September 21-24

Wow…that’s how Ken and I both feel after the whirlwind week we just had.

First off, it was my first full week working at St. Luke's as Director of Parish Music and Worship! Yes, that is my official title. I will be installed September 30th. This week I created a music team bimonthly devotion called "The Bass Line" - except the "a" in bass is a bass clef. Clever, eh? I'm excited for the teams to do these together since it will bring a sense of unity to them all as they might never all get together, but they are all reading the same devotions. I also worked on creating the worship roster for the next three months, and creating song rosters for the church so we can establish which songs the congregation really knows well, and which they don't. It will also help us see how often we sing certain songs or how often we sing totally new songs. Finally, I'm getting ready for a new worship team which will have it's first practice in October, and will lead worship in November! Exciting!

Ken has been swamped with work for the youth camp coming up Oct 1-5. He is leading Bible study times as well as helping me with music by playing guitar! He also moved into his own office finally - although it is temporary. For the last two months he has been working in Pastor's office, but now that the NZ president has moved, his office will be empty for a few weeks and Ken moved in. It's been great for him to have space to work. Also, Ken's been meeting with more of the youth to get to know them better, understand their vision for youth nights, and just to hang out with them! It was awesome too, because this past week one of the youth told their mom that talking to Ken was the best part of their week! That was very uplifting for Ken. He's also been busy working with outreach director, to plan a mission outreach project for the church. There is a possibility St. Luke's will be planting a church in another country, but where, when, etc is still to be determined through a lot of prayer and all the information Ken and Butch are gathering for this project. Please keep that in your prayers as they continue to research where God wants St. Luke's to plant. Finally, Ken has been busy with creating the confirmation program for St. Luke's that starts in October! It's called "Plug In" - this program seeks to connect what they are learning from the classes to the student's every-day-life. To do this, there will be a digital journal for the students to communicate online with Pastor and to go on field trips to learn from people how they have applied what they're learning in confirmation to their every-day-lives.

That's what's going on with our mission at St. Luke's. Besides that, Saturday was a fun day - I invited a few youth group girls to bake cookies with me and to shop for some groceries. I needed American ketchup, so we headed to McDonalds and bought a small hot chips, but asked for 30 bags of ketchup! It was enough to make sloppy joes for our dinner date with Kate and Damien (church friends). We had a great time having them over - in fact, we lost tract of time and they didn't leave till quarter past eleven! They really enjoyed the sloppy joes - something that most New Zealanders have never had. Kate and I enjoyed looking at my wedding photos and talking about her upcoming wedding this March to Damien, while the boys gabbed about sports, farming, and other "guy" things. We ended the night playing a game of High Low Jack, where unfortunately the boys beat us girls.

Sunday we went white bait fishing with Kerri and Rick. That was a blast! We went to the Manawatu river and set up our nets and let the little fishies swim in! Well, we only caught one. These things are really tiny and are eaten whole, often cooked with your eggs. I wasn't super upset that we didn't get enough to eat...We enjoyed the sunshine, made a bonfire, and had some sausages with shandies (beer and lemonade) - overall, good fun and fellowship.

Bubbles Rick and Kerri's lamb

Ken and the boys having fun

The Manawatu River

The nets

Redbands are awesome!

Monday we hit the Sledge Track that is near our home for a good tramp in the mud - and was it muddy! But we enjoyed the 5 hours adventure, ending with sunbathing on a rock in the middle of the creek. It was there we talked about some future ideas and plans...we are playing with the idea of doing servant-mission trip for our one year anniversary, and also with the idea that after we are done here in New Zealand to go to another country before heading back to the states. We aren't sure where, or what, or how, but we figure God got us here, and He will get us wherever else He wants. We also really like the idea of a "gap year" - in Europe, NZ and Australia it's quite popular to take a year off and just travel, working odd jobs here and there. Ken and I are quite enamored with the idea of going somewhere and doing some sort of social/servant/mission work for a year to give us more time to decide what we want to go back to school for in the states. Well, it was all fun to daydream about in God's beautiful creation.

Ken made this

They're in no short supply of water here

It got really thick in here

And then we made it to a clearing atop the mountain!

Enjoying the creek






And that brings me to our latest revelation: Christ is so awesome to us! Reading Isaiah 43-45:14 opened our eyes to the fact that God is so in love with us! He choose us to be His servant, but yet we are more than servants for He loves us. He goes before us to level our ground, to place us where He wants us. And therefore, who are we to question why we are here? Why we are doing what we are doing? Because He is in control, with a good purpose for us. Amen.