Adventures In The Bush: Tramping the Greenstone Caples

Our whole team after climbing to the top of McKellar Saddle!

Adventure has filled our hearts this week!  A week ago Andrew and Crystal sadly departed our team to start working in Christchurch.  As we said good bye to our friends, God was setting us up for a new ministry in the bush.  Our team (now seven in company) departed Queenstown and traveled west past Glenorchy.  After a bit of windy road around Lake Wakatipu we arrived at the trail head of the Greenstone-Caples Track.  Packing our backpacks full of food, tying our boots tight, and filling our hearts with love we stepped out onto the 67 km (about 40 mi) trek.  Our team spent 5 nights and 6 days tramping through the Greenstone-Caples.  We would camp outside of huts and fix delicious breakfasts and dinners for the other trampers and share life with them.  Very much like our YWAM school, people had come from all over the world to backpack through New Zealand.  We met many Germans, Brazilians, Kiwis (New Zealanders), Italians, Americans, Israelis, British, and a whole lot more. God opened up many opportunities to share His love.  Though the trail was long at some points God always gave us energy to talk to people once we reached the huts.  Here are a couple stories from our trek.                

Our campsite at the Mid Caples Hut

I was super excited to go tramping into the bush.  I had heard stores, all my life, of New Zealand's beauty from my parents and I was excited to see it first hand.  I was also excited to get away from technology and meet new people.  On our first day our hiking was slow. We had packed enough food not only for us but for any one else we met.  It took us a little bit longer to get to the Mid Caples Hut, where all of us were happy to get out packs off. We set up our tents quickly, and I sat outside the cabin were a few of us talked to an Israeli couple.  The couple were on their honeymoon and they shared some Arabic coffee with Mallory and myself.  I am not much for coffee, but I enjoyed trying their brew.  To be honest, I would rather have their coffee again than Starbucks.

After a bit, I sat inside and talked with a young German lady named Kerstin.  She was sweet and kind.  We talked about Germany for some time, and I told her I had a desire to learn German.  She was puzzled why, but we became fast friends.  Before long, she offered to have me stay in Germany with her.  I plan to take her up on that if I am ever blessed to be back in Germany.  In the morning we offered her bacon and eggs before she started out again.  I like making new friends, and after the trip we have sent emails back and forth whenever we have had internet.

I have realized that sharing God's love is not a short process and above all it should be done in love and not forced.  Also that each opportunity looks different. and it takes wisdom to learn how to discern for each person. We are all learning on this.         
                                                                                                                    --Kent
    

Julie, Isaac, Dan, and Kent on top of Key Summit

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
   --Isaiah 52:7

A couple days ago when we descended down the Greenstone Valley to the parking lot after five nights on the trail, our feet were not beautiful - at least not in any literal sense. Some of us had blisters, one of us had a toenail coming off, and all of our feet were pretty smelly after more than 65 km (40 mi) of walking. But while my body was weary and dirty, my spirit felt invigorated. Our six days trekking around the Greenstone and Caples Valleys west of Queenstown were a physical challenge and a major learning experience as we discovered what it looks like to share God's love and the good news about Jesus with each person we encountered on the way. In many cases, this just meant offering a passing smile and a bright greeting. In other cases, it looked like sharing some of the food that we had carried with us - including some special things you rarely get on the trail, like bacon or pancakes.
Most often, though, we just had conversations with people. These would start out as small talk, but often it was easy to go a little deeper, listen to people's stories, and begin a friendship in a really short amount of time. In this way, we connected with a Brazilian family, three different Israeli couples, several Germans, a few Australians, a group of kiwi high-schoolers, an Italian woman, a French guy, and even a recent college graduate from Raleigh, NC - not to mention quite a few others. After initially being a little bit hesitant to begin talking to these perfect strangers, we quickly found out that it's really easy and our confidence grew.

Many of these conversations stayed light and never got to the point of talking about God. We've found that it's not very helpful to force that; instead, we just listen, share our own stories, and stay alert for opportunities to go deeper and talk about spiritual things. It can be frustrating at times because I have recently gained a deeper desire for everyone we meet to know Jesus and have a relationship with Him. But forcing the gospel on someone who isn't ready to receive it (especially if they have been hurt by Christians in the past) can really do more harm than good. So we are happy to simply be a link in the chain of events that will bring a person to God and to pray for everyone that we meet, starting even before we meet them.

