Ebbs & Flows // April - May

Heyyy!

It's easy in the 'ebbs' to feel uninspired and as though we haven't done much, but looking back over the year since the September DTS graduated in March we can see how beautiful the flows have been in actuality. Gotta stir up that attitude of gratitude! So here we have an update on some of the 'flows' from the last couple months...

Northern Easter Camp

After a rather spontaneous email to the Northern EC director, our lot plus a couple of our good friends from other bases joined with the team that run EC every year and it was wild. We worked in torrential rain and moments of shine from 8am - midnight or later for 3 days leading up to camp. The camp had just short of 5000 attendees and we were assigned to different areas. Barry and I were tasked with welcoming each campsite in at the start and seeing them off on the last day, plus us and our crew were running the stalls in the village and generally adding people power wherever it was needed. We took this year as a way to build relationship, get to know them and them us, and expose our crew some more to what's going on outside the YWAM NZ scene.

Annual Day-camp

We then helped in facilitating a day-camp with local churches. Basically bus loads of young kids come from different parts of the region for day trips and do all sorts of workshops and activities. One of our staff, Luca, is the youth leader for a youth space run once a month in Maungaturoto. He oversaw the teen tent and teen leaders specifically. Barry and I got to hang out and were asked to share our testimonies, our crew facilitated smaller groups in hearing God's voice, and young people committed to following Christ! I was particularly moved by the teens sincere focus when we were practising hearing God's voice, and the vulnerability of their feedback from that time.

Discipleship Training Week

We tried something else new and launched a one-week course called the Discipleship Training Week (DTW). Wildly enough we felt to open it up to as young as 13yr olds which we knew might be an interesting dynamic, but it was well and truly worth it. We wanted to see who out there was interested and learn from there. We had a different speaker each day and tried to capture a real overview of the topics covered in the usual 5 month DTS. We enjoyed the week so much and it was an awesome opportunity for one of the newest school leaders to facilitate it and learn on the go.

Testimonies from DTW...

Our oldest attendee in his 60's said in 42yrs of following Christ he had never felt so free. Every day was a new revelation of the Father's love for him and he was overcome with this love to the point of weeping on the daily. Our youngest member, a 13yr old, had recently been expelled from high school and was heading down a rough track. He came in exchange for a pack of Oreo biscuits (lolll) and instead encountered Christ, was met in his deepest heart breaks and disappointments, felt the presence of the Lord, and ultimately gave his life to knowing Jesus and walking in His way.

Local Stuff

We hosted a South Island outreach who we sent further North with some of our crew for one week to connect with some peeps we wanted to get to know and serve. It went awesome and they really blessed the crew overseeing a bunch of the work up that way with youth in Kaitaia college. They and our staff also went into the local Otamatea Christian School up the road from our campus and spent time with the seniors tackling some of the tough questions about God's character and nature. We're keeping up the relationship with these two locations and pumped to send teams to them again.

Our local Otamatea Marae hosted a working bee which we went to and helped them level out the wharenui and organise their fundraiser. It was a great way for them to get to know each other better. Another time our staff team went along for a combined Kaipara pastors hui where our pastor Tawhiri hosted a time of story-telling about the marae. It was one of Ratana's places of teaching back in the day and the land is full of stories of miracles that changed lives. The Marae also has two significant landmarks, one is a bust of Queen Victoria gifted to Ngati Whatua which actually has bullet holes in it from when locals used it as target practice to express their pain toward the crown (she's now encased in a see-through box), and the other is the assembly house which opened in 1883 as a venue for Maori parliament.

Prayer Requests

At times it has felt as though the maintenance on this property is unrelenting. We've had moments of real discouragement, feeling that we've inherited something that's already done its dash, but also felt huge encouragement as slowly but surely the campus gets revived and we see a light at the end of the tunnel. Usually it's when we look back at 'before' pictures that we see the contrast between 'then and now'. We appreciate that all properties require maintenance and upkeep, that certain things do have expiration dates, but as people who just have hearts for missions it sort of took us by surprise when our job became a little less DTS and little more DIY. A lot of mopping flooded floors, weeding overgrown gardens, painting and chopping wood. While we do run the other programs and try out new stuff, it hasn't been the glorious return we probably sub-consciously had expected! It's far more humbling and ego-shattering, haha. So be praying for us - for wisdom with the property, with ministry resources, with training up staff, and that while we're intentional - we'd just have fun with it!

Much love,

Tesh and Baz