Hello, hello =) It is a lovely Sunday night here in New Zealand it is about 9PM here, so it’s around 2 AM back home in Saskatoon then. We had a nice little barbecue tonight where we ate outside because the weather was gorgeous today. I hope none of you are freezing over there, last time I heard the snow had been cleared up, but perhaps it is back? It is getting nice and warm here, it is still spring though so it is not super super hot, but it is quite beautiful at this temperature. Anyways, I have not blogged in awhile so I have quite a few updates!
A week ago on Saturday Sheryl drove Kelsey, Amber and I down to Christchurch and we went shopping for the day! And while the 4 of us went shopping most others at the Crossing went for a small nature hike. Christchurch is a really nice city with a population about 100,000 bigger than Saskatoon, which is quite big for New Zealand. New Zealand has about 4 million people on it in total and their biggest city of Auckland has 1 million, so NZ is made up mostly of a bunch of small cities and towns. But yes it was a really good trip. We found some pretty sweet clothes throughout the 3 different shopping areas we visited and I got some stuff for ABS in April. While we were there we also stopped at the Cookie Time cookie factory. They are the company that has created the biggest cookie in the world; they used 5.1 tonnes of sugar, 2.5 tonnes of chocolate and 4.5 tonnes of flour to make it. Crazyness.
To get to Christchurch from where we live right outside of Geraldine it is about 1 ½ hour drive, so not bad at all. When we came home that same day for supper we had a relatively normal time at the crossing until nightfall. Angela, Amber, Kelsey and I had all gone to bed and Angela and I were just beginning to fall asleep when all of sudden Amber and Kelsey jump up on their bed and start screaming. They were yelling about how something was in the ceiling and you could hear it walking around and making noises. After that they ran downstairs to freak out to the boys who were awake in the formal lounge. Angela and I were so annoyed because we were so tired, but then I heard it making squeaking noises, it was so creepy so I left too and went downstairs. We all eventually came back up and we were trying to sleep but then all of sudden at random times it would start squeaking or walking around and we would freak out again. Then Cameron, who hadn’t gone to bed yet, walked in the room at midnight and since we were so on edge we were startled and began screaming. Haha she was so confused, I think we scared her too just because she didn’t expect that reaction.
Later around midnight we started hearing noises right by the windows, like the windows were shaking and we knew it wasn’t our rodent friend above us because we are not that slow. The guys were attempting to scare us, but it didn’t work very well. When Amber opened the window she heard one of them say “Ow!” and then we saw Bryan’s blue sweater flash across the yard. So it wasn’t too hard to figure out, but we didn’t know how exactly they got up that high to our windows on the second floor. That morning we found out that they had found a ladder, got a long stick and tied a broom to the stick to reach our windows. A lot of effort that didn’t really accomplish much, plus it was pouring rain while they were doing it. I suppose they can get an A for effort. That next day we went to a new church in Timaru called the Life Church and they gave us chocolate because we were visitors. A very good policy I must say.
That night all of us girls were quite determined to show the guys a worthy trick, but we needed some rope first. We went and asked Joseph for some rope saying we needed for our project coming up and that was enough for him to believe us, but he didn’t have any rope only wire, so we had to settle for that. So Amber, Kelsey and I woke up around 2:30 am and used the wire to tie it around the boy’s door handles that were adjacent to one another. Since the boys doors open inward they would not be able to open their doors in the morning because their handles are tied to a door across from them. The problem was the wire that we had to use was very rusty and old so it was quite noisy and we were afraid of waking the guys up so we did it quite quickly. At the time we thought we had tightened them well enough, but when the guys woke up the next morning they just opened their doors and the wire fell off. So we had an epic fail and they bugged us about that for a long time. Ah well, it was a good idea in theory. If only we had had some actual rope.
We didn’t have fellowship that Sunday night (where our teacher for the week comes and speaks and we have dessert) so our teacher for the week joined us the following morning on Monday. Our teacher this week was Richard Neville and he taught us through the book of Genesis. He was really good, as most of the teachers we’ve had so far are, and I never really knew there was that much to learn from Genesis in its original context and how it can be applied to us today. Our DVD lectures this week were from Russell Kelfer and it was about the life of Joseph, his message was quite good as well. Also we have a project coming up that is due in about 5 days on Friday to outline the “Progress of Redemption”, basically an overview of God’s plan shown through the bible. Kelsey and I are going to be presenting it as a puppet show haha so it should be fun.
