Ministry Week!

This past week, Amber, Cam, Hanna, Michael, Ben, Bryan, JB, Joseph, and I all headed down to Christchurch for our ministry week. Having written at least five letters/postcards since then describing the events of the week, I will keep this description short.

We arrived on Sunday evening in time for the youth service at the church that was hosting us. The worship was great and it wad really neat to meet the youth, but none of us really appreciated the speaker. We had our doubts when, at the BBQ preceding the service, all the youth were talking about how the speaker was really awesome and how she was a prophetess. Hmmm, first a woman speaker, then one who claims to have the position of prophet, not a good start. She seemed to start on the right path, talking about David and goliath and how David excelled at what he did (watching sheep and that meant that he could also excel at what was to come (fighting Goliath and being king). Unfortunately, she missed the most important part: Christ! I would have to say though, she would make an excellent secular motivational speaker!

One Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings, we helped out at 0-800-HUNGRY, making and delivering food parcels. On Thursday morning, we helped out at Voice of the Martyrs stuffing envelopes for their monthly newsletter. And on Friday morning (after sleeping in J), we headed out to the city center with some surveys to do some street evangelism.

In the afternoons, we visited people of different faiths to find out what they believed and why. We visited a Unitarian Universalist (What’s true to you is true to you so long as it makes you happy and doesn’t hurt anyone), some Mormons (otherwise known as Church of the Later Day Saints), a Thai Buddhist temple (their goal is to reach a state of not desiring anything but simply acknowledging every thought and sense, and a Baha’i couple. We were able to come to a better understanding of these faiths and have some pretty good conversations! I’d love it if you could pray for the people that we met that God would work in their lives so that they would see the truth and so that they would ask questions as a result of our visit. It was sad to see how most of them had no hope; their “admission to heaven” was (for the most part) based on good works and depending on God’s mercy and boundless love for all people. Meeting them, however, really made me grateful to know that we have the truth.

On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, we went to a drop-in center in one of the tougher parts of town and hung out with gang members, playing ping-pong, foosball, pool, x-box, jamming, and just hanging out with them. It was Really fun!! And it was really neat to see the ministry that Richard (the guy who started it) has in working with these kids and young adults. He not only runs the drop-in center as a safe haven in the evenings, he also has some of the older guys doing construction, fixing up cars, and cultivating ferns to get them working and earning money legally and he does Bible studies during the week.

On Thursday night, we went to a men’s soup kitchen. We made them a soup (out of chicken in a broth and any cans they had in the cupboard), sang a few songs for them, and mostly just hung out and chatted with them. Some of the guys even player chess and checkers. Some of the men there were pretty cool and they were all happy to see us.

It was really neat to be able to do practical work to show Christ’s love. And it was really neat to see how united we are through Christ.

On Saturday, I went cliff jumping with a bunch of people. The drive there was almost more exciting that the jump itself since the flower power car kept bottoming out in all the puddles along the dirt road. The pool where we jumped was beautiful with the waterfall falling about ten meters into a pool surrounded by huge cliffs. A bunch of the guys even jumped off the highest cliff which they estimated at about 50 feet (in meters, that really high!).

On Sunday evening, us girls got to go to Patti’s to continue our series on “Holy Women of God.” I am being challenged in my assumptions of the role of women in the church and in society. It’s really cool!