Welly

Ello Mates,

It's a beautiful sunny day in Welly this afternoon.

This trip has started out not quite as relaxed as I would have hoped. We picked up Mike's friend who I had actually met a few times at A&M from the airport. She is currently a student down in Christchurch for the year. She has been a big help in Mike and I getting to know New Zealand.

We rented a Nissan Bluebird, a sweet little car with some character. It was really exciting, driving on the wrong side of the road, half way across the world, whoohooo.

We stayed with her boyfriend's college buddy for the night, a "first class mate". That's how he described Mike and I, and we felt the same about him.

From Auckland we drove up to Bay of Islands a beautiful place full of small jutting land masses surrounded by wonderful expanses of blue. The only problem was that a cyclone was off the island of Fiji or something, and so the skys were gray and the weather was wet. Went on a sweet hike to a waterfall and some mangroves.

From there on to Coromandel peninsula and Hot water beach. This was supposed to be just a really sweet spot where you dig in the sand and make your own hot tub from heated water from hot spots left from volcanic activity. But to our chagrin we were met with a sign that said we couldn't because of the weather.

Then on to Lake Taupo. The biggest lake in all of NZ.

We were almost there, 10k to go, when as we pulled out in front of and got nicked by a log truck. Yikes! Getting nicked by a log truck still did a fair amount of damage to our poor Bluebird. But we barely noticed it. Hitting a pothole earlier in trip shook up the car more than than this did.

So we were all super fine, I thought the truck was going to miss us entirely, it was close. Anyways, the bumper got totally knocked off and the right rear was smashed. We got our first NZ cop experience also, he was very pleasant.

The short version: the car is "unfit to drive", so we left it in Taupo.

Taupo was a neat little place. Had a nice time hanging out there.

Now we are in Wellington staying with some other friends of friends. The car is all taken care of. Mike's shoulder is feeling better. And things are good. Mike and I had a good chat about what God was doing with our pride and lives on the bus ride, and that was great.

Tomorrow we leave for the South Island!

Thanks so much everyone

Lollies and Lefties

Kia Ora from New Zealand,

So after a very long and cramped flight, middle row, 12 hours, not pretty; I am in NZ! After the flight we were offered "lollies", aka candy of any sort. We took a bus from the airport to Auckland and our bus driver drove a little on the fast side, and whats more is that he drove on the wrong side of the road the entire time!! Ok, well he was supposed to, but it took a moment to realize what was going on. They have really lush suburbs, quite nice.

The park we went to to nap off our jet lag was beautiful. Auckland however is just another million people port town so far.

Thats all the time I have...

Prayer requests:

• Lord's guidance on every part of this trip!
• Mike's shoulder is acting up and he needs a lot of prayer
• If it's the Lord will we could really use a car, and it will take the Lord to provide on we can afford

Thanks everyone!!

Remember Joseph and that Coat?

God's extremely large and awesome plan is Amazing! As I read Gen. this morning about how Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery, I am in awe how God knew about that moment forever. It is Ishmael's descendants that buy him from his brothers, and if you go back in Gen. you see God's grace upon Ishmael, also a son of Abraham, even though he is not chosen by God to fulfill His promises and display His power. If he had allowed Ishmael to die as a little boy out in the desert, he would not have descendants that end up buying Joseph from his brothers. I think it's sweet, that God used them to fulfil his purpose of getting Joseph to Egypt.



Today is the last full day I have in Texas before I take off; fortunately I am going freely : ) The same God that had a plan for Joseph's life, has worked out this intricate plan to get me to NZ, and has a plan for everyone's life!

First

Howdy everyone,

Welcome to my very new blog. Hopefully this will be used to communicate the things that I would like to share with you from my trip to New Zealand. I don't know what to expect or what is going to happen. What I do know is that the Lord has worked it out for me to be able to go on this fantastic trip to the youngest country in the world and I am so glad he has.

This will also be a sound board for me to ask you for prayers, I'm going to need them. Right now what I need is focus, that I maintain keeping the Lord number one as I finish getting ready to go and as my life changes daily for the next couple of months.

I thank you so much for reading this. Since you are, you probably mean a lot to me, so much love!

Send an e-mail to me keeping me up to date on what is going on in your life, I'll do my darndest to get back quickly.

Praise to the Father!