On Tuesday this week we had girl / guy night. It’s where all the guys go spend some time together and all the girls go off and do the same. The guys all went on this mud racing track, had a steak and potatoes barbecue and then went possum and rabbit hunting haha quite a guy night. Our girls night was soooo good. We started off by going to Patti’s (the directors wife) and she made us some delicious appetizers with things like crackers, bread, dips, cheese, etc. We talked for awhile then had a light supper with salad, lamb and this cheese dish. We relaxed for about an hour then we had the most amazing dessert ever; we had a chocolate fondue fountain with shortbread, pretzels and every kind of fruit imaginable. We ate so much haha and then after that we did a foot spa while we watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The movie itself I didn’t think it was that great, but we talked through most of it anyways. It was a really good night though!
The good did not last long though; we woke up the next morning and noticed something quite different about the house… there were shoes everywhere! During the night the guys had taken one shoe from each of our pairs and hidden them all over the property. We spent the whole day looking for shoes; they put them in places like hanging on the deer antlers, behind a door, on a fire alarm, in a light, in a rubbish bin, in a vase, on mantles, on the ceiling, on the mailbox, in the umbrella bin and pretty much everywhere else.
The rest of the week was pretty chill just learning about God and hanging out with each other, nice and normal. That weekend the girls from The Crossing were invited to have some tea with the ladies from the first and second services at the church we attend in Geraldine called St. Andrews. It was a really good way to connect with the ladies there and the desserts they had there were amazing. They had things like caramel coconut balls, fruit shortbread pastries, raspberry cream filled pastries, fudge, cookies, lemon cake, caramel chocolate brownies, and even more I can’t remember. We ate so much, but it was quite worth it. Later that night after supper a lady named Louise from Tea called and invited us to come to her house for lunch after church on Sunday.
So today after church we went to Louise’s house for lunch. She has a beautiful acreage, as everyone here seems too, and we met her children Samuel, Esther, Grace and Faith and her husband Jason. They fed us a lovely lunch and they took us to this beautiful place called the Waihi Gorge. We have decided that this Friday coming up we are going with a bunch of us from The Crossing to camp there for a night, it’s about 15 minutes away from our school which is awesome =) .
I hope you are all doing well!
Love Love Love
Cara Lee
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
All That Jazz
Hey everyone :) I hope you are all doing well. So this is my fourth week here at the Crossing so this coming Monday on October 19TH I will have been in New Zealand for a month! Holy moly eh? That’s crazyness that means only two more months until I come home for Christmas. This week in classes Dale (our director) is teaching us about the progress of redemption, basically going through the big picture of the bible and God’s plan. We also have a DVD lecture everyday from Billy Strachan this Scottish man, he is really hard to understand sometimes, but quite entertaining haha. Today was also our workday which means from 1pm-5pm, which is our free time every other day, we have work projects. I was assigned to the house today with Adam and Jonas, it was good and then later Hanna, Cameron and I cracked Walnuts for like 2 hours. We had some pretty good conversations about stalkers it was lovely. Oh and earlier this morning we surprise skyped this guy named Joel Baxley. Joel is one more person who is supposed to be at the crossing right now, but he has had a really big delay with his student visa. So right now at the moment he is just waiting for his visa and as soon as he gets it he is heading straight over here. It was his birthday today and he didn’t know Dale knew, so Dale was like I would just like to skype you to see how things are going, but when he was talking to him we all came in and sang happy birthday to him haha it was great. So we have all kind of met him now as well? Hm I don’t really count skype meetings though. Nope not really.