Hiking down the Greenstone Valley

The outside of the Greenstone Hut. We camped in a grassy area behind the hut on our final night out.

On our fourth day out we met an awesome little group of four kiwi high-schoolers hiking with two of their dads. Through conversations, sharing some food back and forth, and a couple games of Farkle (a fun dice game) we quickly struck up a friendship. We soon found out that they were hiking the same way as us, so that we'd be able to hang out with them two nights in a row! 

Creatively roasting marshmallows with our new friends

For a long time our conversations with them stayed pretty surface-level, but we soon learned that one of the dads, Mark, was a Christian, and his daughter Hannah went to church as well. The other three students, like most young people in Wanaka, didn't go to church and had only indirectly seen or heard about Christianity. As we continued deeper into conversation, however, we found that they really were curious and interested to hear about why we followed Jesus and what it was all about for us. As they asked questions, a few of us were able to share our stories of relationship with this personal and immediately relevant God, One who speaks directly to us, cares about our lives, and loves us unconditionally rather than condemning us. It was incredibly fun to be able to share this passion that we have, even if they didn't become Christians on the spot or anything like that.

God's activity was SO evident in our "coincidental" meeting of these young people, our interactions with them, and even our praying afterwards. As it turned out, we had already planned to spend a couple days after our hike in their hometown of Wanaka. This meant that we were able to see three of them again and watch a movie together at the local cinema!

Our team on the last day of our hike with our kiwi friends: Hannah, Michaela, Ashleigh, and Johnny

All this is to say that we had an amazing time learning how to reach out while hiking and camping. God was powerfully with us, planning and orchestrating things. Our feet may not have been literally beautiful, but we could feel God's delight over us as we walked with Him on the trail! As we finished the hike, I read down a few more verses in Isaiah 52, and they rang so true:

For you shall not go out in haste,
and you shall not go in flight,
for the Lord will go before you,
and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
   --Isaiah 52:12

 

        ~Dan
 

Cleaning, Coffee, and Conversations in the King's Country

We have had an exciting time here in Queenstown!  For the past week and a half, we have been constantly busy! Our team haven't had much time to stop and talk about what has been happening. We have been staying at the YWAM Queenstown base that  opened one week before we got here.  The base is an old church building that YWAM Queenstown are renting for a little while.  The building was vacant for 7 years and with the combined efforts of the two YWAM teams (the Queenstown staff and our outreach team), we have brought it back to life.  The building now looks might fine, despite the orange carpet from the 70s.  This base will be used as a training and living facility for the Discipleship Training School (DTS) that is starting right after we leave.  Our team has been working hard at the base, but we have also been serving the community with several work projects.  Along with work projects we have also done coffee/tea outreaches on the waterfront and promoting awareness on sex trafficking.  Our time here has been enjoyable and impacting. Here are a few stories from our team from the week:

Our very first morning in Queenstown, we drove to a point high above the town and prayed for the whole area! It was an incredible view, and wonderful to get God's heart for this place.

This week has been quite the busy one for the team and myself. We've done two coffee and tea nights, we've worked with the Salvation Army, and we've done a sex trafficking awareness stand in the heart of Queenstown... I told you it was a busy week! I've loved getting to talk to so many different people and just getting to know their story. The coffee and tea nights have been my favorite, I got to meet people from all over like Estonia, Russia, Sweden, Brazil, Australia and the list goes on and on! Its fun seeing people's faces as you told them that the coffee is free, and usually the question that follows is always "why are you doing this?"! Blessing those people with something as small as free coffee was truly a wonderful experience. 

One girl specifically stands out. It was during our time with the sex trafficking booth. She came up one time and was really interested in the topic. After a few minutes of talking she went on her way, but a few moments later she came back to talk some more. The second time she came around you could just tell that she was filled with curiosity, and after ten minutes of talking to her i could tell how much she cared for other people and how close she was to coming to Christ! We learned that her name was Isabel. After a few more minutes of talking we prayed for her and she went back to her friends, but after she left the three of us that talked to her just knew how close she was to coming to truth! All we could do was hope that our conversation would set Isabel on the journey of rediscovering her faith.   

         --Isaac

After a crash course on the growing issue of sex trafficking around the world, we set up a booth in town to raise awareness about this injustice. In addition to raising awareness, this provided an easy conversation starter that sometimes led to sharing our stories or the gospel.

