Minty2

A few posts back I said I'd continue to tale of my couple of weeks up in Nelson/Marlborough. So this is as promised.

In Nelson I met a couple of guys in the fledgling CF in the polytech there, and the wonderful Milo, the local Scripture Union worker.
The long holiday weekend saw Liz join me over the hill in Golden Bay, which was great. On the Monday Lizzy returned home and I travelled to Malborough, for on the Tuesday Minty2 began.


Minty is the 'discipleship training scheme that's refreshingly different', with Ps 92:14-15 as the aim. Minty2 is the second of three training weeks through the year for Minterns around the county. Minty2 was held at a beautiful bach on Queen Charlotte Sound. My colleague Andy has beaten me to it in terms of reflections on the week, and has posted here: http://kiwichronicles.blogspot.com/2007/06/friendship-is-forge-of-future.html
I agree with Andy, so do have a look there (although I didn't have the joy of arriving by small plane, much though I would have loved that. But I loved the drive too - bizarrely, I picked up the same hitchhiker twice, in different places, on different days!)

Then, after Minty2 I returned to Nelson to take one of the teaching sessions of Nelson Scripture Union's high school leaders training conference - Fuel'07. Was great to be there, teaching from Hebrews about encouraging one another, and to give the high school students a vision of what a uni CF could be like. I look forward to working with Milo in Nelson more closely. There was a bug at camp and a few leaders were crook, including Milo. But being a Canadian he, unlike me, wasn't grumpy about it!

It was a long drive home over the mountains, but beautiful. Great to get home, but great to have been in Nelson and Marlborough.

LUCF now in Fiji

This is Commodore Vorque Banimarama - the Fiji coup leader who's expelled the NZ High Commissioner.

The LUCF 14 who've headed to Fiji on short-term fortnight mission trip over their winter break are now in Fiji. Their cancelled Air Pacific flight and the expulsion of a NZ journalist and the NZ High Commissioner not withstanding, they seem relieved to be there and ready to go, as the following update from Tom (TSCF Lincoln Mintern - graduate trainee) shows:

Its great to finally be here with the rest of the team (14 of us from Lincoln Uni Christian Fellowship). Praise God that we're all here safely after flight cancellations and high comissioner expulsions and a pretty hairy bus trip (the trip from the airport to the camp usually takes 3 1/4 hours and our bus driver did it in 2 hours 10 - so that was an exciting start to the trip, but we were all so joyful we were too busy singing to be worried)!. We've arrived in Suva today after 2 nights at the Coral Coast Christian Camp. So far we have had some great times together at the camp, both as a team and meeting some of the 150 young people (from primary school to uni age) who were there on a camp over the long Queen's Birthday weekend. We attended one of their services on sunday morning which was amazing (especially the singing!) and the invited us to a lovo feast on sunday night (like a hangi) in our honour which was awesome. We ended up singing them a couple of songs which the loved (especially when we sang 'This is the day the Lord had made' in Fijian!!).

It is a lot hotter than Lincoln and pretty humid - but its not too bad and we're getting used to it. The food has been great too (although a few of the team didn't think much of taro at the lovo!) - especially the fruit. Cam shot up a coconut palm for us yesterday and we got our fill of fresh coconut which was good fun.

Its nice to finally be here in Suva where we are based until next week. Tomorrow we head into the slums and the rest of the week will be spent doing different things including visiting a local kindy, schools, the suva prisons and the womens' refuge. At these places we will be presenting a 'service' of songs, testimonies, skits, puppet shows and speaking from the Bible. We also have a building project at the Womens Refuge - helping build some flat-units there. Then next week we head up-country to the village which will be totally different again.

The team is doing really well and have enjoyed the first couple of days here together in this beautiful place with the lovely Fijian people.

So far we haven't felt unsafe but we'll get a better idea now that we're in suva this week of what implications the NZ-Fijian tensions may have for us.

I'm really looking forward to the 2 weeks ahead and us all being pushed out of the comfort zone to share our faith. So far the spirit within the team has been great and I they are keen to get stuck in - if a little nervous (me included). So please pray for good health and safety and that we'll keep coming together as a team. Please also pray for us as we prepare to share the Gospel with the people here, that we can be clear in communicating to them about Jesus and that we can make it appropriate to this culture and context. I think rugby stories may get a thrashing - they are rugby mad, especially the ABs and the Crusaders!

My love to you all and God Bless

Tom

Thanks to those that have asked about the team and praying for the team. Fiji's not a great place to be for the 12 Kiwis on the team at the moment, and only slightly better for the other two (Japanese and Zimbabwean). I continue to pray that they will be bold and enthusiastic in proclaiming Jesus and that this overseas experience will continue to motivate them to be bold and enthusiastic in proclaiming Jesus in Lincoln.

LUCF to Fiji update

They're off to Fiji - original flight on Sunday has been cancelled by Air Pacific so the missions agency have them rebooked on an Auckland flight Saturday.
They're all excited about going, have been praying passionately, and good to go. They're aware of the political tensions but the missions agency has cleared their departure given the level of caution advised by the government.

I pray that they will experience lots of God's grace, and the hospitality of His people, over the next two weeks and return to Lincoln excited about mission on campus.