Ah and just yesterday we celebrated Canadian thanksgiving here at the crossing! It was so lovely, Hanna and Sheryl and Patti decorated up the room with candles and jazz and we had a big meal. We had some turkey, ham, stuffing, sweet potatoes, gravy, mashed potatoes, carrots and peas. It was sooo good. There was no pistachio salad that I usually have though, only sad part. That night was also family night. Family night is a night where we the students are split into two different groups (same ones every time) and we either stay at the Crossing or go to Dale and Patti’s house. During family night we play games and just hang out. So yesterday my group was at Dale and Patti’s house we just played this card game that asks you questions so we pretty much just talked for a few hours. Colin told us one of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard in my life we were all pretty much losing it laughing. We also had dessert at Dale and Patti’s which was homemade apple pie and pumpkin pie with whipped cream and ice cream. It was quite delicious.
So this week so far has been quite good, a lot more relaxed than the last week I had. The last week for us at the Crossing was our Ministry week so we were split into two different groups and sent to two different camps. I went to a Te Mapua Camp which means something like precious child in Maori and it was located at the Woodend Christian Campground. It was about a two hour drive to get there because the camp is located 10 minutes outside of Christchurch. The camp was a really good experience for me to have, but I have to say it was one of the most difficult weeks I’ve ever had. Dale didn’t really tell us much about the camps except that one of the camps our two groups were being sent to had some children with higher needs. He was definitely right about that one. It turns out the camp we went to was completely sponsored children (basically they were quite poor) and all of them came from backgrounds of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. They told us some kids have never been taught to eat with a knife and fork, some had never even seen something like a grape before (like their parents never fed them anything like that) or that some had to be carefully watched because they had restraining orders against people who were trying to abduct them (i.e. divorced parent, step-parent). At one point the leader of the camp read to us some of the specific backgrounds the children were coming from, but without telling us their names to protect their privacy. It was really hard to hear the situations these young kids were coming from.
The night before we started camp during staff training we had this pastor come in and talk to us. He talked to us about how these kids have been given labels by the world, but that doesn’t make them any less worthy and that we shouldn’t let that scare us, these kids are still precious children of God. He told us this Christian environment at camp would be so countercultural for them because they are coming from places with no hope. He told us to “Give hope, show love”, to show the love that God has so graciously bestowed on us, pass that on and be a vessel of God’s love. He said that this week it should be 80% of God’s love and 20% yours, we can’t do it without him. After he talked to us we had some time alone to prayer and then prayed with all the girls. All of us from the Crossing were quite terrified before that, but we felt better after that.
During that week I was in a cabin with two other leaders, most people had one other leader, but I had the young girls (6-7 years old) who were higher needs children so we needed one more leader. While we were at camp everything we did was about serving the kids and being about them. I don’t think I literally had one moment of free time for myself the entire week; we were always with the kids, constantly looking after them. The longest I ever left the kids that week was for about 15 minutes which was the one night I showered because we weren’t supposed to leave our other leaders alone any more than we had to. We were basically their parents for the week. All of the children we had lacked a lot of basic skills even with eating or communicating or taking care of themselves. Their behavior was a reflection of the neglect these kids had had in their lives, because if you love your children you take the time to discipline them. Even though these kids were so difficult to take care of and took so much out of me, they were still beautiful, amazing girls who deserved to be loved so much. My heart breaks for these girls. God really showed me that I needed to depend on him this week too because there is no way I could have done it without him. Even though it was a hard week for me and the Crossing crew, I am so glad we could provide this place of refuge for these kids even if only for the week.
So yes, this is what’s been going on lately in my life in New Zealand. This weekend Amber, Kelsey, Ben, Michael and I are driving to Christchurch to go shopping. I am so stoked I have not had any prime shopping opportunities yet so we are going to go to this big mall they have in the city. Hopefully we don’t get lost in or getting to the city, which is quite probable haha oh well.
love & miss you all heaps
Cara Lee
Ah and just yesterday we celebrated Canadian thanksgiving here at the crossing! It was so lovely, Hanna and Sheryl and Patti decorated up the room with candles and jazz and we had a big meal. We had some turkey, ham, stuffing, sweet potatoes, gravy, mashed potatoes, carrots and peas. It was sooo good. There was no pistachio salad that I usually have though, only sad part. That night was also family night. Family night is a night where we the students are split into two different groups (same ones every time) and we either stay at the Crossing or go to Dale and Patti’s house. During family night we play games and just hang out. So yesterday my group was at Dale and Patti’s house we just played this card game that asks you questions so we pretty much just talked for a few hours. Colin told us one of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard in my life we were all pretty much losing it laughing. We also had dessert at Dale and Patti’s which was homemade apple pie and pumpkin pie with whipped cream and ice cream. It was quite delicious.
