Week 3: “Wave” Goodbye to Our Excuses
Week 3 was a pretty awesome week from the beginning to the end!
Here on OFF THE GRID we start our week on Sunday, so we began our week by to going to Hope Community Church like last week. We had a great time worshipping and spending time in God's presence. We also spent a lot of time after the service chatting to some members of the congregation who have been praying for us and getting to know us. Some of us spent some time in the library and checked out some books to read. We felt so touched to be blessed with a gift from an anonymous member of the church. As a team we are so happy to feel so welcomed into the church family and know that we have lots of support here in NZ.
Sunday evening, we had some free time but we also had to pack for our upcoming kayaking trip on Monday morning.
Monday was an early start for us and we were all super excited to explore another of God's amazing creation. Despite being told that the forecast and conditions were perfect we had to deal with some pretty rough waves out of the sea! This was especially challenging for some of the team who haven’t really kayaked before. The kayaks we were in were super heavy, we needed 6 people to carry them! We eventually arrived at Anchorage Bay in the Abel Tasman National Park, a place that felt like it was out of a movie. The bay itself was full of sailing boats and beautiful yachts, the beach wasn’t particularly busy. We carried our kayaks to the campsite, which was very close to the seafront, we set up camp and got settled into our new home for the next two nights.
That evening we spent some time on the beach where we discussed the reasons why we hesitate as Christians to share God’s grace and hope with those around us.
After a noisy night in the tents due to the squealing of wekas and various other kinds of birds we got back in our kayaks and explored the estuary. The weather was much sunnier and the conditions were much flatter for this journey. We docked our kayaks in a bay and tied them to a tree, from there we walked 10 minutes to a wonderful water pool where there even was a cool natural water slide in the midst of the national park!
We had lunch and did the next part of our study where God's characteristics was made even clearer to us.
That afternoon we practiced deep water rescue drills in Anchorage Bay, intentionally capsizing the kayaks, pulling spray decks, getting back into our boats and losing shoes. Outdoor leadership training in action!
Tuesday evening was particularly special and magical for us as we explored some caves covered with glow worms and gazed upon the beautiful night sky filled with stars. We even prayed for some shootings stars and within seconds God provided the brightest and most overwhelming shooting star! We chatted amongst the team about how beautiful the stars are and how small we are as people. The idea that God created the stars and called them good and created people and called us very good was stuck in our minds as we were awestruck by the beautiful display.
Wednesday was time to return back to base camp so after our study and a motivating testimony from one of our leaders we loaded all of our gear back into the boats and set sail back to the kayak centre. While doing rescue drills in the sea the day before, one of our teammates lost his shoe, which sunk to the bottom of the ocean. We prayed that it would float and get washed up on the beach, and the next morning there it was! This was a really cool answer to our prayers & a simple testimony of God’s faithfulness. The sea was calm and there was a bit rain, we even got to see some seals with their pups which was an amazing experience.
Thursday was a nice rest day for the team. However, we were still busy as we learnt more about the unreached and least reached parts of the world. We got a big map of the 10–40 Window, which is the area of the world that the least amount of people will hear the name Jesus Christ. Each of us on the team prayed for countries that were on our hearts and that God would work in these countries.
Friday we did a nice day walk along a costal hill walk, the views were amazing and showed yet another perspective of God's creation. That evening, we enjoyed a great cultural meal prepared for us by our USA participants. We then watched an inspiring movie about a faithful missionary, and it made us all wonder what God has got in store for us.
Saturday morning was time for a typical English breakfast made by a Brit. We spent some time in study as a group. Some of the team went skydiving later on in the day but didn’t get to leave the ground due to strong winds, so hopefully we may get some time and good weather in the weeks to come! Saturday also marked our halfway point of OTG, so we had a nice evening at one of the leader’s house where we played rugby and some cricket. We had great time!
Where we saw God this week:
-God answered lots of our prayers pretty quickly even though they may have seemed not that important.
-God gave us good perseverance and endurance when things were getting tough.
We really appreciate all the support everyone is giving.
Please continue to pray for us especially for:
-Healthy feet, as a few team members are struggling with various minor injuries, so please pray for healing and protection.
-Good weather, the forecast looks pretty wet for our next tramp so please pray for good weather. We have been so blessed to have hot sunny weather for the 3 weeks we have been here so thank God for that also.
-Please pray for God to continue to speak to our hearts and help us to dive really deep into our studies and conversations that we have.
Please leave a comment/short note for our team in the comments section!
Written by Jonas (Switzerland) & Dan (UK) on behalf of the entire OTG Team