God bless them for their dedication, and God bless the Fijian church for hosting them.

NZ High Commissioner to Fiji expelled

Following tensions between Fiji and NZ since Fiji's coup last December, yesterday, Michael Green, the NZ High Commissioner to Fiji, was expelled. Today, a NZ journalist in Fiji has been deported.

I don't know the ins and outs of high level politics, but I know that's not good. I know it's very serious. I know that later today I have to explain this to 14 Lincoln CF students who are scheduled to travel to Fiji for a short-term missions trip tomorrow.

I'm concerned that they may not realise the gravity of the situation, and that they're used to a Kiwi passport being looked upon favourably around the world. But, it seems, the worst nationality to be right now in Fiji is Kiwi. As they'll be spending time in the capital Suva, it may be worth considering post-poning the trip. The NZ government has upgraded the risk on www.safetravel.govt.nz overnight and is considering doing so again today. I fear that the 14 will be too excited about the 'experience' of going and not concerned enough for their own safety and God's glory. This is a short-term missions trip and the most benefit is to the 14 going, not to the Fijians who will host them. I pray I'm wrong in my initial assessment of the 14 - I'll find out later today when I meet them all for lunch during their last preparations. The missions agency say that safety is paramount but that the trip is still on. They, and I, will continue to monitor the news today.

Details on the breaking news are here:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4095334a10.html
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4095504a10.html

Nelson

It's good to be home in Lincoln.
I've recently spent longer away from home than I usually do, good stuff up north in Nelson & Picton, but it's still great to be home.

Here's a potted timeline of my trip:

I spent the best part of a day driving over the Alps via Lewis Pass to get to Nelson. Part of my new TSCF remit is to support the fledgling CF group at NMIT (Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology) and liase with churches in terms of teenagers heading off to tertiary studies around the country.
It was great to meet Liam (who used to study at Lincoln several years ago!) and Alex (in Nelson just a few months from Korea) in the cafe and hear their stories and pray with them. CFs in polytechnics are hard work, and very different from their uni counterparts, as I learnt in Christchurch polytech when I was a volunteer with TSCF in the late 90s. So it was great to meet Alex and Liam and also Milo, who's the local Scripture Union high schools worker, who supports the NMIT CF. Milo and I are keen to work on ways to help each other in the future, and it was my privilege, a week later, to take a Bible teaching session (on Hebrews 10 'lettuces' and 1 Cor 12 'the body') at Fuel07 - the regional Scripture Union high school CF leaders weekend camp.

Here's a photo of the new NMIT student accommodation block - looks good, but orange?!


It was really good, as always, to stay with Aunt Maureen in Nelson. I rang her up beforehand to see if i could invite myself to stay with her, and she said 'that's fine Tim, but you ought to know I had a wee heart attack a couple of weeks ago'. Wow - just casually drop that in then! But she's being sensible and seems fine again. Lovely to see her, and the DeHamel cousin clan down the road from her.

The first weekend in June is a long one, thanks to Queen's Birthday, so Liz and I decided to holiday in Golden Bay - over the hill from Nelson. She could have taken the bus which would take two of the three days, so she took the train. Or, as they're called here in NZ, the plane. It's been odd getting to used to planes as train equivalents - but it's great. Cheap, plentiful and quick. So here's Liz (in the brown jacket) arriving into Nelson, turning my 6-7 hour drive into a 1 hour flight. As the crow flies it's 155miles.

We had a great holiday weekend - just the tonic. Had lots of rain one day and lots of sun another which is not bad for winter. I'm sure this is a great view when it's not raining...
And just in case you think i only post picture of Liz, here's one of me:


Wharariki Beach is a beautiful, isolated, stunning, windswept place. Right at the end of Golden Bay, near Farewell Spit, we went there on Aunt Maureen's recommendation. It was great to walk along the beach, and even nicer when we came across some frolicking seals; fun acrobatics and great to see their acrobatic skills outside of the artificial environments of Sea World and the like:


Much rain on the Sunday. We joined Takaka Church of Christ which was a welcoming community, despite the really cold church hall. Interesting sermon on the 'ites' of the Bible - Hivites, Jebusites and Favour-ites.

Then, much to Liz's joy, we stumbled across the Golden Bay annual country music awards.
It was held in the village hall in Pohara - only in NZ would a village hall be built, in the 1970s, just across the road from the beach, with no windows facing the sea!!

Liz would want me to say just how popular the event was - and it was. We only just got a seat. Must have been about 350 people there. But eventually, the desire to be outside in the winter rain was just too much so we left.

It was a great weekend. On the Monday Liz returned to Lincoln and I headed east to the Marlborough Sounds for Minty2 - and that will have to wait for the next blog.
This post has turned into a bit of a travel blog, but that's okay, 'cos it was fun for us to travel and see parts of NZ we'd never been to before. Hope you've enjoyed seeing some photos.

June 1st - Canterbury Tales (non-blog)

Today's June 1st - first day of winter. But I type from a pavement in Nelson, which seems very un-winter like and distinctly autumnal still.

I've sent out the non-blog version of Canterbury Tales today - news for prayer about TSCF. If you'd like a copy and I've not sent you one, then leave me a comment and I'll get you a copy forthwith!