So this week so far has been quite good, a lot more relaxed than the last week I had. The last week for us at the Crossing was our Ministry week so we were split into two different groups and sent to two different camps. I went to a Te Mapua Camp which means something like precious child in Maori and it was located at the Woodend Christian Campground. It was about a two hour drive to get there because the camp is located 10 minutes outside of Christchurch. The camp was a really good experience for me to have, but I have to say it was one of the most difficult weeks I’ve ever had. Dale didn’t really tell us much about the camps except that one of the camps our two groups were being sent to had some children with higher needs. He was definitely right about that one. It turns out the camp we went to was completely sponsored children (basically they were quite poor) and all of them came from backgrounds of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. They told us some kids have never been taught to eat with a knife and fork, some had never even seen something like a grape before (like their parents never fed them anything like that) or that some had to be carefully watched because they had restraining orders against people who were trying to abduct them (i.e. divorced parent, step-parent). At one point the leader of the camp read to us some of the specific backgrounds the children were coming from, but without telling us their names to protect their privacy. It was really hard to hear the situations these young kids were coming from.
The night before we started camp during staff training we had this pastor come in and talk to us. He talked to us about how these kids have been given labels by the world, but that doesn’t make them any less worthy and that we shouldn’t let that scare us, these kids are still precious children of God. He told us this Christian environment at camp would be so countercultural for them because they are coming from places with no hope. He told us to “Give hope, show love”, to show the love that God has so graciously bestowed on us, pass that on and be a vessel of God’s love. He said that this week it should be 80% of God’s love and 20% yours, we can’t do it without him. After he talked to us we had some time alone to prayer and then prayed with all the girls. All of us from the Crossing were quite terrified before that, but we felt better after that.
During that week I was in a cabin with two other leaders, most people had one other leader, but I had the young girls (6-7 years old) who were higher needs children so we needed one more leader. While we were at camp everything we did was about serving the kids and being about them. I don’t think I literally had one moment of free time for myself the entire week; we were always with the kids, constantly looking after them. The longest I ever left the kids that week was for about 15 minutes which was the one night I showered because we weren’t supposed to leave our other leaders alone any more than we had to. We were basically their parents for the week. All of the children we had lacked a lot of basic skills even with eating or communicating or taking care of themselves. Their behavior was a reflection of the neglect these kids had had in their lives, because if you love your children you take the time to discipline them. Even though these kids were so difficult to take care of and took so much out of me, they were still beautiful, amazing girls who deserved to be loved so much. My heart breaks for these girls. God really showed me that I needed to depend on him this week too because there is no way I could have done it without him. Even though it was a hard week for me and the Crossing crew, I am so glad we could provide this place of refuge for these kids even if only for the week.
So yes, this is what’s been going on lately in my life in New Zealand. This weekend Amber, Kelsey, Ben, Michael and I are driving to Christchurch to go shopping. I am so stoked I have not had any prime shopping opportunities yet so we are going to go to this big mall they have in the city. Hopefully we don’t get lost in or getting to the city, which is quite probable haha oh well.