So as we said, we did practical work to serve the community. And every time it is kind of a surprise : before we go, we only know the address and the name of the person, but we don't know what we are going to do. I remember a few days before beginning these practical works, I asked God "God it has been a long time since I've been around horses (I used to ride horses before). Could you please give me 5 minutes with them? Just 5 minutes ?" So we were going to our first community help time, and what a surprise when we arrived! They told us that our job was to clean paddocks full of horses! So God gave me not only few minutes around horses but a whole morning with them! Well, we basically cleaned horse poop during couple hours, but it was so great to have the opportunity to pet them and be around them. It was God's little gift for me, and I really enjoyed it  :)

          --Julie

We’re at the end of week 2 of outreach – we’ve been in Queenstown staying at the new YWAM base… and what a GORGEOUS setting it is!  Heaps of practical outreach – helping the base get ready to begin their very first DTS and volunteering time in the community. We also did justice awareness downtown and have had free coffee, tea & slack line nights by the waterfront.

The "new" YWAM Queenstown building! We were a Godsend for the YWAM staff here, who have had a very short time to prepare the building for the first DTS, beginning at the end of January.

Connor and Isaac doing practical work (landscaping) at the new Queenstown YWAM base.

Andrew and Crystal making heaps of bunk beds for the first Queenstown DTS!

Reaching out to people in the western culture is so unique… and kind of challenging! We love on people and spread Jesus’ love in a very relational way. It’s been cool meeting people, talking with them and hearing their story. We’ve had some great conversations about what they believe and getting to share what we believe and how real the love of our personal God has been in our lives.

Raising awareness for the injustice of sex trafficking was pretty impacting. To hear people say they never knew this happens blew me away! I loved raising awareness and helping to fight something that steals life and joy from so so many people.

One evening, we hiked a mountain that towers above Queenstown and spent the night on the mountain, under a big starry sky. It was AMAZING! And seeing the sun rise the next morning over the quiet peaceful town was breathtaking.

       --Andrew & Crystal

Traveling Tales

After saying  goodbye to my friends at the base - some of whom I've grown very close to over the course of my DTS - and my beloved fiancé, it was finally time to begin our journey to the south island. My thoughts were filled with excitement, anxiousness, anticipation, and nervousness. It was pretty bittersweet for me because I was sad to say bye to my loved ones, excited for our journey, yet nervous about not knowing what to expect. In that moment of saying goodbye I was leaving behind my comforts and conveniences—replacing them with unknown expectancies. All the while there was a still, small voice echoing in my heart saying, "Peace I leave with you- not as the world gives, rather my heavenly peace which surpasses all understanding." I treasured this deep in my heart as we departed on what would be one of the longest road trips I've taken in my life. Sure, I've been on some road trips before- however, never have I been on one where I was packed like a sardine (which is inevitable when you're in a van of 7 people and tons of equipment). So far I've experienced nausea , breathtaking views of mountains, exhaustion, and adorable baby seals! As we are now on our second day of driving, I sit here in the van filled with joy, feeling incredibly blessed. I'm blessed to be on this journey with my team, blessed that we're listening to some good tunes, and that when I look outside my window, I'm surrounded by God's wondrous creation. May we never lose our wonder and amazement at who You are and all the good works you do, Lord. :)

          -Beth

Our team left base at around 2pm and after  a long drive we finally arrived at our ferry (a boat that's taking us to south island) at midnight. We arrived early so we walked around town for 2 hours and napped until it was time to get on. About an hour later we were signaled to drive onto the ferry, this was our last bit of traveling to reach south island so we were all excited but too tired to show it. We got onto the ferry and plopped ourselves and our stuff on the ground after about an hour of sleep i woke up around 4am to 4 Samoan children jumping up and down on a racing arcade game that was on the ship screaming and making a lot of noise, It's funny how I always end up I these situations after asking God to work on my patience with me lol... So I put my headphones in and went back to sleep.  We arrived in south island at 6 ate breakfast at 7  then started traveling to our campsite which was 5 hours away. We finally arrived at our campsite after almost 24 hours of traveling we slept pretty much all day and ended the day with a trip to the beach. We are now driving to Queenstown which is another 7 hours away. I'm so excited to see what God has planned here for us.

          -Connor