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.

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