love & miss you all heaps
Cara Lee
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Day 12
Kia Ora! I think that means welcome or hello in the native language of New Zealand. I have been here at the crossing for 12 days now, but it honestly it feels like I have been here for a month. There has been lots going on lately, this last week we’ve started actually taking classes, the first week before was more so orientation. The way the schooling works here at the Crossing is we have a new teacher come in every week who is our main lecturer. The person teaching stays here for the week and focuses on a specific topic. This week we have Werner Schreiber here from South Africa teaching about the Sermon on the Mount. He is such a good teacher, I quite enjoy his classes. On Sunday night we had our first fellowship which is where we have somewhat of an open house and the speaker comes and shares their testimony (of God’s work in their life) or some of what they will be teaching this week. It was at supper time (which is like 7pm or 8pm here and it is like having coffee, tea and snacks, but here in New Zealand when you eat dinner it is called tea which is quite confusing). Werner Schreiber talked about what our goal is for being here and how that plays an influential role of where we will end up when this year is over. He talked about how we so often use God as a means to get to where we want to be, and we always pray about getting to our goal or where we want to be, when our ultimate goal should just be to be with him. It really puts things into perspective if your main focus of where you wanted to go in life is just to be with God, to just die to your own ambitions. It’s an amazing thing.
Throughout the week Werner went really in depth into Jesus’ teachings from the Sermon on the Mount and it completely changed the way I look at God’s word. I won’t go into much detail about what he said because it could not really do what he taught us justice in a few paragraphs. One of the main things we learned about this week though is how a lot of people read the bible in prescriptive ways, when it is actually descriptive. Something is prescriptive when it is simply telling you what you must do and when something is descriptive its more so just what will happen. Throughout the bible, like in the Sermon on the Mount, people usually take it prescriptively that they must follow all these rules that were laid out for them. But that doesn’t work; laws and rules can’t change people’s hearts. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus made it nearly impossible on purpose to carry out all of these “so called rules” because it reminds us we can’t do it without him, it reminds us of our dependence on him. Everyone is a failure at the Christian lifestyle, everyone falls short and God knows that. The Sermon on the Mount and some things like it should be read descriptively, because it shows you the way you will live when God lives through you; this is just what will happen when you have God in your life. Your heart (which is reflected through the way you live) is only changed by God, not by following rules. So this is just a little tidbit of what I learned, there is more but I don’t have a crazy amount of time before the internet turns off!
So throughout the week it’s been our first real school week so every week we have classes, ministry stuff, assignments and readings. We have bible readings assigned and reading 2 other books called Revolution within and The Knowledge of the Holy. We have a journal where we write down the main points of the lectures and hand it in at the end of every week. We will also have random big assignments here and there. For this week we had to write down our testimony and hand it in. Everyone is going to be sharing them throughout the coming months.
Earlier this week we were eating lunch and all of a sudden the house lit up and we were so excited it was one of the first times there was sun outside! But throughout the week it has actually been getting quite nice, not ridiculously hot in any way but definitely sweet spring weather. We have some bikes here that we can use to bike into town and it only takes about 6 minutes, but for some reason it takes about 40 minutes to walk into town. Amber, Bryan and I biked and longboarded into town the other day and right on the outskirts is a dairy (which is like a convenience store) we could get a bunch of whatever we really needed. I got milk :) I was quite excited. They also have ice cream there that is so ridiculously cheap you can get like 5 scoops for a dollar. Its crazyness. The flavor of choice for most is called Hokey Pokey. After that we came back to the school and Joseph set up a Brian Regan comedy DVD and we moved all the furniture into the student lounge and had a comedy night. I had never heard of him before and neither had a lot of people and a lot of us actually thought he was coming here haha. Today we went to the beach about 20 minutes away and it was not really warm and super windy but it was really nice to see the ocean. We had brought a dirtbike and Joseph’s cool kite and Syrrel (this older man who is really great) taught us how to catch whitebait. Whitebait are like these little clear minnow-like fish. A bunch of us decided to eat them raw and I actually ate one, raw. I still can’t believe I did that. It didn’t really taste like anything, but it was salty from the ocean. Bleh, gross. Speaking of other things I don’t normally eat haha I have been eating salads and tomatoes here! Which is also quite a feat for me. The food we get here at the school is actually quite delicious.
Right now it is like 10pm here and Kelsey was telling me about how when Cameron and Jonas went into town a little while ago sirens were going off throughout the city and all the lights in the town were flashing. We think it’s a Tsunami warning… we aren’t quite sure, very sketchy to say the least. I don’t really think that’s what it is but peoples parents keep emailing everyone about Tsunamis so maybe you never know. But tomorrow we have to wake up super early and we are going to camp for the week! We won't be back until late Friday so I won’t be able to be in contact on the internet or anything for a long time so sorry if I don’t get around to emailing certain people in near future :(.
