Ecuadorian visitors x 3

We've had Mothy's colleagues from CECE (TSCF in Ecuador) staying with us in Lincoln for a few days. Ruth is a kiwi who is married to Josue, and their gorgeous daughter is Ana-Gracia. This is the group together on a picnic in Hanmer yesterday.


We had a really nice relaxing weekend there, reading, walking, and of course soaking in the thermal pools. Hopefully Ruth and Josue relaxed too, as their visit to Chch seems to have been pretty busy to say the least! They're out this evening cooking an Ecuadorian dinner, which was a prize in an auction, raising $1000 for IFES. AND they're doing 2 more in other towns in NZ! The very scary part is that we've got Ana-Gracia asleep in our spare room though! I've been terrified all evening that she's going to wake up. I spent the whole of the evening telling the Bible study we had here to ssshhhh.

It's been really great spending time with Ruth and Josue, they're very wise, patient people, and I think they make us both feel quite humbled, when I think about how we bemoan the state of the Church in NZ, and the lack of commitment to the gospel among students. Sounds like life in Ecuador, and faith in Jesus is much more challenging, but they're faithfully persevering - and making a difference to people's lives.

Ahhhh - cute! Ana-Gracia's quite sweet too.

LUCF Jesus Awareness Week

Thanks to so many who've prayed and asked for updates after Lincoln's first ever Jesus Awareness Week.


It surpassed my expectations - many in LUCF got stuck in and enthusiastic, especially for Txt4Toasties.

Here's a short summary I've written for the TSCF quarterly, Canvas:

Gordon from China. Majid & Marianne from Iran. Keith from NZ.

Just a few of the Lincoln students engaging with Jesus Awareness Week at Lincoln.

Gordon came up after seeing the huge who is Jesus? chalking and said ‘I in NZ only four months. Please, who is Jesus?’.

Majid and Marianne listened to some of the lunchtime talks and wanted to say how much they admired Jesus, but he was only a prophet of Islam, will return one day, but never died and why do you Christians worship three Gods?

Keith just wasn’t interested, was apathetic: ‘Who is Jesus? Who cares.’

The whole week was a new venture for LUCF, so it was great to see a student and a university staff track, and to experience the enthusiasm of LUCF, some Christian staff, and our visitors to help us from the UK, China and even Auckland and Otago. Lunchtime talks about Jesus the way, Jesus the life, and Jesus the truth; chalking who is Jesus? around campus; early morning prayer meetings; Jesus quizzes; a staff & student combined praise event and the highlight - txt 4 toasties, where halls students could ask any question about Jesus and receive a free toastie and a start of an answer. Some things worked real well others less so - but that’s inspired some in LUCF for next time!

Good times, great to have visitors from UK, China, Otago and Auckland helping out; great to have a staff track; great to have the support of the Student's Association; great to have fantastic weather (sunny and warm, in direct contrast to the weeks either side!) to enable better first-contact Jesus quizzes; great to see a couple of people become Christians.

All good, but oh so tiring! Great to have Lizzy and homegroup leaders and others forcing me to rest. So that's good too. I'm looking forward to my first week of leave this year in late August, which will be a chance to properly refresh ready for the next season of the year.

The UN in Lincoln

Lizzy and I really enjoy being in such a diverse town. Liz works with people from Aussie, Sri Lanka, NZ, USA, UK, Argentina, Russia, Israel, Mexico, Holland, China, Germany....... and add that to the 66 different nationalities studying at the university and it's a veritable mini-UN.
Last night at church homegroup there were 16 of us (which in itself is great as last year it was often just 5 of us), with 8 different nationalities - people from Singapore, Malaysia, NZ, China, UK, Germany, Papua New Guinea and USA. Great stuff. It's just a wee bit like Rev 9:7 - 'After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.' Yep, that's great.