most of this entire trip doing ministry and pouring into the city of Christchurch (which had a huge earthquake two years ago). When we left for Christchurch, we didn't have anywhere to stay for the week, but Jesus was so good to us! The first night, we stayed in a garage. The following night, we stayed in a local church's youth center. The next day, we went to a public pool to take showers (we hadn't showered since leaving the North Island) and afterwards we went to a park to hang out, eat, and worship. While we were worshipping, this random girl walks up to our group and asks to join us. We got to talking with her, and she asked us where we were staying for the night. We said we didn't know, and she invited us to stay at her house. She lived in a Christian community house that had been running for the past 20 years. The next day, my team leader joked that we were going to be spending our next night in a mansion. We all thought this was a joke, until we pulled up to the house we had been invited to stay at for the night-it was this beautiful mansion on a hill overlooking the entire city of Christchurch! The family who invited us to stay with them were amazing and so helpful. We were so blessed in so many different little ways over this trip and it was so awesome to watch Jesus work things out the way He always does! We did heaps of ministry all in Christchurch, from spending time with different youth groups to street ministry to putting together food to send out to the hungry. It was definitely the best week I've had since being New Zealand… And that's saying a lot! Now, we're gearing up for our final week in New Zealand (how is it already almost time to go home!?) and pressing in for more of the Lord's power in the remainder of our time here. In less than a week, we'll be Stateside! See y'all then!