Love Cara Lee
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Pics Pics Pics
A passion I have in life is nutella.
p.s. note the background is my lovely new home, it was opened as a bed and breakfast in 1907. hopefully i can get that video of our house and the property up soon!
So its super hard to get pictures on facebook or on the blog or anywhere in general because the internet here is LAMESAUCE so I shall put a few random ones up for now. Even doing that it takes foreverrrrr, I have a lot of photos I wish I could share them with you all :(
This was the boys pathetic attempt at a prank. Blocking our door with a bunch of random stuff, they added more things as the week went on. They should be careful what they start, people could show them what a real prank is.
This is a candy store :) here they call candy "lollies". I think that is a great word for candy. This was in Timaru when we went shopping.
Sheryl (our cook) had this delicious carrot-cake and we decided to make some colorful icing to decorate it for Michaels birthday!
We went to Ian Hyslops house (the pastor of the church we're associated with) for a barbecue one night and played some soccer and just hung out.
This is Kelsey & I in part of our backyard. Our backyard is soooo huge. We also have doves (DOVES!) who live in that bird house in the back left corner :) They are gorgeous.
The other nigh Joseph (kind of the program person I suppose and the maintenance guy) booked the high school gym and some of us went over to play soccer. It was so hot in that gym but it was so much fun. We made two teams based on where you were from: Canada vs. Multicultural haha. Canada won! It was a super close game, it was super fun too.
I am going to write a very lengthy post tonight to tell you all about what I have been up to this week, its been really great so far. So I promise I will do that tonight! This was just a few photos to hold you over till then :)
P.S.
Feel free to mail me stuff I would adore it :) letters or packages. I shall snail mail you back if you do! This is my address:
Cara Lee Custead
Capernwray Crossing
124 Woodbury Road
R.D. 21
Geraldine
NEW ZEALAND
P.P.S.
ohh and its really hard for me to go on facebook, but at the school I can check my email quite regularly, so if you need to get a hold of me email me at cara.custead@hotmail.com.
Much Love :)
Cara Lee.
p.s. note the background is my lovely new home, it was opened as a bed and breakfast in 1907. hopefully i can get that video of our house and the property up soon!
So its super hard to get pictures on facebook or on the blog or anywhere in general because the internet here is LAMESAUCE so I shall put a few random ones up for now. Even doing that it takes foreverrrrr, I have a lot of photos I wish I could share them with you all :(
This was the boys pathetic attempt at a prank. Blocking our door with a bunch of random stuff, they added more things as the week went on. They should be careful what they start, people could show them what a real prank is.
This is a candy store :) here they call candy "lollies". I think that is a great word for candy. This was in Timaru when we went shopping.
Sheryl (our cook) had this delicious carrot-cake and we decided to make some colorful icing to decorate it for Michaels birthday!
We went to Ian Hyslops house (the pastor of the church we're associated with) for a barbecue one night and played some soccer and just hung out.
This is Kelsey & I in part of our backyard. Our backyard is soooo huge. We also have doves (DOVES!) who live in that bird house in the back left corner :) They are gorgeous.
The other nigh Joseph (kind of the program person I suppose and the maintenance guy) booked the high school gym and some of us went over to play soccer. It was so hot in that gym but it was so much fun. We made two teams based on where you were from: Canada vs. Multicultural haha. Canada won! It was a super close game, it was super fun too.
I am going to write a very lengthy post tonight to tell you all about what I have been up to this week, its been really great so far. So I promise I will do that tonight! This was just a few photos to hold you over till then :)
P.S.
Feel free to mail me stuff I would adore it :) letters or packages. I shall snail mail you back if you do! This is my address:
Cara Lee Custead
Capernwray Crossing
124 Woodbury Road
R.D. 21
Geraldine
NEW ZEALAND
P.P.S.
ohh and its really hard for me to go on facebook, but at the school I can check my email quite regularly, so if you need to get a hold of me email me at cara.custead@hotmail.com.
Much Love :)
Cara Lee.
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