In between

... coming back from the Philippines and moving to Hamilton I got up to quite a few things.

First off Tracey and I spent a day at Parachute 09. Caught up with peeps from YRO and Pathways and of course heard some great music.

Kutless

That night we crashed at her parents place and then on Sunday morning we met up with the Youth Leaders from church in Matamata at Mr & Mrs Robinson's house. They put on a beauty lunch for us so that we weren't rafting on empty stomachs.

While we were in the Philippines 2 new people arrived from North America. Amanda is Sarah's best friend and Lorne is Mark's. I'd chatted a bit to Lorne before he got here but this was the day I got to meet the both of them. Once we got past that slightly weird we've stalked each other online thing, it was great. It was also here that Mark announced that he and Sarah are engaged! So cool! So we had lunch with the the wonderful Robinsons and then took off to the Wairoa River!! Amazing fun! Girls raft kicked butt!


We spent that night in Papamoa together and celebrated Mark's 25th birthday the next day. That night, after we shared a traditional kiwi meal of fish n chips eaten straight out of the newspaper on the grass, played a game of mini golf, cooked ourselves in the spa and were baffled, oh I mean initiated with the Bernie, some of us went down to the beach. We were there for quite a few hours, late into the night. We lay in awe of the beauty of God's creation. We watched the clouds clear, leaving us the most amazing view of the night sky. It was actually breathtaking. The shooting stars and constellations and satelites, all just hanging out, doing their thing. We lay their talking about life, as you do at times like that. We talked about the Philippines trip, about our fears and expectations for the year ahead. We shared personal things about what God was teaching us and what he was convicting us of. We talked about the excitement of having new faces around and how we were scared about how it would be when they leave. At the end we prayed. We prayed to God, our God. The one who created the universe, hung the stars in the sky. The God who cares so much for us that Jesus, His son died for us. Our God. My God. We prayed and passionately thanked Him for all He's done for us and asked Him to change us to be more loving like him. It was a good night.