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